Live through this…

Just ask Mrs. Lisk

Did he even study for this exam? (c) Gwyn’s History School Report, 1988

The sad thing is I did. Anyroad, I’ve been all over the interweb and in and out of books researching the history of the Royal Inland Road and also listening to the Top of the Pods podcast (I even got me name read out on it the other day. And it has upwards of 1600 listeners…). So here is the natural conjunction of those two pasttimes: my
Top 10 historical things I’ve learnt about El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro:

10. The whole thing about Moctezuma thinking (Conquistador) Cortes was Quetzalcoatl- their lightning god- returning was probably a convenient myth made up by the priests to showcase once again that God was a Spaniard.

9 Guadalajara was founded in 4 separate places. Injuns was the usual excuse for upping camp and starting again down the road.

8 Guadalajara is named after renowned sadist/explorer Nuo de Guzmán’s home town in Spain.

7 Nomadic Indians were a lot harder to fight than the settled ones, hence the 40+ year Chichimeca War from 1550 to 1590ish. ‘Chichimeca’ is what the Aztecs (not the most peace-loving of nations) named them. It means, depending on which source you use, ‘of dog lineage’, ‘language of dogs’, ‘dog people’. Basically sons of bitches…

6 The camino was originally used for sucking all the mineral wealth out of Zacatecas and surrounding area and supplying them with vittles from Guadalajara. Cos the land round them parts weren’t none too fertile.

5 The Chichimecas found it very easy to attack these convoys and used their impressive bow and arrow skills to take out the muleteers and who they reckoned were atrespassin’ on their land. Hence the swift change of route to go via San Miguel de Allende to Mexico City and stay well away from Gwod.

4 The Chichmecas only started playing nicely when the Spanish/Mestizos stopped attacking and enslaving them and started trading trinkets and baubles instead. Half Chichimeca/ half Spanish Miguel Caldera spearheaded the operation of ‘Paz por compra’ (peace by purchase) which replaced the previous tactics of ‘Guerra a sangre y fuego’ (War of blood and fire, or more roughly, shock and awe…)

3 Juan de Oate extended the route from Zacatecas up to Santa Fe, New Mexico once the Chichimecas had calmed down a bit. But he still had troubles when he had to finance the whole thing and there wasn’t much in the way of gold/ silver/ docile natives to find. His brutal reprisals in Acoma at his mutinous men and indignant indigenous peeps by cutting off feet and suchlike made him few friends, even the Spanish Virreyes stripped him of all kinds of titles and fined him.

2 The Camino Real was later important for all kinds of historic events. Which I’m still getting to… Independence, Revolution, Cristero War. And ting.

1 Wikipedia is more useful than any other site on the interweb for historical research. If I earned a living wage, I’d donate… I read the founder’s personal appeal, and he says it’s there for ‘the child in Africa who is going to use free textbooks and reference works produced by our community and find a solution to the crushing poverty that surrounds him.” And I’m sure if he’d pondered it further, he’d have continued ‘and impoverished Brits trying to research background material for a documentary of trinational importance in Mexico”.

And also, thanks, Amy, the latest Guestmappee who’s no longer in manateeville but NYC with a predilectation for audience participation in Comedy Central satirical news shows.

Sita’s left me in Downey while she gallavants to sociologise in Philadelphia. Back on Monday. Is what she told me anyway…

I’ve made some lovely DVDs with photo slideshows and musical accompaniment and everything in the last few days, there’s little else you can do in the excrutiating heat. I chose not to go to Philly because it’s the same heat with 10 times the humidity and I’m melting fast enough here…

Anyroad, last night we went to Santa Monica pier where Plastilina Mosh were playing, who i’ve been quite fond of since Guadalajara in 1998. I’ve started to figure out the night settings of the camera a tad better but there’s still work to be done. Have a gander’s at the pix here.

There’s also some photos from our revisiting of our wedding locales, they’ll be at the end of this here link then. And yes, the weather’s just the same with a lower cloud level. Bring your pully.

Tortilla… Eggs, spuds, onions and acrobatics

So Sunday morning I awoke, stretched and started peeling spuds for a tortilla cos we’d been invited round some friends of Victor and Jayna’s for brunch (desalmuerzo?). Lots of Yanquis teaching in the American School of Gwod were round there and had brought such delights as waffles, pancakes, olive tapenade and bacon. T’was very nice and I got to explain what I was doing in MX. It was nice to say, Well, I’m not teaching English… Afterwards, V&J came round for a nice cup of tea and a sit down and agreed to come to the lucha libre on Tuesday… Sita missed out on all of this ‘cos of grant applications, Spanish revision and other trifles. I wandered off to Santa Tere to see the market being taken down, try and find some more ‘cars that resemble where they’re parked‘ and hunt down a cantina (La Taberna de Mou). Success on 2 out of 3; Moe’s Bar is still too elusive and I did walk for a fair while.

The evening was pleasant enough, with the leftovers of Sita’s recreations of tequila based dishes from Saturday and we watched El Matador, which is an American film set largely in Mexico D.F., and was pretty good. I rang Jose today to check he’s still up for the lucha libre and he is. He also wants to make a cortometraje mini film about some idea he’s had or other and is coming round to pitch it this evening. More news about that as it happens…

Sita rang me at work to say she’s got shunted by an SUV when she was waiting at a red light. Had a miserable time of it because the SUV was driven by a hija de la chingada miserable woman. Sita and the altima are unscathed, but it sounds like the slanging match they had wasn’t much fun. Bless her.

…We bought a toaster second hand for 5 US dollars. And some more shelves. And a wifi router. And a multiregion DVD player. And some salt and pepper. er. Salted butter. Yep, it’s quality posts like this that keep you coming back to agaveweb.com/blog.

To try and salvage this entry, Mum gave me a book of collected Charlie Brooker articles this Xmas and I’ve finished dipping into it. I think I’ll extract bits to pep up boring posts:

As far as I can tell, fashion is nothing more than a handy visual system that gives people with no personality some palpable criteria to judge each other by.

And have a look at what pouring concrete down an ant hill for 3 days, then excavating it will get you. Skip to 2:50 for the good bit.

Thanks, ants. Thants.

Let’s start with Friday. I got home from work around 5ish and Sita and I took Mr. Atticus to the beach where he was correctly identified as part schipperke by a stranger. This happens with alarming regularity, many denizens of Santa Cruz appear to have an encyclopedic knowledge of dog breeds. My in-built dog reference guide has bulldog and poodle with a big gap in between. anyroad, after much leaping around and photography we headed home, put Atticus out to pasture and brought Klem and Lulu in for a hop around the furniture… Then we went out for a sophisticated romantic dinner at Pearl Alley Bistro with fine wine and rare meats, dessert and an espresso, all bankrolled by my folks as birthday treat. We went to Well Within and on the way out saw a friend from Scotts’ Valley High, where I used to work, we spent 15 minutes in the street catching up on the goings on of the last few months, and agreed we’d meet up for a beer in the near future. We said our goodbyes and then, as one, turned around and said let’s have them now. Lo it came to pass and we spent the rest of the evening getting through pitchers of Newcastle Brown in the Poet and Patriot pseudo-Irish pub and talking nonsense. Result. or ‘Epic’ as some readers of this blog may say… got home settled Mr.A into his deluxe doggy bed and hit the hay… cue saturday morning. – TO BE CONTINUED- Have to go and watch sita play netball with girls from ucsc at the local elementary school.

Sun streams in throught the window, coffee gets brewed, breakfast is slowly knocked together and a nice long phone call from me mum’n’dad arrives… after that i saddle up the Nissam Altima, get me mobile, radio and camera together and I headed off into the Santa Cruz mountains for to explore the sights and sounds. I timed it just right to hear Car Talk, This American Life and Wait, Wait Don’t Tell me on NPR. And when they ran out I had a few episodes fo the ‘The 99p Show’ burnt onto CDs. Went all along route 9, stopping at the summit for an hour’s walk or so with well pretty views, then moseyed on to Saratoga for a coffee, a muffin and to pick up a copy of The Wave and then onto town…

Our little Agave Tequilana, itself grown from an hijuelo (or Agave Pup, as I’m unreliably informed by teh interwebs) stolen from the fields of Tequila, Jalisco has sprouted two new Hijuelo shoots. So in a week or two they can be replanted and maybe go some way to stopping itinerant cats crapping in the garden with their soon to be spiny pencas.

Help yourself to the photos, now with an all new Creative Commons share alike license. Don’t go crazy now…

Talking of agaves, I read Sita’s 2nd chapter in her dissertation today and it’s brilliantly written, fascinating stuff all about pulque, mezcal and tequila’s road to prominence in the United States of Mexico… Also, agave expert Ana’s coming round and we’re off for a meal in famous local restaurant called something like the Artichoke Heart. Should be good.