Category: Mexico

Biannual roundup of your favorite posts

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Above photo from Postcard from Toulouse, France: Falling in love one quirky detail at a time

The year 2022 brought a reshuffling of what blog entries caught your attention. You dove back as far as 2010, an indication of how long I have been blogging.

Barton Springs in Zilker Park, Austin History Center

You politely made one of the stories drawn from research for An Ostrich-Plumed Hat, And Yes, She Shot Him Dead your number one favorite, clearly attracted by Texans’ love of pralines. You continue to support efforts to populate Brackenridge Park with ghosts, and thanks for welcoming a post about my new hometown focusing on the history of Zilker Park. And the quirkiness that is Toulouse sparked your attention. In other words, your interests are as unpredictably wide-ranging as my posts.

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A season when cemeteries reunite the living and the dead

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Above: No rearranging of the surroundings would be needed to film a horror movie in the dark and cavernous Cimitero delle Fontanelle in Naples, Italy.

It’s not surprising that a writer who would include Haunting the Graveyard as part of a book title is drawn to cemeteries. A few random headstones can reveal stories about individuals and entire communities.

Someone in the family demonstrates great patience with sating my taphophilia wherever we travel. Naturally, All Saints Day and All Souls Day are among my favorite times to do so. Posts in this blog are filled with the resulting photos, and the links below will take you to a few from our past travels. So many graveyards from which to choose….

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Caste discrimination woven into Spanish Colonial art of the Americas

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Above: “Virgin of the Tailors,” Cusco, Peru, circa 1750, on loan from Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima

Late-colonial New Spain was awash with conflicting energies: American-born Spaniards (Creoles), like their North American counterparts, felt a growing desire for independence, yet needed their identification with Europe to cement their sense of superiority over the racialized indigenous, African, and mixed-race lower classes….”

“Casta Painting and the Rhetorical Body,” Christa Olson, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Fall 2009

And 18th-century fashion statements as recorded in paintings and sculpture became a tool to exhibit the claimed superiority of those with pure, or at least high, percentages of Spanish blood flowing through their veins. On display at the Blanton Museum of Art through January 8, Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial Latin America focuses on the societal role of textiles in conveying class distinctions.

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