6 April 2005
I hired the services of a door-to-door salesman on Sunday afternoon.
As I was coming home from the internet café, a guy named LuisArturodelaGarzaHernándezParaServirle (I am still trying to get used to the fact that "AtYourService is not really a last name) stopped me and asked, after looking down at my sad excuse for tennis shoes, if I maybe had any shoes at my house that needed shining. I said yes, but I was waiting on my paycheck. I claimed poverty, I claimed student status, I explained that some gringos are poor, I used every excuse in the book, but he shrugged it all off and told me the shoeshine, done on site, was 2Q. That is roughly 25 cents.
OK, for that, I can afford to have my shoes shined. So he followed me home, explaining the whole way why he was in need of the work. He is epileptic (see the scars on my head where I hit it when I have a fit?) and the meds cost 500Q for a pack of ten, and he has to take one of them twice a day. And his mom has polio. And he has no father. I grabbed my boots from my room and we sat out on the sidewalk - I knapped for a while, and he brought my shoes to a military polish. When he was done, he told me that fifty women would now throw themselves at me, because I had such shiny shoes. I said I was looking forward to that, but what was my wife going to say?
An old woman who was passing by looked at me with a twinkle, and said, "She knows. Wives can see everything and know it all." And then she was gone. I believe her.
Later in the day I was approached by a pen salesman. He was selling ballpoint pens (bearing such auspicious names as Vioxx, Fox and Associates Dental Group, and Smith and Karlowski Law Firm) for a small donation. He helped in a halfway house, where he was a counselor for gangbangers. An ex-drug user himself, he knew how important it was to get the boys off drugs. The donation helped the house, where the government couldn't. I have no idea whether it was true or not, but I gave him 5Q (for the story – I didn't take a pen) and wished him luck.
Begging here is an art form. There are Maya children who hang out by the teller machine and beg pesos from every gringo that goes in. Cute kids. They hang from arms and hug legs, swinging with reckless abandon if you stand still, which I did while waiting on Matt to emerge. One of the older ones was coaching the youngest on how to ask for food.
Without ever moving her mouth, the seven-year old ventriloquist said "Necesito comida (I need food)"
"Necesito comida" parroted the protégé, from her position draped around my leg.
"¿Me puede dar cinco pesos?"
The apprentice-in-miniature repeated the words. The seven-year old master never made eye contact with me, and the apprentice never stopped hugging my leg. I finally extricated myself from her grasp, and shook her hand. It had three quetzales in it, and she almost lost them when she shook my hand. Not the best technique for keeping your money, to my way of thinking.
But everyone has an angle. For many it is no angle, just the dreadful reality. I have been approached by a woman wearing gloves so she could scoot along the street – she had no legs. Others, however, have included able-bodied men with conjunctivitis, and even a bushy-haired gringo writer hippie. An ancient man came and rang my doorbell to ask for help. I gave him a few quetzals, and he went away. Women who beg tend to use the children to make more piteous their plight (sin hombre, they always say).
I feel odd saying "no" when comparatively I have so much, and when a few cents can make so much of a difference (try giving a nickel to a beggar in New Orleans). But I also have to pick and choose my charities, because I will be broke plenty soon enough. So I give when I have small change, and feel bad when I don't.
Saturday, Ingrid and I hiked up the hill behind the house (Matt was in Salt Lake City at the annual meetings for the Society for American Archaeology), and went up to the Plaza Santiago at the top. The climb was pretty tough and dusty, and we were both winded by the time we hit the summit. Then we followed the hill down, and we realized we were sitting on top of the Cerro de la Cruz, the most picturesque spot in the city. Spectacular view. We then picked our way back down a different way, serendipitously ending up right in our backyard. I think we'll probably take that route if we go again.
Cerro de la Cruz, however, is a pretty sketchy place, and bandidos frequent the area and pick off the unwary tourist. Literally – some have been killed for their wallets. We didn't realize that was where we were headed, or we would have bailed. But pretty, mercy, how pretty it was. I saw parts of the city I have not visited, and realized that I have unintentionally been avoiding certain streets while walking around town. I have since rectified that particular tendency, and widened my collection of streets.
Sunday's mass was nice, with extensive mention being made of the pope, and also, since it was the first Sunday after Easter, it was the day for visiting the shut-ins; dozens of men in uncomfortable-looking black suits milled about in front of the church until the priest came out. Then they all loaded up in a couple of cars. Fifteen minutes later, a car with loudspeakers drove by our apartment, a woman singing loudly (and not terribly well) from inside the car, magnified a thousand times through the loudspeaker, and projected across the neighborhood. In front of the car was a station wagon, the roof of which was fitted with an altar on which was perched a statue of an angel in white.
The priest walked up the steps right next to our apartment, accompanied by a number of suited men, one of whom was ringing a bell like it was going out of style. And then the cars left. I presume they came back to pick him up a little bit later, but all I heard was
the dreadful a capella singing, mercifully going away from me. It was, apparently the ecclesiastical version of the "IIIAAAAGAAAAA!" we hear from the gas vendor.
Mass was beautiful. I actually got to see the results of something I had read about. The reason that churches are oriented E-W is to take advantage of the lighting behind the altar. The sun rose on that crystal morning and the light exploded through the stained-glass window. Absolutely stunning effect. I had heard about the reason for the orientation of the building, but had never been inside a cathedral for sunrise services. Well worth the effort, if you have the chance.
The city is, of course, festooned in white, gold and black in memory of the late John Paul. Every business has a multicolored bow or an oversized poster commemorating his life and mourning his death.
The pictures of Semana Santa have been developed, and will be uploaded to my Dad's business web site (www.dixielumber.net, and click on "Antigua Journal") where a friend of mine is recording my journal. The pictures are a little washed out. I don't know if it is the camera or the development (it couldn't possibly be the shaking hand behind the disposable camera) that was at fault, but it gives an interesting visual image counterpoint to my descriptions. I will be stealing Matt's digital camera soon for general Antigua pictures, since I saw the results of his shots from last year's Semana Santa. The richness of the detail and the color is astounding.
Matt came back from the SAAs on Monday, and he was more relaxed than I have seen him in months. The meetings went well, and an edited volume on Motul will, Matt informed me, include a chapter on the lithics.
The deadline for the draft is December; I have some work to do.
Still no news on the grant front. I re-read part of my proposal, now that it has been a month since it was submitted (as of today), and it is not as bad as I remembered. I just need it to be "not bad" enough to get funded. Continue to keep fingers crossed.
The lithic analysis I have been doing was getting me deep into the dumps, so to speak, until yesterday morning, when I finished up analyzing a unit that had taken me a long time, and started another from a different group. The difference was night and day. I went from working with tiny pieces of shattered stone with almost no interesting traits to working with big, pretty utilized flakes. This is really good news, because it means that the elite residence where this stuff is coming from got the end product, and pretty high-quality products, whereas the knappers in the other house had to deal with huge quantities of low-quality material. I think it was not so much the awful material that was getting me down about Group G's material, it was more the sense of sameness for every lot. Now that I am seeing different stuff, it makes more sense out of what I am doing. I can look at how many flakes per tool there were, what proportion of flakes were utilized, and compare them across the site. I just wasn't seeing the petrified forest for the wood chips.
On a completely different note, my birthday falls on the 28th of December. In Latin America, that is Santos Inocentes, the day of the Innocents. It is a perfect birthday for me - the Latin equivalent of April Fools Day. Last Friday, as you all know, was April Fools,
probably my favorite holiday. My indoctrination started early (just ask my parents about the snake and the shotgun) and I have always felt unrepressed glee at even the silliest of pranks. And for those of you who received my Yucatecan journals, I am sure that there was a sense of foreboding when you read last week's entry, mailed out on March 31st. I have heard from a couple of people that they read it all the way through, to see what lies I was going to tell this year. And were a little disappointed when there was nothing there.
In fact, I even got a message from Ali, a friend of mine from Northern Illinois, in which she forbade me from contacting her on April Fools day – that in her mind, that day is permanently classified as Crorey Hell Day. I called her, of course, but without any joke to play – just to talk. She was shocked to hear from me, but we had a good conversation. We haven't seen each other in almost a decade, and narrowly missed being in Antigua at the same time – her sister adopted a pair of Guatemalan children from an orphanage here, and Ali came to help with the finalization of the adoption.
But simply surprising someone wasn't enough. I couldn't let my day pass without pulling something. A few select recipients got an email on Friday informing them that I had been mugged on the way back from one of my early-morning jade-cobble runs, and I was unhurt, but sans wallet, driver's license, twenty dollars, and ATM card. I explained it as a sort of Antigueña instant karma, where I steal the city's cobbles and she extracts her pound (sterling) of flesh in return. Not exactly up to my usual standard, but effective, since I am living in a place where it could happen. One recipient, who had scoured the earlier epistle for a joke, even asked Kathe about my ordeal. Kathe, who was unaware that I had anything planned, asked "What mugging?"
I am sure that my comeuppance is imminent, but I simply couldn't help myself.
Heh.
I hired the services of a door-to-door salesman on Sunday afternoon.
As I was coming home from the internet café, a guy named LuisArturodelaGarzaHernándezParaServirle (I am still trying to get used to the fact that "AtYourService is not really a last name) stopped me and asked, after looking down at my sad excuse for tennis shoes, if I maybe had any shoes at my house that needed shining. I said yes, but I was waiting on my paycheck. I claimed poverty, I claimed student status, I explained that some gringos are poor, I used every excuse in the book, but he shrugged it all off and told me the shoeshine, done on site, was 2Q. That is roughly 25 cents.
OK, for that, I can afford to have my shoes shined. So he followed me home, explaining the whole way why he was in need of the work. He is epileptic (see the scars on my head where I hit it when I have a fit?) and the meds cost 500Q for a pack of ten, and he has to take one of them twice a day. And his mom has polio. And he has no father. I grabbed my boots from my room and we sat out on the sidewalk - I knapped for a while, and he brought my shoes to a military polish. When he was done, he told me that fifty women would now throw themselves at me, because I had such shiny shoes. I said I was looking forward to that, but what was my wife going to say?
An old woman who was passing by looked at me with a twinkle, and said, "She knows. Wives can see everything and know it all." And then she was gone. I believe her.
Later in the day I was approached by a pen salesman. He was selling ballpoint pens (bearing such auspicious names as Vioxx, Fox and Associates Dental Group, and Smith and Karlowski Law Firm) for a small donation. He helped in a halfway house, where he was a counselor for gangbangers. An ex-drug user himself, he knew how important it was to get the boys off drugs. The donation helped the house, where the government couldn't. I have no idea whether it was true or not, but I gave him 5Q (for the story – I didn't take a pen) and wished him luck.
Begging here is an art form. There are Maya children who hang out by the teller machine and beg pesos from every gringo that goes in. Cute kids. They hang from arms and hug legs, swinging with reckless abandon if you stand still, which I did while waiting on Matt to emerge. One of the older ones was coaching the youngest on how to ask for food.
Without ever moving her mouth, the seven-year old ventriloquist said "Necesito comida (I need food)"
"Necesito comida" parroted the protégé, from her position draped around my leg.
"¿Me puede dar cinco pesos?"
The apprentice-in-miniature repeated the words. The seven-year old master never made eye contact with me, and the apprentice never stopped hugging my leg. I finally extricated myself from her grasp, and shook her hand. It had three quetzales in it, and she almost lost them when she shook my hand. Not the best technique for keeping your money, to my way of thinking.
But everyone has an angle. For many it is no angle, just the dreadful reality. I have been approached by a woman wearing gloves so she could scoot along the street – she had no legs. Others, however, have included able-bodied men with conjunctivitis, and even a bushy-haired gringo writer hippie. An ancient man came and rang my doorbell to ask for help. I gave him a few quetzals, and he went away. Women who beg tend to use the children to make more piteous their plight (sin hombre, they always say).
I feel odd saying "no" when comparatively I have so much, and when a few cents can make so much of a difference (try giving a nickel to a beggar in New Orleans). But I also have to pick and choose my charities, because I will be broke plenty soon enough. So I give when I have small change, and feel bad when I don't.
Saturday, Ingrid and I hiked up the hill behind the house (Matt was in Salt Lake City at the annual meetings for the Society for American Archaeology), and went up to the Plaza Santiago at the top. The climb was pretty tough and dusty, and we were both winded by the time we hit the summit. Then we followed the hill down, and we realized we were sitting on top of the Cerro de la Cruz, the most picturesque spot in the city. Spectacular view. We then picked our way back down a different way, serendipitously ending up right in our backyard. I think we'll probably take that route if we go again.
Cerro de la Cruz, however, is a pretty sketchy place, and bandidos frequent the area and pick off the unwary tourist. Literally – some have been killed for their wallets. We didn't realize that was where we were headed, or we would have bailed. But pretty, mercy, how pretty it was. I saw parts of the city I have not visited, and realized that I have unintentionally been avoiding certain streets while walking around town. I have since rectified that particular tendency, and widened my collection of streets.
Sunday's mass was nice, with extensive mention being made of the pope, and also, since it was the first Sunday after Easter, it was the day for visiting the shut-ins; dozens of men in uncomfortable-looking black suits milled about in front of the church until the priest came out. Then they all loaded up in a couple of cars. Fifteen minutes later, a car with loudspeakers drove by our apartment, a woman singing loudly (and not terribly well) from inside the car, magnified a thousand times through the loudspeaker, and projected across the neighborhood. In front of the car was a station wagon, the roof of which was fitted with an altar on which was perched a statue of an angel in white.
The priest walked up the steps right next to our apartment, accompanied by a number of suited men, one of whom was ringing a bell like it was going out of style. And then the cars left. I presume they came back to pick him up a little bit later, but all I heard was
the dreadful a capella singing, mercifully going away from me. It was, apparently the ecclesiastical version of the "IIIAAAAGAAAAA!" we hear from the gas vendor.
Mass was beautiful. I actually got to see the results of something I had read about. The reason that churches are oriented E-W is to take advantage of the lighting behind the altar. The sun rose on that crystal morning and the light exploded through the stained-glass window. Absolutely stunning effect. I had heard about the reason for the orientation of the building, but had never been inside a cathedral for sunrise services. Well worth the effort, if you have the chance.
The city is, of course, festooned in white, gold and black in memory of the late John Paul. Every business has a multicolored bow or an oversized poster commemorating his life and mourning his death.
The pictures of Semana Santa have been developed, and will be uploaded to my Dad's business web site (www.dixielumber.net, and click on "Antigua Journal") where a friend of mine is recording my journal. The pictures are a little washed out. I don't know if it is the camera or the development (it couldn't possibly be the shaking hand behind the disposable camera) that was at fault, but it gives an interesting visual image counterpoint to my descriptions. I will be stealing Matt's digital camera soon for general Antigua pictures, since I saw the results of his shots from last year's Semana Santa. The richness of the detail and the color is astounding.
Matt came back from the SAAs on Monday, and he was more relaxed than I have seen him in months. The meetings went well, and an edited volume on Motul will, Matt informed me, include a chapter on the lithics.
The deadline for the draft is December; I have some work to do.
Still no news on the grant front. I re-read part of my proposal, now that it has been a month since it was submitted (as of today), and it is not as bad as I remembered. I just need it to be "not bad" enough to get funded. Continue to keep fingers crossed.
The lithic analysis I have been doing was getting me deep into the dumps, so to speak, until yesterday morning, when I finished up analyzing a unit that had taken me a long time, and started another from a different group. The difference was night and day. I went from working with tiny pieces of shattered stone with almost no interesting traits to working with big, pretty utilized flakes. This is really good news, because it means that the elite residence where this stuff is coming from got the end product, and pretty high-quality products, whereas the knappers in the other house had to deal with huge quantities of low-quality material. I think it was not so much the awful material that was getting me down about Group G's material, it was more the sense of sameness for every lot. Now that I am seeing different stuff, it makes more sense out of what I am doing. I can look at how many flakes per tool there were, what proportion of flakes were utilized, and compare them across the site. I just wasn't seeing the petrified forest for the wood chips.
On a completely different note, my birthday falls on the 28th of December. In Latin America, that is Santos Inocentes, the day of the Innocents. It is a perfect birthday for me - the Latin equivalent of April Fools Day. Last Friday, as you all know, was April Fools,
probably my favorite holiday. My indoctrination started early (just ask my parents about the snake and the shotgun) and I have always felt unrepressed glee at even the silliest of pranks. And for those of you who received my Yucatecan journals, I am sure that there was a sense of foreboding when you read last week's entry, mailed out on March 31st. I have heard from a couple of people that they read it all the way through, to see what lies I was going to tell this year. And were a little disappointed when there was nothing there.
In fact, I even got a message from Ali, a friend of mine from Northern Illinois, in which she forbade me from contacting her on April Fools day – that in her mind, that day is permanently classified as Crorey Hell Day. I called her, of course, but without any joke to play – just to talk. She was shocked to hear from me, but we had a good conversation. We haven't seen each other in almost a decade, and narrowly missed being in Antigua at the same time – her sister adopted a pair of Guatemalan children from an orphanage here, and Ali came to help with the finalization of the adoption.
But simply surprising someone wasn't enough. I couldn't let my day pass without pulling something. A few select recipients got an email on Friday informing them that I had been mugged on the way back from one of my early-morning jade-cobble runs, and I was unhurt, but sans wallet, driver's license, twenty dollars, and ATM card. I explained it as a sort of Antigueña instant karma, where I steal the city's cobbles and she extracts her pound (sterling) of flesh in return. Not exactly up to my usual standard, but effective, since I am living in a place where it could happen. One recipient, who had scoured the earlier epistle for a joke, even asked Kathe about my ordeal. Kathe, who was unaware that I had anything planned, asked "What mugging?"
I am sure that my comeuppance is imminent, but I simply couldn't help myself.
Heh.
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