Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 18
April 27, 2014
Everything is happening at the _feria_
A full and interesting day yesterday. After breakfast we went out walking, and I went to a street vendor whose wares I'd seen the previous day, and got a middle-sized bag about half the size of my usual canvas briefcase, a pretty soft leather thing. (I do have more bags than the vainest teenage girl. But my usual one is much bigger than I need when I'm not carrying the computer. And I'm husbanding my strength.)
Then we wandered into a huge bank building, which José had told us was actually a pawn shop. He used to work in the industry as an architect and built a lot of them -- it's a curious aspect of Mexican economics, that people use these pawn shops for many of the fiscal functions that banks serve in the American system. People routinely sell and re-buy their cars and even houses, and on a smaller scale keep hocking the family jewels and redeeming them. So the barter system is pretty exact and self-correcting. When you borrow cash, say, on a car, you have a set period of time before you pay it back, plus about ten percent interest. If you don't pay it back, the pawn shop is free to sell it to the highest bidder.
The bank/pawn buildings are about the size and demeanor of a museum building. This one had walls built by the Aztecs.
José picked us up and moved us to our new hotel, about an hour of frenetic driving – the Hotel Plaza Camerones (place of the shrimp!)—which is only a 20-minute drive from the feria.
The feria is basically two large tents, circus sized; one with books for sale and the other an auditorium for presentations. I went straight there for the formal presentation of the guests. Then to the other tent to sign books for an hour and a half. Gay had to help me with peoples' names; strange spellings and pronunciation for a Yank.
Most of my signing was a freebie that the convention had printed up with a long story from each of us, Otras Historias ("Other Stories"). Mine was the gruesome la Suma de Todas Sus Partes, "More Than the Sum of His Parts," which might give me a fearsome reputation in Mexico.
A bunch of us went for lunch to a kind of large greasy spoon. Good company but bad chicharrones, and no beer to compensate.
Then I had my own hour on the stage, along with Jose Luis Zarate and Gerardo H. Porcayo (both sf writers), along with the indispensible translator, Armando Salinas, also an SF writer.
Then off to a very good dinner at a restaurant that specialized in pozole, a stew made with hominy and broth, to which each person adds stuff to his own liking. I had a few drops of hot sauce and a whole fresh avocado sliced up.
My beer with that was an outstanding version of cerveza preparada, which in its usual U.S. manifestation is Tecate beer with half a lime squeezed into it. Here it was dark (Bohemia) beer poured into lime juice and salt – there were squeezers on the table so you don't have to touch the lime yourself. The place was big but homey and not too loud; we had a fine time.
Got home about midnight and crashed.
Joe
Then we wandered into a huge bank building, which José had told us was actually a pawn shop. He used to work in the industry as an architect and built a lot of them -- it's a curious aspect of Mexican economics, that people use these pawn shops for many of the fiscal functions that banks serve in the American system. People routinely sell and re-buy their cars and even houses, and on a smaller scale keep hocking the family jewels and redeeming them. So the barter system is pretty exact and self-correcting. When you borrow cash, say, on a car, you have a set period of time before you pay it back, plus about ten percent interest. If you don't pay it back, the pawn shop is free to sell it to the highest bidder.
The bank/pawn buildings are about the size and demeanor of a museum building. This one had walls built by the Aztecs.
José picked us up and moved us to our new hotel, about an hour of frenetic driving – the Hotel Plaza Camerones (place of the shrimp!)—which is only a 20-minute drive from the feria.
The feria is basically two large tents, circus sized; one with books for sale and the other an auditorium for presentations. I went straight there for the formal presentation of the guests. Then to the other tent to sign books for an hour and a half. Gay had to help me with peoples' names; strange spellings and pronunciation for a Yank.
Most of my signing was a freebie that the convention had printed up with a long story from each of us, Otras Historias ("Other Stories"). Mine was the gruesome la Suma de Todas Sus Partes, "More Than the Sum of His Parts," which might give me a fearsome reputation in Mexico.
A bunch of us went for lunch to a kind of large greasy spoon. Good company but bad chicharrones, and no beer to compensate.
Then I had my own hour on the stage, along with Jose Luis Zarate and Gerardo H. Porcayo (both sf writers), along with the indispensible translator, Armando Salinas, also an SF writer.
Then off to a very good dinner at a restaurant that specialized in pozole, a stew made with hominy and broth, to which each person adds stuff to his own liking. I had a few drops of hot sauce and a whole fresh avocado sliced up.
My beer with that was an outstanding version of cerveza preparada, which in its usual U.S. manifestation is Tecate beer with half a lime squeezed into it. Here it was dark (Bohemia) beer poured into lime juice and salt – there were squeezers on the table so you don't have to touch the lime yourself. The place was big but homey and not too loud; we had a fine time.
Got home about midnight and crashed.
Joe
April 26, 2014
Mexico marvels
Yesterday we went to the huge Templo Mayor, with Luis Britto García. This was the hub of the Aztec empire, long buried under the city. Rediscovered by telephone repairmen in 1978! This was the main temple of the Aztec death cult, where captured prisoners of war were brought for mass sacrifices, as many as ten thousand at a time. They were given spikes of shell and allowed to kill themselves. You have to wonder what lovely alternatives were offered.
Next to it, the Museo del Templo Mayor has thousands of artifacts from that grisly period. The center is an eight-ton disk that depicts the Moon goddess, who was decapitated and dismembered by her brother. These people were almost as bad as the Christians.
(When we came here in the seventies, I think the consensus was that the sacrificial numbers were much exaggerated by the Spanish conquistadores when they wrote up their adventures, to justify their own cruelties.)
We could see a large open-air restaurant with patrons looking down at us as we wandered through the ruins. We wound up going there for lunch – Porrua, the terrace of a large bookstore. I had a really fine artichoke, roasted and served with a sweet vinaigrette, with good duck tacos for a main course.
From there we walked a bit, winding up at the Colegio de San Ildefonso to see the colossal murals of Jose Clemente Orozco. There were Diego Rivera murals there, too, but they were closed for renovation.
Back through a light mist of rain to our hotel, where we had a drink in the bar, the terrace being a bit damp. We were joined in these meanderings by novelist José Carlos Samoza, from Spain, and a Mexican student Pavel, an astronomy graduate student (who had read my books), and our guide José Ramón Calvo.
We collapsed for awhile. I went out to get a late-night (for Americans) snack and a bottle of wine, but got a little lost. Found a couple of chicken quarters, nicely roasted on a spit. For dessert we went out again and found a yogurt shop and had a couple of cones, very American.
Not much sleep. Can't get used to the air on this planet.
Next to it, the Museo del Templo Mayor has thousands of artifacts from that grisly period. The center is an eight-ton disk that depicts the Moon goddess, who was decapitated and dismembered by her brother. These people were almost as bad as the Christians.
(When we came here in the seventies, I think the consensus was that the sacrificial numbers were much exaggerated by the Spanish conquistadores when they wrote up their adventures, to justify their own cruelties.)
We could see a large open-air restaurant with patrons looking down at us as we wandered through the ruins. We wound up going there for lunch – Porrua, the terrace of a large bookstore. I had a really fine artichoke, roasted and served with a sweet vinaigrette, with good duck tacos for a main course.
From there we walked a bit, winding up at the Colegio de San Ildefonso to see the colossal murals of Jose Clemente Orozco. There were Diego Rivera murals there, too, but they were closed for renovation.
Back through a light mist of rain to our hotel, where we had a drink in the bar, the terrace being a bit damp. We were joined in these meanderings by novelist José Carlos Samoza, from Spain, and a Mexican student Pavel, an astronomy graduate student (who had read my books), and our guide José Ramón Calvo.
We collapsed for awhile. I went out to get a late-night (for Americans) snack and a bottle of wine, but got a little lost. Found a couple of chicken quarters, nicely roasted on a spit. For dessert we went out again and found a yogurt shop and had a couple of cones, very American.
Not much sleep. Can't get used to the air on this planet.
April 24, 2014
down Mexico way
The other day Gay and I went to the airport and flew to Atlanta, but then changed our minds and turned around and flew to Mexico City. Actually, we'd been invited to a convention, the Feria Internacional del Libro de Azcapotzalco. Kind of rolls off the tongue, if you're an Aztec.
We were picked up at the airport by José Ramó Calvo, who has been our guide for all of the considerable driving around we've required.
We came early to Mexico City, knowing it would take a day or two to get used to the altitude. Good thing; after two days I'm still panting a bit and not feeling like the young 70 I was when I stepped on the plane.
Mexico City is fascinating, though, and we do have friends here from science fiction. Gay has two degrees in Spanish and speaks it well. I personally can order a beer and maybe a taco.
We had dinner out with old friend Paco Taibo II, but I was still too tired to do the Aztec soup justice. We went up to Paco's place and admired his book collection, huge and gorgeous.
This morning I started to feel somewhat normal. We had breakfast out on the terrace of the hotel's sixth floor, in the shade of the Cathedral, on the Zócalo. Bright and sunny, with a vast variety of food on offer. I had bacon and eggs but also a fruit salad that had fresh mango and papaya; frijoles refritos (black beans cooked and refried), exotic fruit juices, and a strange pancake made with corn flour and a raisin-like red sweet fruit, with honey. Lots of sweet strong black coffee.
We had the company of hummingbirds and one fat black pigeon. The view was both impressive and foreboding – even at the break of dawn, the pollution affects visibility.
We rested for a bit and I worked some. Then we met with a group of the Feria's organizers who had just brought another guest of honor from the airport, Luis Britto Garcia from Venezuela, and we all went off to the Restaurant Cardinal, to feast on their specialty . . . ant eggs (escamoles). They look kind of like rice and are pretty good fried with maguey flowers, rolled up in a tortilla with lime juice and washed down with white wine.
They do have a distinctive mild flavor not quite like anything else I've eaten. Never catch on like chicken eggs, though.
In the early evening José drove us out to Coyoacan, a sort of artsy area, very beautiful with a kind of GreenwichVillage intimacy, lots of young people hanging around doing young people things. We peeked into an old church and, our appetite for culture assuaged, sat at a lovely outdoor café where they were roasting gorditas over a heavenly-smelling pine fire. Good beer, but I think it may be hard to find bad beer in Mexico.
Tomorrow I will explain why.
Joe
We were picked up at the airport by José Ramó Calvo, who has been our guide for all of the considerable driving around we've required.
We came early to Mexico City, knowing it would take a day or two to get used to the altitude. Good thing; after two days I'm still panting a bit and not feeling like the young 70 I was when I stepped on the plane.
Mexico City is fascinating, though, and we do have friends here from science fiction. Gay has two degrees in Spanish and speaks it well. I personally can order a beer and maybe a taco.
We had dinner out with old friend Paco Taibo II, but I was still too tired to do the Aztec soup justice. We went up to Paco's place and admired his book collection, huge and gorgeous.
This morning I started to feel somewhat normal. We had breakfast out on the terrace of the hotel's sixth floor, in the shade of the Cathedral, on the Zócalo. Bright and sunny, with a vast variety of food on offer. I had bacon and eggs but also a fruit salad that had fresh mango and papaya; frijoles refritos (black beans cooked and refried), exotic fruit juices, and a strange pancake made with corn flour and a raisin-like red sweet fruit, with honey. Lots of sweet strong black coffee.
We had the company of hummingbirds and one fat black pigeon. The view was both impressive and foreboding – even at the break of dawn, the pollution affects visibility.
We rested for a bit and I worked some. Then we met with a group of the Feria's organizers who had just brought another guest of honor from the airport, Luis Britto Garcia from Venezuela, and we all went off to the Restaurant Cardinal, to feast on their specialty . . . ant eggs (escamoles). They look kind of like rice and are pretty good fried with maguey flowers, rolled up in a tortilla with lime juice and washed down with white wine.
They do have a distinctive mild flavor not quite like anything else I've eaten. Never catch on like chicken eggs, though.
In the early evening José drove us out to Coyoacan, a sort of artsy area, very beautiful with a kind of GreenwichVillage intimacy, lots of young people hanging around doing young people things. We peeked into an old church and, our appetite for culture assuaged, sat at a lovely outdoor café where they were roasting gorditas over a heavenly-smelling pine fire. Good beer, but I think it may be hard to find bad beer in Mexico.
Tomorrow I will explain why.
Joe
April 20, 2014
It's a boy?
Interesting model at open studio yesterday. A German woman in her mid-twenties (I'd guess) who is traveling around South America and the U.S., paying her way by modeling for artists. From the neck up, she looks kind of like a Ode-on-a-Grecian-urn pretty boy.
Joe
Joe
April 18, 2014
crunchy peanut butter and literacy
(from a conversation on sff.net)
I read a lot of Heinlein and other Golden Age writers lying in a jungle hammock
in my backyard, drinking ice cold lemonade. My mother made it killer sweet,
which probably made me a hyperactive child.
Another taste key to the past is peanut butter (crunchy) and saltines. My mother
and dad would leave me and my brother to "babysit each other" in the afternoons
Saturday and Sunday while they went to the country club to drink. They'd leave
us a big jar of Skippy and a box of crackers, so we wouldn't starve to death
if they forgot to come home.
Joe
I read a lot of Heinlein and other Golden Age writers lying in a jungle hammock
in my backyard, drinking ice cold lemonade. My mother made it killer sweet,
which probably made me a hyperactive child.
Another taste key to the past is peanut butter (crunchy) and saltines. My mother
and dad would leave me and my brother to "babysit each other" in the afternoons
Saturday and Sunday while they went to the country club to drink. They'd leave
us a big jar of Skippy and a box of crackers, so we wouldn't starve to death
if they forgot to come home.
Joe
scatology in the time of Sam. Pepys, Esq.
Wednesday 17 April 1661
By land and saw the arches, which are now almost done and are very fine, and I saw the picture of the ships and other things this morning, set up before the East Indy House, which are well done. So to the office, and that being done I went to dinner with Sir W. Batten, and then home to my workmen, and saw them go on with great content to me. Then comes Mr. Allen of Chatham, and I took him to the Mitre and there did drink with him, and did get of him the song that pleased me so well there the other day, “Of Shitten come Shites the beginning of love.”
(This calls for some research.)
Joe
Love in the time of Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Sad to see that Garcia Marquez has died, though he did have a pretty good run.
I like to read him outdoors, camping, so many of my memories of his delicious prose are mixed with the glorious synergy of campfire and cooking smells.
And one humorous tang of fear – I was crowded close to the campfire reading Love in the Time of Cholera long after sundown, and a huge ball of rank fur bumped into me and squealed in surprise! A fat raccoon, near-sighted or blind, was attracted to the fire's light and warmth and hadn't noticed that the world was inhabited.
When I was reading One Hundred Years of Solitude we were camped by a mountain stream in Maine. Wish I had the photo I snapped that afternoon, a net bag floating in the icy water with a bottle of white wine and three bright green artichokes.
The next morning it rained, a soft mist, and I started writing the long narrative poem "Saul's Death," sitting on a log with a poncho protecting my tablet. I'd moved some kindling under the car to stay dry, and was able to get the fire going again for breakfast.
A percolator is nobody's favorite way of preparing coffee, but it's pretty fine with a campfire and the woods waking up all around you.
Joe
I like to read him outdoors, camping, so many of my memories of his delicious prose are mixed with the glorious synergy of campfire and cooking smells.
And one humorous tang of fear – I was crowded close to the campfire reading Love in the Time of Cholera long after sundown, and a huge ball of rank fur bumped into me and squealed in surprise! A fat raccoon, near-sighted or blind, was attracted to the fire's light and warmth and hadn't noticed that the world was inhabited.
When I was reading One Hundred Years of Solitude we were camped by a mountain stream in Maine. Wish I had the photo I snapped that afternoon, a net bag floating in the icy water with a bottle of white wine and three bright green artichokes.
The next morning it rained, a soft mist, and I started writing the long narrative poem "Saul's Death," sitting on a log with a poncho protecting my tablet. I'd moved some kindling under the car to stay dry, and was able to get the fire going again for breakfast.
A percolator is nobody's favorite way of preparing coffee, but it's pretty fine with a campfire and the woods waking up all around you.
Joe
April 16, 2014
Gold in outer space!
People interested in zero-gravity simulations and/or beautiful women cavorting in gold lame bikinis might look at this unusual film clip . . . Sports illustrated did a photoshoot on the Vomit Comet with an interesting passenger . . .
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2562390/Shes-world-Kate-Upton-attempts-curves-tiny-gold-bikini-poses-zero-gravity-conditions.html
Joe
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2562390/Shes-world-Kate-Upton-attempts-curves-tiny-gold-bikini-poses-zero-gravity-conditions.html
Joe
April 13, 2014
words to live by
From Funny Times, attributed to A. Whitney Brown –
"The Baptists believe in the Right to Life before you're born. They also believe in Life After Death, but that is a privilege and you have to earn it by spending the interim in guilt-ridden misery. At an early age, I decided that living a life in pious misery in the hope of going to heaven when it's over is a lot like keeping your eyes shut all through a movie in the hope of getting your money back at the end."
Joe
"The Baptists believe in the Right to Life before you're born. They also believe in Life After Death, but that is a privilege and you have to earn it by spending the interim in guilt-ridden misery. At an early age, I decided that living a life in pious misery in the hope of going to heaven when it's over is a lot like keeping your eyes shut all through a movie in the hope of getting your money back at the end."
Joe
April 8, 2014
Feet up, mind slightly in gear . . .
Spending a few days on Cedar Key, an island about 90 miles from home. Artsy place with wonderful sea breezes and a sort of muted fishing-village atmosphere. Not too much commercial fishing done here now, just clams and shrimp and a little sport fishing. I've caught a few fish here, and one $100 ticket for catching a trout a quarter-inch too short for the game warden.
(I guess that's a malady you might call fisherman's eyeball. I knew the limit was 12 inches, but the fish looked longer than that to me. The warden was a literalist, with a ruler.)
Writing and painting and biking and loving the ambience. Nice simple restaurants, and the double room has a kitchenette and a fridge, which keeps me happy when we don't feel like biking the couple of miles into town.
For lunch we went to the venerable restaurant Steamers. I'm not much for clams, but love that Cajun-grilled grouper sandwich.
As a vacation spot, you'd have to admit it's oriented toward older folks – putting it kindly. Anyone under 30 would probably be swimming for the mainland after a couple of days. But if your idea of excitement is sitting in a wonderful environment writing and reading and every now and then opening an ice-cold beer . . . this is the place for you, and me.
joe
(I guess that's a malady you might call fisherman's eyeball. I knew the limit was 12 inches, but the fish looked longer than that to me. The warden was a literalist, with a ruler.)
Writing and painting and biking and loving the ambience. Nice simple restaurants, and the double room has a kitchenette and a fridge, which keeps me happy when we don't feel like biking the couple of miles into town.
For lunch we went to the venerable restaurant Steamers. I'm not much for clams, but love that Cajun-grilled grouper sandwich.
As a vacation spot, you'd have to admit it's oriented toward older folks – putting it kindly. Anyone under 30 would probably be swimming for the mainland after a couple of days. But if your idea of excitement is sitting in a wonderful environment writing and reading and every now and then opening an ice-cold beer . . . this is the place for you, and me.
joe
Joe Haldeman's Blog
- Joe Haldeman's profile
- 2191 followers
Joe Haldeman isn't a Goodreads Author
(yet),
but they
do have a blog,
so here are some recent posts imported from
their feed.
