Sunday, April 17, 2011

Papel Picado

Roberto Bolaño on Stealing Books


"...I remember the edition: it was a book with very large print, like a primary school reader, slim, cloth-covered, with a horrendous drawing on the jacket, a hard book to steal and one that I didn’t know whether to hide under my arm or in my belt, because it showed under my truant student blazer, and in the end I carried it out in plain sight of all the clerks at the Glass Bookstore, which is one of the best ways to steal and which I had learned from an Edgar Allan Poe story.


After that, after I stole that book and read it, I went from being a prudent reader to being a voracious reader and from being a book thief to being a book hijacker. I wanted to read everything, which in my innocence was the same as wanting to uncover or trying to uncover the hidden workings of chance..."


From Entre paréntesis


Read the full text at the New York Review of Books Blog

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

West Texas

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"There are too many trees," he said. "You can't see the sky."

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...People are leaving, and no one is taking their place... So you might wonder why anyone is still there, in this place where natural beauty is defined by dry creek beds and scraggly mesquite…

"The greatest sunsets. The stars are just right there. You hear the coyotes howling," says Billy Burt Hopper, sheriff of Loving County, home to 82 people and the least-populated county in the United States.

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Full story:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7517531.html

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Werner Herzog and Cormac McCarthy


Werner Herzog reads from All the Pretty Horses:



Herzog and McCarthy discuss cave art:

WERNER HERZOG: When you speak about forgotten dreams, you know, there's one stunning piece unearthed, a rock pendant. The only partial human depiction, the lower part of a female body, naked, the pubic area visible, and the bison somehow embracing the female. And 32,000 years later, you have Picasso drawing paintings and doing prints of the Minotaur and the female.


CORMAC McCARTHY: You know what Picasso said when he came up out of Lascaux after the war?

WERNER HERZOG: Yes.

CORMAC McCARTHY: He said, we've learned nothing.





Full discussion on NPR's Science Friday.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Spanish Missions of Sonora, Mexico


On the route of Father Kino's white missions in Sonora:

La Purísima Concepción de Nuestra Señora de Caborca

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Interior of Missión San Diego del Pitiquito

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Missión San Pedro y San Pablo del Tubutama

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Missión San Antonio Paduano del Oquitoa

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Fotopedia:

Complete list of Spanish missions in the Sonoran Desert: