Last Day in Mexico and an Ungainly Welcome Home

Hi Everyone from the Stormy Hills of Caledon!

We arrived home on a red eye from Mexico City early Thursday morning and had about seven hours of electricty before trees started to topple onto hydro lines and you know what happens after that. It was a severe ice storm and some people in our area are still without power. Ours came back on late Saturday night. Because we live in the country with a well and electric pump to bring water into the house, we didn't have running water. The wood stove gave enough heat. Camping lights and headlights worked too. We were at sixes and sevens though having just arrived home.




I have some amazing shots of Diego Rivera's murals to share with you as soon as our home is in order. Mexico is full of surprises and wonderful people who struggle just as we do. However, they have more to struggle about than we do. That was a lesson for me yet again. We have so much and yet sometimes we expect more than life can give us.

See you again very soon!

Scouting the City

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       A soft spot to sit.

            Elegant feet.

  Sweepers always on view. No garbage.

   Our electric taxi. 6.1 km./kilowatt hour 

Cuidad Mexico CD is a huge company with taxis, tour buses and bicycles throughout the city for rent.

  A swinging basket for your baby.

       In Oaxaca hot chocolate was prepared by beating chocolate 

       into hot milk. Here you mix it yourself.

      Enormous sculpture.

     Lots of fruit for sale.

  Sidewalk sweepers always on the move.

On the door of a women's washroom.

           On the men's.

Frida Kahlo. Her Passion. Her Pain.

  Entrance to La Casa Azul, The Blue House, the birth and death place of Frida Kahlo.

    We waited two hours in line to get in. Bob is centre front wearing a white cap.

The family we talked with in line for two hours. He is a political cartoonist. They are

from the state of Sinaloa, noted for its violence. They said you're careful to associate with the right people.

     Kahlo and Rivera lived here for around 25 years.

         In the courtyard.

          Kahlo's braces.

Bob and I were very moved by the exhibition of her clothes and various braces, only discovered in a room next to the upstairs bathroom in 2004, 50 years after she had died. We've seen exhibitions of her paintings, seen the movie with Selma Hayek and read her life story. But in her home we saw a documentary of interviews with her biographer, a former art classmate and an orthopedic surgeon who described her constant pain as 10/10.

But despite her pain she lived a life of intense passion, passion for her art, for her husband Diego Rivera, and for her many lovers both male and female and of course enormous passion for life. Her pain came not from polio she contracted at age six leaving her right leg shorter and thinner than the left -- but from a horrible bus and trolley car accident when she was 18. 

Her injuries were incredible: a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis (in three places), eleven fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, and a dislocated shoulder. Also, an iron handrail pierced her abdomen and her uterus. She had three miscarriages and between 22 and 35 operations.

    She wore special shoes.

 Kahlo is wearing the dress in the middle in the photo below.

     As a young teenager.

           Headpiece.

         Her right shoe.

              Her lipstick.

  She camouflaged her deformities.

        Kahlo's easel.

         Her bed. We didn't see a double bed.

Nighttime in the city.

   Almost a full moon just after the spring equinox.

              Las Bellas Artes.

      Making Creme Brulé

    Entering our building last night.

         More to follow ;)

Surprises in Mexico City

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   Flying east of the active Popocatepeti volcano that erupted January 16 to March 3 this year.

 The eruption, 55 kilometres southeast of Mexico City.

  Coming into land at Mexico City -- population 8.4 million, 22 million including the suburbs at 7350 feet ASL, (the city)

We're in a funky little B&B in downtown Mexico City called Chill Out Flat B and B, 600 metres from the cathedral that was started in 1573. There's so much history here.

          The Old Archbishop's Palace

                Live concert today.

  Massive doors of the archbishop's palace.

A mixture of classical and contempory music. Such a beautiful environment for live music listening.

The Old College of San Ildefonso

In the courtyard of The Old College of San Ildefonso. A model posing amongst an art installation.

An exhibition of the work of Mexican sculptor, Javier Marín      

La Belleza de lo Imperfecto Corpus Corpus -- The Beauty of Imperfect

Marín's work is both disturbing and mesmerizing.

Long hallways in the 15th century college.

Outside the cathedral on Palm Sunday. Church goers carry braided palm leaves and flowers. 

   Scrumptious oven baked spaghetti for dinner tonight.

Hasta pronto.