How Things Work
Things are different in Cuba. Different enough that some of them need to be explained. The Internet Cuba opened up to a largely uncensored internet in 2015, with private wifi becoming available in 2019. They’re still…
Landing In La Habana
As has been exhaustively documented, the actual Landing In Cuba was hellish, but it’s been pretty smooth sailing since then. Our local friend Jenn arranged a driver to pick us up at the airport, which…
An Unprecedented Level Of Fuckery
One of the principles underlying this adventure is shopping. I don’t mean tourist shopping, for handicrafts and native artifacts. I mean shopping to feed ourselves, which is the activity that most ties us to local…
Palacio de Bellas Artes
As I mentioned in the post on landing in Mexico City, the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes is a great hulking Oreo of a building, with a crunchy Art Nouveau exterior and creamy Art…
The Ghost Of Xochimilco Past
When I was 13, my parents took me out of school for a year to traverse North America in a travel trailer. My father had had a health scare, so to reduce the stress level…
Oaxacan Weaving
Weaving is one of the oldest and richest of the Oaxacan traditions. They’ve been weaving for over 2,000 years just in the village of Teotitlán del Valle, which we visited for a tour of a…
Curl Up & Dye
One of the lovely, and unexpected, side effects of visiting Fe y Lola‘s rug weaving workshop in Teotitlán del Valle was meeting Elsa, another family member. Like Omar, who conducted our tour, Elsa is devoted…
Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán
I’ll confess to a fraught relationship with colonial architecture. On the one hand, there are plenty of breathtaking, soaring monuments to… the other hand. Early in our time together, Dorothy and I thought it would…
Making Alebrijes
After our mostly successful foray into making woodcuts, we thought we’d try our hand at making another of the classic Oaxacan arts, alebrijes. We chose a class at Tlayudona, a local business that specializes in…
Traditional Pottery With A Modern Twist
Oaxaca is known for its pottery. There’s the classic black clay pottery produced in San Bartolo Coyotepec, and the iconic green glazed pottery of Santa María Atzompa, among others. But like every other art form…