el paso daily photo blog by chacal la chaise

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

Although I took this image a couple of weeks ago, I thought I would post it to signal the start of finals week at UTEP. Kinley's Coffee Shop, a favorite with the medical, business, and student communities, and of course, coffee and tea drinkers, and hungry people everywhere, provides free Wi-Fi for its customers, along with a wide screen TV that seems to shows either Mexican and other Latin American team soccer matches, or CNN. Thank goodness not the usual alternative, which I must endure at my pharmacy or doctor’s office.

The evening I took this picture was a particularly slow quiet evening; the afternoon rush having long since departed, and I was catching up on my reading grids for Composition Studies and about ready to leave for my 6:00 P.M. Visual Rhetoric class.

Sometimes it takes writing a blog entry to discover that one of your favorite local businesses has a...(cue Wall-E's little voice)

TA DA!...A web site. Kinley's House Coffee & Teas

As far as their coffees, sandwiches, and frozen yogurt, Kinley's is the best. Usually, I must get an extra shot of espresso for Starbuck lattes, but at Kinley's they are just fine. My favorite "George's Turkey" sandwich is absolutely fresh and tasty, and their yogurt is actually tart and not overly sweet. It tastes like yogurt because it is!

While parking is tricky (the Newman Center next door will tow--how Chris....oh, well never mind,) you can always use the drive-through, which when I last looked, that merited at 20% discount. Then you can away your lunch and have a picnic at Kern Place's Madeline Park.

Labels: el paso, finals week, kern place, kinley's, neon, study hall, texas, UTEP

While this is not truly an image of an El Paso landmark or scenic view, it is something that tangentially says something interesting about El Paso and her people: Na zdrowie! L'Chaim! Salut! Prost! Cheerio! To Your Health! Cheers!

Yes, the season of light, of life, of new beginnings is almost upon us, and Black Friday (the good kind, of course) is hopefully around the corner. But first, back to two things about this wine label that set it apart from others I have enjoyed.

First, I am a graphics freak, especially labels--from Depression-era California fruit box labels to wine labels. I love the graphics and use of text, their typography, colors, embossing, printing--it all adds up to what the producer/sellers try to say or invent about their products--wrapped up especially for its wine-drinking audience (and typography freaks.)

Secondly, by including this image here, I am not saying that an El Pasoness means that we here exclusively drink wine or any other alcoholic beverage (although many do). No. The image was taken at Sun Harvest Sunday afternoon; and, I had never seen this wine. And that makes the finding fun. It was something new, reminded me of things I am interested in (graphic, typography, and rhetoric) and finding trendy things on-the-fly. How many times can you say you had fun while shopping these days?

I saw this bottle because I was looking for a cheap (yes, cheap--not affordable nor amusing nor any other euphemistic word for a headache producing bottle of cheap) white wine for roasting a 40 clove of garlic chicken tomorrow night. And next: pino noir, apart from being a red wine, was so out of my budget for cooking 40 clove roast chicken. But not so much for drinking. Well, OK. Festive drinking. Perhaps I will get a bottle when I go back for Beaujolais Nouveau, aka the newborn of reds, when it comes out next week.

In any event, I love this label. It is deceptively and overtly simple. Here, an old typewritten style (Courier), all mono-spaced and clear, with another, a handwritten styled typeface litters words about the wine's name--scattered descriptives that impart your sensations and experiences should you drink this wine. The label just straight up propagandizes, attempts to sell, and display it all at the same time. Nicely subversive and different. It is as if it were a dramatization of how a synesthete might see (or not) the descriptive, if they tasted the wine for the first, second, or twenty-second time.

Speaking of which, and this is probably more for my memory than what you may want to know about, but I heard the best explanation and description of just that neuro-sensory condition (that people "'enjoy," according to the show's host) on the NPR Now show broadcast on the sat rad. While I had hoped to find a free podcast link, (you must purchase this show,) the link does provide a good overview of the show and what synesthesia is and what it means to those who experience it.

In any event, happy shopping and enjoy the season! That is all we truly have control over, right. Of course, right! L'Chaim! And Salud!

Arg! Apologies for adding sticking this at the end of a post, which is something I've never done, but want to do now. Here, finally, is a link to a friend's blog--City Representative Susie Byrd's Notes from District 2. And while I'd love to be a constituent of her district (we live in District 1,) her blog does merit a note of appreciation and link.

Labels: advertising, beaujoulais nouveau, design, district 2, el paso, festivities, labels, next: pinot noir, notes from district 2, sun harvest, susie byrd, thanksgiving, typography, visual rhetoric, wine