MUSICA ANTIGUA

There is always music happening here.  Right now there is an early music festival: 

 Last Friday we went to a nearby church to hear a performance by CORO MELOS GLORIAE.

A 17th-century church is the perfect place to hear this music.  The woman second from the left in the front row has a soprano voice 5 times her size:

DOMINGO CAMINANDO

Yes, we were drawn back again to the neighborhood across the river.  What progress has occurred?   The photo below is at the corner of Universidad and Invierno.  There are these bench frames popping up everywhere.   A big block of wood will go down the middle:

A long, narrow fountain will adorn the front of the train station:

The wall of the new sports field has been painted:

This is going to be a huge peatonal (pedestrian walkway), from the looks of things.  There are patterned cobblestones and fountains.  I'm hoping a new public gym will be built on the left, but who knows.

This is Cuauhtémoc, the street behind Invierno.  See the two big pink planters with an incomplete bench in between?

This is the walkway along the river.  The plantings are stunning.  Purple lavender on the right emits a lovely scent:

Don't know what these yellow flowers are.  Behind them is Russian sage.  I wish the city offered tours with plant IDs:

Trillium?

Pepper tree?  Enlarge the photo to see the red berries:

I love these fountains:

I asked the kid if he knew what this flowering tree was, but he didn't.  Only that the plantings were native:

On the way home, near the Jardín Zenea, el sr J spotted the tour bus for this band:

What caught his eye was the unusual configuration above the cab.  On closer inspection, it turned out to be a customized (and probably unique) pivoting window, which can be opened and closed by a roof-mounted piston:

This group of serenaders must enjoy the wind in their faces.

TRAUMA DE TRAMITE Y TAMALES

This morning we went to Immigration to renew our visas.  It doesn't seem like a year since we first did this, but it is.  It's not a long walk, which is a good thing, since people usually have to make several trips to accomplish anything.

The office opens at 9 am.  We were there at 8:45.  There was already a line of course, but we weren't worried since we're of the Tercer Edad status and can go to the front of the line once everyone is inside and waiting to access a clerk.

The woman who waited on us was rude and nasty.  She perused our documents.  She said our letters of petition (one of the several requirements) were incomplete because we need to say. . ., and then she uttered a long sentence starting with "manifiesto."  I asked her to please repeat and she looked disgusted, but she said it again, very fast.  I got "manifiesto bajo protesta...."  I asked her if she could write it down.  She refused.  We also needed yet another copy of our US bank statements from the last three months.  We also had to go to our local bank and pay the government fee, which we knew we would have to do, and then bring back the original receipt and two copies.  All this meant we had to come back another time and hope we had everything we needed.

So we came home.  I wanted to wait and go back tomorrow, but el sr J was infected with resolve to counter-attack at once.  Teh [sic] internets are wonderful.  I typed in "manifiesto bajo protesta" and got this:  MANIFIESTO BAJO PROTESTA DE DECIR VERDAD QUE LOS DOCUMENTOS QUE EXHIBO SON FIDEDIGNOS Y COPIA FIEL DE LOS ORIGINALES QUE EN ESTE MOMENTO PRESENTO.  No wonder I couldn't remember it.  It basically says I swear these documents and copies are true.  This statement was new to us:  we didn't have to swear about anything (except the process) last year.

So we went to the bank, went home to make more (true) copies of things, and then hiked to the office. I wanted to go to a new window for a different bureaucrat, but el sr J wanted to grapple with the same one.  Victory.  Kachunk, kachunk, she stamped many pages, kept our old visas (we can't travel without them), gave us passwords to access our account on their website.  We will be looking on line for the outcome, which, if things go as they should, would mean we will have new visas in a couple of days.  Then she added a last note of officiousness:  if nothing appears on line in 10 days, we have to go back to her and find out what the trouble is.

We treated ourselves with tamales for lunch and now we're exhausted.   

20 (Y 21) DE NOVIEMBRE

The 20th of November is a holiday here, commemorating the beginning of the Revolution in 1910.  There's a nearby street named in honor of it:  

It fell on a Sunday this year, which is the usual day of rest, so on our calendar Monday the 21st is a "descanso obligatorio:"  literally an obligatory rest day.  I like that phrase, even though it's not really enforced--the city construction guys were on the job, raising dust.

We celebrated our obligatory day of rest by going to our 3rd Tarkovski film, Stalker.  We left last night's, Solaris, in the middle.  Too slow, too talky, too pointless.  Today we felt obliged to sit through the whole 163 minutes.  I'm not sure if we'll go to the next two.  What kind of faux cineastes are we?

DOMINGO CAMINANDO EN LA CONSTRUCCION

You're probably tired of photos of construction.  We're tired of living with it.

Exit the casita, look left, and this is what we see:

A closer view:

If we can go left (sometimes it's completely blocked off and we have to go right), we come to the Plaza de Armas, still under construction.  There is dust everywhere.

Sunday is our day to walk to the place that shall not be named.  We noticed today that there are now various Qs (for Querétaro) imbedded in the newly paved streets.  In addition to indicating the neighborhood's new designation as a tourist destination, we think they also indicate the way traffic will flow in and out of the historic train station area.  The one-way direction of one of the streets is going to be reversed, otherwise you can get out but you can't get in.

On the way home we noticed what we consider typical disrespect for bike lanes:

El sr J is a biker, and scenes like this make him livid.

HOMENAJE A ANDREI TARKOVSKY

There's an homage to the Russian director going on here.

Last night we saw Mirror:

Tonight is Solaris:

2 1/2 hours of Russian with Spanish sub-titles.  Might need a drink afterwards.  VODKA.  NEAT.  DOUBLE.  DOS VEDANYA.

NAOMI JAFFE

Born in 1943, another of Marcuse's students at Brandeis:

Personal Quote:

 "We [the Weather Underground group] felt that doing nothing in a period of repressive violence is itself a form of violence. That's really the part that is the hardest for people to understand. If you sit in your house, live your white life, go to your white job and allow the country that you live in to commit genocide, and you sit there and don't do anything about it, that's violence."

DOMINGO CAMINANDO

We decided to explore a different area of our new neighborhood today.  We would go to the train station (2 blocks down from the house-that-is-not-ours-yet) and go left.

This is the corner of Primavera, the first street perpendicular to ours, looking north toward the train tracks.  In this intersection there is a different size paving stone with a different design, one associated with the stone work in front of the train station.  And it looks like they're going to re-pave at least some of Primavera, which was closed to traffic.

Another angle, looking south on Invierno.  Note that cars will not be able to park on the sidewalk "bubbles."  The workers have erected curb-side posts:

The office of Kansas City Southern de Mexico, next to the old train station:

Past the train station, this building and sign:  We are jubilados, but we don't know what they want us to pay attention to, unless it's the domino club announcement:

Then this detour into a huge construction site:

At the far end of the construction site are the beginnings of two fountains, we were told:  one (circular) in the foreground and one (looks like an amphitheater) in the background:

Looking back toward the train station, more construction, including two fairly large sports complexes, which are behind the trees on the right:

El sr J was coveting the equipment and materiel, especially the stones, which would cost a small fortune in the US:

We saw a sign saying 4 million pesos had been dedicated to the improvements to just a couple of blocks on Invierno.  It's hard to imagine how much all the other nearby improvements are costing the city.  We'll keep providing Sunday progress reports.

LA SINFONIA Y LA TUBA

A brassy evening, pre-intermission.  First time we've heard a tuba solo at a symphony performance.  An Armenian composer and a born-in-the-USA shaped-like-a-tuba soloist:

The guest conductor:

He was intense and demonstrative.

HELEN WOODSON. . .

spent most of her adult life in prison (27 years) for opposing (and damaging) nuclear weapons.

Then:

Now:

CARNE DE RES

The weather forecast was windy with a high of 59 today so, as we prepared to set off for market. el sr J and I talked about some cool-weather meals.  We decided beef vegetable soup and a pot roast would be good choices for fall weather.  Then we had to figure out how we were going to ask for the cuts we wanted.  We consulted our Larousse Mexican Cookbook and an on-line chart of different cuts:  Here's the beef.  We wanted chuck, which was identified in the on-line chart as paleta.  There ensued a semi-heated discussion about whether to ask for it by size (gestures tend to work here) or by weight (how big is a kilo of chuck?), which ended with el sr J's being granted the responsibility for talking, since he does the cooking.

Off to market.  None of the cuts on the counter at our butcher's looked like what we wanted.  So el sr J asked for "paleta."  He said we wanted to cook it in the oven.  The butcher gave us that smiling but confused look that told us he had no idea what a "paleta" was.  Of course.  Just as it is with chiles, different regions are likely to have different names for the same thing.  On to Plan B.  I tried a different approach and said we wanted to make a soup with carrots, potatoes and onions and we wanted a cut with some bone for flavor.  Then el sr J, who had another cut up his sleeve, added:  "chambarete."  "Oh," says the smiling butcher and he talks to another guy there who disappears into a locker for about 5 minutes.  (If you remember a previous post, sometimes these guys climb a ladder and turn on an electric saw.  This time all was quiet).  He finally comes out brandishing a cow leg and asks if that's what we're talking about.  Yes.  El sr J told him he wanted 3 pieces from that leg and used his hand to show him where to cut them.  Up the ladder with the leg, down with the 3 pieces.

Look what we got!  Beautifully marbled with marrow bones and lots of meat.  Excellent for soup and stock.  We got 4 quarts.

During the 5-minute wait, el sr J was eyeing up the cuts on the counter and asking about them.  He saw one he liked for the pot roast and here it is:

This cut is called diezmillo.  Don't know what it's called anywhere else.  It's not chuck, but it will do.  

MAS ALMOHADAS

More pillows.  I'm calling these loosely alphabetical.  Loosely, because I don't know the languages, and also because they are mirror images (for technical reasons).

Armenian:

Arabic:

Chinese:

Tamil:

Arapacana:

The small ones are for the patio chairs (I still have one to go).  The big ones are for the sofa.

Instead of eating words, we'll sit on them.