Palacio de Bellas Artes / Fine Arts Palace

Palacio de Bellas Artes (Spanish for Palace of Fine Arts) is the premier opera house of Mexico City. The building well known for both its Beaux Arts exterior in imported Italian Carrara white marble and its murals by Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco.
The Palacio has two museums: the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes and the Museo de la Arquitectura.
The theatre is used for classical music, opera and dance, notably the "Baile Folklórico". A distinctive feature of the theatre is its stained glass Tifany's curtain depicting a volcano and the valley of Mexico. It is the home of Mexico's National Symphony Orchestra, the Bellas Artes Orchestra, the Bellas Artes Chamber Orchestra, the National Dance Company, and the Bellas Artes Opera.
Rivera's "Man at the Crossroads" mural was originally painted for the Rockefeller Center in New York City. Rivera had finished ⅔ of the mural when the Rockefellers objected to an image of Vladimir Lenin in the mural. When Rivera refused to remove Lenin, his commission was cancelled and the mural was destroyed. Rivera repainted it a smaller scale at the Palacio in 1934 and renamed it "Man, Controller of the Universe"

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.
G. K. Chesterton

Bonne Annee
Prosit Neujahr
Felice Anno Nuovo
Feliz Ano Novo
Szczesliwego Nowego Roku
Happy New Year
Feliz Año Nuevo

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Winter Scenes

The Dreams of the Bird Seller

Zocalo / Main Square

Waste collector at Historic Center

Main Square

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Fire Engine

Learning to be a Firemen.
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Piñata Time

I guess everybody know what a Piñata is, if you don't:
A piñata is a brightly-colored papier-mâché covering either a clay container or cardboard shape. It may have originated in China. Marco Polo discovered the Chinese fashioning figures of cows, oxen or buffaloes, covered with colored paper and adorned with harnesses and trappings. Special colors traditionally greeted the New Year. When the mandarins knocked the figure hard with sticks of various colors, seeds spilled forth. After burning the remains, people gathered the ashes for good luck throughout the year.
Nowadays, piñatas have been adopted in many parts of the world and have become a more common sight at parties and celebrations, especially in Central America and the Southern United States, mostly due to the close influence from Mexican culture.
Piñatas have also been introduced to Europe over the last several decades, although at a much slower pace. India is one of few countries outside of the Americas to have adopted the Mexican tradition of the piñata for cultural celebrations. [Wiki]
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Cloud Washers

Happy Weekend!
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Pixel Surgery

Made with Corel Painter Essentials 4.

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Jose Luis Cuevas

Head by Jose Luis Cuevas (Mexican sculptor)
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2 Views of Acapulco

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Lady of the Park

If you are at peace then you don't have to fight for peace.
The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.
Conversation with Henry Miller
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Portrait in Yellow

Waiting for the green signal.

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The Orange Vendor

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The Game

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Democracia en Mexico / Democracy in Mexico

500 años de Catolicismo
200 años de Independencia
100 años de la Revolucion Mexicana
Resultado: Politicos enriquecidos, pueblo empobrecido.


500 years of Catholicism
200 years of Independence from Spain
100 years of Mexican Revolution
Results: Wealthy politics.

Info:
May 22, 2006 Issue
Copyright © 2009 The American Conservative.
While the country’s poor flee, Mexico’s elite take care of themselves.
By George W. Grayson
Mexico City—A watchword of Mexican politics is “Show me a politician who is poor and I will show you a poor politician.” In accord with this adage, many Mexican officials enjoy generous salaries and lavish fringe benefits. Even as they live princely lifestyles, they and their fellow elites pay little in taxes and refuse to spend sufficient money on education and health care to create opportunities in Mexico—a country that abounds in oil, natural gas, gold, beaches, fish, water, historic treasures, museums, industrial centers, and hard-working people. Rather than mobilizing these bountiful resources to uplift the poor, Mexico’s privileged class noisily demands that Uncle Sam open his border wider for the nation’s “have nots.”

Mexico’s establishment also keeps quiet about the salaries and benefits that its members receive. Private-sector executives are especially secretive. Thanks to Forbes magazine, however, we know that Mexico leads Latin America with ten billionaires, including telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helú, the world’s third richest person with $30 billion. And an increasing amount of data is available on the earnings of public officials. The numbers show that Mexico’s governing class is enriching itself at the country’s expense, with exorbitant salaries and bountiful perks. Remember, these are “official” figures. Most politicians have ingenious ways of fattening their bank accounts.

The salaries of top Mexican government officials match or exceed those of comparable figures in Europe and much of the rest of the world. President Vicente Fox ($236,693), for example, makes more than the leaders of the U.K. ($211,434), France ($95,658), Canada ($75,582), and most other industrialized countries (POTUS earns $400,000).

The 500 members of Mexico’s notoriously irresponsible Chamber of Deputies, which is in session only a few months a year, each made $148,000 last year in salary and bonuses—roughly on a par with Italian and Canadian legislators and substantially more than their counterparts in Germany ($105,000), France ($78,000), and Spain ($32,311), where living costs are markedly higher. Other legislators in Latin America receive substantially less; for example, those in Bolivia earn $28,000 for a four-month session. Legislators in the Dominican Republic take home $68,500 for six months of service.

Even better work, if you can get it, is to be found in the judicial branch of the Mexican federal government. In 2005, the 11 justices on the National Supreme Court of Justice—equivalent to the U.S. Supreme Court—received $311,759, compared to $194,200 for their American counterparts. (The U.S. Chief Justice earns $202,900.)

State-level Mexican officials are amply rewarded as well. Salaries and bonuses place the average compensation of Mexican governors at $125,759, which exceeds by almost $10,000 the mean paychecks of U.S. state executives ($115,778). Narciso Agúndez Montaño runs Baja California Sur. Although his state has only 424,041 residents, he earns $277,777. This is $100,000 more than the salary of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who governs 36,132,147 Californians.

And so on…

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Ponzanelli

Photomanipulation of a sculpture of Gabriel Ponzanelli, from a exhibit at Jardin Borda [Borda's Garden] in Cuernavaca, a beautiful town near Mexico City. You can see another great sculptures of Ponzanelli
here.
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Street Dance

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Imagine

Dakota Building, NYC

Strawberry Fields Central Park, NYC

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Take Five

Reciprocal curiosity

Heroico - Helguera (La Jornada)
Pregunta: Quien vota por estas gentes?
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The Sundown Messenger

Happy Sunday!
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Sunday in Mexico City (No Cars)

In main street no cars, only organic wheels.
Ahh! A little bit more of oxygen.
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Christmas Tree / Arbol de Navidad

Probably the world's tallest Christmas Tree (90 m = 295.275')
El próximo 5 de diciembre, la “Magia de la Navidad” llegará a la Ciudad de México y permanecerá por 36 días que ofrecerá a los visitantes atracciones como la ya tradicional pista de hielo en el Zócalo capitalino, el árbol de Navidad más grande del mundo y diversas actividades que se desarrollarán en puntos estratégicos del Distrito Federal.

De 10:00 de la mañana a 10:00 de la noche, los capitalinos y visitantes nacionales y extranjeros podrán disfrutar –además de las actividades que se hospedan en Plaza de la Constitución–, de nueve kilómetros de diversión que iniciarán en la calle Lieja sobre Paseo de la Reforma, para llegar por Avenida Hidalgo hasta la Alameda Central, el Centro Histórico y el Zócalo de la Ciudad.

Este año, la ceremonia de encendido del Árbol de Navidad marcará el inicio de las festividades navideñas en el Distrito Federal. Se trata de un árbol navideño ubicado a un costado de la Glorieta de la Palma que buscará romper el récord Guinness como “el más grande del mundo”, título que actualmente ostenta Brasil.

Con más de 90 metros de altura y 35 metros de diámetro, el Árbol de Navidad Más Grande del Mundo será decorado con más de 72 kilómetros de series de micro lámparas, 80 mil metros de cables eléctricos y 600 luces estroboscópicas. El montaje del mismo generó 200 empleos temporales para trabajadores mexicanos que se encargaron de colocar los cables eléctricos y 600 empleos más de forma indirecta.
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Going Nowhere

Peripheral expressway.
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Bosque de Alisos / Alder Forest Street

PhoneCam
Bosque de Alisos / Alder Forest St in West Side of the city
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December 2009 Theme Day: Waiting

What Are We Waiting For?
Click Here To View Thumbnails For All Participants
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Wave

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Street children

Street children is a term used to refer to children who live on the streets of a city. They are basically deprived of family care and protection. Most children on the streets are between the ages of about 5 and 17 years old, and their population between different cities is varied.

Street children live in abandoned buildings, cardboard boxes, parks or on the street itself. A great deal has been written defining street children, but the primary difficulty is that there are no precise categories, but rather a continuum, ranging from children who spend some time in the streets and sleep in a house with ill-prepared adults, to those who live entirely in the streets and have no adult supervision or care.

A widely accepted set of definitions, commonly attributed to UNICEF, divides street children into two main categories:

1. Children on the street are those engaged in some kind of economic activity ranging from begging to vending. Most go home at the end of the day and contribute their earnings to their family. They may be attending school and retain a sense of belonging to a family. Because of the economic fragility of the family, these children may eventually opt for a permanent life on the streets.
2. Children of the street actually live on the street (or outside of a normal family environment). Family ties may exist but are tenuous and are maintained only casually or occasionally.

Street children exist in many major cities, especially in developing countries, and may be subject to abuse, neglect, exploitation, or even in extreme cases murder by "cleanup squads" hired by local businesses or police.

In Latin America, a common cause is abandonment by poor families unable to feed all their children. In Africa, an increasingly common cause is AIDS. [Wiki]
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