Now some long distance buses in Peru play videos. The choice of videos, however, is really shocking, they are so violent. I am wondering whether this is just my luck or whether it is a generalized phenomenon.

Yesterday, while driving through for hours through some of the most depressing industrial slums I have ever seen, including the entire city of Chimbote twice, we were treated to two videos. First, Rambo. Then, one about human trafficking in the D.F., Juárez, and New Jersey, with some very graphic rapes and beatings. I and the several of my neighbors - these passengers being a very hard working, broken down, and exceedingly sweet crowd - seemed to want to watch videos so as not to look out the windows, but on the other hand, kept looking out the windows so as not to have to see what was happening in the videos.

I kept thinking, these people live in this landscape and these videos are what are on their TV screens … while commercialized cumbias blare in the smoke-filled streets, drowning out, sometimes, the sound of construction. How do they handle it? I think they handle it because food, cell phones, transportation and Internet stations are still available, there is some employment, there are goods in the markets, and there is no war here.

That is to say that Peru has not yet turned into a one hundred percent ruined African country, and that consumerism is an effective drug. I am told that Dickens was horrified by the United States when he visited because it was so much more savage and ravaged than his London. This is how I feel about Peru as it is now.

Axé.

From Servetus: the 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. Bold the ones you’ve read, strike through the ones you read but do not remember well, and italicize the ones you have never heard of. Many are unread by me, and some are unknown to me. I am only interested in reading some of these.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: A memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud
Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: A true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

Axé.

Everyone knows not to be in Lima in winter, because of the weather. I would add to this that if you are traveling (as opposed to renting your own apartment), not to be in Miraflores in the month of July because it is inundated with “backpackers” and other people you left Europe and the United States to take a break from.

Everyone also knows not to go to Cusco during the month of July for the same reason. I regret to add to this list the entire department of Ancash. The tourism mentality is not a great deal better than that of a cruise boat, even if the actual tourists appear to be more hip than that. And there is this very colonial, even apartheid-esque atmosphere - there are natives and tourists, each in their role.

At other times of the year it is possible to travel without dealing with so many tourists, but in July the only thing to do in my opinion is have a connection to rent a house from a non-fancy local. This is what I could have done and should have.

I will next report from the interior of La Libertad, God willing. It is fiestas patrias and one never knows if it will be possible to find a place to stay. I have telephoned some places and they say they are dealing on a first come first serve basis.

I have the feeling there may be some hard traveling coming up but I do not think it can be harder than dealing with the inundation of adventure tourists with a cruise ship mentality I have in Ancash. I do not like these colonial situations at all, at all.

Axé.

There are many such words and I want to know the meaning of this syllable.

PLACE NAMES INCLUDE
Abancay
Chancay
Chinchay
Recuay
Yungay

VERBS INCLUDE
Yanapay (=to cooperate reciprocally)
Challay (=to sprinkle, to fall as does dew)

…and many, many others. Indeed, there seem to be -ay, -iy, and -uy verbs, but -ay verbs seem to dominate.

I know absolutely nothing about this, I am just idly observing and getting curious. Everyone speaks Quechua but me. I would like a commenter to explain the situation with these -ay words. I have been told they are not related but I am not sure I believe it. I want to know if “-ay” means “place.”

I am also curious about place names involving -huaylas, and town names ending in -az and -bamba.

Axé.

If you have spent any time at all in Lima in winter - and I suspect the poverty of the early 20th century, although different from the current poverty, was about the same - you see why Vallejo was able to write such depressed poems about this city. The pollution, the traffic, the general deterioration, and the fact that many beautiful old parts of the city are somewhat moribund, are the main Banes. I think I will go on vacation to where the sun shines, namely the SIERRA. In fact I may be gone by the time this post comes up.

Although I prefer Peru I might secretly be Argentine or Uruguayan because I love the CAFE HAVANNA, of Argentine origin, and the LIBRERIA EL VIRREY, created by Uruguayans. These are both located on a very ritzy street in San Isidro. Besides the books, what makes the bookstore so attractive is that its florescent lighting is the warm-toned kind, not the cool-toned kind which predominates here. Besides the coffee, what makes the Havanna so attractive is that it has halogen lighting.

In any case I have decided rather eccentrically that the right districts to live in are LIMA 1 (I used to live near the Plaza Francia), BARRANCO, and certain districts of PUEBLO LIBRE and MAGDALENA DEL MAR. I am very tempted to buy incandescent light bulbs. It would be ideal to buy one of the beautiful old nineteenth century buildings and restore it, or to return the entire Plaza Bolognesi and Paseo Colón to their original beauty.

Axé.

I normally do not read anything in the genre of self-help, but a friend told me that in her I Could Do Anything… Barbara Sher sounded a great deal like me. And indeed, her ideas fit with mine, but she knows more. I am getting a great deal out of reading at this book. I believe I recommend Barbara Sher generally.

Axé.

My original blogging plans for this Bastille day have been superseded by the need to help broadcast the call to HELP SAVE ZIMBABWE and to ask you, if it is possible for you, to DONATE to this important cause.

I was to have blogged today for Derrick Ashong’s band SOULFEGE, a much better cause than escargot eating, which is what the French Revolution has been reduced to in many Louisiana restaurants. Most specifically I am still to blog for SOULFEGE’s new album.

I am in the Andes with intermittent electricity and low bandwith, so this post is underdeveloped, but please see the Changeseeker’s post on SOULFEGE.

If you find other posts on SOULFEGE, or other information on Zimbabwe aid including refugee aid, please let me know. Since it is not fully constructed, this post can function at least as a kind of aggregator.

*

Finally, I would like to say there is still one very good reason to vote OBAMA: his opposition to offshore drilling (if he can stick to it, of course).

I am at this time just over a stone’s throw from a major glacier which has decreased in size almost 50% over the past few years. By 2015 all Peruvian glaciers under 5,500 meters above sea level will have melted.

I am not connecting the dots here since I know my readers know I am talking about g_____ w______.

Axé.

It is the weekend, so we are singing bluesy rock from Andahuaylas with UCHPA. There are a number of important terms beginning with A, associated with Andahuaylas: Abancay, Apurimac, Arguedas, and Ayacucho, whose song we have sung before:

ADIOS PUEBLO DE AYACUCHO, PERLASCHALLAY
TIERRA DONDE YO HE NACIDO, PERLASCHALLAY.
KAUSAQPAYCHA KUTIMUSAQ, PERLASCHALLAY
HUAÑUSPAYJA AMAÑALLA, PERLASCHALLAY.

Everyone in my house speaks or at least understands Quechua except me, and if I keep listening I too will soon start speaking Spanish with Quechua syntax, like a character in Arguedas: “muy lejos es” “aquí nomasito ven.” “Perlaschallay” apparently means “Mírame, perlita mía.” There is a blog which teaches Quechua and links to Quechua videos. Apurimac mayu!

Axé.

I have been tagged again for the Passion Quilt meme, for which I thank WoC PhD. I am honored because I do not think of myself as passionate about teaching - I was not brought up to think of that as safe, say you are interested in it and you will not get a tenure track job or make tenure. Neither do I identify easily as a “teacher.” I am not Mr. Chips; I am interested in school for what one can learn, not for what one can teach; I may teach well but then I am also good at service and administration; I came here for study and research, not to be a “teacher.” That is why this meme has now put me at a loss twice.

I try to impart to students that in terms of choosing majors and careers, they should orient themselves towards their true interests and not just to lo que está bien. Most of my students’ parents want them to major in something which will lead directly to a job, either with putative security and a “good schedule” (K-12 teaching, nursing, speech therapy, IT) or which makes a great deal of money (business, engineering, law, medicine). I am not opposed to this - practical skills and professional licenses give freedom. But more majors are practical than many people realize, or are practical in more ways than people realize. And I try to encourage women to consider as well the “practical” majors normally advised for men, and vice versa for men who have interests in the more “feminine” careers.

Mostly, though, I work hard and often successfully at finding ways for students whose interests are less obviously “practical” to combine these interests with practical plans. This takes some time and thought. It also takes some investigation and a fair amount of listening. It amazes me how much people spout at students, or “listen” but refuse to respond.

I was not sure what sort of picture to use for this post, so I thought a menu would be as good since I have written about choices. Now I am to name five others and ask them to participate, but all memes on this site are self-tagging.

Axé.

If I vote for McKinney and McCain wins, don’t blame me, blame Barack Obama and the Democrats who refused to look seriously at candidates who offered alternatives to Republican policies!

I am irritated at Obama and at a few other things, but I am actually in an excellent mood because I have been hanging out at a good university and a good conference.

It has been some time since I’ve been excited about the next day the night before, because on the next day I will get to keep writing an academic piece. I can say this, and this, and this, I crowed last evening.

I keep thinking my problem in life is that I am not interested enough in what I do to be willing to do it in circumstances antithetical to it. But if I displace myself to an environment which has anything at all to do with what I do, I change completely.

To keep political disillusionment in perspective and celebrate writing we feature today Geoffrey Philp’s excellent post on why he blogs.

Axé.