Basque Walks The stocky woman in knee high rubber boots waved a red rag at the passing traffic. On this rural road traffic was hardly worth noticing, a farm truck, a car every five or ten minutes. There were more pilgrims than cars. She was moving sheep back to the farm after their summer pasturage in the mountains. The Chemin de St. Jacques de Compostello crosses back and forth on the road where the farm woman guided the flock with the help of a dog. A man and teenaged boy, possibly the husband and son of the traffic stopping woman, herded [View Full Entry]

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http://madammayo.blogspot.com/2008/07/guest-blogger-l-peat-oneil-5-links-on.html http://www.powerwalk.ning.com [View Full Entry]

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Xmas is not a holiday here, but Xmas eve the youth cut loose until 11 pm or so...It's a western holiday dominated by Santa images, no christ god stuff, so the youngsters want to celebrate and feel modern. The Chinese youth in the streets wear Santa hats with light up stars on the white border (or hearts on the alternative model) spraying fake sno' -- the kind that was banned in USA about 3 decades ago. Spraying sticky white fake snow on each other's coats and being weirdly free, making their own fun. The old people walked to and fro [View Full Entry]

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Construction everywhere in Shanghai. Displaced people (the old folks, usually) living on the edge of rubble yards that used to be their low-rise apt. blocks. Sunday, on my morning walk, I saw masses of peasant-migrant men crouched in a line waiting for possible work at a construction project. Huge migration from the countryside to the jobs the construction boom is fueling. Workers live in hastily built dorms on construction job-sites and tumble out of their bunks into the next shift running round-the-clock. Wednesday night (8-8-07) a colorful TV extravaganza to celebrate the 1 yr count [View Full Entry]

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Mina de Trinidad, worked by licensed prospectors who chip rock seeking opals. Opals are polished and set by local artisans. [View Full Entry]

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Guanajuato is riddled with old mine shafts and tunnels. Poke around in the dark corners and you might see the ghosts of wealthy mine owners and the weary spirits of the workers. http://www.mexconnect.com/MEX/mxc/gto.html -- travel website featuring Guanajuato http://www.guanajuato.gob.mx/ -- website for the state of Guanajuato [View Full Entry]

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In the farming hills of Vera Cruz state, about 50 K from the Gulf of Mexico, I found silence and livestock rolling in the grass. You need a compass up there to navigate because there are no road signs to speak of. Coffee producing mountain towns like Coatapec and Xico, about 10 km from Jalapa (Xalapa), offer unusual access to rural life. [View Full Entry]

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Where are the revolutionary minds today? [View Full Entry]

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At the northern end of the Sierra Gorda range, where the dusty red rock washes into green, an eccentric Englishman named Edward James built a cement fantasy garden, an experiment in surrealist architecture. [View Full Entry]

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Dinner in Mexico City In Mexico, you have to invite twice as many people as you want to have at your party, I was told. So, on the day of the dinner I asked just about everybody I saw --the neighbors upstairs who gave me a lift to work, a colleague who I owed a meal, the Starbucks barista, the computer fixer people who restored e-mail after the daily server crash…. In the end the original number of people showed, minus two cancellations. The friend was right - you DO have to ask more people than you hope will come. Net [View Full Entry]

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