Even Better Than Halloween

This weekend must've been one of the busiest of the year around here. Between NMSU's homecoming football game (where we got trounced by Boise State 49-0) (hey, last year we got trounced 58-0, so it is a kind of improvement), Halloween, a Carrie Underwood concert on campus, Dia de los Muertos, the local Renaissance Faire, if you count the early voting that ended on Saturday, my head is spinning!

So we spent Halloween giving out vast quantities of chocolates and organic fruit suckers (mmmm.. mango tango!). Saturday we went to both the Dia de los Muertos festival in Mesilla as well as the downtown farmer's market. I've never been to a day of the dead, having just heard about the holiday, and appreciating the asthetic of calavera sculptures, paper banners, and nichos or shadow boxes (take that! Joseph Cornell!).

In any case, it was amazing! The little plaza square was packed with tables and altars filled with photographs, mementos, offerings to deceased family members and pets. Often these were paired with an 8x10 printed description of the person's life and death. It was often touching, sometimes funny. One of the most memorable was a shrine that featured this skeleton decked out with a lap tray that included a portrait of its subject, along with a tv dinner and clicker. It was so personal and specific a tribute. Another invited viewers to eat a piece of their grandfather's favorite candies (those chewy caramel squares), and to ring a bell.

Then there was a woman selling sugar skulls. When I bought a couple, she directed us over to the altar she had created. It took a second for me to put together that if she had constructed an altar, that meant that she had lost someone. It was her son, who died in 2000. He was actually born the same year I was. It was a difficult and wonderful public kind of intimacy (sounds contradictory, I know). Here I was buying a decorated skull made of sweetness, sharing a stranger's grief. This makes me want to participate in a more personal way next year.
There were some that were altars for mass deaths. In addition to a large installation displaying what must've been thousands of paper cranes for the American death toll in the Iraq war, there were also at least two altars to commemorate the women murdered in Juarez.

It was pretty emotional. One of the past posters said "To Remember is to Live"-- I think that's a nice way to acknowledge how it's not morbid, but rather life affirming. One of our favorite (super LIFE AFFIRMING) booths was run by a pair of sisters (Kristi from Dexter, NM and Konsuela from Roswell, NM) who do ceramics, make t-shirts, and had several kick ass calendars. They were both such characters (think Paula Deene, then multiply by two, amplify the volume and laughter, make them arty, and park them in the southwest handing out skull lollipops!). We loved them so much, we had to come back on Sunday just to buy their other calendar. (We came too early and even hung out and waited around just for them to open up.) They even pointed out that we had to visit the booth next door and check out their cool stuff.

Which we did, but nothing could beat Kristi and Konnie.

Okay, finally. I don't mean to brag/gloat but to my friends in Syracuse, NY and Wisconsin, and even Indiana. It is the first week of NOVEMBER and I bought home grown watermelon (seedless but SUPER SWEET), tomatoes, green tomatoes, and canaloupe. And it is sunny and clear.

We are fortunate indeed!