A Sunday at Tenacatita with Ron and the kids

Ron, a long time buddy, just got down from Seattle and spent a week with me here in Melaque. He and his wife Dora who is from Mexico are moving down once again and he will meet her in Vallarta in a few days. Vallarta has more jobs and they will be working ... but Vallarta is busy and crazy so Ron is not sure. Colima and/or Manzanillo might be the next location if Vallarta does not work out.

Anyway ... Ron and I took the kids up to Tenacatita last Sunday and had a great time. Seven kids total. Bought two barbecued chickens with rice, salad, salsa and tortillas ... to-go in Melaque to save a little money. Then just bought drinks in the restaurant. About 200 pesos in the restaurant and 200 pesos for food to-go with extra salad and rice.

Ron finally bought a digital camera and the last two fotos are his. The first one is mine from the rocky point just to give some perspective of where we spent the day

Tenacatita from up above

The water dogs - Jania, Xiomara and Mia (with a choke hold on me)

The sand fleas - Marcos, Jania and Eddie

Tenacatita, Costalegre, Jalisco Mexico

Barack Obama 30 minute special

If you missed Obama's special last night or would like to watch it again ..

'Happy Families' by Carlos Fuentes

BOOK REVIEW
'Happy Families' by Carlos Fuentes
By Tim Rutten
October 22, 2008

It once was said of James Joyce that he had abandoned everything about the Scholastic philosophy of the High Middle Ages that suffused his education -- except its basic principles.

Carlos Fuentes, who turned 80 this year, is one of the surviving lions of a heroic generation that brought Latin American letters to global prominence and acclaim. Early in his career, he often spoke and wrote of the long cultural shadow cast by the Spanish Counter-Reformation's vain attempt to restore the lost medieval wholeness that Martin Luther shattered when he nailed his 95 Theses to Wittenburg's church door. All of Iberian culture -- and that of its daughter nations, like Fuentes' native Mexico -- the author argued, was, in some deep sense, the product of Catholic Spain's quixotic quest to put the social and intellectual toothpaste back in the tube.

Though Fuentes, like Joyce, remains a high modernist to the core, it's become increasingly clear that his own literary project -- 23 books now, with more in the pipeline -- is a part of that endeavor. "Happy Families," Fuentes' new book (superbly translated by the redoubtable Edith Grossman) is described as a collection of "stories." In recent interviews, however, the author has called it a "choral novel," which seems entirely apt. Sixteen dramatic vignettes involving contemporary Mexican families -- or people in social arrangements standing in for traditional families -- are linked by poetic "choruses" composed in free verse. The juxtapositions are typical of Fuentes: These are narratives focused deeply on his country's contemporary situation while simultaneously looking back into the traditions of Western letters and expressing themselves in the idiom of continental modernism. Though Fuentes routinely is linked with other Latin American writers of his generation, particularly his friend Gabriel García Márquez, his closest aesthetic antecedents and colleagues are Central European: Bloch, Kafka and, particularly, Milan Kundera.

Full LA Times article

Bamboo in your yard

We have this beautiful clump of bamboo in the lot nextdoor and I would love to bring some over eventually. The problem is controlling it's growth. We had it in a garden when I was a kid but remember my parents cussing at it after a few years. I've read on the internet you can box it in with metal or cement but may have to go a meter deep. Anyone have experience with it?

Did I dump this Blog - Not really

It's just the construction project has finished it's third week and there were a few weeks before that of gathering permits, finding workers, checking my construction vocabulary and clearing the lots. It's not that nothing is going to be happening but I decided to focus the project on another page.

Building a house in Pinal Villa

It's been a lucky year for hurricanes here on the Pacific Central coast. Norbert took off to the west and then cut back towards Baja. Odile, which almost hit hurricane status died right off Colima so here we sit in the sunshine when were expecting flooding

Condom-mobile missing in Mexico

October 1, 2008

BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
MEXICO CITY--— Missing in Mexico: One truck carrying 5,000 condoms, 800 HIV tests and a 23-foot inflatable prophylactic.

The coordinator of an HIV/AIDS awareness tour, Polo Gomez, said Wednesday that the ‘‘Condomovil’’ was parked in front of a friend’s house in Mexico City when it disappeared Sunday evening. He believes the truck was stolen, but he doesn’t know why. Police are still investigating.

The truck should be easy to spot. It features painted images of a peeled banana, the exposed part shaped like a condom, and a shirtless man saying: ‘‘I protect myself. Do you?’’

Gomez estimated $19,000 worth of material is missing, including the truck, its contents and sound equipment. The United Nations AIDS program says there are some 200,000 people living with HIV in Mexico.

The Condomovil program has toured Mexico since 1998 promoting safe sex practices while distributing 1.2 million condoms to more than 700,000 people, Gomez said. The inflatable condom was used to draw attention from passers-by.

Gomez said a scheduled tour of Mexico’s south would likely be canceled unless the truck is found.

The group bought the truck with a grant from Mexico’s federal Health Department. The department also donated the 5,000 condoms in the truck when it went missing.