Port Aransas

I have to admit.....we have been doing a little partying. Port Aransas on Mustang Island just off the coast of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico.  There were a few reasons to go. First, we needed a little vacation but secondly I'm still working on the Port Aransas Project of making some black and white images to combine with log entries that Ned's family kept back in the 1860-1870s. For those I used my big girl camera but for fun I shot some stuff with the iPhone and the Hipstamatic app. If you want to see the Hipsta images take a look here.

Shocking Language

You know, I try to keep up with the times with technology, current events, and language. I listen to the grandkids and try to grab on to a few of the phrases they use. I read books, see movies. I'm with it. I'm hip. But there is one word whose current usage just hits me the wrong way......bitch.

I knew bitch was a female dog or if you called someone a bitch it was an insult, a pejorative usually considered profane. But then I started hearing young women using it to each other, not as an insult but as a kind of back handed compliment. When I heard it used like that I was very uncomfortable. Okay so the language was changing but I could never use the word bitch that way and certainly not with a friend of my generation. Actually not with any generation I might have a conversation with.

I'm appalled that there are currently two television sit-coms, that while the actual word Bitch isn't in the title, it is implied, and everyone understands that "B" means Bitch. The first is a take off of the book Good Christian Bitches. The network decided to call it GCB. Kind of cover up the Christian and Bitches relationship. And the other is Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23.

So, friends, it looks like I am falling behind the times. Becoming one of the older generation who sit around and grump about the younger generation who are going to hell in an handbasket.

Farmer's Market on Airline Road

This week we went to Houston's Farmer's Market. It has been near downtown on Airline Road forever and ever. It isn't an organic market and it isn't what it use to be at least not the public part. But for me it is still pretty special. It is in a huge building and out back are covered stalls. But what is in the building are huge 24 by 72" sided tables. Each one holds one kind, at the most two kinds of vegetables. They also have some shelves of canned and preserved fruits, salsas and vegetables. Not canned by Del Monte or one of the big food companies but canned by small regional kitchens. It isn't  hermetically sealed and air conditioned. Instead it is cooled by giant fans. I love that fresh produce smell.

Okay, you may be thinking, why do you drive across town to go there when you have two grocery stores right near your apartment. There are several reasons. The first is that it reminds me of the mercados in San Miguel that I'm missing. Of course, since I've been going to the Farmer's Market on Airline for 40 years...maybe longer...it could be that the mercados in San Miguel remind me of home. Whichever way it works, this Farmer's Market makes me happy with its abundance, color and smells.

The second reason is I like to pick out each tomato, or okra, or ear of corn or cucumber. More and more in the grocery stores, food is getting packaged----four ears of shucked corn in a styrofoam box and wrapped in plastic, little plastic tubs of cut up melon and fruit, a plastic box of okra. I've never liked the prepackaged produce but now that we are starting to hear more about what can leach out of the plastic and into our bodies I like it even less.

While we were picking out okra, we struck up a conversation with another man who was also picking out okra. And that is the third reason I like shopping at the Farmer's Market.....community. The conversation was about what we were going to cook with the okra which of course led to talking about gumbo. He made my mouth water when he said that he had some crabs to put in his gumbo. It isn't unusual at all for a conversation to start up while you fill your bag, "My, these tomatoes sure look good." "Yes, they are. I think I'll make up a pot of tomato sauce." "That would be good. How do you make yours?" And so it goes.

I always see a lot of stately black women shopping there with their baskets filled with okra, greens, tomatoes, peas......Oh, I wish they would take me home with them. I know that I would have a meal filled with soul.

And the fourth reason I shop there is because they have produce that I can't find in the grocery stores. This week they had purple hull peas, lima beans, speckled butter beans, and pinto beans. They were blanched and frozen, just like I would do them if I bought a bushel of beans and shelled them. They are not the same as Swanson frozen black-eyed peas and they certainly taste differently than dried beans and peas. Have you ever eaten fresh pinto beans? They are so fabulous, the same with the speckled butter beans, fabulous. If I hit the market at the right time during May, I might be able to buy a bushel of fresh pinto beans and shell them like I use to do but that was back when we were a family of five. It isn't practical for just the two of us. So I'm really grateful to find them already shelled and frozen.

One other thing I love about this market, Food Trucks. I know that these days food trucks are the IN thing. As long as I have been going to the Farmer's Market on Airline, there have been food trucks and they have all had some kind of Mexican street food. We try to time our trips there so we can eat from one of them.

So now you know why I drive across town to shop at the old Framer's Market on Airline.

The Fast Lane

If you have been wondering where I have been, I have been in the Fast Lane. We flew into Housto for Ned's check up a few days after I wrote the last blog entry.  That started a series of tests which showed that Ned's cancer is still around. We flew back to San Miguel, gathered up the car and the dog and drove back to Houston so that Ned could start another round of radiation. Actually it was two rounds of radiation. One for the spots in the brain and another for a spot in his shoulder. I'm telling you he has had so much radiation I may start to glow in the dark just from sleeping with him.

Radiation took up the whole day because we had to go to one place for the shoulder and another for the brain. The high tech machines could have an issue one day and would have to be recalibrated or whatever they do to them and so we did not have a fixed schedule. In fact, Tuesday of the second week was typical. Tuesday morning at the brain location we were given the schedule for Wednesday which included the weekly visit with the doctor. By the time we arrived at the shoulder radiation location, it had been changed.

But the good news is that Ned is feeling better AND he is eating again.

While we are hanging out here we may take some day-trips or even get back to Port Aransas for a few days so I can do some more photography there. In the meantime I have been doing some photography here. One day I headed over to an older part of Houston and took a few photographs.  I'm not working on a "project" but getting out does exercise my foto-eye.

This building was built by Gus Koschany in 1936 as his mechanic shop. It is on a large corner lot with a house. The house faces one way and the shop faces the other direction on the side street. While I was photographing the building the lady who lives next door came out and we chatted for a while about the neighborhood. I love that photography sometimes helps me make a connection with people that I never would in any other way.

My Life With the iPhone

So far I've made a gazillion bad images with the iPhone. It is so easy to play with the apps, especially ones like Hipstamatic and Instamatic. Then you can download other apps that are just cameras or you can use a ton of photoshop-type apps on an image. It is fun. I think I must be addicted to playing with all the photo apps like some people are with playing Angry Birds on the iPhone.

A few days ago I started to play with a new "camera" in the Hipstamatic application and it has been leading me in an interesting direction, small still lifes in my home. The iPhone is perfect for this. So many times I see a still life but the big girl camera is upstairs and I'm downstairs. The iPhone is always with me. I don't have to think, can I stop what I'm doing and go get the big camera. I just pull out the iPhone and snap.

I'm so easy to entertain these days....as long as I have my iPhone.

Our Lord of the Conquest II

I wrote about El Señor de la Conquista last March. None of that celebration has changed except maybe it is bigger than last year. We heard the drumming throughout the day and last night we went into town for dinner and a walk around the Jardin. Just as we stepped out of the restaurant we were greeted by this troup of dancers heading away from the Jardin. It was dark. they were backlit and moving. I raised the camera and hit the shutter button. I am not sure how much I like the blurry image but I think as a stand alone image it does have a mysterious quality.

After the dancers passed us, we walked into the Jardin, stopped at the ice cream store and then sat on a bench eating our ice cream and watching everything that was going on around us. The Jardin was packed, the streets still had drummers and dancers and all along the edge of the Jardin were food stands doing a good business. It was a blaze of color, smells, sounds and swirls of Mexican people. I hope the thrill of being in San Miguel never goes away.

Getting an FM3 Is Easier and Easier

It is that time of year again. Time to renew my FM3 which allows me to live in San Miguel de Allende. It is getting easier and easier. On Monday morning we went to the the building you see at the top, El Escritorio Publico which is across the street from th Instituto Nacional de Migración. All I had to take was my passport and my current FM3 card. They took my picture. Asked me some questions so they could type up the paperwork and then gave me the paper to take to the bank to pay the fee for the Mexican Government.

We left the Escrito, got back in the car and drove to the Bank. Now this was the one hitch we had in the whole procedure. The bank we went to no longer collected these funds for the Mexican Government, so we had to drive to another Bank across the street. There wasn't a line and it didn't take but a few minutes to pay the fee.

Back on the Libramiento, the San Miguel beltway, to the Escritorio. He had all our papers typed up. I signed in three places. He put the papers in a folder. We walked across the street to the Migración office, took a number and sat down to wait our turn. The wait was the longest delay but there were two people sitting at the desk who brought in stacks of renewal forms for those Gringos who hire someone else to do this job for them. When it was our turn we went to the desk, turned in our paper and we were out of there...beginning to end....in about 2 hours.

Migración had given us a receipt for the papers and they said we could follow the progress on line at such and such address but our new FM3 card would be ready today....just one day after reapplying. Sure enough, Ned checked on line for it this morning and it was ready.

The immigration laws have changed in Mexico but they are not fully implemented. We had heard that after two years with an FM2 you "might" be eligible for Permanente Inmigrado status. We asked the officer who was helping us. He said that yes, the law had changed but they did not know how it would be implemented and under some circumstances you could apply for Permanente Inmigrado status after 2 years with an FM2 but he had no idea what those circumstances would be. Maybe next year at this time it will be settled and I'll start on the way to becoming a Permanente Inmigrado in Mexico.