Blog Archives
Beauty College
Does it look like the beauty college has a bit of a skin condition?
San Antonio, Texas
photographed 10.24.2014
Goods
If you are in San Antonio and want to get away from the tourists around the Alamo and the Riverwalk, you could do this:
1. Have breakfast at Ocho, a nice little place at the Hotel Havana. (But the waitress will ask you to not take photos with your camera. You can, she says, take as many as you want with a phone. When asked the difference, she says they don’t allow cameras “with lenses” because of “privacy concerns.” You decide it’s not worth the time to explain to her what a lens actually is. Or how a photo shot with a phone is kind of more likely to instantly show up on Facebook.)
2. Walk north along the Riverwalk. There won’t be any tourists, other than yourself and any companions you may have brought along. But there will be plenty of runners and walkers and dogs. It’s a nice walk. Some of the bridges have art under them, and there’s even a set of locks. It’s a very pleasant place.
3. Take some time at the Pearl Brewery, which hasn’t actually been a brewery in a long time. If it’s a Saturday, the part with the farmers market and retail shops will be pretty crowded, but the part where the sign says GOODS will be quiet. You can sit in the shade and read a book.
4. Or you can take in the stores and do a pretty fair amount of people watching at the market.
5. Or, you can find a chair on a grassy slope above the river and read that same book. (We are Water*, by Wally Lamb, was what I was reading, in case you wondered.)
6. After a while, you could go to La Gloria for some street tacos.
7. And then, you could get the water taxi to take you back toward downtown. The taxi’s only marginally faster than walking, but it does go through the locks, which is something that I don’t get to do in my day-to-day routine.
San Antonio, Texas
photographed 1.25.2014
* I agree with the review, and am glad that the book was on sale: it wouldn’t have been worth it otherwise.
Offerings
Today marks the beginning the Latin American celebration Día de Los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. It is a popular holiday in Mexico and is becoming increasingly popular in the American Southwest, too. (Here’s a good source of information on the tradition.)
Here in Lubbock, several art galleries participate in an event called Procesíon, with exhibits reflecting the cultural heritage and modern interpretations of the holiday. The Buddy Holly Center hosts workshops, and tomorrow my granddaughter and I are headed over to make sugar skulls, which is our traditional after-Halloween activity.
And, meanwhile, one winter day several months after the celebration, in a niche on the back of the cemetery gates in Terlingua, I spotted some relics of Day of the Dead.
Terlingua Cemetery
Terlingua, Texas
photographed 1.20.2013
(I am gone for a while, and will not be responding to comments right away. But make some anyway, if you feel inclined, and I’ll get back to you – it just won’t be right away.)
In a dry and barren place
Out here in the desert, cemeteries aren’t the pastoral sites they are in other parts of the country. There’s no grassy paths to soften the scene, no trees to provide shade to mourners.
But there are uneven piles of rocks, topped by simple crosses. And, way in the back, the Virgin stands in her tiny grotto.
Lajitas Cemetery
Lajitas, Texas
photographed 1.20.2013
(I am gone for a while, and will not be responding to comments right away. But make some anyway, if you feel inclined, and I’ll get back to you – it just won’t be right away.)
(not a) church
Down along the river (which hard to think of as an international border, even though it is), there’s a movie set.
So, at best, this is just a fake church….
near Lajitas, Texas
photographed 1.20.2013
(I am gone for a while, and will not be responding to comments right away. But make some anyway, if you feel inclined, and I’ll get back to you – it just won’t be right away.)
One Day | One Image 