Oregon.

i imagine it went like this, two guys sitting in a boardroom in philadelphia:

"so, what if we built these giant wind mills and they could like, i don't know, harness energy ... what do you think???"

"barry, you're one crazy bastard, but i think you've got something there ... corporate will never go for it, though ..."

getting lost somewhere between Boise and Portland ... and in no hurry to find my way, again.


I used to be pretty clear on what was real and what I made up, but with everything going on in the world, none of that seems to matter, so I just decided to talk less and smile to myself more, so as not to add to the general confusion - Brian Andreas.

- Jessie

Breakfast at Elmer's

where it never rains...

- Jessie

David L. Robbins Adulterer

I found this while walking around Jackson, MS. I wonder if David L. Robbins still gets laid in this town.

Night lights ...

really late at night during an intense snow storm ...

these were way too orange in color, i like them better in black and white, gives them a creepy, "Nightmare Before Christmas" feel ...

Andrew where are you???

this came in the mail the other day and i'm still deciding if it says more about one, andrew carpenter, or the inner workings of the united states postal service.

this guy lived in our house a couple roommates back and apparently he's going bankrupt. so, not only is his life falling apart, at one point he was so pathetic he included directions to his room as part of his address ... and he never bothered to change it.

i know it's just a letter, but my ponderings since it came here are thricefold ... did the other roommates hate him so much he had to clarify that he lived "upstairs right" just so his mail would make it to him? ... is his new address "andrew carpenter, parent's house, basement" and if so, should I forward it there?? ...

did the postman chuckle at the poor bastard everytime he delivered mail here, thinking to himself, "my life is bad, i mean, i'm a postman for cripes sake, but this guy has it so much worse..." ???

so many questions...

There was an immigration raid in southern Idaho this month, 16 men were arrested and most of them are about to be deported back to Mexico. I went to a vigil with the families in Boise to take photos and do some reporting for a project i'm working on.

I love that she wore these shoes, so cool and not at all appropriate ...

Meet Catherine.

(AP Photo/Charlie Litchfield)

By JESSIE L. BONNER - Associated Press Writer
Edition Date: 12/13/08

PAYETTE, Idaho — For nearly a year, Catherine Carlson refused to pay the fine for driving with a suspended license because it was issued to both her and the man she used to be.

She went to jail four times over the ticket that includes both her legal name and the one she was born with, Daniel Carlson. She had surgery 28 years ago to become a woman, the gender she believes should have been assigned her at birth.

Carlson legally changed her name in the 1970s, but police and court records include both in this rural farming and ranching community east of the Snake River in southwestern Idaho.

"The ticket was the last straw," Carlson said.

Her fight against local authorities brought up questions Payette County had never answered before: where to house a transgender person in a jail with separate cells for men and women, which courthouse bathroom should she use, should the former male name be stricken from county records.

"This is a very conservative old-fashioned community, that's just the way it is. This is rural, small town Idaho. This is new to us," said Payette County Sheriff Chad Huff.

During the past year, Carlson repeatedly protested the $841 citation in court hearings on the case. Her struggle for acceptance since the sex-change operation on Thanksgiving Day 1980 has gone on much longer. She chose a life of solitude at a trailer park near the Payette city limits, rejecting a society she feels has rejected her.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/531/story/602863.html

Gulfport three years after Hurricane Katrina

This week I am in Gulfport, MS and I have been blown away by how much rebuilding is yet to be done. The city is still working on cleaning out the storm drains near the beach. Many of the large houses that lined Highway 90 are gone and all that is left are the foundations. So here are some photos from my walk yesterday morning.

Stairs to nowhere

A building that will be rebuilt for historical purposes, I don't know the story.

The Gulfport Library

Josh O'Connor - Gulfport, MS

The ice man cometh...

When I was little my godmother had a pond behind her place and when it froze over she would take us ice skating in the ridiculous cold that is a northern Idaho winter. I was the one who flew out to the middle of the ice, where it was weakest, where no one else would go, and I would wave at the line of cars that slowed along the highway to check out the stupid kid about to fall through.

So, naturally, the 26-year-old version of myself is thinking the sport cannot have changed that much and after three years of tropical living, I should probably give it another try.

I knew it was going to be bad when I saw the Russian skater team doing pirouettes in the middle of the rink, the families huddled on bleachers, the teenagers on really awkward first dates.

And then there was me, the blades of terror strapped to my feet, revisiting a former life and taking mental snapshots.

But then I realized that I would probably never see any of these people again, and I started taking real snapshots. It suddently hit me that one of the truly great things about getting older is that you really stop caring what people think.

So, I did a couple shaky laps, clinging onto the arm of a friend, avoiding glares from the Russian man-chics everytime we accidentally got in their way. The 16-year-old referee would glide by every five minutes to ask if we were alright and I would assure him that no, I wasn't having a seizure, I just hadn't done this in a while. - Jessie

shutter by moonlight ...

Jessie - from the edge of a prairie in eastern Washington.

Georgia Aquarium: where fish are epic

From John, in Atlanta:

Check out these videos from my recent trip to the Georgia Aquarium, which is the largest in the world (and they're damn sure going to keep it that way ... some aquarium in another country was going to be bigger, but they decided to build a new dolphin exhibit to keep up with the underwater Jones').

I sat in this room forever.


Doesn't this look like it's from another planet? Those seaweed things are garden eels!

Fall Awakening...

From Jessie in Boise

I, like all warm-blooded people before me, know that satan invented cold weather because he got bored and decided there simply wasn't enough suffering. I don't do well in temps below 70, which means I've been cranky since August, but the colors have been nice lately and I'm going to try to take more photo ... and hope summer 2009 doesn't take its sweet time getting here.



This dude did not think my Walt Whitman comparisons were funny ... i wanted to tell him he shouldn't have worn that hat then, because he was totally begging for it ...

Rub a Dub Dub...

I'm not sure why anyone would actually NEED an outdoor bathtub after the year 1812, but apparently the guy we're renting this house from did, and I can't stop thinking about it and how it got here and who the hell is supposed to use it, or if someone built it at one point and then realized there was a bathtub inside the house (whirljet, changed my life) ... and this is not even the strangest part about this place.

Oh, wait, what's that? you mean YOUR living room ISN'T covered with gold chickens?? only someone really odd would do that??

Fruit that requires a screw driver

OKC -- A woman at a Vietnamese restaurant near my house gave the most convincing clue that the durian is an evil fruit that should not be eaten: "It's got spikes all over it, like, warning you to stay away," she said, before comparing the fruit's taste to vomit.

I first heard about the southeast Asian durain fruit at a dinner party, where a new friend and his wife (both white people from Ohio) said that the durain was the most delicious thing on earth. They said it was sweet, but not too sweet, and had the consistency of custard. Just be sure you crack it open on the porch, or outside your home, they said, because the fruit smells like a combo of rotten eggs and Fat Albert farts. They assured me that's a smell one can overcome, and that I would be hooked after one try.

Clearly these people have not taken human anatomy. Your nose is tied straight up with taste in your brain. And my nose is freaking huge.

My friend Jesse and I walked to Super Cao Nguyen, an Asian grocery store, on Saturday afternoon to buy a durian and try it out for ourselves. The fruit is sold out of a freezer, looks like an angry, rounded pineapple, and is pretty expensive. We picked the smallest one possible, and it weighed about 5 pounds and cost like $9. I didn't have any money in my wallet (convenient right?), so Jesse paid for it and carried it home. The durian is so spikey that, even when held in two plastic bags, it still stabbed him in the leg and litterally made him bleed. Ouch.

We got the fruit to my front porch and realized we didn't have much of a game plan for cracking it's spikey, wood-hard exterior. Here's a progression of tools used:

1. The knife: We used a small, sharp knife to stab at the fruit. It wasn't cerrated, but we still managed to saw across one side. We tried to pull it open, and just got stabbed in the palms. The fruit wouldn't budge.

2. The garden gloves: Used garden gloves to continue trying to pull the fruit apart. Not strong enough.

3. The stairs: Jesse picked the durain up and started banging it against the concrete stairs that lead up to my porch. "What are you doing?" I said. "Haven't you ever seen an otter?" Me: (Um, yes, in the Chicago Aquarium...) "Um, yes." Jesse: "They do this with mollusks, they put their little hands on the mollusk and then bang them into rocks." He continues banging, but all he does is get rid of a few spikes.

4. Screw drivers: Finally, we used two large screwdrivers to pry the fruit apart along the slit made in step one.

Immediately after the fruit opened, a stench filled the air. It was pretty sulfuric, like rotten eggs, but had a hint of otherworldlyness that for some reason reminded me of that scene in Gremlins when they all start hatching in the attic. Not that I have smellivision, I just imagine that's what it smells like.

As for the taste, I think Jesse was most accurate when he said it tasted like soggy, moldy onions. Whatever it was, it was sick, and I kept burping it up for at least 5 hours. After several washes, its smell still stuck to my hands. (It was unclear which kitchen utensils, if any, would be able to dig into the pockets of fruit beneath the spikes ... I didn't have a metal spork on hand, but maybe that would work).

Moral of story: trying new foods can be an adventure, but make sure you know what tools are required, and have a chaser and/or antacid ready.

--John

Whoa uh oh, the sweetest thing...

Yeah, so U2 was playing in my head as I watched the following hook-up at like, 3 a.m. in the morning when I couldn't sleep. I live in an old converted hotel that overlooks downtown, so basically, when Boise parties till 3 a.m. on a flippin' Tuesday, so do I, cursing them and every emo-cover band that ever mastered the art of applying black eyeliner. But that night, when I heard these guys talking below my window, it actually wasn't so bad.

The guy, kind of nerdy, looking up songs on his laptop, sitting as FAR away from her as possible.

The girl, kind of edgy, bleached hair, the preying mantis to his worst fears.

The thing is, it worked for them, and when I wasn't feeling totally creepy for watching them for a couple seconds, I kind of felt like the universe was trying to make up for a past connection between two other people that somehow got missed.

Here's to the unexpected, may it keep biting us in the ass...

Jessie

I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike, I want to ride ... ok, I'll stop

A little taste of last year's action...

I think assimilation is pretty cool (if you're a communist), so when I moved to Boise I took a look around and realized I would either have to get a dog (beagle) or a bike (banana seat). The place reeks of granola (or "kashi" if you're a hipster) the type of place where mentioning "Wal-Mart" and "Starbucks" is equivalent to dropping the F-bomb (like Target treats its Indonesian factory workers ANY better) It took a while to catch on, mainly because I didn't really understand the "lingo" (note: cool word for "language") and everyone wouldn't shut up about their "times..."

Standing in the line at Java waiting for my coffee:

Dude, what's your "time" on that 4K? I got like 5:32, yeah, pretty good "time," better than my last "time"...

First, I went for the obvious -- these two grown men wearing spandex and complaining about their knees were part of some cult, that they got together on Wednesdays and did weird stuff involving clocks. But then, buying toilet paper at Winco:

"Hey Sarah! how's your time on the Eagle Run? I did about 20:13, not so bad huh?"

The homeless guy who smokes the cigarette butts off the sidewalk on 9th street:

"Hey Rusty (not even gonna tell you how he got the nickname) what "time" did you get walking from Fremont to Fairview?? I got about 20 minutes..."

Okay, it wasn't just me, it was like I was stuck in this Cindi Lauper music video where "Time after Time" was playing on vinyl (my new favorite thing) ... just circle after circle of some of one of the worst tunes (cough..George Michael...cough) produced during the 1980s. I finally broke down and asked someone about it (yes, Rusty the homeless guy). He explained like so, if you live in Boise, this weird city of hippies and Capitol types in suits, sooner or later you look around and realize everyone is either training for a triathalon, or improving their "time" on some local trail.

I got my road bike when I got back from Guatemala (where owning a bike is kinda like owning a Suzuki) and there it was, in my apartment staring at me (awkward).

And here I was, in the apparent biking capital of the world. all I wanted to do was throw on some sweats and hop in a rickshaw (preferably hauled by a dog (yeah, that's right, the tables have TURNED). I've tried to live by a non-conformist code, sometimes succeeding (nothing but cold cereal for an entire month) sometimes failing miserably (scrunchie phase, circa 1980s) but I felt I just couldn't ride my bike in a place where people actually gave you a thumbs up when you passed by and Saturdays, man, Saturdays were like a parade of goofy smiles riding Huffys and Schwins ... it was just embarrassing.

But then, there was the bike race of the year had enveloped my apartment complex, some mess of an event called the "Twilight Criterium" and it was me against the biking world as I realized the entryway to my apartment had been blocked off.

So, I did what anyone would have done in the same situation.I sat at my window mapping out the trajectory of a lugee for a few seconds, then I grabbed my bike, waded through the massive crowd (cooler and involving more sweat than it sounds) and rode to the other side of town to a really nice bike trail called the Boise Greenbelt, and for two hours I shifted gears, balanced just right on the curves, and tried to pretend I hadn't just started drinking the Kool-Aid.

Jessie

Going to East Africa?

If any of you are thinking of a trip to East Africa, particularly Tanzania, I recommend you get in touch with a friend of mine, Renson. He is very kind, speaks English, and is having trouble keeping his business going this season because the flow of tourism is so low. I assume this has to do with recent violence in neighboring Kenya. In any event, if you're planning a trip to that part of the world, please contact him. He does tours of Kilimanjaro, Zanzibar, and all of the safaris.

Here's his business site. (http://www.africaadventuretreks.com/) Or e-mail him at info [at] africaadventuretreks.com.

Quick Swahili lesson: safari=journey, rafiki=friend, simba=lion.

That's him in the picture above.

John

Rodeo Disco: the circle of life

OKLA CITY -- Country bars and gay bars are like 4 millimeters apart on the great wheel of nightlife.

This is based on a recent visit to Club Rodeo, where, as you'll see in this video, a bunch of dudes in cowboy hats and nut-hugger jeans jump around beneath a disco ball to "YMCA." If you listen closely, you'll hear my boyfriend say, "Oh, goddamn!" in the middle of it all.

The line-dancing bar is seriously a two-step away from being a gay disco. Everything's about the clothes: who has the coolest cowboy boots or the biggest hat. The urinals are closer together than any straight person (or me, for that matter) could possibly be comfortable with. And guys are the center off attention on the dance floor: they wear pastel colored shirts, twirl around and whip their heads from side to side like they're in a tango competition.

The music isn't too far off, either. Club Rodeo is as big as an airport hanger, and while people wait to see live bull riding, they dance to everything from Kenny Chesney to Kanye. There's a laser light show, obviously, and the tracks that hold the lights lowers down close to the floor for the hip-hop, and pulls up high for slow country tunes ... kind of going into roller rink mode.

Of course, while women dance together openly, waiting for some cowboy to step in, you'd never see two men dancing together. But plop some of those homeboys down in a gay bar, and I'm sure there'd be a few boot heels clickin.

John

And they call the thang (club) rodeoooo

OKLA CITY -- Sometimes the best exploring is done in your own city ... especially if you happen to live in a weird-ass place like Oklahoma, where you can find a country dancing club that hosts live bull riding next to its dance floor.

No, not mechanical bull riding, which you might find in bars elsewhere. LIVE dust kicking, ball pinching, arm breaking bull riding. On Friday and Saturday nights, Club Rodeo has it on the half-hour. Everyone stops dancing to come watch a bunch of amateur dudes compete for $300 ($600 on Saturday because no one had scored Friday).

It's insane.

At the 11:30 ride on Saturday, some guy took off on a bull named Lickety Split. Watch the video to find out how well he did, but let's just say that he was holding his arm so tightly after the race that it looked like he needed a trip to the ER.

Which brings up a good point my friends made: What's $300 compared to an ER visit?

I want to know more about these guys who put it all on the line for some sliver of glory, or a piece of their rent check. Maybe they're trying to make it onto the big, pro rodeo circuit. Maybe they just get a kick out of it.

Either way it's pretty fascinating.

(Tip if you go: only drink beer in a bottle, and put your thumb over the top when the bulls are jumping. They kick up a lot of dust ... and since said dust smells like manure, you don't wanna drink that.)

John

Switchbacks in the concrete jungle

SAN FRAN -- The hills in San Francisco are crazy steep. Like ski hill steep. Like tear an ACL muscle/strain a quad steep.

The hill where you'll find Lombard Street (the famous "windeyest" road in America), drops at a 27 percent grade, for example. Neighborhoods are named things like Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill, mostly so idiot tourists will know to walk around them rather than pass out during the climb. Property rates on Telegraph Hill were supposedly super low before the automobile, because only poor people were willing to walking up and down it. Take the dramatic city hills and valleys, and thrown in some serious Pacific fog, and you get a range of micro climates in the city based on the topography. One resident told me neighborhood temperatures can vary by as much as 20 degrees, just because hills hold the weather.

Sometimes, these hills have little stair steps to help you out with the climb, but often you're left to make your own path.

John and I figured out the hills are easier if you take a little tip from skiing and hiking -- and cut the grades down with some switchbacks. It makes you look a bit like a fool, but hey, I was already carrying a camera around my neck and a big yellow backpack. Not much to lose.

And I guess that's the exact technique that makes Lombard Street tolerable for cars. The hairpin curves of the road dilute the grade down to 16 percent, according to a National Geographic travel guide.

John

Good Vibrations (of the slightly scary variety)

The Golden Gate Bridge is 8,981 feet across, and you really have to walk it to get a feel for how enormous it is.

When you do, the giant red structure, which seems more like artwork than engineering from afar, becomes a real working, moving, imperfect thing. You notice scratches and big dull spots in the "International Orange" paint. You hear the roar of traffic.

And, most of all, you feel the vibrations. The road is suspended from cables, and those cables vibrate "like piano strings," as one passer-by put it. No shock, really, since the bridge is built to handle 27.7 feet of sway in the case of an earthquake or disaster.

(some info for post came from National Geographic travel guide to San Fran ... which I highly recommend)

Bark! (get off my stinkin dock)

SAN FRAN -- At Pier 39 in San Francisco, you'll find a whole gaggle (or whatever) of sea lions. They bark at tourists and each other as they slide around looking for resting space on the pier. They're quite social, and snuggle on top of each other in piles. The sea lions come and go on their own, and, according to a sign in the area, the pier's owners actually abandoned a section of docks since it's become such a social gathering spot for the animals.

We stood by the pier for 20 minutes or so just watching the sea lions shove each other around. They have very different personalities. The fat males (you can tell they're males by the lumps on their foreheads) seem grumpy and territorial. Smaller, fuzzier sea lions stayed far away from the aggressors, content to sleep like sardines in a row.

I would have been one of the lazy sea lions. I mean, the whole point of the stop is to rest and chill out ... no need for all that alpha male drama.

John

They say that when you live in a place long enough, it becomes part of you. When it comes to Guatemala, I can only hope so. This place meant a lot to me, on many levels, and now I'm headed back to the states to see my family for the first time in a year. I came here, for the most part, as a complete moron, in a culture I knew nothing about and a language I was just beginning to understand. But, after a while, I found myself drawn to everything about this country, finding things that reminded me of parts of myself that I had forgotten while I was in such a hurry to graduate from college, get a job and take myself seriously.

I threw all that away when I went all Hunter S. Thompson and moved to Central America.

This is my final Post-a-Card until my next trip. I look back on Guatemala and what I've posted here, and I see a lot on the highlights from this experience, the moments where I felt such freedom and happiness about quitting my job and leaving everything to come here. I left out the parts where I literally collasped under the weight of the decision I'd made.

But here's the thing.

I realize now that the most valuable thing I'm going to take from all of this -- minus the 12 bottles of hot sauce in buried in my luggage -- is this:

I will probably never chase after the white picket fence, so many of my friends are married and getting jobs, leaving old ones, buying property so they can settle down and find a place for themselves in this messed up world, and while I think it's great for them, it also freaks me out, it's a small part of why I left, I had no idea what I wanted or where I wanted to go. I never really found a place that felt like home for me. Some people might have gotten a shrink. I moved to Central America. And now I'm leaving, a lot poorer, a little smarter, less in sync with the English language than I'd care to admit, but feeling a whole lot better about where I'm headed after realizing this:

It doesn't matter.

Anything can happen at this point, and I'm really okay with that, mostly because I've decided that "home" is not the name of a city, it's not even the place where you were born or grew up, home is an idea, it is a place where you can be yourself, it is where you are most happy, surrounded by people and places and music and food and a life that you love.

And for a while, Guatemala was home for me.

Yes, I'm still alive...

Okay, so I haven't posted in a while, and a Post-A-Card couldn't even cover half of what has happened in the past couple of weeks, so I've decided to delight, no ASTOUND, you with a small portion of the photos Lexey and Tristan took when they came down to visit. Tristan and I were reporting on a story and Lexey took time off from work to meet up with us last week. I've had a blast traveling through Central America, but it's also been difficult realizing that when you've been gone as long as I have, it's pretty easy to fall off the map. Friends don't write as much. Your inbox isn't as full as it used to be. Your name comes up and someone says "Oh yeah, I remember her, isn't she still in Mexico or something?"

Basically, in times like these, you find out who's got your back.

There's Talia Buford, my best friend in the entire world, a girl who paid international postage to send me my favorite candy from the states and wish me an early Happy Thanksgiving. And then there's Lex and Tristan. Both of them offered major support when I decided to come to Guatemala, and I felt so lucky to have them both here to help me finish up my trip. They also happen to be two of my favorite photographers ever and you can check out their photo blogs here and here.

Here's some random shots from our travels. Enjoy.

Lake Atitlan, where we spent most of our time after leaving Antigua, the city where I've been hanging out for the past four months.
Getting ready to catch a shuttle from Antigua to Panajachel, the city where the boats dock and take people across the lake. The story was in Santa Cruz, which is the only village on the lake that is located up in the mountains. We hiked 20 minutes everyday just to get to it.
Your basic reaction to what Guatemalans call "transportation." Just imagine being shoved in a van with 16 other people and the kind of ass-hurting that comes when driving 50 miles per hour on cobblestone streets and you get the picture.
Seriously just happy to be alive...

Less than ideal working conditions, but we made it work.

Lexey having another one of her "SERIOUSLY, THIS IS WHERE YOU'VE BEEN LIVING?!?" moments ... there were a lot of them.
Documentation of the exact moments Tristan and I realized we no longer have jobs...
WARNING: Traveling with photographers subjects you to being photographed AT ALL TIMES.
I don't know Karate, but I know CRAZY...


We helped the world A LOT during this trip.

When did you get your nose pierced???

Tristan heading back to D.C.

Why am I going back to the states again?

oh yeah.

The Kite Runners...

Halloween was cool, but the real holiday came the next day, on November 1, Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. We caught a chicken bus out to a small village outside Antigua and witnessed one of the most bizarre rituals I've ever seen in my entire life.Let's just say it involved a cemetary, a crowd of Guatemalans, and kites the size of school buses. People honor their dead by flying the kites over the graves, and the tails on the end of the massive structures are made up of pieces of cloth, they include the messages families send to loved ones who have passed on.

It was beautiful, even if it seemed a little morbid.




The graves provided pretty good leverage for the runners, who had to pull the strings and keep them up in the air. Tristan's best "Where the Hell Am I?" look.

We do things a little differently here...

Okay, so Halloween managed to make it's way here thanks to the tourists, we didn't exactly have access to pumpkins, but my buddy Tristan got into town this week and we headed to the market and bought some produce to carve up. Sure, they're not exactly ... pretty, but you get the point and they made the dimly lit bar where I've been working for the past month a little more attractive ... sort of.

I only have about a month left here in Central America and even though I came here with every intention of experiencing how people really live in Guatemala, it was really cool to have a piece of home here. I passed out candy at the bar, Tristan somehow squeezed into a child's size 4 teenage mutant ninja turtle costume he found at the market, and a good time was had by all.

About 50 years ago, my parents were married on this holiday, it's always been my favorite, this year it didn't dissapoint.

Geovani rockin' his costume.
The closest thing to a pumpkin we could find.
Geovani and his brother taking a day off from working the streets to just be kids.

Roberto, aka, Britney Spears, or a really ugly prepubescent girl ... depending on how you look at it.

I've already written about Geovani in past Post-a-Cards. he's a local kid who comes in every night and keeps me company while I work. Our agreement is a simple one. I give him free refills on glasses of "leche" and in return, he helps me entertain/make fun of the hundreds of tourists who pass through the Black Cat hostel. at some point we became friends and everybody pretty much knows that whenever I work, there's a spot at the bar reserved for Geovani, who poses for pictures and makes them laugh. Everyone who meets me, at some point or another, meets Geovani. There was Derek and Chris, the Marines from Texas who would give him their leftover pizza when they were done with it. There was Elad (pictured above) the Israeli who was startled to find out Geovani was smarter than him. There was Jim, the local guy who talked to Geovani for a while, bought chocolate from him, and then shoved him away when he got annoyed with him.

The kid is dressed better than most of the other beggars, and I swear sometimes it's like he's a 30-year-old stuck inside an 11-year-olds body, but for some weird reason I connected with him.

Last night my manager was watching while I poured Geovani a glass of milk and bought him a bottle of water to take home. I thought she was going to yell at me, that I'd get in trouble once she realized i'd been feeding this kid, and if we were to add up all the shots of "leche" I've given him, it would most likely sustain a small pueblo for a couple months, but she didn't.

She told me she knew the kid, knew where he lived, that he was one of like 16 kids and they had a really rough life, their mother suffers from some kind of mental disability.

People ask me about Geovani all the time, they can't tell if he's just another one of the beggars who roam through Antigua or if he's my little brother. The truth is, I've built somewhat of an extended family down here, and somewhere along the way Geovani became part of it.

I'm almost done working at the hostal, and I'll be leaving Guatemala in about a month, the other night it struck me how much I'm going to miss him.

Think Michelle Pfeiffer in dangerous minds ... Guatemalan style

It's been a while since I got kicked out of a classroom, I was always the loud kid, the one who laughed just a little bit too much ( I have hazy memories of telling one substitute she was two fries short of a happy meal) And here I'm 24 years old, getting kicked out of class again by my friend, Simon, who told me I was disrupting his "ninos" a little bit too much with my camera and it'd probably be best if I left so they could concentrate.

In this case, "the class" is a group of underpriveleged Guatemalan kids who go to this small ghetto school where my friend Simon has been volunteering as a teacher for the past week. There are no books, these kids barely have enough money to buy the cheap notebooks they scribble in. I asked Simon if I could tag along, he's been telling me about his "ninos" for a while and I was really curious about a school system that takes on traveling tourists as instructors, so desperate they are, they'll take on anyone, even if it's just for a few days.

Most of the people who travel through Antigua are tourists in their early twenties, people just looking for a good time that consists of getting drunk every night and stumbling back to the hostal where I work ( I swear to God if one more person asks me where they can get some cocaine I'm going to start selling blocks of talcum powder)... My point is, most of the tourists my age sleep until noon or so and then yell at the bar staff because breakfast is only served until 11 a.m. and nothing sounds better than a big greasy Guatemalan breakfast when you wake up at 1 p.m. and with a hangover.

Simon gets up every day at 7:30 to go spend four hours with these kids, and it blew me away. When the girl he was traveling with got bored and moved onto San Pedro, Simon stayed in Antigua because he had made a commitment to the school and his "ninos." Getting to know him and spending time at the school was one of the best parts of this trip, I mean, sure, I spent most of the time making fun of Simon's accent and telling Pedro, the kid in front row, all the answers on his test and Simon spent most of our time together yelling: "Woman, has anyone ever told you that you are CRAZY!!"

I told him yes, many, many times.

But we had each other's back the other night, when this drunk Guatemalan guy stumbled into the bar and asked Simon what he was doing in Latin America. Simon told him he was teaching at a local school and Mr. Drunk Guy essentially told him he was a piece of crap for spending only a week with these kids and then leaving. He told Simon that if he'd really wanted to make a difference he'd stay for a year, and then he pointed at the dinner Simon was eating and told him that the kids in his class could probably live for a week off of what the meal had cost.

I told him to shut up.

He started yelling, reminding me that this was his country and I was just a stupid gringa and I couldn't talk to him like that. I couldn't help but see there was a very visible line that had formed, the division between the white people who travel here and the Guatemalans who have grown up in this country hating us and our "priveleged" lives. It's division I've experienced one too many times. The drunk guy eventually bowed out, got into a fight when another guy who told him to leave me alone. I left the bar until they were gone. Simon had already stalked out, the drunk guy made him feel like crap about himself and what he was doing here. But the next morning, the drunk guy somewhere else sleeping off his hangover, and here was Simon, getting up at 7:30 to go spend the day with his "ninos."

I made sure he knew that I was really proud of him and that he should feel really good about himself and what he was trying to do here. I tried to remind him that guys (ladies, you too) say really stupid things when they're drunk and for the most part, people can only make you feel bad if you let them.

a nice shot of Pedro the "special" kid who sits in the back and tries to stay awake.

Simon, feeling good again.

"Sometimes music is the only thing that makes sense, play it loud enough, it keeps the demons at bay."

I think we forget how important life is, how sometimes all we have to do is just sit back and take it all in and stop pummeling through it like we can't wait to get it over with. It's sad, because most of the time we only do this when we've reached our lowest points or we're really frustrated or tired or disappointed with how our lives are going.

What does this have to do with a drum corp of Guatemalans?

The past week was rough, composed of the kind of "My So Called Life" moments that make you just want to curl up in bed and shut out the world (let's just say there's been a lot of "journaling" lately) but this morning I heard this band outside my window and realized I hadn't taken any photos of the drum corps who walk through Antigua. I stopped feeling sorry for myself, grabbed my camera and ran down the street, and then I shot for about an hour, the drumming vibrating in my chest, the complete energy of everything hitting me straight on, the kids in the street stunned silent, proud mothers taking pictures of their kids and bringing them water in between sets. I watched a man take his abuelita by the hand and lead her across the street after the band passed by, both waiting to cross out of respect for the music, and then it struck me how happy I was to be alone, because I was so choked up I just sat there and stared, so grateful I got to see it.

I send photos home and I imagine what people see, what it's like to view Guatemala like I once did, as a poverty-stricken, war torn country with little to offer the people who live there.

I find myself wanting to use images to explain just how wrong I was, that these people are some of the richest people I have ever met, the love of life they carry is profound, something you couldn't buy even if you wanted to. I find myself wanting to soak up as much from them as I possibly can. What I saw today was the same drum corp that goes through the streets of Antigua every single week, and in the crowd I saw the same people I see everyday in the market, in bookstores, in cafes, but I took more away from just siiting their watching them through my camera lense then they will ever know or understand. The drum corp jam is like most things in life, at first it looks really hard, complicated, like something you could never do in a million years.

But then one day you pick up a snare drum, or one afternoon you rock out to a Stevie Wonder album, everyday gets easier and you learn a little bit more with each step, and pretty soon you're jamming right along with them.

What I saw today is going to stay with me for a while. It reminded me that what I'm going through or experiencing isn't all that important in the grand scheme, there are more important things in this world, there is life going on all around you, even when you don't take the time to stop and notice it.

No phone? How about a conch shell and a mountain top

9/13/07
IMORONA, MADAGASCAR – Dear John, I’m writing by the flicker of candle light from a village called Imorona, where a group of farmers sell vanilla on the international market. When I arrived this morning, ass-chapped and sore from a jolting ride in the back of a pickup truck, I climbed a dirt staircase up a mountain to take a in the lay of the land. It is absolutely paradise here. A river snakes through the feet of mountains, leaving the lime-green patchwork of rice paddies in its path. The mountains are still covered, mostly, in dense forest. And the ocean is a kaleidoscope of blues. It is striking to me how untouched this place is, at least by outside influence. Last night, for example, word came to town that a tsunami had hit southeast Asia … and that the wave might be headed here. That news came from a concerned relative who drove here, several hours, on a motorcycle, just to deliver it. Once it arrived, a moderate panic set in. About 500 people, the mayor told me, assembled in the middle of the night on top of the mountain to assess the situation in sure safety from any rising water. The planning of that meeting is what’s particularly awesome. Did they call everyone on the telephone? Of course not, they don’t those. Did they interrupt the usual television programming? Nope, no electricity here. So an official climbed the mountain, high above the town, with a conch shell in hand. When he reached the peak, he blew hard into the foot of the shell: “OOOO-EEEEEE!!!!!” He let out a high-pitched call that all the town could hear. Everyone scampered up the mountain right away to see what was the matter.
In an interview today, the mayor imitated it for me. The shell is the “telephone Malagache,” he said. It’s so cool that places like this still exist. Love, John

"Answer me these questions three ..."

9/13/07
IMORONA, MADAGASCAR – Dear Dave –
Hours on bus: 14
Rivers to cross, without bridges: 6

[When you don’t have bridges, men with 50-foot bamboo poles push you across your truck across rivers on a shaky raft. The hollow poles pushing off the river bottom sound like plastic straws digging into slurpies. – SUTTER]

15 people, me, 14 hours, and the back of a Toyota

9/13/07
IMORONA, MADAGASCAR – Dear Ben, I got in to this small village this morning after riding for a total of 14 hours in the back of a pickup truck, on a sideways wooden bench, crammed next to 15 other people. It was crazy. We were so close together, our arms were thatched together like palm fronds on a mat. Our feet and legs were like tangled tree roots. All the while, the truck is jerking back and forth with the force of an old wooden rollercoaster. We were driving so slow. Bicycles were seriously passing us because the roads were so bad. They looked like this: (insert craggy line here). The back of the truck was covered with a metal cage and a green tarp, to protect us from the rain. That was nice, but it also made the space fill up with exhaust as the truck heaved its way through muddy red ruts as deep as my thighs. It was worth it though, for one reason – the music. Just as I would think I was going to puke on/kill everyone around me, my fellow passengers would start singing. I couldn’t understand a word, but the soulful harmonies lifted me right off of that bruising seat and put me somewhere wonderful, a place where I could see the magnificent beaches and misty mountains on our path. A place where the ocean breeze snuffed out the tail pipe fumes. The world is terribly unfair sometimes, and we should do everything we can to change that, but the power people have to life themselves out of shitty situations, if only in mind, is truly amazing. Love, John

Malagasy love them some pro wrestling ...

MAROANTSETRA, MADAGASCAR – Dear John, It’s not very PC to say this, but Madagascar makes me totally feel bi-polar sometimes. Earlier this afternoon, I was so discouraged and lonely – it felt like none of my best-laid plans were coming through. Then I went for a walk at twilight (random sidenote: the French call that “la nuit americainne”) and I couldn’t stop smiling. The people here in Maroantsetra are beautiful, friendly and love WWE wrestling. Random combo, I know. Keep reading.
My walk took me not far from my bungalow, just down a dirt road to the local market, which I can still hear buzzing with chatter and motorcycle engines. When I got to the market, I made eye contact with a big woman who was sitting on the ground in front of rows of dead fish (also on the ground). She was frowning. I said “Hello” in Malagasy, “Hope your day is good.” Her eyes lit up – so fast. Then she flashed an enormous, toothy smile and greeted me in return, nodding her head in thanks. From that simple instand on, I was back on a high. I bought a bundle of bananas (10 cents), three blocks of fresh bread (30 cents) and two bottles of water ($1.50) … all for tomorrow’s car trip, assuming I get to go.
On the walk back, I took in the smells of raw fish, charcoal smoke and earthy rice dust with joy. When I got back here to the bungalow at Hotel Ebene, the owner was watching a WWE wrestling DVD from 2005. In the program, a guy with a flattop, wearing jean shorts and bulging bare chest showing, beat a older dude in a skimpy speedo. We all muttered “oohs” and “uhhs” together as they traded body slams on the tiny TV. I was the only one who laughed at flattop man when he paused the match to pump air into the tongues of his Reebok Pump shoes. I hated watching WWE in the US, but here it was hilarious and wonderful, because it was something we all could understand. Love, John

Learning a little patience (Mora Mora)

MAROANTSETRA, MADAGASCAR – Dear John, I’m sitting outside my palm-roof bungalo in another NE Madagascar town that looks like it is a cross between something on “Lost” and the Wild West … they use more wood here than elsewhere. So far, this stay has had just one goal – figure out how to get 50 miles south of here, to reach the village I plan to write about. Easier said than done, as between me and Imorona (the village) lies a stretch of road that is muddy year-round, to the point that trucks sink down to their wheel wells. It is crisscrossed by six rivers with no bridges. And it bounds up and down several mountains along the coast. “Bush taxis” normally run the route, but the one that starts in this town is broken. So, tomorrow at 6 a.m., I will find out by phone whether I’ve been able to sneak my way into the bed of a private truck, as cargo. There will be a sideways bench (wooden) for me to sit on, if it’s a go. My ass is going to be super sore, because the trip is 12 to 24 hours, I’ve heard, depending on the road conditions. If I don’t make it on this truck another probably won’t leave until Friday, which is too late for me. If nothing else, hopefully this trip will leave me with a heaping dose of go with the flow-style patience. Here, they give that a phrase: “mora mora.” And everyone seems to have it down.
I’m doing my best to smile my way through the hiccups. Love, John
PS: a rooster just walked behind my chair.

My stuff is moving today, in Oklahoma

John M. and I are moving to a new house in Oklahoma City ... this is a diagram of our old place, which John moved out of on the 8th. The landlord found a buyer and offered up some money to cut the lease short ... Sappy, I know, but it's weird to be moving while you're on the other side of the world. Drew this on the beach at sunset. -- John

Zen and the art of watching chameleons

SAMBAVA, MADAGASCAR – Dear John, Went running on the beach in Sambava to clear my head. Scheduling woes, and you know me, planning stuff is not my cup of tea. I wanted to get out to this awesome national park because I’m stuck in this town until Sunday, but I don’t have time. Ah well.
On the run, I saw a man and pregnant woman herding cattle (zebu). The hoof-prints made the running interesting, and I I was laughing out loud by myself about the whole scene. I ran so much that I got blisters and cuts all over the bottoms of my feet – woops. The beach is a little more like glass shards than powder. In reality, I’ve gotten a lot accomplished on this trip to vanilla land. I’m just frustrated that I have to wait around for this one tour, and I’m kind of – OK, really – lonely here. I want my head to stop spinning. Good thing there are insanely beautiful ocean and mountain view are here to help me chill out a bit. Nature is about the only thing that’s keeping me sane here … oh, and I saw the COOLEST chameleon the other day, walking across the beach one slow, controlled step at a time, his eyes darting around in all directions before he’d put a new foot down in the sand. He made it to a mini-palm tree and rested in the shade (eyes still darting) while I watched the waves. Love, John

Vanilla trip begins

SAMBAVA, MADAGASCAR -- Dear Fam: I’m up in northeast Madagascar, the world’s best region for growing vanilla. When you walk down the streets in Sambava and Antalaha, the smell of vanilla drying in the tropical sun hits you with a force strong enough to stain your hair and clothes for the day. The smell isn’t everywhere, it just pops out of the windows of the concrete bunkers where workers sort dried beans with the speed and precision of Vegas card dealers. They put beans in various tubs and piles, corresponding to a number of categories: length, color, moisture, weight, texture and, above all, smell. The smell was one of the things that’s surprised me the most about vanilla production … because it’s grows. Opening a bottle of McCormick’s vanilla extract makes you think of cookies and ice cream and summer and such. Dried vanilla smells like raisins. Maybe caramel. And both are kind of alcoholic-moldy.
Once the vanilla is properly dried and sorted (that takes nine months) then it is exported for the most part, to you in the U.S. People here don’t use the stuff.
Wishing you love from a Chinese restaurant that smells like caramel raisins. JOHN

I am constantly blown away by the kids I meet here, most of them know more about life than they really should. Geovani is 11 years old and he walked up to the bar last night like he owned the place. He was selling these chocolates wrapped in foil gold coins and I told him I didn't want any but if he was tired he could sit at the bar and I'd get him some hot chocolate. Just as I was thinking that it probably wasn't the best place for him to be hanging out, i realized he'd already lived a harder life than any of the european tourists i serve during happy hour ... and he could probably drink them under the table.

He's originally from Nicaragua, the coins are only his side job, he told me. He drums in the street with his father and brother most of the time. My mouth dropped and i realized he was part of the family of street performers i photographed when i first got here. I showed him the photos I'd taken of his dad and his brother and he told me he remembered watching me shoot them while he took a rest. Then he swigged down his cocoa like a man, wiped his mouth on his flannel sleeve and grabbed his coins before walking out the door.

I went back to work, and so did he.

It was kind of a rough night before he wandered in, and i realized after he left that i felt happy just knowing i would be able to find him again, two streets to the right and one street up, and there he'd be, drumming in the same spot i left him two months ago. on the face of it, life has dealt kids like him a tough blow, but i think that's too easy, the passing glance "Oh that's so sad" before you walk into a store and plop down 3 bucks on a latte, i guess the way i make it okay in my over-contemplative head is to think about it like this: they are no better or worse off than me, they've simply been faced with a different path, and sure it might be tought than mine, but I think they'll be better people because of it.

Just another pinata milestone...

[9-15-07]

Mom-

Carlito, the son of my Spanish instructor, turned 10 years old yesterday and I finally got to see why she's been dragging me all over town this week to pick out his party supplies. She was really worried about the pinata. Carlito wanted spiderman and she couldn't find one and she flipped. I didn't see what the big deal was until she pulled out the photo album and showed me. There he was, Carlito, age 3, using a small stick to beat the crap out of a life size paper Snoopy.

Carlito, age 4, pinata in the shape of a pokeman action figure.

Carlito, age 5, he and his friends surround a pinata in the shape of superman.

The carnage continued ages 6 thru 9.

So, we went out on Friday and found the kid a spiderman in the market, bartering an old women down to 30 quetzales. Alenka, my tutor, asked me to take photos at the party and i was really jacked about it because we've been going through a rough patch, the kind only people who spend four hours a day with each other can go through.

I could only stay at the party for a little bit because I had to go to work, and I was kind of happy I had an excuse to leave.

It was a wierd feeling, but a familiar one, it's that awkward place where people have welcomed you into their lives, but there's also a certain distance because of the circumstances, i mean, to this woman i am "a job" and it was hard not to look around the room and realize i was the only american. You kind of get the same vibes when you're a journalist, when you hang out with people long enough they invite you into their lives, but no matter how much you blend in, it's you who's holding the notebook, or in this case, a camera, and you're the one who has to go back to the office and stare at your computer screen until it makes sense.

But all of this aside, I left the party realizing I wanted to stay, knowing that these people had let me into their lives not because i was a journalist or an American or someone who could do something for them like put them in the newspaper, for about an hour I was simply part of the family. - Jessie

White guy hiking town to town in rural Madagascar

[9/16/07 IMORONA, Madagascar. Dear Christian, I was reminded of our biking trip in the Appalachian Mountains yesterday. I walked a few hours down dirt road through the jungle and rice fields to get to this town, Mananara, on Madagascar’s east coast. Let me assure you that a white dude hiking alone with a massive pack is way more shocking to onlookers in Madagascar than we were – in spandex – to Appalachian people in Virginia and North Carolina. Kids saw me coming first. Some rushed to tell their parents of my arrival. “White person! White person!” Some said it with excitement, others with fear, running back into a bamboo home with arms flailing overhead. One kid ran out to the road, pointed at me, then screamed at the top of his lungs and spun around in circles. Then pointed again. He was excited, like I was Oprah or something. Although I guess she would stand out less. I tried to always flash a smile, no matter how I was received in these villages. I offered up a few Malagasy greetings (“any news in your family?”) Usually more shrieks followed. People here are way more excitable than they are back home. Commonplace stuff causes quite a stir. The animals play along with the game, too. Every morning, the rainforest shrieks with delight when the sun starts coming up. I imagine the frogs, birds and chameleons as cartoons, yelling “Oh my God, the sun, the sun!! Hurry, hurry, wake up. It’s the sun! It’s back!!” Hopefully I can bring some of that enthusiasm back to the states with me. This was all going through my head while I trudged down the hot and muddy road, thinking in my head “Just keep walking, just keep walking.” Like Dorey, the inquisitive but confused fish on Finding Nemo. –SUTTER]

The 5 a.m. pollinator

[9/16/07 IMORONA, Madagascar. Dear Grandma, People here in northeast Madagascar are dedicated, gentle and quick. They have to be to succeed on some of the best vanilla plantations in the world. Six days a week, Séance wakes up at 5 a.m. to pollinate the orchid flowers on vanilla vines. The climb up the side of a steep and misty mountain. He walks for an hour – down a dirt road, down a cool stream and through a rice paddy – to get there. In Malagasy, the name of the mountain means “rising sound of moving water.” (Lots of names here are cool and literary). But no time to ponder that now, I’m worn our from following Séance all morning, and I think I’m going to take a nap. People here – just like in Oklahoma – are so proud and hard-working. Darting around the hills to pollinate flowers is just the first of Séance’s several jobs, and he lives in a bamboo hut that’s just barely bigger than a king-size mattress. I’m doing my best to learn from everyone here … Hope you’re doing well. Love, John]

Don't call me spelunker

[9/15/07 Dear John, Thanks for all of the messages from Austin City Limits (ACL). I’ve been thinking about you guys and I’m sure you’re having a blast. Drink a Texas Martini for me (holy Jesus, that sounds so awesome right now). I’ve been out of cell phone range in Imorona. I stayed with Tom and Faith, a married couple in the Peace Corp, who lived in Austin before coming here. They’re totally interesting people. They met in a “caving” club. Just don’t call it “spelunking.” I made that mistake. Tom quipped: “Spelunkers are people who, like, walk around in caves with sandwiches and flashlights. We’re, like, serious. We have equipment.” OK sure. Tom and Faith got engaged on a Friday and married on the following Monday. They say Austin is a “cavers” heaven. As you know, it’s pretty good for food, too, and Tom and Faith fed me some amazing food during my stay. Everything is rice here, but you can do some cool stuff with it. I think when I get home, I might join some clubs and learn to cook. Their domestic settledness is appealing, because they keep the adventure alive too. Love, John]

Vanilla beans are just strung-out raisins

[9/7/07 SAMBAVA, Madagascar. Dear Fam: I’m up in northeast Madagascar, the world’s best region for growing vanilla. When you walk down the streets of Sambava and Antalaha, the smell of vanilla drying in the tropical sun hits you with a force strong enough to stain your hair and clothes for the day. The smell isn’t everywhere, it just pops out of the windows of concrete bunkers where workers sort dried beans with the speed and precision of Vegas card dealers. They put beans in various tubs and piles that correspond to important categories for beans: length, color, moisture, weight, texture and – above all – smell. The smell was one of the things that surprised me most about vanilla production … because it’s gross. Opening a bottle of McCormick’s vanilla extract makes you think of cookies and ice cream and summers. Dried vanilla, to me, smells like raisins. Once the vanilla is properly dried and sorted (no easy feat, and one that takes nine months) then it is exported, mostly to the U.S. People don’t use the stuff here. … Wishing you love from a Chinese restaurant (where I’m writing this) that smells like raisins. –JOHN]

(image caption: negative image … beans are black and the tie is usually a palm frond)

Nude beach (but only if you're a zebu with a big horn)

[9/7/07 SAMBAVA, Madagascar. Dear John, Went running today on the beach in Sambava, to clear my head. Scheduling woes are – you know me – not my cup of tea. I wanted to get out to this awesome national park because I’m stuck in this town until Sunday, but I don’t have time. On the run down the beach, I saw a man and pregnant woman herding cattle (zebu here). The hoof-prints in the sand made running interesting, and I was laughing out loud to myself about the whole scene – me on a de-stress run and encountering a herd of horned cattle blocking my path and coming right for me. I ran so much that I got blisters and cuts all over the bottoms of my feet – woops. The consistency of the beach is a little more like glass shards than powder. In reality, I’ve gotten a lot accomplished on this trip to the vanilla-growing region of Madagascar. I’m just frustrated I have to wait around for this one tour of one vanilla factory – and the down time is making me pretty lonely. Good thing the beautiful ocean and mountain views are here for that. Nature is about the only thing keeping me company (and sane) here at the moment. Love you, John]

The best thing you'll probably never eat...

They come in a small plastic bag and for one quetzal (about 13 cents) you can get five. These two women make them every day out of a small store front. They laugh and talk in this really strange dialect (one of the 26 of the mayan variety i have yet to learn) and I can never tell if they're laughing at me or simply having a good time. But i will say, they make the best version of these you could possible shove your face with. They slap the dough together until it's round and flat and then they flip it over this burner until it starts to brown. Their regular customers could form a line that stretches all the way down seis avenida norte.

They call then "pupusas" in el salvador, but it pretty much translates throughout central america as "tortilla," a product that can only be purchased in a vacuum-sealed bag back home.

To understand, you'd have to know Rodolfo

I watched him fumble through his wallet for a piece of identification, a photo, anything. He was proud of his education, that at one point he worked as a teacher, and he wanted to show me it was real. I couldn't help but think this man had spent a good chunk of his lifetime trying to prove himself. I couldn't stop thinking about that morning.

A Guatemalan photographer had documented the return of 21 coffins to the Guatemala City airport. The 21 young men were shot while crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The photos were on display at a local center and I stared at the images of a crowd of people in the airport terminal clutching their mouths and looking on horrified as families stepped forward to claim the bodies. The story probably ran in the states as yet another successful catch by the U.S. Border patrol , how every American can sleep a little better knowing these men didn't make it into Texas. I stared at the photos that were hung in a narrow hallway and realized nobody else around me was talking. I couldn't help but think of the reactions this exhibit would receive back home.

The truth is, Americans most likely came across a small headline about how the border control is doing their job. What they won't see is these photos of the crying abuelitas back in Guatemala clutching their rosaries and tiptoing through the quiet rows of coffins to find their grandsons. They'll probably never see this incredible piece of humanity that silenced an entire hallway of people with its images, including me. Here, they weren't headlines, or statistics, or criminals.

They were people. Brothers. Fathers. Sons. People.

I'm not stupid enough to pretend i know the answers to the mess that is immigration between the United States and Latin America, I wouldn't even know where to begin, an estimated 3,000 people try to cross the border every day, about 300 actually make it, more than 1,000 undocumented immigrants who have left their homes in Central America are unaccounted for. Part of me has to wonder, when did this become okay? When did we start shooting people like animals and shipping them home in boxes?

Yes, there obviously needs to be some controls in place, but beneath all the politics, countless statistics, and crazy people patrolling the Arizona desert on their rifle-strapped-four-wheelers, it becomes pretty simple. immigration is the result of an economy that fails to support its people and we, as a nation, are telling them no, they can't cross our borders and work towards a better life, and if you want us to spell it out for you we will, in the form of 21 coffins.

Again, underneath all the politics, it becomes even more simple.

There's an old man living in Guatemala who hasn't seen his family in at least 20 years. His name is Rodolfo and he has a son in California and he would go live with him if he could, but he doesn't have enough time left on this earth to wait jump through all the hoops it would take to go through the U.S. legal system. So he comes to this cafe everyday and eats a danish and coffee and makes small talk with the women behind the counter. He used to be a teacher and in his younger years, he was actually pretty good looking. He has a great sense of humor because there's no use wasting time thinking about a family and grandkids.

They might as well not exist.

From the exhibit.

Sundays are easily my favorite day of the week. It is a struggle to live here, every day I watch people struggle for food, water, respect, you name it and these people have to work for it. And while anyone could argue the whole I-love-Sundays is anything but a new revelation, I would just like to emphasis the phrase "taking a load off" takes on an entirely new meaning when you're job is schlepping back an forth from a pueblo in the mountains to a tiny city at the foothill to sell people avocados. The rest that comes on Sunday means so much more to me now. The parks are literally filled with people and talking and laughing.

Somehow it makes the rest of the days of the week seem a little bit easier.

you try keeping it together on cobblestone streets. - Jessie

Julio-So, I didn't cop out. I tried to learn the salsa in a local club called Riki's, where one of the surviving members of the disbanded Buena Vista Social Club, Ignacio "Nachito" Herrera, plays a quick set every Wednesday night. Usually late, always unexected, he might show up, he might not. I've caught him a couple of times (me and my friend Amy have become his official "groupies") but last night he jammed for three hours and I totally forgot about learning salsa, grabbed my camera, and just tried to capture the energy in the room. At some point, everyone forgot they were in a restaurant, put the chairs aside, and just danced. I didn't want to use my flash, I felt it would somehow alter the mood, but now I'm really glad I didn't. These abstractions capture it completely and I'm blown away to realize that if someone asked me to describe the salsa for them, i probably couldn't. but i would show them these. su amiga gringa, Jessie

Ignacio "Nachito" Herrera jams and yes, he's just as cool in person...

Just when you think you've heard it all...

Money does strange things to people, something that was nailed home today in the form of a 200-pound woman named Maria. I was reading on the sidewalk, waiting for a friend, when she lumbered toward me in her wheelchair and showed me a prescription for medicine she needed but couldn't afford to fill. I'm used to the beggars making up stories to get sympathy, someone's brother is dying, another needs milk for her baby. But Maria had a wild card.

She lifted up her skirt and pointed to her legs and I felt my stomach turn.

She has six months, the masses on her legs nothing compared to the tumor growing inside her. Pieces of her black skin color had already been eaten away. We talked for a while, I told her she shared the same name with my mother. I was kneeling down beside her so we could talk at eye level and before she wheeled away she kissed the top of my head and told me not to forget her. I told her I wouldn't, pretty sure the exchange would stay with me for a while. Then she wheeled off and I watched her plead for food from a nearby cafe.They gave her coffee and a few muffins and just as i thought i was taking in this serene moment of humanity, a few seconds later I heard cardboard hit the cement. I looked up as Maria had finished her drink and threw the cup to the sidewalk, lumbering onto her next stop, and I saw the looks on the faces of people who walked by and saw her.

I laughed out loud.

Money does strange things to people, which is probably why my parents made sure I never put much faith into it. Pieces of paper that grant luxuries to some, even if they don't deserve or want them, it also how we face the cards we're dealt, the very state of health we are allowed and in most cases, where we sit in society ... literally ... and sometimes that seat has two wheels. Some of the the people who stopped to throw a few pieces of change at her couldn't even look Maria in the face and I could tell she gave up caring a long time ago. She threw the cup, and to some people on the street that day she probably came off as a thankless begger, but that's not what I saw.

To me, it was Maria telling society to take its system and go to hell.