Mexico-Las Vegas-Utah-Arizona

As you can see from the past few blogs, I had limited access to the internet while I was on vacation. I'm now back home and can finally catch up with everything including all that reality TV--the finale of Work of Art and all of the new Project Runway. I had only seen the first episode and I need to see the next five to bring myself up to date, not to mention the final two episodes of Doctor Who. I'll tackle all of that in separate blogs.

The trip was fun and unusual, slightly marred by my headaches caused by my getting used to new glasses (I'm still having problems, but a recent visit to the opthamologist may finally resolve the situation.)

We flew to Mexico City to visit friends who live there and then drove with them to Malenalco where they have a second home. We stayed there for a few days during which we drove to Taxco, a beautiful town specializing in silver. Very hilly, like a European resort. It was really pretty. We had a mini-Carmen Miranda festival, watching DVDs of two of her movies. Interesting that she was never the star, always the comic relief with one or two big numbers featured all that fruit on her head. Ironically in "Doll Face," the best number was "She Was Always True to the Navy" which was cut from the film--featuring Carmen with a lighthouse on her head.

The we flew to Las Vegas. We had been there once before, staying at a sleazy motel. but now we decided to splurge and stay at Caesar's Palace. We lucked out and got a suite with an amazing view of the strip, right across from the Flamingo where Donnie and Marie were playing. We swam in the luxurious pool, used the jacuzzi in the room, ordered cocktails from room service (They didn't send the order of nuts, but the waiter told us it would ahve been $25). While walking on the strip I saw several bridal parties and three people getting arrested.

From the center of man-made splendor, we drove to natural wonders in Utah (passing several billboards advertising the services of lawyers). Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon were breathtaking. We finished the trip in Arizona visiting Jerry's sister and her partner who had a summer home in a resort area called Lakeside.

The vacation came to a mixed ending when our rental car went over a big rock in the Salt River Canyon. It caused a bad oil leak and luckily we found an open garage in Globe, AZ. (It was Sunday morning.) We had to get a cab to the Phoenix airport and we just made our flight back. But we had a great time.

Hoodoos In Utah; Papers in Arizona

(LAKESIDE, AZ) We crossed the border from Utah to Arizona and were not stopped to show our papers, so the new law must be ineffective. We travelled the Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon, staying at the Thunderbird Lodge in Mt. Carmel Junction. Breathtaking scenery of gigantic cliffs and mesas and hoodoos--what the hell is a hoodoo you ask? Wasn't that the villainous magician played by Charles Nelson Reilly on that awful Sid and Marty Krofft kids' show called Lidsville? Actually a hoodoo is a standing piece of rock carved out by years of erosion. We asked a ranger where the phrase came from and he said someone in the 1880s just started calling them that. It derives from voodoo and black magic. It's supposed to be a spell. Anyway, after driving out of Utah, we entered Arizona to visit with Jerry's sister who has a summer place here.

I will have to give you a more thorough account of the trip with pictures once I have downloaded them from my camera, but we did not bring our laptop. Over the last few days I've gotten a little cold, so I'm taking it easy today by just resting here at the Holiday Inn Express. I watched the beginning of Sea of Grass with Hepburn and Tracy but got bored with it and I think I'd seen it before. So then I watched Divorce Court and an episode of Law & Order. My glasses are still bothering me so I couldn't read too much, just a few pages of Atlas Shrugged. I did still in the hotel hot tub and felt relaxed.

More Vacation

(MOUNT CARMEL JUNCTION, UTAH) I'm typing this in the lobby of the Best Western Thunderbird Lodge in Mt. Carmel Junction, UT. After a week in Mexico, we flew to Las Vegas, then rented a car and drove through Nevada to a little bit of Arizona to Utah. We spent the afternoon at Zion National Park and then drove here where we had a reservation.

I didn't expect to like Vegas as much as I did. The last time we were there we stayed in a crummy motel right out of "Leaving Las Vegas" with Nicholas Cage. We had a suite at Caesar's Palace--We lucked out because it wsa only for one night and we were first time guests. There was a lovely view of the giant sign of Donny and Marie at the Flamingo across the street. While walking on the strip I saw three people getting arrested and several brides. I will fill in with more later. My headaches are still here and I'm limiting my computer time.

Gays, Muslims, and Illegal Immigrants: The New Axis of Evil

It´s a strange coincidence that Prop 8 was overturned and landmark status was denied to the future site of a Muslim community center and mosque a few blocks away from Ground Zero in Manhattan on the same day. Both actions infuriated elements of the right wing and for the same reason--they demonstrate the legitimacy of the Other in America and that scares them.

By these decisions, gays and Muslims are deemed equal to straights and Christians in the eyes of American jurisprudence--not barely tolerated, marginal figures, but morally equal citizens, entitled to live openly and practise their religion anywhere.

The generation over 50 will be the last with white people in the majority and losing that status scares the hell out of them. During the 2008 election, NPR inerviewed an old white woman from Pennsylvania who was voting against Obama for admittedly racist reasons. She gave voice to her fears that black young man emboldened by an Obama victory would feel free to push her around on the street. I think she was projecting her own feelings of prejudice onto others. She was afraid she would suffer the same fate blacks had when they were in the minority, and probably she had feelings of white superiority and was now guilty about it.

Another image terrified me. There was a news photo on the Huffington Post of a woman protesting a mosque coming to her little town of East Podunk. She held a sign reading ¨IT´S NOT YOUR COUNTRY.¨ I wanted to say to that woman through my computer screen, Ÿes, it is the muslims´ country, just as much as it is the Christians´, the Jews´, the Buddhists´ and the nonbelievers.¨ BTW, the anti-Ground Zero mosque people have at least the slight justification of saying the proposed house of worship is too near the WTC site. Not that I agree with them at all. We are not at war with all of Islam, just its fanatic wing.

People angry over mosques in Anywhere, USA have no rational ground for their indignation. I don´t want to seem naive. There may be individual cases where mosques may be fronts for terrorism, but judging all mosques as dangerous and anti-American would be like the blacklist days judging of all left-wing organizations as fronts for Communism.

With the call for repeal of the 14th amendment and Arizona´s racial profiling legislation, illegal immigrants are added to this new Axis of evil for the far right. Yes, being here illegally is wrong, but there is a larger subtext of anger at immigrants--largely Hispanic--for not assimilating, retaining Spanish as their primary language, and maintaining their cultural identity. It´s rage that America is no longer the Leave it to Beaver fantasy of their youth with white, straight, Christian, English-speaking people as the only worthy images in their culture. The Tea Partiers want us back to that world where gays were only seen as hairdressers and interior decorators, black people were loyal maids like Hattie McDaniel with no lives of their own, Hispanics were gardners or entertainers like Ricky Ricardo or Carmen Miranda, and Muslims didn´t even exist except as mysterious espionage agents in movies like Casablanca.

Mexican Holiday

(MALINALCO, MEXICO) Currently in the gorgeous garden of the country home of our friends Nick and Jim in Mexico. We´re in the first stages of our trip which began on Fri. Somewhat weird vacation in that at the beginning of July, I began to get headaches after reading and concluded I needed new glasses for my aging orbs. The same thing happened to me last year before vacation and I had to go through about a few days of adjusting to the new specs while trying to relax upstate.

Anyway, we arrived in Mexico City Fri. Jerry had come down with a bad cold. He stayed in bed at the apartment where we were staying while I went out with Nick and Jim to soak my throbbing brain in margaritas. It actually worked and I forgot the dull ache behind my eyes thanks to the lime flavored booze.

Nick writes a blog on Mexican food (it´s linked on the side, I´m too relaxed right now to put in a direct link) and has written a guide book to Mexico City.

Sat. Jerry was almost fully recovered and we looked around the city. Had breakfast at a place called the Barracuda diner which featured American food. I had pancakes. We went to a musuem and saw an exhibit of a French artist who did nothing but black shapes and designs. We went to the University and saw two Rossini one act operas. The kid in front of us checked his cell phone three times. We decided not to sit through the second one and went for dinner at a very nice restaurant.

Sun. we drove to Malinalco where they have a weekend house. They live off the rents for the apartments they own. We´re thinking, do we (Jerry and I) want a life like this?

Observations: black market DVDs and computer programs are a big deal here. Jim and Nick took us to a place that had dozens of them for 30 pesos or about two bucks. I got Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact for next to nothing. The first was missing the first five minutes, the second was intact but both were in English. People were selling bootleg versions of Windows and Abode for like $10. I still haven´t written up the first episode of Project Runway or the next to the finale of Work of Art.

Nick is a big fan of old movies like me. We might force Jerry and Jim to watch Carmen Miranda.