Paint Runs

Pour painting by Holton Rower. Beautiful colors for a busy Friday. [NOTE: Music is String Quartet No. 3 (Mishima) by Kronos Quartet].

Mandalay Express (From the Archive)

After finishing the rattan survey in the Hukaung Valley (see Hukaung Valley Rattan Survey), we arrived at Myitkyina to learn that our flight to Yangon had been canceled and that no planes would be available in the near future. Our flight from Bangkok to New York was in four days. For lack of any better options, we decided to traverse the 919 miles from Myitkyina to Yangon by train.  We bought our tickets, got blessed by a Buddhist monk, and then wobbled and lurched and squirmed for almost 48 hours.

[NOTE: Music (local pop) was playing the entire trip - all night and all day.  They never turned the lights out in the cars for security reasons. The springs kept popping out of the cushion of my seat.]

Calehual

The agaves were flowering during my recent trip to Guerrero, Mexico. Image shows the developing floral spike, or "calehaul", of Agave cupreata Trel & Berger.  Once the flowers are produced, they will be pollinated by bats. The fact that this individual has been allowed to get this far along in it's reproductive cycle indicates that it will not be harvested to make mescal.  It is purposely being left to produce seed to maintain the population. [NOTE: The fact that it was 12 degrees in New York this morning may explain why I continue to post images from sunny Guerrero. I was working in a t-shirt. Sigh.]

Experts

Another image from the meeting in Acateyahualco, Guerrero last week (see Meeting in Acateyahualco). This is what traditional knowledge looks like. [NOTE: I worry that this may be the last generation of this caliber of rural Mexican farmer].  

De-ice

The first step in Delta Flight 481 to Mexico last Tuesday was coating the wings of the plane with a de-icer so that we didn't freeze up and drop out of the sky on take-off. Seemed like a good idea to me.

Mescalero

This man has been making mescal out of Agave cupreata in Acateyahualco, Guerrero for a long, long time. Counting agave plants never used to be part of this process. But, after all of the meetings and presentations and discussion, he felt that running transects was probably something that he should know about - so he joined the inventory team. [NOTE: I got this marvelous image from Biol. Ivan Ibanez Couoh, who successfully defended his bachelor's thesis on the population dynamics of A. cupreata at the University of Guerrero in Chilpancingo this afternoon. Felicidades y gracias, Ivan].

Meeting in Acateyahualco

Have just returned from a meeting in Acateyahualco, Guerrero where villagers presented their data on the density and size-distribution of local maguey (Agave cupreata Trel & Berger) populations.  They harvest wild maguey to make mescal (see Mescal), and they need inventory data to develop a management plan for this resource and to monitor its behavior over time.

Some of the attendants initially appeared skeptical about the utility of resource inventories, quantitative data, and histograms, but by the end of the meeting, it was hard to argue with the logic that knowing how many maguey plants you have is much better than blindly harvesting the resource until it disappears.  Very impressive what these folks have done.

As frequently happens in rural Mexico at the end of community meeting like this, when there was nothing left to say we were all offered a half liter of Coca-Cola and a package of cookies. And, of course, the obligatory copita of mescal to give a toast for a job well-done.  [NOTE: Acateyahualco will soon have a verifiably sustainable system for exploiting Agave cupreata. I know of no other place in Mexico where this is occurring. Nice job, GEA].

Bio-coca

Never seen this before. I am currently in Chilapa, Guerrero doing some work with my friends at GEA (Grupo de Estudios Ambientales, A.C.), and this morning one of the young researchers from Columbia (thx, Bibiana) offered me an interesting tea bag containing the leaves of Erythroxylum coca Lam. Apparently, you can buy this product in several health food stores in Bogota and other big cities in Columbia).  [NOTE: Go here for a nice article about coca tea].