Friday

México has a new president. This morning, Felipe Calderón ran in the back door of the congressional building amongst a phalanx of ruling party lawmakers, mounted the speaker's podium amid catcalls and jeers, sped through an oath almost inaudible above the riotous din, and was then whisked away to the other side of town for a securely televised national address.* Luckily, México is a very wide town. ALMO was left protest-marching around the national Zócalo. Full-grown congressmen came to fisticuffs in the legislative arena. But, he did it: he's now president. Earlier in the week he named an interior secretary destined to crack down on situations like those in the Zócalo and Oaxaca. Do actions speak as loudly as words today? By the time Calderón delivered his address, his tone was predominantly conciliatory: straying from the conservative economic party-line of the PAN, he attempted to unify red and blue México by asserting his desire for progressive healthcare and scholarship programs, stressing the need to strengthen México's economic infrastructure to a point where its workforce no longer relies on employment opportunities in the US. This is actually an interesting move; he seems to be subtly distancing himself from Fox's six years of attempted immigration reform--seeking to staunch the flow from this side of the fence. This is very much in the spirit of cooperation with the interests of the United States right now, but also seems squarely in the best interest of México. In any event, his excellent lip service to the concerns of opposition parties, probably requisite in a country where rarely will anyone be elected with majority support, was likely fomented over these last five solid month of political protest. Because of this, he may very well be a better president for all of AMLO's haranguing. [Cavin]

Friday

México has a new president. This morning, Felipe Calderón ran in the back door of the congressional building amongst a phalanx of ruling party lawmakers, mounted the speaker's podium amid catcalls and jeers, sped through an oath almost inaudible above the riotous din, and was then whisked away to the other side of town for a securely televised national address.* Luckily, México is a very wide town. ALMO was left protest-marching around the national Zócalo. Full-grown congressmen came to fisticuffs in the legislative arena. But, he did it: he's now president. Earlier in the week he named an interior secretary destined to crack down on situations like those in the Zócalo and Oaxaca. Do actions speak as loudly as words today? By the time Calderón delivered his address, his tone was predominantly conciliatory: straying from the conservative economic party-line of the PAN, he attempted to unify red and blue México by asserting his desire for progressive healthcare and scholarship programs, stressing the need to strengthen México's economic infrastructure to a point where its workforce no longer relies on employment opportunities in the US. This is actually an interesting move; he seems to be subtly distancing himself from Fox's six years of attempted immigration reform--seeking to staunch the flow from this side of the fence. This is very much in the spirit of cooperation with the interests of the United States right now, but also seems squarely in the best interest of México. In any event, his excellent lip service to the concerns of opposition parties, probably requisite in a country where rarely will anyone be elected with majority support, was likely fomented over these last five solid month of political protest. Because of this, he may very well be a better president for all of AMLO's haranguing. [Cavin]

*

Thursday

A beautiful, if profane, notice of our Vegas wedding was posted by our good friend Ian a couple of days ago. Ian's post includes some photos we attached to last Sunday's official email announcement. Ian's post can be found here. Topically, there is now an mpeg at YouTube capturing Sunshine's totally faked bouquet toss, predictably caught by her one and only bridesmaid. That can be found here. Since professionals have overtaken the reins of moving-related housework, I've been left with the time to upload some remaining photos to Flickr. By this time tomorrow there will be over a hundred new pictures from our Xilitla vacation available here. Day of the Dead photos from Pátzcuaro will soon follow. Only then will I finally be caught up enough to start working with the hundreds and hundreds of pictures taken in Vegas. In lieu of talking about my aching calves, let's look over some kooky political events since this is such a big weekend for the hemisphere. Venezuela's election will be just as nutty as usual this Sunday.* Goodbye Chavez? Here, the hotly-contested Mexican Presidential Election Saga ends tomorrow, maybe, if Felipe Calderón is sworn into office before congress. Tuesday, members of two parties swarmed the speaker's platform. Adult legislators have laid siege to the podium ever since then, taking bathroom breaks in shifts.* Occasional punch-ups break out in the confined area. The Democratic Revolution Party is attempting to hijack this turf in a bid to disrupt Friday's ceremony--much as they disrupted President Fox's state of the union address back in September.* National Action Party participants are trying to prevent this by doing the same. Incidentally, many interpret the governing law to indicate that Calderón cannot be inaugurated without swearing-in before congress in this place on this day. We'll see. [Cavin]

Wednesday

There are movers in my house right now. It's five, and they are making a last minute inventory of stuff, walking around the house trying to estimate what supplies they will need to bring tomorrow. Apparently, they've run out of book boxes for today. As of five, I have been awake for twenty-nine hours. I stayed up all night doing last-minute stuff, and was actually satisfied that I'd prepared our house correctly by the time these guys showed up to put most of it in boxes this morning. I am very impressed with the work they've gotten done already: except for some doodads here and there, the majority of the downstairs is done, difficult kitchen breakables and oddment tchotchkies alike. They've taken down most of the books and packed them into prefab book boxes; then they've tipped over the bookshelves themselves and packed them into custom-made bookshelf boxes. Our enormous metal star is in a hand-crafted pentagonal envelope, our vacuum cleaner is stuffed into a snug little cone. Like the wicker cat bench we had shipped from Pátzcuaro recently, everything has been encased in its very own form-fitting corrugated and padded shell. This makes the living room look just several Coptic jars shy of Tut's burial vault--if Tut had ruled over a cardboard Egypt. Besides these interesting sculptural boxes lining the walls around the first floor, the house is starting to look pretty empty already. I think this effect happened just after I took all of the refrigerator magnets down and stuck them in a box. Of course, all of the menus and grocery lists and forensic calendars and cabbie business cards and thermal photos of The Cat came down with them, leaving the refrigerator very white, the kitchen very barren, and the house very nearly empty. [Cavin]

Tuesday

There's always a point in every move when one must spend several hours in front of the old shredder. I reached that point today. Since I had plenty of time to think, I thought about working at Kinko's. For the first time since retirement, I was doing something that really reminded me of that, specifically the legal jobs that were the Kinko's experience's absolute low-point: reaching into boxes, pulling out folders of folded and stapled receipts and things, carefully taking them apart--making sure everything was there--and feeding them into a machine. At Kinko's I was, of course, copying them, sometimes numbering those copies, tallying them up, and then putting them all back together, staples and all, into folders into boxes the way I found them. Today, I was ripping them to shreds and baling them up in puffy wads. As my mind drifted, I actually found that pretending I was in Kinko's again, utterly destroying some important towering stack of full disclosure, made today's job a lot more fun. Tomorrow, a team of movers show up around nine am, and the whole process starts in earnest. I'm looking forward to it. By the weekend, there will very little left for me to worry about. Then you will hear all about cleaning the place and after that I will whine about leaving this all behind. In the news: seems as if president Fox fainted at his Guanajuato ranch over the weekend.* Pundits blame the heat; and in any event the ambulance that streaked to his rescue took him to his house instead of a hospital. Fox is only president until Friday, anyway. His successor, Felipe Calderón, named his interior minister today. Apparently this left the Mexican legislature so divided that they began slapping and pushing one another.* [Cavin]

Monday

For a while there we had a figurative cat in a bag, and I guess it's out of that bag now. Last night, Sunshine and I emailed notice of our Las Vegas wedding to everyone we had an address for. This email included a link to the Little White Wedding Chapel where we were married. Their site will be hosting the video of our ceremony for the next twenty-odd days.* That chapel can be found online here, and the video is here, although you will have to use Windows Media Player to view it. Free downloads of Media Player can be found here, if necessary. But this cat is even farther from that bag, now. You can also read notice of our wedding at this celebrity blog. Now, a hundred thousand people I don't know have read about this cat. Sadly, I immediately began receiving email delivery failure notifications last night, so there are people I actually know who haven't yet heard the news. There's a chance you are reading about this for the first time at Neil's blog right now. I enjoyed getting married in Vegas--in the same Little White Chapel which hosted similar events for Sinatra and the characters in Friends. The Chapel has a drive-thru window to accommodate handicapped couples. It's covered by a Little Tin Roof painted with cherubs and stars. They call this drive-thru the "tunnel of love." We got married inside one of the little chapel rooms. Our pianist kept yelling "Mazel Tov" and offered to bring us a glass to stomp. Was this because of my dashing fedora? Our photographer, a Sammy Davis, jr. impersonator, called me a gangster when I didn't smile quickly enough. Later, he handed us the roll and told us to take it to CVS. Awesome. [Cavin]


* The Chapel hosts the video for thirty days, but we also got a DVD-R hardcopy, so if interested parties somehow fail to make the video work before the deadline, I will still be able to distribute copies someday. Anyone with the wherewithal to capture the streaming source and upload it permanently to YouTube would be doing me a favor. Hint hint.

Sunday

Hello there. Here is a small admin note. Do I know your email address? If I do, it's likely that you have mail waiting in your inbox right now. No? Then maybe you should send me your address. End admin note. We spent all day frantically doing the sorting and moving things that we got behind on during our recent vacation. Tension is in the air. We're walking around the whole house asking ourselves "does this item go to Vietnam, DC, or into storage for years?" We then have to answer that question. Then we have to make distinct piles of sorted stuff, often meaning we must go on to justify our decision-making to each other. This can be tricky if, say, she feels strongly that some item needs to go into storage, and I think we definitely need it Vietnam. The process is, of course, far worse if I can't figure out whether something should go to DC, and she is none too sure whether we should store it. One item we're sure about: a wicker jaguar bench with bronze eyeballs that we bought during a recent vacation. We had it professionally shipped to Monterrey, and those shippers custom built a form-fitting corrugated sarcophagus around it and fit it into a swank little crate. It looks like an ancient zoo animal. It goes to Vietnam before we set it free. Other decisions are more difficult and we really must get them all decided correctly--and, in any event, quickly. Originally, we had until tomorrow morning, but the move has been thankfully postponed while the employers sort through red tape. This is good because we are not ready yet. We are crossing our fingers about Tuesday, now: that we are ready, and that the red tape is, too. [Cavin]

Saturday

We returned last night, but since it was already several seconds after midnight I decided to put this resumption of update stuff off until today. Coming back was overshadowed by the fact that we'll be leaving town, for good, in less than a month. Driving into Monterrey felt very much like a homecoming as we navigated the familiar, empty, shortly-before-midnight roads. I've talked about this before, I know, but it never ceases to amaze me how quickly familiarity managed to set in here. How this ugly, no-nonsense city became imbued with a sense of place, or safety, or whatever, that has made returning here a similar sort of relief as coming home. This time, we knew, was the last time: when we next drive over the city limits it'll be the afternoon we return to the US. It is fairly unlikely that we will ever return to Monterrey. How long does it take a sense of safety place, grown over eighteen months, to evaporate again? I don't know. Last night, out the cab windows, orangey city lights fanned out in all the familiar patterns over the Macroplaza, Parque Fundidora, Barrio Antiguo, Loma Larga, and Obispado. The radio towers twinkled atop la Silla, Mirador and las Mitras, high above houselights in the valley below. Merry Christmas lights have appeared since last week, garishly filling in whatever spaces remain. Cruising in the cab, I realized the city had grown beyond familiar, safe, and homey: it had also, at some point, become pretty. So I did what I always have to do: looked out the windows trying to remember everything. Usually I do this because everything is so new I feel like I need an edge. This time it was different. What I don't remember will be lost so very soon. [Cavin]