Tuesday

Something like twelve movers showed up today, and the job was done before five. Items remaining were wrapped, boxed, nailed into large wooden crates and loaded onto a huge orange truck. Now the house echoes like used to when I called Sunshine before moving here. The place seems a lot bigger and whiter than it did yesterday. Next week the air freight guys are coming to take stuff going straight to DC, but that will be pretty easy. Then all that will be left to do is clean the place and pack what remains into the car. We're over the hump, I think. In online communication news: I have uploaded a lot more photos to my Flickr page. I am currently loading photos that I took just last month in Pátzcuaro. Go here to see. Tonight we had dinner with our friend Olga who is just back from reporting live from Oaxaca. The sometimes-violent protest there seemed to culminate two weeks ago when APPO factions began torching colonial-era buildings downtown, prompting police to bulldoze barricades. Olga found Oaxaca settling into normal city life, sort of. She said waiting for something to happen was difficult, and wrote this story about nothing much happening. A lesson in the news: here is the story submitted on the same day by the competition. The reporters are in the same town, covering the same subject. It is amazing how different these stories are. More from Reuters today: federal and state police in Oaxaca arrested over a hundred and fifty people associated with the APPO last month, cracking down on the protest. One leader, Flavio Sosa, ducked out of town to avoid arrest only to be captured in México City yesterday after giving a news conference.* Don't go into hiding before television cameras. Gosh. [Cavin]