Juan is well!

Today the surgeons installed three stents, and Juan is in recovery, doing well. We're all overjoyed, and the children are wild to see him, though perhaps they won't, as they're missing school and they probably need to come back before Juan can be sent home. We are all grateful, hopeful he will continue to do well, dreaming reunion in summer.

I had a migraine today, so I didn't get out to make a photo, but yesterday I received a book I've been looking forward to, from which the blip photo is taken. The book is Incantations: Songs, Spells, and Images by Mayan Women. The title page says "Fathermothers of the Book: Ámbar Past with Xalik Guzmán Bakbolom and Xpetra Ernandes, Cinco Puntos Press, El Paso, 2005. 

The book was 23 years in the making, a collaborative project of a group of Mayan women in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico and an American woman, Ámbar Past, who has been living in that community since 1971. The poetry (as we call it) was spoken, chanted, or sung in Mayan Tzotzil, written down, translated into Spanish and English, and published in many languages. More in this review.

Here's a taste of it: "Before there was writing, poems were chanted over and over, generation after generation so they would not be forgotten. Each singer adds something from her own harvest. The song is polished in the flowing of the years and tongues" (p. 89).

Sacred fire:
Give me something to eat.
My griddle rests here,
Sacred stone.
I make my tortillas
On the face of your hearth.
On your mask of stone
I bake my bread.
--Maria Tzu.