Notes From Merida

Cotton Candy

hfdratch — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:58:24 +0000

I shoot so little. Less and less as my health deteriorates.
Here a cotton candy vendor in the park (El Parque) in the historic center (El Centro) of this small city earlier in the year before the hot, muggy tropical weather made walking in the city unpleasant most nights; impossible almost all days.

Street vendor with cotton candy

Backstreet Vocho/ VW sedan

hfdratch — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 18:30:43 +0000

I don’t drive a vocho – a VW sedan – never did. This one says Mexico loudly – they continued making them here until around 1999 when the tools and dies were long past worn out. It also touches on the Mexican weakness to alcohol and the proliferation of AA clubs in the country. I don’t do that either.

But this is Merida backstage. Behind the renovated colonial homes of the expats and the international commercial strip of the nouveaux riche upper middle-class of the northern part of the city.

Street scene in El Centro, Merida

Sinfonia New York

hfdratch — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 06:05:17 +0000

It was back in May that the new, period orchestra, Sinfonia New York, mounted the Gran Chacona in New York. I wasn’t there, didn’t know about the group and their work with ancient instruments but YouTube saved the day. I did get to watch and listen to this video.

Sadly the sound and picture are not the same as being there but it is nice to get a taste of it.

The Art and Ecstasy of the Chaconne
The Gran Chacona (after Aranes), as performed by members of Sinfonia New York and by dancers Patricia Beaman and Carlos Fittante. Arrangement by Grant Herreid of Ex Umbris and choreography by Patricia Beaman and Carlos Fittante.

Sinfonia New York’s site

Technorati Tags: Music, New York, Sinfonia New York, Dance, Period Instruments

American Sojourn

hfdratch — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 01:55:49 +0000

Travel has been taking up my last two weeks. There was, because I cannot fly, the 5 hours by ADO bus from Merida to Playa del Carmen. Then I discovered that the low tourist season has diminished the number of ferry crossings – ergo, a 2 hour wait for the next ferry on the new dock/muelle in Playa. It was the night before Independence Day, Mexico style, and dogs sniffed, soldiers searched, Mexico raised it’s security level to preclude the terrorist bombings of last year in Morelia. Cozumel was peaceful.

My stay was booked through www.kayak.com on Expedia.com at the Casa Mexicana Cozumel, a pleasant hotel on the malecon not far from the Carnival dock, puente langosta. I gave it a thumbs up for convenience, cleanliness and a price of about $53 + tax US which isn’t bad in tourist-oriented Cozumel.

Waterfront Hotel on the malecon in Cozumel

Soon I was ensconced in the bowels of the thoroughly American world of the cruise ship – air conditioned, overfed and coddled, a VIP. The long trip begins.

Carnival Ships Ecstasy and Imagination

The Ecstasy sets sail earlier than my Imagination in whose cabins I have traveled before. This time, VIP, my cabin has been upgraded to one with a window (not porthole since portholes are round and open – this is large and rectangular, doesn’t open). I have stayed aboard beset with a celebratory attack of gout, still exhausted from 5 hours on the bus from Merida. And perhaps the feeling of being back in America is worthy of some tastes of frozen yogurt and over-eating.

The Ecstasy steams away from Cozumel in the dwindling sunset

The voyage by sea has been over for a while followed by some time nursing gout and a flu-like something, visits to doctors and, finally, the train to New York. That, itself, is a voyage not unlike a cruise without the comfort but still with the odd take on the past. On the ship it is the days of ocean liners updated to mass travel. On Amtrak it is the days of golden railroad travel barely hanging on to its’ roots.

More to come assuming the cardiac surgery Monday goes well.

Mexico Won On Hedged Oil

hfdratch — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 07:09:30 +0000

The Financial Times reported that the Mexican finance minister, Agustin Carstens, who is suddenly a figure in global markets, hedged oil prices for 2009 and won his bet on a global level. His finesse earned the country an extra 8 billion US while the OPEC countries are counting backwards. Check the story out at FT’s Emerging Markets. It is also reported that President Calderon replaced the head of PEMEX in his cabinet shake-up.

Picture of the day: You can’t have an omelet without breaking a few eggs – or some such cliché.

Photo © Howard Dratch, 2009.

Mejorada Square: The Blessing

hfdratch — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:39:54 +0000

There are no posts recently. I haven’t been very interested in words. There is a new picture from Mejorada Square, another Meridiano face overlooking the city. This one blesses the passers-by of the ancient church.

: Ancient priest blesses the passers-by

Mexican Heroes

hfdratch — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:51:05 +0000

Picture of the Day: 12 July 2009.

Mexico has its’ revolutionaries and their effigies (badly done) on display for the tourists of the world to savor. Window display in El Centro, Merida.

Effigies of the strong and famous

Anniversary Memorial

hfdratch — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:19:06 +0000

Tomorrow will have been our 40th wedding anniversary. We were married in the garden at Blithewood, the Zabriskie estate, on the Hudson River at Bard College. It is now the Jerome Levy Institute for Economics of the College and is returned to its past glory. For us it was the keystone of a long but tempestuous marriage. Each year until we came to Mexico we returned to the garden. It will be a sad day for me and one full of memories of better times before slipping away from civilization into the primitive life of the Yucatan jungle.

The formal garden at Blithewood.

Merida: Ghoul of El Centro

hfdratch — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 04:20:19 +0000

This fellow tried to scare me from a perch above a door in El Centro. He has been at this game for some time. Just walk on by.

Merida Faces: The Ghoul

New June Pictures

hfdratch — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:10:05 +0000

It is time to do a little creative work, to test old cameras and keep learning the new digital machine. The F3 is dusted off and cleaned, some rolls run through it, the ancient Vivitar 283 left at a shop to see if it still can work and an FM3A left for the same reason. Wandering with a film camera that I actually know how to use was fun, the scans ok to work with.

I began a file of pictures from which I may have real prints made rather than the cheap-printer variety that never fail to un-impress. Then there is the search for what to shoot, how to regain a passion of more than 50 years that had begun to escape me. Changes come hard in this world.

Hieroglyphs from Past Civilizations

Click on the preview to go to the gallery, click on thumbnails to launch it.