Walking Dead: Dia de Los Muertos.

So I'm in this samba group here in Austin, and on Saturday, we performed a Dia de Los Muertos show at Central Market.  That's Skeletor me, above.

Right before we went on, everyone was running around putting on their finishing makeup touches.  I couldn't stop taking pictures of everyone's faces!:

This is Rendi (left) and me, being serious skeletons.

Happy skeletons!

When I was a kid growing up in San Antonio, I used to see touches of Dia de Los Muertos here and there: Pictures of dancing bride and groom skeletons, carved skeletons in people's houses.  I even had an art teacher once who gave us plastic white skulls to decorate, and having gone through a brief Jem and the Holograms phase, I painted pink eyeshadow on mine and gave her awesome pink earrings with a pipe cleaner.  She still didn't look as pretty as real Jem, but that was only because she lacked ... skin.  A serious handicap.  

But even as Dia de Los Muertos surrounded me, I didn't understand the holiday for a really long time.  As a child, I found it freaky and morbid.

When I learned later what Dia de Los Muertos was all about though, I thought it heartbreakingly beautiful.  And it's funny, you know?  All that exquisite San Antonio culture I took for granted while I was living there.  I'm just now able to appreciate it.  We performed in San Antonio on Sunday too, and I was reminded of the whole "more is more!" ethos of San Antonians.  They LOVE parades and they LOVE bright colors and they LOVED us dressed up as skeletons.  I was telling Ross that I may have to do my makeup like this every day, because you get treated so incredibly well: Smiles, nods, doors held open for you!  People really do respect the dead.

(This is what a skeleton looks like when she's getting ready.)

Return to the living!

here's to your beloved dead, and speaking of spirits ...

happy halloween today, reader!

Taking technology breaks.

Photo courtesy of Nicola Poluzzi.

Have any of your friends started abandoning Facebook?

(And I don't mean abandoning Facebook FOR Google+.)

A few of mine have.  One dear friend never got on Facebook at all, despite the pleas of her peers.  But I think she might be onto something.

***

About seven years ago, I taught after-school art classes at Oak Hill Elementary.  One of the co-teachers and I got to talking about this guy, and this girl, and the fact that the guy liked other guys, and no one found out about it (including the girl) until he posted it on MySpace.

"What's MySpace?" I asked her.

"It's like, this site where you can build your own profile, and talk to friends and stuff," she said.

"Oh ..." I said, still confused.  "Like a dating site?"

"Sort of," she said.  "But it's not really for dating.  It's to connect with people you know, or get to know online."

Huh.  That sounds weird!!  I thought.  Only losers with no friends must be on this "MySpace."

In thinking about my life around that time -- 22, teaching kids' art and yoga, living in a tiny studio apartment on 45th and Speedway -- it's amazing to remember how much a computer was not a part of my day.  In college, it had been purely a means to an end: A device with which I wrote papers, performed research for those papers.  I wrote email of course, and occasionally Instant Messaged people.  Sometimes I checked out a few culture sites who had gotten their act together early in the Age of the Internet: Salon.com, Slate.com.  

But when I got home to my apartment after that conversation about MySpace, I didn't curl up with my computer.  (Which I do a lot now.)  Instead, I probably performed my typical 22 year-old routine: Went to Vulcan Video, rented some movies, came back home and watched them on the falling-apart TV/VCR (!) that I had inherited from the last person who lived there, made myself dinner, read a book, and went to sleep.  

Sometimes I met up with friends.

And you know what?  I miss those days.

***

A year later, I had a MySpace profile, three years later, I had a Facebook profile, four years later I started this blog, and five years later I was on Twitter.  Somewhere in there, I got a significant phone upgrade, one that is basically a tiny, super-advanced computer.

It is shocking to me how much my life has tipped toward the computer screen just over the past seven years.  I love having this little corner of the Internet where I can write, practice my photography, talk to the world about the city that I adore.  But I think it's a hallmark of my generation that we were basically the last ones to grow up without the Internet, and as a member of that generation, I constantly find myself straddling this psychological space where on the one side, social media and the computer and texting is totally AWESOME (and novel), and on the other side, I just want to go outside and lay on a blanket for hours and hours, far, far, away from the polite-but-persistent ding of new email, and pet my cat.

***

So I guess this is the point of this blog post: I'm thinking about instituting a weekly Technology Free Day.

Many of my friends who got off Facebook did so for privacy purposes.  Privacy isn't my fear here (though I guess I should be more worried about that kind of thing); technology overload is.

I posted about this idea on Facebook (oh, the irony!) and one of my friends commented back, telling me about a Digital Sabbatical that Gwen Bell does.  I'm not sure who Gwen Bell is, but she seems like a nice lady, and sorta famous.

Gwen takes a whole month off from technology: No computer, no checking email, no texting.  I guess that to successfully pull this off, you either have to be self-employed, work in a job that doesn't require gadgets, or have the kind of job where your boss would be cool with you, um, not working for a month. 

Which to me, sounds difficult.  But intriguing!

As a blogger who people read, I often feel like I'm not online ENOUGH.  I mean, I only post a handful of times a week.  And frequently, I think to myself:

You should really post on the weekends.  Less blog competition on the weekends!  Capture all those readers hanging out on the Internet!

Or,

When was the last time you Tweeted?  Yesterday??  Oh dear God, it's almost noon.  Get on there and say something witty, STAT.

Or,

What if -- just hear me out -- you posted 10x/week instead of 3-4x/week, self?  You could totally do it!  Just a few more hours each day in front of the computer!  Think of the TRAFFIC!

And then I think: Ah, welcome back, ego!  It's been a while.   

***

Now, truth be told, I think my technological neuroses might largely be an Austin thing.  Do you live here, Reader?  If so, you'll know what I mean when I say that social media is just in the air here.  Twitter was launched here in Austin, at SXSW, in 2007.  I've got buddies who work at Gowalla, Facebook, and Google, all a few miles from my house.  In Austin you can tweet to national companies that were founded here, like Whole Foods, and they tweet you back.  

It's a startlingly plugged-in city.

It may be different where you live.  But no matter how social media savvy or not your home is, we all know what it's like to be having a conversation with someone, and suddenly, they get a text. And then they read it.  And then they text back.  And then they turn back to you and say, "uhhh, what were we talking about?"

(I have certainly been on the other side of that scenario before, too.  The annoying one texting.)

So in this Technology Free Day experiment, I'd like to ponder this thought, too:

The single greatest and most valuable commodity in the 21st century is undivided attention.

I'm not sure who said that, but I think it's brilliant.

So I'm going to try this out on Saturdays.  Tomorrow will be the first one.  As my friend Adam sarcastically suggested, "don't forget to post about it on Facebook when you're done."

And you know what?  I may.

have you ever taken a digital sabbatical?  did you enjoy it?  would you ever start doing a regular technology-free day?

UPDATE, 10/28/2011 at 11:36 AM:

Nicole left a link to this video in a comment below, and I LOVE IT.  Exactly the thing to do on Technology Free Day! 

And it WAS The Good Life.

A couple of weeks ago, Ross and I went to our absolute favorite local food event of the year: La Dolce Vita.

It's a fundraiser for the Austin Museum of Art, and has been going strong for 22 years.  It usually sells out too.  Why?  Oh ... perhaps it has something to do with the fact that 50 Austin restaurants and wineries come out, and sample their absolute yummiest, most tempting delights.

Samples top to bottom: La Sombra, The Driskill, The Alamo Drafthouse, The Carillon, Sao Paulo's.

Ross and I basically starve ourselves for the day before this event, so we can feast in full gluttonous fashion.  Last year I was so entertained by the people running around in full-body colored latex suits that I could hardly CONCENTRATE on the food ... but this year, I resolved to take my eating more seriously.  So I brought Danger Kate along with me for the task!  (Danger Kate is my camera.)

Our favorite savory dish was this roasted pepper, olive oil, grilled fish, and bacon (of course) sampler from Sao Paulo's -- one of our regular Date Night haunts.

We definitely sipped lots of wine while we were there, but judging by the photos below, we were even more enthusiastic about the dessert options ...

Samples top to bottom: Word of Mouth Catering, The Melting Pot, Chez Zee, WOM Catering, Sugar Pop Sweet Shop, SPSS, WOM Catering, Urban: An American Grill.

... I mean, can you blame us?

Here we are below, savoring La Dolce Vita, sipping wine, pretending we are Italian.

As we strolled out, stomachs full and mouths very very happy, we encountered this delightful warning:

Pretty much the greatest traffic sign ever.

Lesson learned (I hope).

My cat Claudia has this low, guttural meow that she reserves for very emotional occasions.  A typically quiet feline, this meow can signal one of two things:

"Get me out of this God-forsaken prison." (She did this a lot after we moved and had to lock her inside for a while)

Or,

"I have captured prey."

It's like the act of killing small creatures, always accompanied by a formal presentation to Ross and me, awakens her wild nature.  And if this meow weren't frequently accompanied by a mouse struggling to survive inside her clenched jaws, I would find it so cute, because it's her tiny house cat version of a proud lion roar.

This is what Claudia looks like when she's about to murder something:

Can you believe this fish is still alive?  That's Jeremy, looking pessimistic about his chances for longevity.

Anyway, I was feeling a little bit like Claudia yesterday.

Do you ever have one of those days when you know that the universe is trying to teach you something?  And it's as if the same scenario, or the same type of scenario, keeps repeating itself in the span of 24 hours so you will learn the lesson?

For me, Sunday's lesson was about patience.

Here's how it started: 

My husband, whom I had just shared an absolutely lovely anniversary dinner with the very night before, calmly told me that he thought we should consider some alternatives to my awesome Curtains in the Living Room Plan.  You don't need to know the details of Curtains in the Living Room Plan (boring); suffice it to say that I really, really wanted to try it out, and really, REALLY needed him to drill some holes in the wall for me so we could see how awesome it was!  

ME:

Let's put up the curtains right now!

ROSS:

 I just want to weigh all of our options here before we drill holes in the wall --

ME:

Right.  Now.

ROSS:

Because it could end up that we actually don't like it?  And maybe it's best to just kind of talk about other ways to utilize the curt--

ME:

RIGHT NOW!

ROSS:

Wait why are you getting all worked up about it?

ME:

[Stomping around outside]

Needless to say, I don't recommend this particular conversation tactic.

Now, I adore my husband.  He is a thoughtful planner, always quick to help me with my projects.  And he simply wanted to have a chat, like grown-ups do, about ... curtains.  That's all it was.  Curtains.  

But instead, I acted like a possessed demon.  Who needed things done this instant.  Why was that?

Shortly after that exchange, I decided I needed to go on a run.  Realizing that perhaps some zen would be helpful, I cued up some Zencast in my headphones and everything was going great. That is, until, the podcast ended and I tried to cue up a new one ... but my iPhone's 3G service wasn't having it.

"Please ... show me ... the list of available Zencasts," I seethed to the phone.  Nothing.

"I WANT -- to SEE -- which ZENCASTS there are," I whispered menacingly, while my phone struggled to retrieve the list, the computer Internet equivalent of a slow-loading screen.

"I JUST WANT TO FUCKING LISTEN TO THAT ONE ZENCAST ABOUT ANGER!  GOD!!" I screamed inside my mind, the irony of the moment not lost on me.  

Finally, sometime after my run, the list appeared.

Still feeling like I had energy to burn, I decided to go to silks post-run.  And on the way, grab a little lunch.  Tacos.  Healthy tacos!  I would totally eat healthy tacos like a healthy person.  

But in the car eating them ... I discovered a problem.

The egg whites / ground turkey filling inside my healthy tacos were too much for the flimsy corn (not flour!) tortilla to bear.  Instead of going back inside to ask for a fork, I angrily shoved bites into my mouth, thinking, I'm in a hurry!  I don't have time for forks!

This, as salsa-coated crumbles fell down my shirt and stained it.

***

I felt like yowling, à la Claudia.

Not because I was proud of myself for killing a small creature, but because I was experiencing something.  Something emotional, that needed to be addressed: Patience.

Or rather, my lack of it.

This is a picture of Ross and me on our honeymoon, circa 2007.  His parents arranged for us to go to Puerto Vallarta, and it was one of the most fantastic trips we have ever been on.

In this book I'm reading right now, The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin talks about the stages of happiness (kind of like how we have stages of grief): These include anticipation of a happy experience, savoring it as it unfolds, expressing happiness, and recalling a happy memory.  By the end of the day Sunday, I so desperately wanted to get out of my gross impatience cycle, that I decided to call up a happy memory.  And you know what?  It worked.

This memory is pretty recent ...

When I came home from New York on Thursday this week, it was the exact day of our four-year wedding anniversary.  These goodies were waiting for me on the kitchen counter when I got home, from my sweet Ross.

Above is a card, with an ink rendering of the school where we met, and the exact location on the school grounds where we got married.  Where in the world did he find this gem? 

Next to it is a bag that came from Terra Toys, a toy shop around the corner from our house.  Every purchase from Terra Toys is placed inside a delightfully kid-colored bag, courtesy of Austin children.  I like the face that flower is making.

And inside the bag were two CD's, with music that is very dear to me.

The first is Tabu Ley Rocherau, a contemporary of Dr. Nico -- this African jazz guitarist from the 1960s whom Ross and I are obsessed with.  We discovered him shortly before living in India for a summer back in 2005, and listened to him incessantly.  Dr. Nico's music is island-y, laying-in-a-hammock stuff, but more importantly, its an instant portal for Ross and I back to India.  It reminds us of our time there, the soft daily rains, the eating with our hands, the elephant that lived down the street from our house.  And to be honest with you, most of the time, that whole experience feels like a dream.  But playing Dr. Nico somehow reminds us that it wasn't, that we actually did in fact do that, so strong is the tether between his songs and that one summer.

The second CD is a compilation from "our" band, Yo La Tengo.  Instead of being a prisoner of impatience ... I think I'd like to be the kind of prisoner Yo La Tengo has in mind.

(love you to pieces, husband.)

Reading while traveling is a necessity.

I've been in New York this past week, and when I got home yesterday, I realized something very important: I need a book while I travel.

For some people it is music and headphones, others a movie they can watch on the plane; for me it's a paperback.  I feel rudderless without one.

This particular trip was work-related, and because of that, I sort of forgot to pack some pleasure reading along with me.  In the hotel room by myself at night, during the time I would normally have been curled up in bed with a book, I:

• Watched The Biggest Loser
• With a Diet Coke
• Read my horoscope on my iPhone
• Took an hour-long bath (that one I don't feel guilty about)
• While listening to  Lifetime Television in the background (that one I do)

In short, I was a little bored.

Books organize my nighttime activity and give my pre-bed ritual structure; they also give my behavior structure in general.  Joan Didion says that she doesn't know what she's thinking until she writes it down, and I can relate to this.  When my thoughts are scattered then everything else is too, and as a result I was a SLOB in my hotel room.  Outfit options spilled out of my bag and flew across the room, shirts resting on lampshades.  A slice of pizza I picked up outside got itself eaten at a proper table, then -- getting munched while I simultaneously took a bath -- the side of the tub.  The tub, people.

Something needed to be done.  

On my way home, I picked up a book in the La Guardia airport bookstore, and as soon as I did, I felt that ahhhhh feeling.  With the same level of relief and anxiety dissipation, I imagine, that smokers feel.

If you are a travel-reader like I am, or just looking for a new nightstand addition, I've got three good book options for you.  And if you live in Austin, you can pick all three of them up at BookPeople (or call Half-Price Books).  

About a year ago, we had an awesome discussion on Austin Eavesdropper about book recommendations, so if you have any suggestions you'd like to add to the list then by all means leave a comment!  I referred to that post for a whole year afterward to get book ideas, and I selected these three titles below based on the amount of times I feverishly corner a friend or family member and force them to listen to me talk about them.  Here we go:

The Art of Fielding came out last month, and the reviews it's been getting are downright bananas.  (Check out this insane list of endorsements you have to scroll through on its Amazon page).  I snagged an advanced reader's copy last summer, after listening to its editor breathlessly describe its charms at BEA (Book Expo America).

This is the first book by author Chad Harbach, and it took him nine years to write.  It's the story of a skinny, corn-fed ball player from the Midwest, who possesses the most beautiful, graceful shortstop game you've ever seen.  Well, at least Mike Schwartz has ever seen: That's the baseball team captain at Westish College, a fictional school in Michigan, and when he sees Henry -- the shortstop phenom -- he takes it upon himself to recruit him.

Henry's arrival at Westish introduces us to a small orbit of characters, Henry's gay roommate, the Westish College president, and the president's daughter.  Mike takes Henry under his wing, grooming him, training him, and everything is going great.  That is, until Henry makes a routine throw during an important game, one that pro scouts have come to watch, and the throw goes wildly off-course.  It ends up shattering somebody's face.

The lives of the five characters also spin out of control after that throw, revealing to us secrets, a couple of love stories, and addictions that had been underpinning Henry's journey all along.  

This is such a fantastic book.  And yet, I have a hard time describing it to people.  The moment I say "baseball book," girls think it's a dude read.  But in actuality, it's one of the most emotionally nuanced novels I've read in a long time, and the character I thought I'd relate to the least -- the brutish, hulky Mike Schwartz -- ended up being my favorite.  I adored him.  I wanted him to be my friend.  If this book ever gets optioned for a movie (likely), I'm incredibly curious as to who will be Mike Schwartz, because despite the fact that everything seems to rest on Henry in this story, it's Mike who is the heart of the novel.

Ross is reading my copy right now, but if you live here in town, I would be more than happy to lend it to you when he's through.

I also heard about The Night Circus on the BEA panel last summer, and like The Art of Fielding, it was also penned by a first-time author.  Erin Morgenstern is on Twitter, and she's just the coolest.

This book I have no problem selling to people: It takes place largely in 19th century Europe, and is about a mysterious traveling circus.  No one knows what town it will show up in next, or how long it will stay, but this much they do know: The circus opens at midnight, and closes at dawn.  Instead of one red-and-yellow big top tent, there are a series of different sized black-and-white tents.  When you enter them, there are no clowns, or bears on unicycles; rather, this is a different kind of circus. A magic circus.

You walk into one tent and are faced with a series of bottles; each time you uncork one, it unleashes memories.  You walk into another tent and see mist before you; it's a vertical cloud maze that you can ascend high into the sky.  

At the center of this circus are two magicians who have been entered into a duel practically since birth, and the duel only ends when one of them dies.  There's just one problem: The two magicians are in love with each other.

If you haven't heard about The Night Circus yet, you will.  The Twilight movie people optioned it before it even went to press. Foreign rights have already been sold to 23 different countries.  I even saw some kind of promotion for it in a Starbucks last week.  It's the kind of book people are DYING to franchise because the story is so downright imaginative, like a mix between Big Fish and Sleepy Hollow.  In fact, is Tim Burton going to direct this thing or what?  He's kind of the obvious choice.

But I'm not sure the author wants that -- the hyper-franchising of a vehicle like Twilight.  Without giving anything away, this book has a definite end-ing.  Not a cliffhangery to-be-continued ending.  The story is squarely resolved, and I love it for that.  Conclusions are the hardest thing in every writing enterprise, be it a book, a short story, even a blog post. And yet, Erin neatly pulls it off.

If you're here in Austin, you can even see Erin this weekend at the Texas Book Festival.  She'll be speaking at 12:30 on Sunday, and PS, have you OPENED the Texas Book Festival schedule this year?!  It's ridiculous!

The last book I want to recommend is the one I picked up in the airport yesterday, and it came out in 2009: The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin.  It was a #1 New York Times Bestseller.

This is a one-year memoir of Gretchen, drive-testing various psychological theories of happiness, and taking up a new point of focus each month: Get healthier, improve your marriage, spend time with your kids.  I've been curious about this book for a while, because I am intensely fascinated by life-satisfaction and more importantly, how to achieve it.  Something tells me I'm not alone here.

Gretchen is endearingly systematic in her approach, creating "action items" for each month's theme.  In January for example, the "get healthier" chapter, she resolves to: Get more sleep, get a trainer, clean her closet.  She even makes a chart for the whole year, and places a check mark or an X mark on each day, to indicate whether or not she successfully executed her goal.  It's shockingly effective.  Even things like "don't nag my husband" become a goal, and you know what?  She stops nagging her husband.  Novel!

I was reading this book on the plane ride home, and already began feeling more emotionally resilient, buoyed by Gretchen's can-do attitude toward creating happiness in your life.  Proof: Work booked me on a window seat during the flight, and when I had to get up to go to the bathroom, I looked down sheepishly at my seat mates to deliver the news.  The baseball-capped gentleman from Iowa to my immediate left had no problem with it, but the woman to his left with the aisle seat (lucky!) looked at me and said: "Well, you made your bed, Window Seat."  

She got up anyway, all in a huff, and let me go.  

Normally I would have slouched to the airplane bathroom, all hurt and wounded over this tiny, disparaging remark, but instead I found it so giggle-worthy.  Window Seat!!  Such a funny insult.  As if to imply that the Window Seaters of the world are the irresponsible ones, who don't think ahead to things like bathroom breaks, and the wiser Aisle Seaters must always be accommodating our loose behavior!  Our depraved, reckless natures.  

Fortunately, I had just read one of Gretchen's passages on "lightening up," and it was the opportune moment.  I predict that when you read this book, you'll find a rule or experiment of Gretchen's that will be opportune for you, too.

So now, here are my questions to you:

what books are you reading right now?  


what was the last book you traveled with?  


     has someone ever called you "window seat?"      

Buying handmade, a pretty sparkly elephant, and One Reason Why.

I'm not sure if I've told you this, Internet, but my husband has a crush on somebody else.

And that somebody is Ten Thousand Villages.

In truth, it's a crush we both share, Ross and I.  Austin's beloved fair trade store beckons to us with a life I think we both secretly want: To live in remote countries with artisans, making flatware sets out of discarded Coke cans and playing our handmade didgeridoos.  I heard this NPR segment recently where they were talking about the artist community in Haiti, and for a brief moment -- right there in my temperature-controlled vehicle with comfy seats and yuppie coffee -- I thought, "I wanna go there."

And who knows?  Maybe we will someday.  Now that I've accepted hiking into my life, I'm up for all kinds of crazy adventure.

But back to our store crush.

Now a few months back, I went to The Austin Fair Trade Film Festival, hosted by Ten Thousand Villages.  PS, you probably know this already, but Ten Thousand Villages is an ALL fair trade store.  If you've never been inside, I encourage you too, because it's filled with qurky handmade art and jewelry and musical instruments from 38 countries.  You'll find my husband in the corner, whispering sweet nothings to African hand drums.

Anyway, at the film festival, I watched a highly disturbing Wal-Mart documentary (The High Cost of Low Price).  I'm so tempted to let this post devolve into Wal-Mart is A Hooved Devil! kind of a post, which is true, but instead I'll just encourage you to go here and read up.

BOTTOM LINE: That was the film that 100% renewed my crush on Ten Thousand Villages, and fair trade in general.  Which for way too long was just a trendy, idealistic concept I latched onto in college, but now I actually spend my money on fair trade things.

I mean let's get real here: Part of the fair trade impulse is (for me at least) a warm fuzzies one.  A little part of my brain goes, "you're welcome, karma!" when I see the little white fair trade label on something I just bought.

But on a less self-congratulatory level, I think the IDEA of fair trade, while new and imperfect and applicable to only a tiny fraction of all traded goods, is an incredibly worthy one.  Aside from its explicit mission, to give artisans and workers in developing countries better wages, I think fair trade is good for Americans.  It makes someone like me, who despite all my preaching against Wal-Mart still has a hard time giving up Target, think about the whole backstory of my purchase.  (Which is always a bit invisible when you buy Isaac Mizrahi for Target shoes or whatever, no?)

One silver lining of the recession is that it's created a handmade renaissance of sorts, encouraging us to learn how to do things ourselves -- sew, plant a garden, cook -- and to be more careful with our money.  I am NOT a perfect shopper by any means, but I think I have an easier time paying a bit more for something I really like, and buying less stuff in general.   

(Even though I've still got a Target habit in a bad way.)

All of these pictures are shots I took at Ten Thousand Villages last week, from the collection of art that will be on display at One Reason Why: A fundraiser for TTV's Austin store, and their Artisan Special Needs Fund.

From TTV:

Ten Thousand Villages' fair trade partnerships also provide long-term benefits to artisans’ children, who gain increased access to education, health care, safe and affordable housing, and clean water.

The event is on Thursday, 10/27 at Art on 5th Gallery (1501 W. 5th Street) at 7:00pm.  I'm going to try to go myself, so if you're in Austin, maybe I'll see you there!