el paso daily photo blog by chacal la chaise

Given FB cannot publish "notes" from more than one blog, I thought I would republish this entry originally posted to a new Moleskiners blog. To me, Moleskiners throws too much in its interface of multiple horizontal menus with a heinous orange and green default color scheme. 

That said, it did make me go and collect my thoughts and write about something that occurred recently. And although not specifically about El Paso nor was the image taken in El Paso, it was created by someone from here; it also tacitly covers issues concerned with education and parenting. 

We've been told that The Judge is not the only student from here who currently attends Michigan State, but sometimes it seems she is. However, there are many more students who do leave home every year to attend college away from El Paso. This is something from one parent with one student who has left home for the past four years.


Fall 2009 marked the first year I was unable to go with MJ to take The Judge back to Michigan State University.

The reason was simple. The schedule for MSU differed from that of UTEP as MSU’s fall semester began a week before UTEP; and so, I did not want to miss the first week of graduate school classes and teaching my crucial first week of freshman composition.

The Judge’s freshman year was 2006, a year when both schools had the same schedule outcomes (a week difference when beginning classes.) For that one year, I had been able to pull it off, but this year was a no go. However, with cell phones available for all, it was almost as if I was there with them—almost. Granted, the calls were not as intimate as when I have virtually walked her back from a frat party or accompanied her from the library at 2:00 a.m. EST (midnight here.) I love walking/talking with her this way. The Judge finds herself to be on the phone with one of us a comfort when walking at night. I don’t blame her at all. She believes that if she is on a cell, she is not alone. She feels safe when we talk/walk together like that.

But back to the first move-in chaos of her freshman year. I loved seeing and watching the cars unload the students, their pillows, stuffed animals, their stuff. The frantic, chaotic mess that only occurs when the luggage, t-shirts, jeans, and other priority/ephemeral details of life collides with all other priority/ephemeral details of “the New Roommate.” Not only are the small rooms awash in clothing contained in the luggage bought, there are also boxes, personal items, microwaves, refrigerators, books, iPods, TVs, speakers, and hundreds of tiny girl T-shirts. That year it was all a blurr to me and probably MJ and The Judge; her things seemed to float around and land all over the room and hallway. Now, multiply that by two. And, I know all this sounds terribly bourgeois, and having nothing (at first) to do with studying for a profession, but it is fun and stressful and most of all sad. You are about to leave your kid at school. But this is the fact of it all—least for us each fall in East Lansing, Michigan, those first few days each fall.

Now, I cannot tarry too long with this initial blog post. I must begin posting other things for my classes. However, what I wanted to share was a moleskine page from way back in Fall 2006. It is a list I made of the items we needed to purchase for The Judge before we left her in Michigan and MJ and I returned (as a couple for the first time in decades) to El Paso, Texas. That first year she lived in the high-rise chaos that is Hubbard Hall.

Labels: drawing, fall, freshman year move-in, Michigan State University, moleskine, notes, parenting, Spartans, the judge, university life

This picture is of two Ukrainian Easter eggs I made over 20 years ago. I found them while hunting for some beeswax for the Judge. She wanted to dye a pair of shorts black and wanted a way for a few small areas of the garment to resist the dye. I found the beeswax and with it over 12 hollow hen eggs in a carton and two duck eggs ready for pysanky dying, along with special the dyes needed to color them all.

I became fascinated with this art form when it was featured in a story in the April 1972 National Geographic Magazine. Titled Easter Greetings from the Ukrainians, it told of the Orthodox Easter customs in both Ukraine and here in the Minneapolis area. I still have my copy, but have never scanned the article. However, this web page includes several images from that article and provides all information on how to make them. If memory serves, the article referred to the Ukrainian Gift Shop in Roseville, MN, a Minneapolis suburb that has a large Ukrainian immigrant population. Two women owned the shop, published books about the eggs, and sold all the supplies needed to create them. I was hooked and promised myself that one day, I would learn how to create those eggs. Around 1983, I got my wish when we drove from Santa Fe, NM to Minneapolis, MN one summer to visit my sister-in-law and her sons. We located the shop; I bought an egg made by the owners, their books, dyes, and other supplies. I could not wait to get home and start making Ukrainian Easter eggs in June.

True eggs dyed in the Ukrainian fashion are actually whole to allow for the best coverage of the dyes. Over time, the contents of the whole eggs should eventually dry and turn to dust. However, until that happens, do not crack or break the egg because the house will smell of rotten eggs! Once I tried dying the whole egg. It was red with accent colors of green, orange, yellow, and white. I think I either gave or sold the egg to a woman who was my supervisor. It sat on her desk for several months; it was very similar in design to the egg on the left. However, one day, something slipped and toppled the egg over off its special stand. Consequently, we had to keep the back door open to our work area for a while. The egg had become sufficiently ripe and gooey.

These eggs in this box could have started out wholly died, and been just fine all these years. With no cracks and kept in the dark they are perfect. For years, they remained in a box in the hall closet along with all hollowed chicken and goose eggs and dyes, patterns, and beeswax needed to transform their white surface. Perhaps I will finish those eggs one of these days. In the meantime, the LearnPysanky site also provides more information and offers all the supplies needed to make Ukrainian Easter eggs.

Labels: 1972, Minneapolis, National Geographic, pysanky, Roseville, santa fe, Ukrainian Easter eggs

In the case of this blog, change is always good. However, sometimes it takes a while to move towards that change, whether writing about something, thinking about writing, or having something you think would produce joy in the world by writing about it and presenting a particular picture about your town. In this case, I found a perfect image that sings joy for me. The birds work hard and entertain me greatly.

This poor mockingbird mom (?) and one of her two fledglings hang around our backyard. These two babies can now fly, but cannot yet feed themselves. Instead, they sit on the fence, fly around the yard, and generally run their mother ragged with their constant begging for food. She brings them red ants, which is something I’d never thought of as bird food. Mimus polyglottos, or the Northern Mockingbird, according to both Peterson's Bird Guide of the Western U.S. and the Cornell Bird Lab, note that the state pajaro de Tejas eats insects and berries. We have—ants, scorpions, and all sorts of beetles, as well as, pyracanthea berries, and mulberry fruits. This year, the family has chosen to nest in a forest of orange trumpet vines (very attractive to ants), desert sage, and another bushy desert plant that grows way too fast for me to keep it cropped and suburban presentable. In other words, we have an unkempt forest of greenery to shelter birds, but is fairly choking my roses.

In years past, parent Mockingbirds would pitch royal fits when Pumpkin no Tail was outside and sleeping on a patio chair. I guess the birds didn't know that this domesticated feline eats only dry cat food. When Inky was in her prime, the yard was fairly littered with Mockingbird feathers. However, now that she is 15-6 years old, she rarely goes outside to hunt; instead, she chooses to watch the Mockingbird action from our bedroom window.

The funniest result of all this songbird opera is that when Buddy II is outside on the patio, the birds don't seem to mind. Evidently, they believe he can neither hunt nor hurt them. (Or, they see the scars on his face and know he cannot fight worth a damn.

Labels: birds, cats, Cornell Bird Lab, el paso, mockingbirds

Modern Art Museum by dumpr.net

Labels: dumpr.net, elpaso, fabulist art museum showing, frankie's grocery, ol guadalupe

I cannot tell you how happy I was when I read the news that ASARCO will not reopen its El Paso plant. Yet, I am melancholy at the same time knowing its parent company will tear down the facility. No doubt the razing of the red and white tower will become a big media event. In fact it already has. Posing questions, wondering who is rejoicing, who is not. This whole situation signals a final erasure to come for the physicality and space that once held a tiny culture and community that stood beneath the stacks. It was called Smeltertown--a place where my mother's family lived that will soon disappear forever. My abuelo and several of his sons, my tios, and a couple of cousins worked for the company and it was because of ASARCO that the family immigrated from Aguas Calientes, Mx, the site of another ASARCO plant.

Smeltertown was a "company town" and had a life embodied in the families. Well over 7,000 people were born, lived, and died within the tiny hamlet. Inside their home, my grandmother gave birth to 13 children of which 12 survived to adulthood. The burned twice and was rebuilt each time.  Several years ago, a distant cousin wrote her dissertation about this community, which was once just as attached to the plant, as families and friends were to one another.

My parents were married at Cristo Rey, the Smeltertown's tiny Catholic Church, and in there, I crowned the statue of Mary for a May crowning when I was about six years old. I have stood inside the red, white striped tower while it was constructed, and my father took the elevator to the top when the last of the continuous pouring of cement was complete.

Now all in this community with connections to this place can start a new chapter of in the history of this city, this land. Yet while the tower may disappear, the stories of the lives and events enacted there will remain embodied in the stories and the ancient photographs we share with the world. I think I am no longer attached, but I remember.

smell the fresh tortillas as they
cook on the fire

feel the hot silt sand that
scorched my summer tanned feet.

see tiny rivulets of tears on my cousins’
silt-covered faces or juice cans
marcy buried in the ground
to practice his birdies and eagles.

taste the acrid sulphur that once
burned my lungs when we played outside.

hear the hollow and forlorn
sound of whistles that
signal the 2:00 a.m. shift

they said it was
la llorona coming for us.

Labels: asarco, c/s, closing, erasure, finalmente, smeltertown

Several weeks ago, (or, as the silly always say, way back last year) Jim Tolbert posted a lovely photo of the Elm Street Guadalupe on his blog. And as I am in the business of seeking and photographing all things OL Guadalupe here in the land of the lost, the Judge and I went to locate this Guadalupe so that I too could photograph it. We wound our way around the central El Paso neighborhood until we discovered this gem. I particularly love how the artist used metallic paint for her aura/hallowedness and that the wrought-iron fencing is painted to match her and the background.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I am not the best at writing on a daily/weekly basis. In fact, after I publish I continue to edit my blog entries. However, I can explain what I have been ruminating about recently, which is about how several iconic mural/graffiti images in El Paso were destroyed in 2008, which happens to adjoin what Jim has been blogging about lately (tagging.)

Now, I am a fence sitter on the subject of tagging/graffiti/street/urban art. But I have read enough by sociologists, urban archeologists, and rhetoricians to know that blanket statements such as, "all taggers are gang members" (of a more troubling criminal kind) is incorrect and too black and white. And while I do not like seeing slap dashed tags scrawled by "gangs" of ego-centric energetic "kids," I will say that this is something that happens in urban environments. It also happens in small towns, covered bridges in Madison County, and hidden caves in France. Nor, is this activity specifically an ethnic, gender, or age thing. Suffice it to say, graffiti is an act of writing, an act of opportunity, an act of rebellion, and above all, an act of communication.

Tags, just as billboards, have an audience, with their messages arranged in a particular way for a particular reason. They exist to persuade (mostly anti-establishment, anti-status quo.) Its delivery method, while silent, screams, "Listen to me! I exist! I have purpose and I am here." This is not really so different from the Elm Street Guadalupe, except of course, that a tag is written without permission. Tags are a form of unsanctioned speech where permission to exist was not first given. And as a tangential audience to these speech acts, we may not believe, and we may not approve. We may become angry that a wall supports scrawled utterances. Nevertheless, one or many people exist behind such statements on silent rock and plastered walls. Are we ready to listen to what they have to say?

Selected bibliography on the Visual Rhetoric and Rhetoric of Graffiti

Barack Obama is a work of art [Television broadcast]. (2008, November 5).
Denver: Columbia Broadcast System. Retrieved December 5, 2008, from
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4385596n%3f

Bearman, J. (2008, October). Street cred. Modern Painters, 20(9), 68-73.

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."
Marxists.org. Feb. 2005. 25 June 2007.

Chia, Adeline. "Spray paint art." The Straits Times [Singapore] 21 June 2007. 12
July 2007.

"Critical Mass." Visual Resistance. Visual Resistance. 25 Apr. 2007.

Currid, E. (2007). The Warhol economy: How fashion art & music drive New York
City. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

D'Amico, Daniel J., and Walter Block. "A Legal and Economic Analysis of
Graffiti." Austrian Student Scholar’s Conference. Grove City College, Grove
City, PA. 5 Nov. 2004. Art Crimes. 11 Apr. 2007.

D'Angelo, Frank J. "Sacred Cows Make Great Hamburgers: The Rhetoric of
Graffiti." College Composition and Communication 25.2 (May 1974): 173-180.

"Ghost Bikes." Visual Resistance. Visual Resistance. 22 Apr. 2007.

Hermer, Joe, and Alan Hunt. "Official Graffiti of the Everyday." Law & Society
Review 30.3 (1996): 455-480.

Drapes, Carolyn Rhea. "The City :: Urban art, stickers, stencils, murals, and
painted building texts." Flickr. 26 Apr. 2007. 26 Apr. 2007.

MacGillivray, L., & Curwen, M. S. (2007, February). Tagging as a social literacy
practice. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 50(5), 354-69.

Lachmann, Richard. "Graffiti as Career and Ideology." The American Journal of
Sociology 94.2 (Sept. 1988): 229-250.

McLuhan, M., & Fiore, Q. (1967). The medium is the massage. New York: Bantam.

Montoya, Isaiah. "Graf in Hush Tones." The Border Observer [El Paso] 6 Apr.
2007, sec. American Sprit—Fine Arts: 26-27.

Rafferty, Pat. "Discourse on Difference: Street Art/Graffiti Youth." Visual
Anthropology Review 7.2 (Fall 1991): 77-84.

Schlecht, Neil E. "Resistance and appropriation in Brazil." Studies in Latin
American Popular Culture 14 (1995): 37-68.

Shannon, Joshua A. "Claes Oldenburg's The Street and Urban Renewal in Greenwich
Village." Art Bulletin 86.1 (Mar. 2004): 136-161.

Walker, William. "The Lessons of Guernica." Toronto Star [Toronto] 9 Feb. 2003,
sec. Business: B01.

Labels: el paso, graffiti, guadalupe, rhetoric, the judge, urban art

Occasionally, cyberspace hooks up with the "real world" (as if cyberspace is not real) to connect people living in one neighborhood with someone living in another from across town or across the world. Recently, through the "miracle" of the Internets and some extra added spice of old-fashioned face-to-face networking, such a connection recently happened to me.

A few weeks ago, Michael and I went to a party at the home of Lee and Bobby Byrd for the artist, Luis Villegas. Afterward, I posted the pictures I took to Flickr and wrote a blog entry. The next interesting thing that happened was that Bobby introduced me to Jim Tolbert. Jim writes a blog that covers events and people living in the Newman Park neighborhood. Jim's blog provides a lot of information--and, not just about his neighborhood. It also contains links to agencies and city departments that are useful for all El Pasoans. By reading Jim's blog, you are able to understand that the issues important to Newman Park residents are about the same as with all of us living here: more art, better schools, government, and representation. Jim gives credit where credit is due, and that is a good thing these days.

Recently, Jim posted pictures of Luis' party and gives insight into how others are striving to make El Paso a better place to live. For me, one of the ways to do this is to write a blog that focuses on your area of town, that covers the positive aspects of your neighborhood, your family, your schools, teachers, and businesses that positively impact your life. If you run into a problem with the city and found a way to solve it, or a particular person helped you, write about it. That is the beauty of the Internet: Communication and community at the personal level. When Jim and I write our entries, it is not just for us. We want to help get the word out that El Paso, with its wild beauty, has a fascinating history, and has wonderful people who live in it today. They work hard, and try to make this town a better place to live, which is not any different from what others try to do when they write blog entries from the perspective of where they live.

Thank you Jim. And, many thanks to Bobby and Lee, and especially Luis, who all work to make El Paso a more beautiful city, one blog, one book, one porch, one Garr fish at a time.

Labels: art, Bobby Byrd, Jim Tolbert, Lee Byrd, Newman Park neighborhood