Beware the Satanic Flea-Market Masseuse

I sprained my ankle last week playing soccer on my older son's field trip. I was about to score, and that dastardly miniature ball we were playing with got under my foot and the next instant I was gracefully embracing the turf. Then there was that moment where you feel like an idiot and want to get up before anyone notices you lying there and due to the shooting pain in your leg you can't move at all. Anyway, I iced it and elevated it during the remainder of the picnic. After she saw me limping back to the car, another mom asked if she could help put away my stroller. I said "No, I got it." She put her hand on my arm. "I used to have what you have: I used to be a supermom too. Let me put your stroller away for you." Like a baby I immediately started to cry--luckily, I was wearing sunglasses so she couldn't tell.

Anyway, It's been getting better every day, but due to the crutches and the limping, I tweaked my back. So my husband suggests we go to the flea market where you can get Chinese acupressure massages for $10. "They're really good," he promises. We get down there and after a few minutes they usher me into the tent to lie on a table covered with tissue paper that does nothing to cushion some sort of pokey thing against my face. A young woman who speaks no English begins--with gestures and a few words I make clear she shouldn't touch my ankle, and that the problem is in my right upper back. She begins massaging my head with vigor. I'm still wearing the cornrows, but that doesn't deter her--I start to think I'm going to have to take the braids out when I get home if she keeps rubbing my head like it's a brillo pad. Then she sticks her fingers in my ears, raises my head and whaps it back down. The whole snapping thing, I think, is overrated in physical therapy, unless perhaps you have something dislocated in the first place. Then she starts buffeting my head and ears with little slaps. Medium hard slaps, actually. I didn't notice any of the old folks on the other beds getting quite this treatment. I begin to wonder: will this become therapeutic and/or relaxing, or will trauma rule the day?

Basically, the entire massage consists of painful digs of her elbow into my knotted muscle, slaps, attempted dislocation of various joints, and hyperextension of my back (thank God for yoga or I'd have been too inflexible to withstand it). I attempt to get her to use less force by yelping, saying "no, please, too hard" and waving my hands, all in vain. It ends with a strenuous reorganization of my facial features that leaves red welts on my cheeks. When it's over, I look at my husband, who's drinking a beer outside the tent (hmm, flea market, rolling beer vendors...was that why he was so eager to go?). "It's your turn, honey," I say. "Oh no, we've got to run if we're going to get the kids to the pool," he says. "Pay her $20, that was great." She seems to understand this English, so I reluctantly hand her $20. As we get in the car, I start complaining. "Paying $20 for that abuse is ridiculous. You didn't feel what that was like. Couldn't you see how hard she was doing it?" "Do you want to go back tomorrow and get another one?" "God, no! I'm never going back!"

Now he feels bad for me. I am so stiff--not only is my back cramping worse than it was to begin with, my neck and shoulders are achy, like the feeling of a bad flu, and it's hard to turn my head.

In summary, and contrary to most experts, I do not recommend high-impact flea-market acupressure massage.

Tips for Musical Moms, Episode 13

Tips for Musical Moms, Episode 12

Eva Cassidy Movie

This video of Eva Cassidy performing Over the Rainbow is fantastic and moving. I can't believe I'm finally seeing her after so many years of listening attentively to this exact recording. Her guitar playing is so expressive yet simple, too. I wonder if she's gone to some parallel plane where all the artists who are discovered after they die enjoy fabulous dinner conversation with each other and endless, joyful creative play.

From the Dept. of Demographics

From Wikipedia:

"The United Nations projects that world population will stabilize in 2075 at nine billion due to the demographic transition. Birth rates are now falling in most developing nations and the population would decrease in several developed nations if there was no immigration"

Click on "demographic transition" above for an absorbing discussion of the four stages of population growth and decline. The factors behind large numbers of children in poor populations and low fertility in rich/postindustrialized ones are interesting. Of course, like all predictions the proof that global population will stabilize remains to be seen. But it makes it clear that there are consequences to every action: If women gain socioeconomic value by work and education, motherhood declines and so does the value of working with children. An equation I hadn't thought of...

Vagabundeo Poster

Check out this poster designed by Dwight Been, with photography by Eliot Kuhner. That there at the top is the cover of my new album!

Alexa's Tips for Musician Moms, Episode 11

Tips for Musician Moms, Episode 10

Mexico en Viaje Relampago

As I write this we’re heading west towards Bakersfield, having encountered Los Angeles-bound traffic on Interstate 10 and decided to jog around L.A. through the desert. With luck we’ll be home by 1 or 2 a.m., having driven 5,000 miles round trip from Oakland, California to Cuautla, Morelos, Mexico in 12 days. The boys are asleep in the back—we’ve done a lot of night driving to lessen the strain on them.

Highlights of the trip included, of course, all the perfect visits with family—no drama! There was a nice party for the baby, who was the reason we had made the drive—my suegra was crying on the phone every week saying she was afraid she’d die before we brought the baby down for her to see. They had clowns and invited all the neighborhood kids.

We also drove up Popocatepetl, the volcano that looms, quietly steaming, over my husband’s home town. Of course, you aren’t allowed to get too close, but we made it to the rarified air at Paso de Cortés, where there’s a visitor’s center. I walked some lovely interpretive trails with signs explaining the habits of the teporingo or zepache, a furtive, talkative little rabbit in danger of extinction. As I was strolling, I looked up at the normally taciturn volcano. Suddenly, a menacing belch of smoke came rolling out, tinged with brown, and I picked up the pace back to the car, where my husband and sister-in-law were waiting with the engine running. Still, I figured if it was going to blow they probably would have detected seismic activity and blocked access to the park. I would love to take a hike the next time I visit, or perhaps go backpacking there at the base of La Mujer Dormida, the dormant volcano that’s next to Don Goyo, as locals call Popocatepetl.

Another highlight was Mazatlán. We drove all night from Cuautla and got there at 9 am. The beach was fabulous, both in terms of sand/sea/sun/scenery and in terms of all the activities. People were paragliding (where you strap on a parachute attached by a line to a boat and fly over the water), jet skiing, surfing, boating, exercising, water skiing, swimming, selling things, playing with their dogs, four-wheeling, digging, spear fishing… and instead of seeming out of control, it seemed fun, like things used to be in the U.S. before you couldn’t walk your dog on the beach any more and had to wear protective gear to do any activity. Americans in Mexico don’t sign a waiver before paragliding, they just strap in and go! Also, many of the vacationers were Mexican families, so there wasn’t a sense of impropriety or destructiveness about all the merriment.

The amazing thing to see was how much Mexico has changed in the last 15 years. Our family is so much better off—and that’s not just because of money my husband has sent. Consumerism is taking over. When I first visited years ago, there was nothing extra in the house. If you wanted a piece of paper or a pen or a rubber band, you had to go make a trip to some store somewhere to get it. Now our nieces and nephews have cell phones, digital video cameras and DVD players. One of my husband’s sisters has a 2002 sedan. There’s Internet—fast!—right around the corner from my mother-in-law’s house. My husband built her a pristine second floor, which for various reasons sits empty, awaiting our infrequent visits. More recently, he built her a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe in her patio. Every year she has mariachis come and sing mañanitas to the virgencita. He also wanted a fountain in the patio, but wasn’t thrilled with the frog-themed monstrosity they chose: Surrounded by grinning minions holding jars, a fluorescent green mutant jauntily leans on a sign that says “Bienvenidos!” It does make a pleasant burbling sound, though.

A few years ago, the Comercial Mexicana burned down near their place, and it was replaced by a Mega. The store is actually part of a mall with underground parking and a few American stores. As we made our lightning tour of Mexico, we saw plenty of new malls throughout the north, east and west, all with vast parking lots.

On the whole, however, our trip showed the diversity of Mexico. Driving up to Popo, we passed fields being tilled by horse-drawn plows. In the north, from Mazatlán to Culiacán, factory farms were the rule, with American-like precision, enormous bodegas and no workers in sight. We saw smoldering shanty towns followed by shining cities, technology parks and universities. The traditional Mexican ways, say, of buying ingredients in the old mercados, still predominate. But my nieces, with tongue, eyebrow and lip piercings and factory jobs to finance their nightclubbing, dream of fast American lives. Mexico has been a strong industrial nation for a long time—but can it continue to grow without losing its character?

Perhaps it can. One classic aspect of Mexican life is the mysterious and multi-layered workings of the goverment. We had not properly imported our vehicle, as I mentioned in my previous posting, but it all turned out OK. On the way home, heading toward Nogales, Arizona, we passed myriad military, agricultural and police checkpoints, always with hearts pounding. It was on the last of these that we had trouble. We were prepared to “pay for our mistake” if need be. Sure enough, after 20 minutes of the judiciales searching our car with increasing vigor, Emilio handed over 1,000 pesos. The judicial who took the bribe wouldn’t look at me—I think he felt bad about it. “No chilles,” he told Emilio, meaning “don’t report this to the government.” But hey, Emilio’s not mentioning it, I am. Frankly, considering the legal alternative, which was for them to seize the car, I was thrilled with the mordida. More than one federale let us go without stopping us, even though you really, really need to have that import sticker on your windshield.

In the end, the main thing that preserved us from the federales and judiciales was this: We were a family traveling together in a country that reveres family above all else.

Compared to that warmth, Arizona’s antiseptic suburban settlements felt soulless. Funny thing, I got my hair done in cornrows on the beach in Mazatlán. In Tucson, I walk into a refrigerated Days Inn; the manager takes one look at my hair and interrupts the person swiping my credit card to say they can’t give us a room! That’s why in a convenience store packed with returning vacationers here in the California desert I felt a surge of love for my quirky state, where you have to work pretty hard to shock folks with your looks. Well, unless you go to that white-supremacist-run ribs joint in Mariposa outside Yosemite, but that’s a story for another day…

The News from Mexico

We´re in my husband´s hometown of Cuautla, Morelos. Crazy as we are, we drove here (we couldn´t afford to fly)! On our way down from Laredo, Texas (everyone told us that was the way to go, but to get to Laredo takes so incredibly long!!) we managed to break two federal laws: First, we bought Mexican car insurance but forgot to register our vehicle with the government for temporary importation. About 6 hours into Mexico´s north east, a federale stops us and asks to see our import papers. We play up our innocence--which was true. I pull out my guidebook and start frantically leafing through it, both to verify the officer´s statements and to emphasize our good intentions. He tells us by rights he should confiscate our car, but since we´re in the middle of nowhere and with family, he won´t. In the end he lets us go with nothing more than a warning not to drive in daylight near Mexico city to avoid getting caught.

Federal offense number two involves eating some fried rattlesnake by the side of the road. As we´re eating it (tastes like fish), I look up and realize we´re under a large billboard that says buying wild products on the highway "es un delito federal." Oops. The woman who serves us the snake asks if we have any baby shoes she can have for her granddaughter, so I give her my son´s.

We stopped in Queretaro because we were exhausted, but ended up spending a wonderful day with family that lives there. My son loved playing with his cousins. The city is magnificent--I really want to go back. We saw a jazz band playing in the old centro, and lots of music everywhere.

We also got lost in Mexico City in the middle of the night, after we´d congratulated ourselves on making it most of the way through. Somehow we got off track and next thing you know Emilio decides to head in a random direction, swearing he won´t let this city get the best of him. To his credit, he normally has an infallible sense of direction. Meanwhile I´m yelling at him to stop so I can figure out on my maps where exactly we are. Soon it becomes clear that we´ve gone one and a half times around the entire city. It was tricky as hell to figure out, with arrows in conflicting directions, streets changing names suddenly and almost no cardinal directions included in the signage (at that moment I really wanted a compass--just figuring out if we were headed in the right direction on a given thoroughfare was near impossible). In the end I won and navigated us out--he was impressed that I had done it.

I´ll close with a story from today: Sitting for a few moments in the zocalo with my husband, a drunk approaches us holding a yellow duckling in one hand and a large bag of corn meal in the other. ¨Please, won´t you give me a few pesos so my duck can eat,¨ he slurs. ¨He hasn´t eaten in four days.¨Duckling is hanging his head in the heat but otherwise looks fine. ¨Give him 10 pesos,¨I tell Emilio, as a reward for this beggar´s ingenuity. ¨No. Get out of here!¨Emilio laughs him away. ¨I was doing that duckling a favor,¨ he explains. ¨If I gave him money he´d go drink some more and leave his duck somewhere. This way when he sobers up maybe he´ll realize he´s carrying the duck food in his other hand!¨ We laughed about this one all the way home.

RIP Chispa, 1991-2007

An hour ago we had our beloved Chispa put to sleep. She was 16, and for the past 6 months she's progressively lost her ability to walk, a neurological problem of unknown origin according to the vet (tests found nothing wrong). Prednisone kept her going for quite a while, but a few times she's gotten stranded in a corner of the yard, unable to get up and get to water, and when I found her she was a dehydrated mess. The past week has been especially hard. I double dosed her on the prednisone for the last two days just to see if she could at least get around, but it didn't make much difference--the water bucket was too high for her so I had to make sure she had everything in a low dish, and I had to prop her up because she often didn't have the strength to hold her head up. For the past few days I also fed her her favorite things, steak and pork ribs and longaniza. Her appetite was still good, at least for human food--she didn't care for dog food any more.

The vet said it was for the better. Clearly, dying at home was going to be slow and painful. They injected her in the leg with an overdose of phenobarbitol and death came a few seconds later. I had trouble leaving her there; I stayed petting her and crying for a while.

So, here are my memories of Chispa:

Noble, intelligent--everyone used to say the expression in her eyes was almost human. She learned all her commands by hand signal. For many years she loved to sneak up onto the bed or couch. She aways wanted to be at my feet. I remember how I taught her to climb a ladder when my husband and I were doing construction in Mendocino. She could climb all the way up an aluminum extension ladder to the roof, and she'd get up there to be with me while I was framing!

Teaching her to swim was so fun. She was so interested in the water, but had no idea how to begin. I started teaching her in the fountain for the Raiders headquarters in Harbor Bay business park in Alameda (when they first developed that place we used to go down and skate or ride bikes with the dogs). I'd wade out a little bit, holding her, and let her legs touch the water as she started paddling instinctively. Then one day, she spied an apple floating in the water, and took off swimming toward it, fetched it and brought it back. She always loved to swim after that--no walk was complete without swimming in the frigid bay, or a lake or pond somewhere. She loved fetching but I never did manage to teach her to bring the ball back all the way to me.

She made me pretty angry a few times, too. She loved to chew--she frequently demolished bricks and cans in her youth, and she ate all my leather shoes and destroyed most of the electrical cords in her first year. She killed two of my chickens, and I was so angry I didn't talk to her for a few days. I found them out in the coop, which I had left open because she'd never shown interest in them before, cold and legs up in the air. The two remaining hens got smart and learned to fly up to the power line in the back yard and perch there.

Poor girl, she took moving down in household status as we had a child and other dogs with equanimity--although I remember bringing home our second dog, Soleil, and they played all day until evening, when Chispa looked at me as if to say, "OK, that was fun, now take her away." Unlike our other dogs, she was totally unagressive, though she wasn't passive either. She simply got along with every dog. Never had a fight. When my son was born she was so excited, sniffing under the door for days until we finally let the dogs meet him. From that point on, she slept under his crib. How she tolerated my son as a toddler--he used to ride her and sit on her.

I love you Chispa and I miss you.

Sell 10,000 CDs?

From Business Week: "Kissing Off the Big Music Labels" (thanks, Laurie):

"The birth of Tilly and the Wall online hints at the threat to the recording industry. Major labels typically need a band to sell at least 500,000 records to make a decent profit because of their high overhead. Efficient indie bands cut out the middlemen and can make a tidy living on 20,000 or 30,000 albums. Tilly and Team Love expect to break even at 10,000 CDs, a respectable number for an indie band's first album. With the online marketing, backed up by a tour, Tilly has sold 3,000 copies of Wild Like Children in the two months since the CD's release."

This nugget is not the main gist of the piece, but it gives me hope, in an odd way. If I can sell 10,000 records, man, I will be well past breaking even!!! I only know one person in my genre who has purported to do so, mainly by extensive touring and festival gigs. Makes me wonder, though--can 10,000 CDs really be merely "a respectable number for an indie band's first album"? That sounds like a miracle to me, given that most releases (major or indie) sell fewer than 1,000 copies. Same goes for 3,000 copies in two months. That's mighty impressive.