North Pole Ice Art Championship 2007

The first annual North Pole Ice Art Championship was really interesting watching people create from an artist's soul and burgeoning into life from a frozen square conforming block to something magical and precious.
People had from Sat 8:00am to Sunday 3:00pm to produce a beautiful textured piece of ice art with chainsaws, power sanders, and even small nail files, with little or no sleep. The ice chips were flying everywhere and cool prisms of light were reflecting from multiple and non-congruent chunks of ice lying wasted next to forming creations. The artist's minds eye were becoming part of reality for everyone to see and feel.
There were multiple volunteers helping anyway they could, from loaning tools, clearing ice, to just helping out with babysitting artist's adorable children. It was a symphony of artists and the community trying to build something together, the laughter and smiles on people helping each other was just such an Alaskan part of life. People had been up all night trying to breath life into a cold solid block of ice, like An Qifeng and his piece of art called "It's Love". The free form and soft curvature might have been about love being free and comes out of nowhere. Two forms coming together and merging into one, each completing each other.
I have felt that kind of soul moving love twice now in my life. My friends tell me people search their whole lives looking for that kind of love and I have been very lucky to have it, 10 years ago and just this spring. Publishing the photo of It's love and listening to Annie Lennox "Love is Blind" while writing this resurfaced what happened just a few days ago at the UAF print art sale. I saw my current endeavor's upper torso portrait on a print labeled "A wonderful thing to wake up to". Well, that was an eye opener and wondering if I have bitten off more than I can chew. The print was a little racy, but that is artistic expression. Then just when I was walking out of the print show, my heart left me speechless, which rarely happens. The person I am truly interested in was looking at the print and was enthralled. I tried to talk but my damn heart was in my mouth, and I let my emotions runnith over. I was not able to handle it, sucks being human. Am I scared to be in love again and fear of failure or being able to change out of this melancholy and be happy again? This kind of thing you just cannot make up, life is better than fiction.
Well, I am digressing and need to get back to the other story, which is also entwined in my life.

The creation from Anita Tabor (see first photo) captured first place in competition juried by the Artists and was presented the award by the King and Queen of the Ice Art Championship. I have never seen anyone wearing a Queen's tiera in the middle of an Alaskan Winter before. She said it was the one award she really wanted to at least place in. Being recognized by your fellow artists is a wonderful fulfilling emotion. She wanted to pay me for photos of her art, but I said I would take it out in trade. I would like to have a "Snow Woman" made in my front yard, since there was not enough snow this year to make one. Why does it always have to be a Snow Man? She laughed and I might have my snow woman next weekend.

Deline Laughlin sculpted this free form piece called "The Gift". We were talking about how artists like ourselves are trying to make this world a better place to live in and how art moves lives. She remembered how during one Ice Art Championship her daughter was going through tough times and she got her into helping her in sculpting a piece together. It truly helped both of them and this piece was representing their time together. Life and art are beautiful combined expressions.
If you would like to see more Ice Art, they have it set up with a Live Web Cam at www.icealaska.com. You all might go there at a specific time and say hi to your family and friends in the lower 48. It would be a heart-warming gift for all involved. I will be there live during Christmas with a sign to say hi to my Family in Florida and Washington on Christmas Day, since I cannot be with them and I am making my X move out. Well, I have my next-door neighbors and friends for X-mas.

Blacken Rose Petal

I can not handle the yelling and cursing at me, especially before a concert, enough is enough. I have watched my mom tell so many other women to stop the verval abuse and here am I taking it myself. Not listening to my grandmother when she said I needed to practice what I preach, was one heck of a blond moment. I thought this over since May and found that I was just keeping Jim around, so I would not find love again since loosing my family. Me someone that has fear, I would never have thought it would happen. What a powerful emotion and makes us do things we never would have thought we would do. Because of this I can finally have the compasion for someone going through something like this. Being with someone for over seven years was being married and it is a difficult decision that needs time to work through and six months is enough. He needs to leave. We both dont deserve being only just friends living under one roof. We need love and companionship, living like this is just living a lie and we have to move on. He told me tonight that once the ball starts rolling that is it. I had to write and take this picture to work this through. I have lived better half of my life with out having to depend upon someone to pay the bills and supposively have no saftey blanket. He is just blowing smoke and being trying to stay with me, and his ass is out of here. I do not like breaking his heart, because mine has been on a really rough road recently. My dad told me becareful when you are breaking someones heart, because you will be in their shoes someday. I have always tried to be this way. If it makes me look like I am weak then they shur the heck do not know me. I have been through some rough times in my life and I have always made it through. Grandma's advise to get through the best as you can and remember the good times, that is what makes me laugh when I can and enjoy life. I wish I could play a country western song backwards and get my dog back, my car running again, love back in my life, and not worry about what I will be doing after May. At this point I will try anything. My next door neighbor tells me I am not going to do it and kick him out. She knows I hate someone telling me something I can not do and gets me going to do what I need to do. This is my decision and I has to be for the right reason of me changing and moving on in life and him refusing to change. I need someone who wants to go outside and do things, not just rot away with tv on 24/7. I want to live life and enjoy it with someone. I still do not like hurting someone to have to move on in life, but it is something that has to be dealt with.

Chichenitza - One of the 10 Wonders of the World

We finally were able to become tourists and relax for just 1/2 of a day. To relax at Chichenitza, one of the 10 wonders of the world, was an added bonus. The minute you step out of the car you realize you are in a special and powerful place.
You could almost feel the power seeping into your soles of your shoes and travel upward. We got ourselves a guide, since we didn't have enough time and I wanted to video record the history currently known.

Thanksgiving Soul Feast

What a wonderful day with friends and family throwing mashed potatoes around. I had sent a cool thanksgiving card to everyone about playing and shaping the mashed potatoes into to multiple shapes. My friend Marie liked the potatoe shaped Devils Tower with the sound track from Close Encounters of the third kind. I know the potatoes will be flying at her table. I like the shape of the vegetarian turkey leg. The air is full of smells and sound of people coming together and enjoying each others company and helping out cooking with a little eating involved.

I had a slight break while the turkey was cooking and looked out side around 3:30pm. The sun was setting and the lenticular and scud clouds were great shapes and orange colors against the contrast of the dark blue sky. I grabed my camera and ran over to my neighbors house and took pictures from her porch. The color deepened and shapes formed into a flying dragon. It was magnificent and beautiful.

The clouds were coalescing infront of the dragon into this women's shape. It was like the dragon was floating and watching something form infront of it. The clouds were forming into a picturesque sky landscape almost like the watercolors of an artists painting. There is just no substitute for Alaskan Sunsets, intense and magnificent in color and textures.

Attenuation

As I am finally home and having my back warmed by the fire, I realize I have been on a trip of the soul and rejuvenation. I am finally listening to people, whom I am am talking to and not just caring. People in today's day and age do care about other people and will help them when they ask. The hardest part has been for me is asking for help. I always have to be the tough stoic person and figure it out on my own. When I was in Seattle and had an important meeting about getting funding for working at the Salk Institute, could I afford to stay in Seattle a few more days, it would help me emotionally and financially, was a ground breaking dilemma. Do I try and save money and just go back to Alaska or do I take a chance to get funding at the premier institute in Neuroscience. It was a gamble and hopefully the University will reimburse me a thousand dollars. The gamble was one of the best leaps of faith I have ever done for my emotional and financial future. Even though the Arkiteck Studios talk did not go get me a job, I might be able to maybe get funding to work with Salk Institute. I talked with NIH consultants and they told me what type of structure and format to present the request in, while in Seattle. It was nice working with professional and caring people about neuroscience and its expression out in the real world. To many scientists are over worked and under paid to have little time to work with the average public. There needs to be an institution or programs set up between the scientists and the public domain. I deal with this problem a lot since by brother does not believe in evolution. It was very difficult when after a severe rainstorm in Olympia that my nephew and I found a fossilized wood piece that looked just like a rock. My nephew got really exited when he reacted after I saw it. It was a truly raw find and beautiful peace with excellent stereographic lines. I looked at his eager face and my heart melted, but I knew it was my brother's call on what to tell him. So I told him to ask his dad, and he looked a me with a moment of regret. At that moment, I had never felt so weak and wrong. He was looking for new knowledge and information and all I did was shut him down. Did I let my want of being accepted over come my rationality of honor? That truly humbled me and made me realize that you have to be true to yourself. I should have figured out of how to help my nephew, instead of running away and burying my head in sand. I had thought I was able to deal with this type of situation, but life is not like in books. You need to grab the opportunity when it exists like a wise women this summer told me, which I had not done because of the repercussions that I had perceived. I should have asked and found out before assuming like a moron. I am finally listening to other people and seeing if it is valid and what to do with it. Trust me this has been a hard and arduous process that will always be worth standing and ignoring life and reality that other people perceive, but I should have listened to and worked through earlier. Life Live It is what I have always stated. You have to take the hits and the punches and not to allow them to change you. I will always be a good intellectual and caring person, not matter what I do to myself or what comes at me. I have found after the last several weeks that I will always be a good person and care about my fellow human beings. My sense of honor will always be a stone to stand upon even though it might be double edged and not get me immediate gratification, it allows me to be myself and have respect, especially after going to Tequiana, MX. Some people might think that money is the most important thing being in Tequiana, and it would have saved me a lot of money, but it was not me and might have lost my soul. It would have made it dirty and not what I wanted as a beautiful and sweet time in life. An older Shaman came up to me and I listened to her in Seattle. She said this is not what I wanted because of my heart being in the way. Don't let the scarred and scared ones get to you, because you have a heart, but be proud and let it stay a part of you. It makes me whom I am and will help through rough times of my life. Hopefully more people can understand this and help each other. Life is to short, it needs to be lived and loved each precious moment. That is maybe why I am trying so hard to decide to stay in Alaska or go somewhere else. I love this beautiful land and the people are in another league, there is one person holding me back to where I would love to stay, but how do I ask such a good and caring person. Hopefully, I will be able to figure this out and get enough courage someday. It really is hard to write this when I have survived charging Bull Moose and bears, but have not survived yet my own emotional forgivings and fear. I have never felt truly fear till this spring and am trying to walk though it. I do not like this emotion and how debilitating it can make of us. From help listening to a the artist, elder, and bartender in Seattle I will be able to channel it and work through it. They all said I do have the courage to work through it, now I just have to listen and wait. Things will be turning soon and be patient, that I am a good human being and to be myself, with stop trying so hard and only the strongest will come to you. It is a difficult thing to do, but I am beginning to listen.

Halloween in San Diego

The endocannabinoid conference was kicking and running full steam at the HIlton Hotel. The people were nice and really were helping and connecting with each other. There was so many intellectual international people from all of the major continents of the world. It was so neat to hear multiple languages being spoken all at once, like a dissonance symphony of language and sound. The spainards and portguese with their passionate talks. The french shy and quiet talking with in their groups. The germans strong and bringing laughter to the discussion. There were so many different nationalities and personalities, all working on one system and trying to understand its nature and function. I even ran into someone from Ethopia that use to go to school with Veronica Topin (Bahamian former PostDoc at UAF) at Case Western and worked with Musa. The only thing that was missing was Halloween costumes, but all the different types of dress and sounds, it was like a strange and intriguing Halloween.
The collaborative atmosphere was really up and running. We had a large group of graduate students and new post docs go to Nick's on the Beach at Ocean Beach for dinner. We were talking about all of our different countries geography, cultures, and societies, from Ethopia, Spain, Portugal, to Alaska. We even pulled out all of our drivers licenses and compared the different countries. The one thing we all had in common was the drive to learn and experiment with the unkown.

Flight of Understanding Life to San Diego -

The flight to San Diego started out with a bang. There is a new time limit of having to check in luggage 40 min before the flight and I was there at 38 min and missed the flight, which had changed in July from 30 to 40 minutes, so I had to wait for the next flight 3 hours later. The leg of Anchorage to Seattle during the day was hopefully going to be full of shooting pictures, since I am finally not flying the red eye flight. You usually have to fly in the middle of the night to be able to hook up with flights in the lower 48. I got on the plane and it was booked solid. I had a weird feeling of deva vue and I knew something was about to happen. There was a cute kid in my window seat and he really didn't want to move, so I stayed in the aisle seat. The boy had no hair and was wearing a baseball cap. He looked like he had been through a rough treatment of chemotherapy and was embarrassed. So I started saying how cool it would be for Halloween to be able to paint his head different colors, like purple or glow in the dark green. Maybe even make an outline of his brain on his head, like we do in Neuroscience Potpourri for the kids. He was laughing and took off his hat and wasn't self conscious anymore.

There is nothing like seeing a kid with leukemia laugh. Well, him and I hit it off and he was taking pictures in no time and enjoying the rough bumpy ride. He at first was a little scared when the plane started dropping suddenly, what a feeling in the stomach. I said this is better than any rollercoaster ride, he got the hint and we made a game of it. We were laughing and having a good time, and this let his very tired mom to get some needed rest. Seth just had a few bad days of chemotherapy and was flying down to Seattle for more extensive therapy. His mom was pretty worried and tired from being up with him all night for the last few days. She looked like she needed some rest and Seth had such a good light hearted personality, that I spent most of the trip talking and playing with him. I enjoyed showing him how to draw Rufus, a dog I sketch, but we didn't have any paper, so we used the barf bag. He drew sponge bob on one side of it. We didn't have any crayons and there is a way to change the color to yellow like eating something yellow, but we just couldn't do it. We went on to playing chess on my iBook and then brought out the Pocket PC. He played for hours Jawbreaker MegaShift and beat my pants off in scoring, go figure! It was really was a beautiful moment in time to see him forget for awhile his severe disease and have some fun and laughter.

His mom even got some needed rest. At the end of the flight, his mom thanked me for baby sitting and she had that longing look of trying to absorb every minute of time in his short life. I have been there and I was trying anything I could do to ease her burden. It made my troubles seem a lot less and how far I have come. There is nothing like helping other people and making them laugh. Laughter is the healer of the soul and it is starting to mend mine.

Reflection of the Year

Each year on this special day I look over what I have accomplished and overcome and this has been one of the most eventful years of my life. I have gone through beautiful joy of falling love again to heart wrenching heartache and I would do it again. It is better to keep trying to make your life a better place, than allowing fear and insecurity take a hold of you and not letting you take a chance in life. You need to sort those destructive emotions out and put them in context, then try and see if you can change them into something better. If you don't they can control you until you enjoy them, which I had seen in a good friend from last spring. Life is too short and needs to be enjoyed with laugher, family, and friends. Our current interpretation of time only moves forward each and every second, and will not wait for us.

So for good therapy I joined a softball team this summer. It was the best move I made all year for myself. The team was great! We were there just to have fun and really didn't care about the score. To this day, I do not know how many games we won or lost, because it didn't matter. The friendships that were formed and playing together is what counted. I went from playing pitcher, didn't hit anyone with the ball I think, to playing every position even bench warmer. I didn't care where I played, just to be having a good time with friends is more important.

One of the best things that could happen to my career this year was being invited to an AAAS Gordon Research Conference and present a poster. It was one of the most camaraderie atmosphere I have ever experienced.

The people were warm friendly and above all so helpful. You could ask them anything and if they didn't know something they could point you in the right direction. Oh and I did get in trouble.

I stupidly told people about the first conference I ever went to, Hibernation Cruise from Vancouver to Seward. I duck taped a totem pole to my director's door, so he couldn't get out of the room. Somehow he knew who did it, go figure. Well, at the GRC conference the darn wind up monkey that bangs the drums that told everybody that the discussion was up disappeared. I didn't even wait for them to ask me where it went, they did eventually ask me about the monkey. So, I went and contacted the librarian that was next door, and would talk to the maintenance guys that I saw working that day near the conference room. The maintenance guys had thrown it away in the trashcan. So every time that monkey started playing, I just kept having these thoughts of a monkey in a dumpster, and tried not laugh. We really had a good time and enjoyed working with people in my field of expertise.

Another wonderful thing in the past year I have had good new friends come and go, that really enriched my life. A next door neighbor Veronica Topin, what a crazy Bahamian. She helped pull me out of my heartache and was getting so upset saying, "let it go", that she took an axe to my fat white but.
The three of us, Joann Cooper, Veronica, and I, to this day laugh about that crazy trip to Chitna and Kennicott. It sure was not ever boring, trust me. A cool thing came out of that trip was a good time with friends and a lot of King and Red Salmon (121), but who is counting. I know I will be getting an e-mail about this!

On other cool thing, was going to Key West on a Harley with my friends Audra and Marie with their boyfriends. What a hell of a time. I will follow with all the cool gorey details on subsequent blog entries.

Another cool fun thing was entering the University of Alaska Fairbanks Forestry Sports Festival. I made new friends and had a lot of fun with people who enjoyed the outdoors, even if it was snowing and cold we didn't care. We were a large group of people from UAF and the community participating in multiple forestry competitions.
The axe throwing was the most dangerous and got second place. I didn't hit anything except the target, no bodies were impaled. The single buck saw competition had multiple different type of saws to use and I thought the newest one would work because it was the sharpest. Well, the blade was squirrelly and I was sawing sideways at one point.

It took forever, so the next competition I watch and waited to see what was the best technique to use. Go figure, using brain over brawn. So in the double buck saw competition I watched and found you had to let the saw do the work, also work together with the other person. Well, it paid off to where Megan and I won the Jill & Jill (27 secs) and the Bill and I won the Jack & Jill (15 secs) competition.
There was even log rolling and heavy cheering going on. That log was huge and not symetrical, so it rolled every which way but straight. The coldest event was the log burling in Ballaine Lake. They had to break away the ice to put the log in the lake. I just could not do the Polar Bear Club thing again and didn't enter this competition. Other people had more courage than I did and just got a little wet and ran to the large campfire and steamed to warmth.

Well, I didn't expect it but I won the "Belle of the Woods" award, the women with the most points. My mother a "Southern Bell" is fit to be tied, her daughter ending up to be Queen Lumberjack in Fairbanks. My grandmother and I are still laughing about it. It has been an interesting year and it is not done yet. I am about to go to the Society for Neuroscience Conference in San Diego on Tuesday, if San Diego is not engulfed in flames. The last conference in Cancun had a Hurricane and was canceled and now this one is going up in flames. You would think I would get the hint, but they have not cancelled it yet so I am going into the fire. One thing I would love to have happen is just a little break from bad luck with timing!! Nothing is falling into place, but I would be bored if things were easy.

Perigee Moon Part of Life

I am sitting here writing and turned on Stevie Ray Vaughan's Tin Pan Alley (aka Roughest place in Town) it truly helps me write the feeling I had after seeing the twisted wreckage of a vehicle with blood running down the drivers side door and how much my heart is aching right now only a few days before my birthday on the perigee of the earth's moon.
We were driving on the Libre to Cancun and saw this huge thundercloud. Guess what? We were driving right into it, go figure. There were no places to turn out, being on one of the huge stretches of nowhere land. If we pulled off someone might not be able to see the road and drive right into the back of us. So onward us crazy Alaskans drove into the maul of a gigantic frog croaker (frog killer - Florida southern slang from crazy friend Marie). It started raining very, very hard to where it was just a constant cacophony of sound and then the darkness enveloped us. You couldn't see much of anything other than the faint yellow doted line, hopefully the road. The thunder just rolled and rolled like Stevie Rays guitar solo, you just get swept up into it and float. Like what has happened to me, getting swept up and then left to float. The road was flooding and when we hit huge puddles of H2O, they exploded over the car. It was like on a trail in Alaska down in the Southeast. The huge storm finally abated and we could finally see gray skies no more black ones.

Only a few minutes later did we come up on this awful wrecked and rolled vehicle. We thought it was a truck or suv couldn't really tell, until we drove on the other side of it. I wish I have never looked and yet that human drive can't be stopped and I did. Like me wishing on a falling star of falling in love again. The blood was slowly flowing on the door and dripping onto the ground, like my heart ripped and torn. There was no body in the cab and the guys standing by the vehicle looked very upset. There were other vehicles there and people were helping to clean up the wreckage, so we didn't stop and help. Hopefully the person was still alive and would make it to the hospital in time. It has been like what I have been going through, with my friends being also helpful and supportive, they have really helped me. To me that is part of life, being there for your friends and family. No matter how hard things get there will be people there for you if you let them help.

I had a good person let me talk and let the pain out till 4:00am a week before leaving for Cancun and only a few days after Crusher (18 years of love) died. It allowed me to get ready one of my biggest turning points in my career and kept me sharp during an emergency situation in a foreign country. She really helped me out and to me that is what being a human being is about. Helping others in need and asking for nothing back. I only wish more people in the crazy no time in their lives would stop once in a while do an act of kindness, maybe some of the violence in this world would start abating. I wonder if the world is going through a Perigee Moon of its life.

Mexico Country Side - Taking a Side Street

The country side was full of multiple shades of dark luscious green. There were at least 10 to 12 intricate shades. The leaves were multiple forms from thick cactus spines to huge banana leaves. It was an intricite ecological niche. While I was flying over the landscape something kept bothering me about there was something missing from it.

When I was in the Mayan Archeaological Musuem, the mystery began revealing itself. One of the exhibits was on ecological landscpe and it was then that I noticed that there were no lakes or rivers, blue was missing from the visualization of the actual landscape. The whole Yucatan peninsula is made of limestone, which is just like cottage cheese. The Mayans got their water by aquafers, sink holes, and underground rivers. No wonder their religon has alot of underworld deities, for example the Jaguar the ruler of the Underworld.
The realy interesting feature was the small towns we went through. There were venders on the side streets selling delicious food and handmade items. The pottery was exquisite, with deep colors and very smooth and accented forms. I bought alot of my souveniers from them, because the money was going directly to them and not to a third party.

Road to Chichen Itza

We awoke the next day with a refreshed vigor that you couldn't really explain. Maybe almost like a new awakening or lease on life, from surviving all of the histeria and stress of a catagory 5 Hurricane coming at us. We loaded up the rental car and headed back to Cancun with a stop off at Chichen Itza, but there was one little problem we couldn't read the road signs. Who thunk that! I thought if we got a map from the front desk I could visually from the map see the area's to turn and hopefully the streets had numbers.

Luckly, the streets in downtown were numbered and we chose to go down the old highway instead of the turnpike to see some of the country side and the other side of Mexico. We only got lost once and went down the wrong way on a one way street written in spanish. opps those crazy gringos!! I learned something from working at UPS, it helps to ask for directions, but in English it was intresting. Thank goodness for the visual map of Merida we had. It help break the language barrier us snobby American's have of knowing only one language.

Night Life Merida

There was a downtown festival on Sunday that was full of flavor and music. The towns people have a little festival with booths of food, drink and conversations. The streets were full of music. A group of bongo drummers was beating out this fast tempo rythum that was intoxicating with raw emotion and drive. Music was infusing everyone and they were all moving, from tapping their feet or outright dancing.


Each square block had different music and texture. We went only a few blocks and the atmosphere transformed to many outdoor cafes next to a park with a bandstand set up next to a beautiful old church. The music began with a women singer and full band. They were really good so we stepped into La Parrilla cafe and it was hopping.

The food was as rich as the music and culture surrounding us. The dragon had to have some flaming food and the chef was excellent. He truely looked like he knew what he was doing and I asked him if this was his only job. He said "he was going to culunary art school to become a five star chef". He was graduating and will be working at the Presidente Hotel, were we were staying. It was one of the finest meals I had in a long time.

Hurrican Dean Aftermath

After the cool old guy asked me to dinner along with my colleges, I told him that I have had a hell of a time in Mexico, so far I have been pick pocketed at Coco Bongo by a guy I was dancing with. He then shows up at the hotel Gran Melia at the front entrance the next evening, while I am going in to the hotel for the pre-satellite conference dinner. He says he has a room and wanted to give me a key. That turd had probably bought it with my own damn stolen cash of $300 and then wanted to take me to bed. I told him "Kiss My Grits" and strutted right the hell out that crazy situation. I knew there was no way to prove that he stole it, so calling the police would been a waste of effort. Believe me you just can't make this up, life is better than fiction in my world. Then I said it would be nice to be treated to a decent meal by a decent guy, and listen to more of his stories of his life. I love to listen to my elders and find out what type life they have lived with real history, other than the messed up tv and history books written by the current victors. He suggested a Chiles restaurant across from the hotel and told him I would meet him later. I couldn't miss this beautiful opportunity to shoot. It was a surreal photographers dream with the atmosphere so clear and deep blue, being cleaned up by the Hurricane. It truly was a perfect backdrop for all of the beautiful flowers and colorful architecture.

There were so many wonderful full colors like have not seen in many years, with no haze and pollution to distort the light by refraction and the beautiful strong colors of Mexican culture. It was one of my best shooting days yet. I took over 200 photos and can only post a few.

The Mayan Archaeology Museum was a surreal blending of Mayan and Spanish architechture. The blending of cultures is seen in the crowns above the windows. They seem to symbolise the jaguar and the symbol of a rabbits head, lion body, snake tail facing each other. The flame symbol is in the window crowns between the two. They remind me being at the momento a la Patria, during the Hurricane. It was one of the best archaeological buildings I have ever seen, but I dont get out of the United States very much and get to see all of the really cool architechture of the world.

I then walk to a side street one block from the 21st century plaza avenue to the real Mexico. Their buldings were alive with color, texture, and wraught iron.

This was the doorway to Where? What type of life laid behind that door? Did they have different concerns than us? They do seem to have a lot more music than our culture. I was even able to sing for our cab ride through the city of Merida. The driver had no music on and we were driving back from the downtown festival. We had not seen Merida yet and had some free time, so he started driving us to different landmarks in town. I asked him if he could play any latin beat music with some type of salsa in it. He said do you sing? I said yes and he but in a CD that we could sing to. It was really cool to let my emotions sing and let out all of the heartache and pain I was feeling. The driver was a pretty good tenor who sang for a mariachi band, go figure! We must have sang for hours, it was like being home and singing with my neighoors on a Sunday. We when got out of the cab and the bill was like 500 pesos, he said no he wouldn't take a peso from me, that I sang for the fare. That was alot of fun and release.