Opening of the Southern Ute Museum & Cultural Center

Saturday May 21 opened with a two-hour meeting in the Aspen Room of the Sky Ute Casino called by the leadership of the Old Spanish Trails Association.  More on them later.  After it was over I drove back into town, picked up BD, and headed back for the opening of the museum.  Former (Ute Mountain) and current (Navajo) students were volunteering as guides, while another (Santo Domingo Pueblo) was there showing people around in the various exhibits where she has been working for months.  I talked to a lot of people.  The drive to Ignacio from this house is a big swoop that loops one into direct view of the shining mountains full of mystery and abandoned mines.  It was really a beautiful day, as was this one.

Heading to Durango from Ignacio

Museum entrance

A stream runs though it

In the center of the museum

Gardens and native plants circle the museum

Vendors of roasted corn and Indian tacos

May in Colorado

They check in but they can't check out

The cabin shack

Crab-apple hypbrid

Some kind of cherry tree.  The birds will get everything.

Almost ready for patio parties.  Too bad the housesitters will be the ones partying.

Closeup of apple-crab hybrid

Almost wild (i.e., neglected) currants (Ribes)

Pear tree in the middle

Lupin volunteer

Snapdragon volunteer

Hornets are moving in, but I'm prepared.  I wish I could live and let live when it's so beautiful out, but part of spring cleaning is removing potential disturbers of patio peace.  I thoughtI saw the early spring oriole couple first thing this a.m., so I hustled to make some sugar water for the feeder after I got a dish and a dessert ready for the afternoon party at T & P's cabin up the road.  The cabin shack above is not Tom & Phyllis's--these are photos taken in the a.m. at the house.

Summer school

This will probably be the last time I teach a summer school class, not because I don't enjoy it when I'm there, but because it's just too difficult to prepare for class, for Ecuador, for summer at home, and to get all the many, many loose ends tied up that need to be (not tied up as in finished off, but as in headed into a design not yet designed in the complex weave of things).  We just got an email yesterday from the people who own and run the elementary school below saying that someone broke into their computer room and stole all the newly-refurbished equipment in there.  They say the same thing they always do about the neighborhood where the school in located, at the northwest edge of Quito:  that there are gangs running around & that there are drugs being sold.  The school is private, which means they have to ask for tuition, but it is at a minimal rate because of the poverty in the region.  They originally had two classrooms for every grade level, but they have cut back to one each for many of them because they can't compete with the public schools, which have been given more state financial support over the past three years (and into which, they claim, students are crammed like sardines).

Centro Educative Juan Pablo I, Día de la Familia, 2009

My profession

Seems it's in trouble.  I'll never question the validity of tenure again, despite the few I know who don't deserve it.  I went on a rant the other day during the Anth 355 final about what I see as anti-intellectualism in, of all places, college.  The idea that freedom of thought and independence of spirit and human inventiveness can take place when there are fewer and fewer professors with job security doing a job that is increasingly devalued is faulty.  I'll write about my college some other time.  In the meantime, here are a couple of good articles:

Wm Deresiewicz: Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education"

David Glenn: "The Default Major: Skating Through B-School"

Mexico City, 2009

This is my favorite picture from my trip to D.F. in July of 2009 to give a talk at the International Congress of Americanists (which is next to be held in Vienna ICA 54-Vienna.

Near where I was staying - East of Chapultepec Park

Here's another:

Fountain in the courtyard of the National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City

From inside the museum:

Cinco de Mayo & my new 'typewriter minute book'

Durango's Del Alma had a Cinco de Mayo celebration today out at the Sky Ute Casino.  As soon as we got there, I got a couple of carne asada tacos at the Tacos Nayarit stand.  Just as we were finishing them up a wind shear came through like a knife, carrying such force that several vendors' stalls were demolished.  Two ambulances carried off a couple of injured people.

When things settled down a dance group from Tamaulipas performed 

We decided to walk through the casino to see if there was anything else to eat, but it was too depressing and I couldn't breathe very well, so we headed to Bayfield...

Statue at the entrance of the Sky Ute Casino

Serving the Southern Ute Tribe

Old cabin in Bayfield

There are several places to dine in Bayfield right in town, but we ended up in "nuvo Beighfield" to eat at a barbecue place new to us but had apparently been there two years.  On the way home we stopped at a little consignment place in Gem Village, where I got this here great book for $5.  I have since been googling "typewriter minute book" and the name of the company, but nothing whatsoever can be found.