water bottles for good

Here's a disheartening example of rational pro-people, pro-earth arguments being co-opted by conservatives. An Arizona immigration activist with the group No More Deaths has been charged with littering and banned from a wildlife refuge for leaving water jugs for migrants in the desert. Read the whole story here.

zapatista agave syrup

Well, it's not agave, it's honey, but oh how I wish it were.

Some of my friends are very different from me. I saw this honey reviewed on a friend's blog. She's fabulous: brilliant, hilarious, wears full-on party dresses in the daytime, and left corporate land to go to chef school years back. I don't follow her blog because the things I find there upset me. (Her profile lists "butchering" as one of her specialties.) But I got all happy over this, even though I know those bees were blow-torched. I know. I know! The idea of supporting rebel cooperatives by buying their [fair trade] products is alluring, plus the masked activist on the label has a whole 'nother kind of allure. Fer real...their logo is a balaclava. Yes, product marketing has an impact on me.

Alas, I'll settle for the [vegan] Palestinian olive oil from Rebel Imports. (When I can't support lesbo Palestinians Aswat by buying their oil, this is good backup.)

P.S. Many food type postlets have moved over to wintergreens. This stayed because, although interesting, is sooo not local. The multiple locations are making me a bit schizophrenic, but that's just the way.

tradition

I like a little ritual in my life, so on christmas I want to listen to Elvis records and eat tamales and bourbon balls. I can't help it. A nip of brandy doesn't hurt either.

Though I've lived away from the southwest longer than I lived there, my lust for tamales (and other foods local to AZ) stays.


It's sometimes hard to find vegetarian tamales, and definitely harder still to find vegan ones, so it's a good excuse to make up one's own big batch. When I'm already making masa, it only makes sense to make pamonha too, a Brazilian version of the sweet tamale made with coconut. Enjoy your own holiday rituals, and happy solstice to you.

radish sculpture

Several years ago, I carved radishes as holiday ornaments. It just made sense, with the beautiful red and white and the nice smell. They shriveled after about 10 days, but were lovely while they lasted. Well, I've been outdone. Check out Noche de Rabanos in Oaxaca!

Photo thanks to Skull a Day and Planeta.

all souls

Halloween, all saints, and all souls all make us have a look at death. All the grim reapers and skeletons running around, the gravestones my friend with cancer reported decorating the walls of her chemo lab, all the graveyard visitation and wishes for the souls of the dead. I've always been a Day of the Dead and sugar skull fan, and recently learned about the Yi Peng festival in Thailand, where some reports say those releasing the lanterns let their troubles float away, and others say they release the souls of their dead. I'd hoped to go to one of the city's largest graveyards today to have a sendoff for my own dead with the accompaniment of a Haitian band, but was too caught up cheering the tail end of the marathoners.

Whatever your celebration of the dead may entail, here's a nod to your deceased loved ones, as well as you and yours still living.

border crossing

I'm reading Sandor Katz's book The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved. It has all kinds of nuggets in it, but I came across something that really stuck: "illegal aliens" or "human invasive species" connected with plant and animal invasive species. He says:

Freedom demands that borders be as porous as possible. Open borders allow for cross-pollination and exchange; ironclad borders are expressions of totalitarian control. And generalized prohibitions on "invasive aliens" are oversimplistic and inflammatory. "Alien species do not come from Mars," the popular science magazine Discover reminds us; "they are not 'other.' They are very much of us, by us; we are the main agent of their spread." Seeds migrate via birds and the wind [[and nation defined borders change]], so "native" is not a static state.

He goes on to talk about how GM giants Monsanto benefit from the destruction of so-called invasive plant species (in effect controlling diversity), while individual seed savers trying to continue their family's generations old heritage foods are stopped at borders. Concerned environmentalists have picked up the invasive=bad, local=good lingo. It's similar to industry like slaughterhouses benefiting from the labor of underpaid undocumented workers, while blue collar workers wonder if they can't get jobs because of the flow of immigrants. The either/or language is deceiving us.

I'm inspired to revisit Xicana writer Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera, which embraces crossover.

fireworks or war?

This image (from ayres no graces') is sortof how I feel about fireworks. I'm sortof scared of them, freaked out by all the war noise, which, when we're honest, is what they're meant to evoke (see The Unapologetic Mexican). Most years I'm paranoid or grouchy or both, and lock my scared cats up in the house with my scaredy cat self during fireworks. Read this hilarious post on tiny cat pants about a fireworks accident this year, which made me feel sane for hiding out. (Wait, or is it the drunk straight people I'm hiding from?) Anyway, ran into this bit from last year when, apparently, I was feeling bolder:

Almost two decades ago I took a marine biology class that field-tripped to Puerto Penasco, Sonora, Mexico to spend our days gazing into tide pools. That is where I learned about bioluminescent animals and organisms, and that those organisms are why the ocean sparkles at night. Standing by a bonfire on the beach looking at the night water, the smallest beings creating such vast beauty had a big impact on me. The ocean can sparkle on its own, with no moon.

I thought about it this week when I visited my CSA's distribution pretty late in the evening. The dense show of fireflies over the fields was absolutely stunning, second only to one summer evening I spent in a field thick with fireflies in the mountains of North Carolina. My insistence on comparing the view to laser light shows (events usually accompanied by Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon") made me laugh at myself. It is so beautiful and fascinating that I'm only able to absorb the information by comparing it to something much flatter, and made by humans.

Growing up in the sunset-rich Sonoran desert, I'm familiar with this absorption issue: Visitors almost always look at the spectacular sunsets for 10 seconds, take a picture, and spend hours looking at the photographic image of that sunset.

This weekend also came with holiday fireworks. I think that because of the fireflies, I was more open to the fireworks this year. Instead of looking and sounding to me like a simulation of war, I was reminded more of fairy dust and making wishes by blowing on dandelions. I saw a woman wearing sparkling lotion over her whole face and her hair and neck and clothes. Though I don't think I'll be purchasing any of this lotion, I understand the desire to glitter. Who wouldn't want to be a part of the world of the fireflies, the world of the ocean organisms, and be able to shine instead of just reflect?

appo

There's a new film about the popular rebellion in Oaxaca, Mexico in 2006, and the filmmaker is hoping to have the film screened for groups of activists. They are not looking for money, but to share the the information widely. See trailers of Desde el Filo de la Navaja.