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Posts Tagged ‘Santa Rosa’

There she sits, aloft a perch

Posted in Creativity, Culture, Music, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 3, 2014| 3 Comments »

Maybe it’s the recent trip to the US — staying in my childhood home, rearranging boxes of old LPs in the garage, looking at framed Fillmore and Winterland concert tickets from shows I attended “back in the day.”  Another sixties-era song came to mind when I ran across this photo I’d taken in January of some street art on Rio Papaloapam in Santa Rosa, Oaxaca (not California).  Ahhh…  the beautiful harmonies of Buffalo Springfield singing Bluebird by Stephen Stills.

On top of an meter box, a painted bluebird

Listen to my bluebird laugh
She can’t tell you why
Deep within her heart, you see
She knows only crying, just crying

There she sits, aloft a perch
Strangest color blue
Flying is forgotten now
Thinks only of you, just you, oh yeah

So get all those blues
Must be a thousand hues
And be just differently used
You just know

You sit there mesmerized
By the depth of her eyes
That you can’t categorize
She got soul, she got soul
She got soul, she got soul

Do you think she loves you?
Do you think at all?

Soon she’s going to fly away
Sadness is her own
Give herself a bath of tears
And go home and go home

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Guelaguetza, here and there

Posted in Celebrations, Creativity, Culture, Travel & Tourism, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 25, 2013| 8 Comments »

Oaxaca’s annual Guelaguetza festival honoring the traditions of costume, dance, and sharing of the eight regions of the state of Oaxaca is less than a month away.  There will be competitions leading up to the choosing of Goddess Centeotl to preside over the festival and parades by the delegations through the city on the two Saturdays that precede the July 22 and 29 programs at the Guelaguetza Auditorium on Cerro Fortín.

There will official and alternative celebrations in the city and surrounding villages.  According to yesterday’s press conference, more than 70 events are scheduled and Lila Downs will be the official Guelaguetza 2013 ambassador.  Hmmm… I wonder what that means?  Surprise Lila Downs performances?  It’s Oaxaca, so you just never know!

To get everyone in the spirit, here’s a few photos from another of Oaxaca’s wonderful urban art covered walls.  It celebrates the heritage of Oaxaca and can be found at José López Alavez 1406, in the Xochimilco neighborhood of the city.

By the way, this past Sunday, San Francisco’s North Bay residents got an early and small flavor of Guelaguetza.  Oaxacan dances, dishes and costumes in Santa Rosa entertained over 1,000 spectators and, no doubt, the hearts of the Oaxaqueños participating and in the audience swelled with pride.  If I’d only known about it in advance, I would have gladly extricated myself from the complexities and minutiae of getting my grandparents’ house ready to sell and driven up there for a taste of Oaxaca.  They were even serving tlayudas!

Oh well, this time next month I will be happily back in Oaxaca and, no doubt, be exhausted, exhilarated, and pouring through hundreds of photos from the first week of Guelaguetza activities.

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