Today was a gorgeous day here - sunny and around 5.  We went out for a walk with a pack of llamas (one of R’s friends is starting to do llama treks in the area) this afternoon in nearby Paradise Valley.  The llamas had been cooped up for most of the winter and were frisky.  One of them really likes dogs and kept trying to kiss Ella.  Pictures were taken but I won’t be able to post them until I return.

Off to the airport at 430 am.  I am all packed and just have one bag … I may go through it again if I have time before leaving.  I am going to make coffee now so that it is ready to be nuked first thing in the morning.  Looks like tomorrow will be a long day but I will be in Mexico! 

Oi … having been back and forth on email with my niece tonight.  The contours of my trip to Mexico are becoming clearer and we are figuring out when she has travelling time and where would be a good place to meet.  I am not doing an inclusive trip - fly in, land at your destination, take bus to your hotel where you stay for a week or two.  I am flying into Mexico City, know that I can take a bus to Queretaro from the airport and will arrive there at about 1030 pm (after getting to the Vancouver airport for my flight at 530 am the same day).  It is hard to predict how much bus energy I will have left at this time but I will either stay overnight in Mexico City or Queretaro and then head west to Guadalajara and the Pacific Coast for a week of R and R or just do it all in a long stretch.  I will have to research any other possibile bus routes tomorrow to get to the Pacific Coast.  Given my niece’s schedule the trip to the beach first seems to make the most sense and I am thinking I will go to the area around Barra de Navidad and Melaque - looks nice in pictures.  At this point a charter flight and hotel look good but it isn’t going to happen!

I came across an article on B.C. Binning, a Canadian artist who died in 1976, and the reference to the exhibition of his art work this morning in the Vancouver Sun.  I had never heard of him but will go to VAG to see the show as I like the pictures of his work.  He also did several mosaics in Vancouver that I would like to see:

- B.C. Electric Building (now called The Electra) at the corner of Burrard and Nelson;

- a mosaic mural in the former Imperial Bank of Commerce (at the corner of Granville and Dunsmuir), now a Shoppers Drug Mart.

Mazel tov!  What a great guy.

TPL - this is for you!

at http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/povmap/downloads/maps/atlas/cover_front_matter.pdf

During my catch up on counterpunch.org I came across the name Susan George.  As I recalled, I read her work in the late 80s so I did a google.  The books she authored at this time that I read were:

George, Susan (1990): Ill Fares the Land, Penguin

George, Susan (1987): A Fate Worse than Debt, Penguin

She is now

"the author of a dozen books translated into many languages. She is vice-president of the French anti-globalisation movement, Attac, and board chairperson of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam"  (quote from http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/susan_george/profile.html).

I’ll have to read her more recent work.

There are other writers/thinkers that I read in the late 1980s/early 1990s that I would like to re-read or read what they are writing about now.  This includes a female writer who wrote about the evangelical Christian movement in Latin America and I forget her name (it will come to me eventually!)

I saw a reference on counterpunch.org to a Noam Chomsky interview on Democracy Now on January 1st/07 where he talks about politics in Latin America … I will have to look this up.

After reading the articles on Oaxaca it makes me want to go back there!  I do want to see my niece in Guadalajara which is about at an 8 hour bus ride from Mexico City in the completely opposite direction.  If I visit Guadalajara and Oaxaca, it would mean 16 hours on the bus from Mexico City to Guadalajara and back … then another six hour bus ride to Oaxaca.  Can I bear this?  I have done these maniac trips through Mexico on the bus in the past but as I get older it is more difficult.  I still have a week to figure this out - I have two Mexico travel guides out from the wonderful Squamish library and close to three weeks vacation!  I leave Squamish next Saturday.

January 4, 2007

Will There be "Huesos?"

Report from Oaxaca

By KATHY RENTENBACH

"Oaxaca had been roiling for months. The Teachers’ strike in May. The attack by the military police at 4:30 AM. in June. The APPO. The new people’s government. Megamarches. Snipers. Deaths. Torture. Arbitrary arrests. Constant military presence. Tanks. The military invasions in November. Oaxaca, beautiful tourist city. Destination for many Americans. World heritage site."

continued at http://counterpunch.org/rentenbach01042007.html

January 9, 2007

Thirty Years of FBI Harassment and Misconduct

When the Truth Doesn’t Matter

By LEONARD PELTIER

"Much of the government’s behavior at the Pine Ridge Reservation and in its prosecution of Mr. Peltier is to be condemned. The government withheld evidence. It intimidated witnesses. These facts are not disputed."

U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals

"For over 30 years I have sought justice from the United States Courts which have failed to provide me with any relief despite acknowledging numerous acts of Government misconduct. For example, after my trial, my lawyers issued Freedom of Information Act Requests ("FOIA") and discovered that the Government fabricated the ballistics evidence which it used at trial to argue that I shot the agents in cold blood. Once we revealed this egregious misconduct, the Government has had to admit on several occasions in open Court and before the Parole Commission that it could not prove I shot the agents and that it could not prove who shot the agents."

continued at http://counterpunch.org/peltier01092007.html

January 10, 2007

A Twelfth Night Tale

A Walk in Oaxaca

By PETER LINEBAUGH

"This is the story of how we took a walk in Oaxaca and went to the zócalo, or city square, for a shoe shine.

We were there for Christmas with friends and a winter holiday. Flying from the Ann Arbor ‘peace movement’ with its silent [sic] vigils and its Zionist virus we were aching for a change of scene, weather, and political outlook. There were three of us, and we were bearing gifts: Michaela, my partner, carrying medicines, Riley, a sophomore in high school, our daughter, bringing an abundance of expectancy, and me, historian, bringing a copy of my study of the commons and Magna Carta. We wanted somehow to step into another possible world, healthy, hopeful, and chartered."

continued at http://counterpunch.org/linebaugh01102007.html