Me veo sonriendo
en los juegos de palabras
en los primeros momentos de nuestro amor
en la cara de mi hijo.

Me veo muriendo
en los recuerdos de mi abuelo
en el hígado de me papá
en los ojos en el espejo
en la cara de mi hijo.

Helados Scannapieco is the place for ice cream if you are in Buenos Aires. Forget the Freddo and Filippo chains, forget all the trendy, cute heladerías. Just go to Helados Scannapieco at  Avenida Córdoba 4826. It’s been there since 1938, just 17 short years after my aunt was born. Perhaps she remembers it opening. In any case, we won’t hold its youth against it.

It has the ambiance and it has the ice cream. You can try the five different types of Dulce de Leche, but really, as far as I’m concerned it’s all about the Chocolate Amargo.

I travel to Buenos Aires just about every year to visit family and to take in one of the more interesting cities in the world. I try to go in February and March to escape the bleak Michigan winter and store up some BTUs in the dead of a Buenos Aires summer.

I usually like to take 3 weeks vacation to make it worth the long trip. This year, my supervisor at JSTOR was kind enough to offer a hybrid approach. Since there was definitely some pressure to get some projects done, I would be here longer, just under 5 weeks, but would telecommute for part of the time. I’m doing my best to make it work, and it seems to be working.

I brought my wireless hub with me to hook up to the apartment’s cable modem. I get on the work VPN and, other than the occasional slowness when hitting some resources, I might as well be in the office. Social interaction? Email, wikis, instant messaging with and without video, Skype, version control on code. All these, but for Skype we use in the office anyway. Some people not in my department didn’t even know I was 5500 miles away.

BTW, have started following @telesaur and @phunkpathic on Twitter.

Saw the Fischbein exhibit at the Palais de Glace in Buenos Aires. The exhibit was big enough to fill the entire first floor of the Palais de Glace. See http://www.palaisdeglace.org/exposiciones/2009/01/flischbein/fischbein.html
The 3 pieces on that web page are about 3×4 feet. There were much smaller boxes and much bigger. Probably about 50 pieces in all, perhaps more. Most built around little plastic babies (1 1/2″ long) woven, glued, wired into/onto all sorts of things.

It took me quite a while to get into it. Eventually, it was humorous and interesting. As the blurb on that page says, he says, “Mi ideal no es componer, sino generar texturas”. It’s not about composition, it’s about texture. But it’s texture at a bigger level: color, rhythm, space and juxtoposition are part of the “texture”. So, why isn’t it composition? Maybe it is too.

My 96-year-old aunt, Virucha, told me this as we walked around the block in Buenos Aires that was once the quinta of the Pagliere clan (the block surrounded by Corrientes, Sarmiento, Gascón, and Acuña de Figueroa). In front of my cousin’s shop was a sign that said something like: “No dejar canastos en la acera o la calzada”. She saw that I wasn’t completely familiar with the words, so to illustrate she told me the following story.

[Virucha, mi tía de 96 años, me contó este chiste mientras dabamos la vuelta de la manzana que antiguamente era la quinta de la familia Pagliere (la cuadra entre Corrientes, Sarmiento, Gascón, and Acuña de Figueroa). En frente de la fábrica de mi prima Lucila Ballester (que diseña y hace trajes de baño de mujer), la hija de la tía, había un cartel en que estaba escrito: No dejar canastos en la acera o la calzada. Virucha vió que no conocía muy bien las palabras, así que para ilustrarmelas, me contó la siguiente historia.]

Una española se muda, con su gata, a Buenos Aires. Le pregunta a un vecino “dónde podría ir a pasear con mi gata?” “Bueno,” le dice el vecino, “el jardín botántico es lindo y ahí hay muchos gatos.” Entonces, un día la española lleva su gata al jardín botánico.
Un gato del jardín se acerca a la gata y le dice, “Qué tal si vamos a pasear por la vereda?”

La gata le dice, “no se dice ‘vereda’, se dice ‘acera’.”

“Bueno,” dice el gato, “qué tal si vamos a la calle?”

La gata le dice, “no se dice ‘calle’, se dice ‘calzada’.”

El gato, un poco harto ya, está casi por irse. Ahora la gata le dice, “Qué tal si vamos a coger un ratón?”

El gato le dice, “No se dice ‘ratón’, se dice ‘rato’.”

Here in Buenos Aires again, the land of the unexpected adventure and an anarchistic everyday life, on a nearly annual family visit cum winter escape. Heat, sun and chaos of possibility to escape cold, cloud-locked Ann Arbor with its dual self-delusions of cultural diversity and progressiveness.

Staying at a fantastic find of an old apartment in a casa chorizo in Palermo Viejo, which may have already jumped the cultural shark since last visit. Other barrios up and coming. All in flux.

More postings to come.

In a conversation recently with someone about how many Argentines are blonde (which for some reason still surprises some people), I was pointed to http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/. Cool site.

A recent email from my second cousin in California about her childhood visits to the family ranch (la Atropellada) northwest of Buenos Aires. It has since become a dude ranch of sorts, or at least a resort.

Hola Alan,

Acá va información en “La Atropellada”.

Originalmente eran 4000 hectareas que Luis compró antes que yo naciera (o sea más de 60 años). Marcos era el que las administraba y vivía en el campo.

Muere Luis, pasa a suceción, muere Marcos y le quedan 600 hectareas y el casco a Lucila. Ella lo abre a turismo y de ahí esta página web.

Pero es original de la familia. Ahí yo pasaba mis tres meses de verano andando a caballo, nadando en el tanque australiano, yendo al arroyo en sulky, y mientras te lo cuento huelo los eucaliptos al mediodía, escucho el arrullo de las palomas a la hora de la ignomiosa siesta forzada y recuerdo el cielo
tachonado de mil estrellas mientras corríamos y agarrabamos las luciernagas para ponerlas en frascos
junto con ranitas chiqutitas atraídas por la luz de la galería.

Lamento que todo esto pertenezca al pasado, tal vez la única manera sea escribirlo, pero a quién le interesaría este esfuerzo?

Alicia

So, looks like Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has won the election in the first round. Seems most are saying that this means a continuation of the current political and economic situation in Argentina. A cousin of mine, L, who I talked to last week, was afraid that Cristina would win and that things would continue or get worse. From what I’ve experienced during my visits since 2001, I see a slow but steady general improvement for the majority of poor and lower middle-class.

Though even for middle class folk, things are not great, I think she is not as badly off as many, many people in Argentina, She told me that her son, M, who according to her knows more about this sort of thing, predicts a collapse in 2008 or 2009.

Argentina is interesting in that everyone there complains about the current state of affairs, the corruption, the dog-eat-dog nature of day to day living, that everyone is working an angle. Just consider the lyrics of the famous Tango Cambalache. The basic philosophy is since everyone else is doing it, you better get good at doing it yourself. Only way to make your way in the world. So, if things are so bad, why vote for the same? I know too little about Argentine politics, but I suppose other choices may not be so great, the devil you know versus the devil you don’t, all that. Actually, that happens in the US too, no? With the illusion of choice we have in the US in all realms of life, from the supermarket aisles to our politicians, we “get to” choose between slightly left of center and slightly right of center. (Of course, there are periods in history, like Viet Nam and the current Bush regime, where things are ever so slightly more polarized, but considering the spectrum of all possibilities, its a small range). I digress.

We’ll see if M is right. Though Argentina can and will surprise, I’d be surprised.