holidays

[waterg]

Dont come here, too many tornados, hurricains, and too many americans 

[Howard]

Too late, G!  Molly had a holiday in New Mexico last summer.  Don't think she experienced any hurricanes or tornadoes, though ...  But lots of dust-devils!

[Molly Mockford]

Dust-devils, tumbleweed, roadrunners, hummingbirds, margaritas - and wonderful warm welcoming people!

[waterg]

yep mexico is nice especially cancun

[Molly Mockford]

It was New Mexico rather than Mexico - I was staying with a friend in Rio Rancho, near Albuquerque.  It was an amazingly beautiful state - 15 minutes' drive took you to a totally different landscape, then another 15 minutes to another totally different landscape etc. - I understand the Western film-makers loved it for just that reason, they could shoot different type scenes without having to zoom around the country.

I particularly enjoyed visiting the pueblos, both those still inhabited like Acoma Sky City and the ancient ruins.  And some of the prehistoric petroglyphs were amazing.  And Americans say they have no history prior to the 15th century!!

The art produced by the Native Americans was also an eye-opener to me.  I had already known about Navajo weaving, but the pottery - especially Hopi, Acoma and Jemez (and the greatest of these is Acoma) just blew my mind.  I would have loved to have brought back an Acoma bowl but I would have had to have sold my house to afford it - I eventually settled for a tiny dolls'-house sized plate.  And I have a little storyteller - oh, and one of those black-and-white clowns with a feather and a slice of watermelon whose name I always forget (I tend to think Kachina but it's not that, that's a different style of figure entirely).  But I adore the bowls, with geometric designs, or black-on-black, or polychromic.  You can see some lovely ones here:
http://www.canyonart.com/acoma.htm

[rhia66]

  Thank you for the link Molly   They have some beautiful pieces!

   I adore American Native arts and crafts.My G has bought me a few things,and I hope to get more wonderful items,when we take our trip out west  

  Light&Laughter,Rhia

[Molly Mockford]

The best pieces tend to be in the art galleries, which means a much higher price - but perfectly fair, when you think that a potter might spend two or three months working on a complex geometrical decoration, and then have the pot burst in the firing.  I went through some really wonderful galleries which made my mouth water.  (In the UK, art galleries tend to be for display only;  the ones in NM were basically shops, and almost everything was for sale on behalf of the artist, the gallery taking a percentage.)

For smaller and less expensive items, I strongly recommend the Native American artists' market at the Palace of the Governors in Sante Fe.  Those who turn up each morning have a lottery for who gets the places (there are only 40 or 50 places as far as I remember).  They lucky ones sit in the shade of the portico displaying their wares on a blanket.  The unlucky ones have to go away again :-(  The items sold there are generally paid for in cash,  so prices aren't high.  The artists are also happy to be photographed with the piece(s) you buy as long as you undertake to send them a copy (which I did!).

I also saw various forgeries and cheap copies, particularly "Navajo" rugs which were machine-made in Mexico 

[magpie]

If you have a car while in New Mexico you can drive to the pueblos like Acoma and buy straight from the potters..you feel good, they feel good and the capitlaist middleman misses out on his 75% cut

Suggestion: for city lovers there are three great places to visit in the US and three horrible ones:

1) New York...only Tokyo can come close to the sheer adrenalin rush and hyper-ventilation of Manhattan...the cabs never stop, the honking is incessant, like a Gershwin song I recall...the cafes never close...it's the Anglo-Saxon world's only 24 X 7 city...there are no free museums like London or great views like Paris (Unless you get to the top of one of the skyscrapers) but there is energy and crowds and intensity you haven't felt since you were fifteen and in love for the first time

2) Chicago...in winter...you want to know why America is so damn big and loud and rich and pushy and arrogant...they still make things in Chicago...they still butcher all kinds of animals, not just humans...here is a city that deserves its nickname "Windy City" perched on Lake Michigan where it is miserably cold, think Oslo with forty mile an hour winds...but it has more great architecture than any other city outside Europe, great art museums and shopping and cafes and crime (Al Capone) and ethnic neighborhoods (more Poles than any city west of Warsaw)...it gave the planet Frank Lloyd Wright, Saul Bellow, Ernest Hemingway and really big-time gangsters...watch the great Newman movie "The Sting" and then go to Chicago...on second thot, forget the horrible winter, go in August when the sweat won't evaporate and remember the great police vs. protestor battles of the summer of 1968 and dream of yet another street revolution in America (soon, please)...and then go to a Chiacgo Cub baseball game at the most important shrine of this totally atavistic game that white Americans love but is played mostly by blacks and Latin Americans whose great grandfathers were taught the game by U.S. Marines on some Monroe Doctrine adventure aroudn the Caribbean decades ago...singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at Wrigley Field (named for a chewing gum magnate after all!) is as close as you come to a religious experience without becoming a Republican...have a Polish sausage with sourkraut and tangy mustard wahsed down by COLD (get over it, Brits, American beer is always icy cold) and bubbly thin beer

3) San Francisco...this is the city where I have spent most of my adult life before I removed to London...it is unique.  It is the richest city in America.  People with money choose to live there.  People who don't fit anywhere else, choose to live there. People who are illegal in red states choose to live openly there.  It is the melting pot's melting pot.  Tolerance is tolerated and encouraged.    There is no majority ethnic group in San 
Francisco, just lots of individuals with names that once came from England, France, Mexico, Japan, Vietnam, China, Philippines, Guatemala, Italy, Korea, Germany, Ireland, Scandanavia, Croatia (the oldest cafe in town is Croatian), Greece, any place with a seaport for this is the world's original boomtown.  It has always been the biggest source of money for the IRA.  Yes, that IRA.  Do walk into Ireland's 32 pub with yr English accent.
 250 residents in 1847.  50,000 less than five years later.  Boom and bust.  Gold Rush.  Railroads.  Wheat. Earthquake.  Like Chicago and London and Lisbon, it's seen total destruction and re-built.  Ship building for war. Transistors.  Internet boom.  This young city has seen it all.  Still it ties Moscow and lags only New York in billionaires and tops London and L.A. All those cities are more than double San Francisco in size.
        This is a city that has always welcomed the outrageous and the outcast and brazen--no mystery why half the world's internet wealth is in San Francisco: Yahoo, eBay, Cisco, Oracle, Google, Napster, Intel, Apple.  A city that knows the next earthquake is going to mean death doesn't flinch at risking a few million dollars on a whacko idea. It's always been over the top--the first ever movie was made here.  TO settkle a bet about how manyfeet a running h orse can have off the ground at one time--answer: just 4.  The most outspoken out-of-control comic in America is a native: Robin Williams.
          Then there is the physical beauty.  The only city I have seen that comes close in terms of physical setting is Auckland.  Ocean, bay, mountains, beaches, arching bridges and sailboats racing across white caps...and Mark Twain's verity: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."  When the Pacifc fog blows in, it really blows.  That's the world's largest ocean providing year-round aeration and air conditioning.  The many surfers all have to wear wet suits, even in August, the ocean never heats up...those beach bunny movies were all made down south in LaLaLand.
          Outside France there is no place better for food and wine...and there are more small, boutique breweries here than anywhere else on the planet.  For your palate's sake, you owe yourself a visit while the £ is big and the $ is shrinking.  You must rent a car to see redwoods and the Sierra and Yosemite, the world's first public national park and inspitration for the Sierra Club, the world's first conservation organization.

oh no cities:
1) LA--LaLaLand....cars from hell...freeways that will eat your brain...smog that will eat your lungs...more egregious over-consupmtion than any good European socialist could even imagine...banking provide more jobs and money...but movies are still the heart and soulless part of LA and always will be...the rest of the world watxches what this town produces...see the movie, skip the city

2) New Orleans...this is apartheid American style, enforced by subtle pressure and guns, on all sides...if there is a dark heart in America, it beats strongest here...worse than Miami, harsher than Memphis, meaner than
Houston, more decadent than any city west of Venice...they couldn't even bribe the crooks to finish the city's only casino because it would apparently cut into the profits at illegal gambling dens...plus when they dump your body inthe MIssissippi which stands sveral; feet ABOVE street level, the 'gators will eat before anybody notices you are gone...don't tell them I wrote this or they'll send out a hit squad...no wonder the conspiracy freaks think John Kennedy's murder was planned and paid for in New Orleans

3) Las Vegas...this is Dubai with better engineering and Mafia management.  The one city where you can walk for ah hour and still be onthe same city block...it should have remained desert but now it's a huge metropolis built on gambling, various forms of sexual and intellectual prostitution and bilking any sucker that comes along...I have two indelible Vegas memories...late one night after a bitter dinner at some lame broadcasting convention I walked through the endless smoke-filled casino to get to the only elevator bank that rises to the hotel rooms (they force you to walk the slot machie gaunlet, there is no easy way to yr room)...and just about 100 yards from my elevator I see two kids about 5 and 8 in their pajames, leaning against the fire escpae door, each hugging a small stuffed animal...they look scared and tired.  It's after midnight.  To ---- with it, I walk past.  Then as I get to the elevator I look back along the wall.  They're watching me. There are no other visible adults around.  Just the blinking slots and far off a table of card players.  I go back.  "You all alone?" I ask.
THey point to a totally mesmerized small woman about fifty yards away at the slots.  It's good old mom.

On another trip, early one Saturday I am off to a broadcasting convention breakfast.  As I pass the slots there is the casino wedding chapel.  People who really need to get married, like dumb rock stars,. get drunk and go to Vegas.  No questions asked.  No blood test.  No banns posted.  Pay yr feed, slam bam.  NEXT.  And just a few feet fromthw wedding chapel door is young woman in full bridal gown, playing the slots.   Suspect she had better shot at winning a fortune than having a marriage in two years...but then I'm just an old curmudgeon.

So check it out...like there is not ONE Europe, there is not ONE America, there are many.

[Molly Mockford]

Wow, Magpie, what an amazing, lyrical summary!  I wish that one could do interlinear replies, like in e-mail or Usenet, but I'll just have to cut'n'paste bits to hang my replies on.

If you have a car while in New Mexico you can drive to the pueblos like Acoma and buy straight from the potters..you feel good, they feel good and the capitlaist middleman misses out on his 75% cut

I did indeed go to Sky City and was mindblown.  The pottery on sale there, though, was basically similar to what I could buy from the exact same people at Santa Fe - the really great pieces aren't left to sit in the pueblo shop at risk of being picked up and broken.  It could take an artist an entire season to produce one of those bowls, and at least they get a decent price from the better art galleries.  I could never, ever, afford those wonderful bowls or seedpots, or the intricate storytellers (nor would I have dared to transport them back home) - but I love to look at them!

I must post up some photos I took at Acoma, particularly one looking out over the distant landscape from that high, high mesa, with my tour guide, Orlando, in the foreground.  (And yes, every photo I took with people in, I posted a copy off to them when I got home and downloaded them.)

New York...only Tokyo can come close to the sheer adrenalin rush and hyper-ventilation of Manhattan...the cabs never stop, the honking is incessant, like a Gershwin song I recall

I went to New York many years ago, as a teenager, and it was extraordinary - as you say, noisy, brash and busy-busy-busy.  My conclusion was that it was a wonderful place to be as a youngster, but that I would hate to grow old there.  I could either write 17 paragraphs about it or leave it there, so I'd better leave it there!

Chicago...in winter...you want to know why America is so damn big and loud and rich and pushy and arrogant...they still make things in Chicago...they still butcher all kinds of animals, not just humans

I've never been there, but I've always loved Carl Sandberg's poem - and I bet that Paul Simon had that poem in mind when he wrote The Boxer, too.  For anyone who doesn't know this poem, it's at http://carl-sandburg.com/chicago.htm.

San Francisco - never got anywhere near there, but your description makes me think a bit of Greenwich Village the way it was when I visited back in the 60s - apart from the monied side of it, that is!  I'd love to go there, and I've got friends who live in Marin County so maybe someday I'll get to visit them and take in SF too!

Thank you for that post, Magpie - it made everything come alive, really real!

[Howard]

No blood test.

Gosh!  A blood test is common in the US as a qualification for a marriage licence?  What is being tested for?  Until you can reassure me, good Magpie, I shall think that there is a eugenics policy at work in the US, not unlike that in force in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s.  

And it's still in operation?  It will really rather make me wonder about the 'Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.' - but perhaps you are neither free nor brave if your genes display any imperfection.

Please calm me down about this - I've got it wrong, right?

[katelyn]

Gosh!  A blood test is common in the US as a qualification for a marriage licence?  What is being tested for?

Syphyllis.

(Not new -- just emended as it looked a little shocking to hang the answer out there without the question.  )