I am on my way to Venice, Italy. I haven't been there since 1965. I am trying to keep awake, because the airport shuttle is going to pick Barry and I up at 4:30 PM. The last time I was in Venice, I stayed at a youth hostel with a curfew, but the day in Venice was long and filled with the beauty of history. It was a different world for this Chicana from Chicago. My best friend's in high school were all Italian, but they knew nothing of their origins. They never really talked that much about Italy, but for that matter I never talked that much about Mexico. It was so far away for both of us. We were what the Japanese Americans call the Sansi. I hope I spell that right.

My high school friends were Calabrase and Secilian. My best friend Jackie Landee was Italian. A racist, because she knew no different. She could be described as having, "el Nopal en su cara" or as I would say, "Her dark olive skin on which was written genetic code of centuries of Greek, Roman, and Muslim conquerers, was darker than mine. However she had the audacity to tell me that I should not have told some guy at Ahmad Jamal's, The Bird House's bar in 1958 that I was Mexican.

The tragedy of it all was that, most of my girlfriedns like myself, lost our language, history and ethnenticity. When I got to Italy many years later, I realized how much they had lost. I love Italy. Every city is a page of history. And now I am going back, but also, I will be crusing on a ship through the Greek Islands.

I am leaving about an hour . So I'm going to kill some time by trying to post pictures of my student.

These are more photos of Mexican dances. I have written articles about the history of Mexican dance, which I attempted to publish. I once wanted to write a book illustrated with my photos about the history of Mexican dance. I decided to try and write an article on the dance history of each region. I did get three articles published in a very small Latino California magazine Saludos and also in the Sept, 97 issue of Vista Magazine. It is a Sunday supplement for Latino readers. Some larger metropolitan news paper inserted it into their Sunday newspapers. I haven't attempted to publish anything any more, until now on my blog.

The Saludos magazine bought 2 of my articles. One was beautifully illustrated with my photos. It was about the Aztec dances of Mexico. They used the two black and white photos I have published here of the single male and female dancer. The other wasn't about Mexican folk dances, but about a Brazilian African dance the Capuerra. I wasn't that happy with the photos I took, but I was more interested in the history of the dance. It came with Angolan Africa slaves and is a ritualist marchial art ballet. It is danced to music that is played on original Angolan instruments. Break dancing came from the Capuerra.

The above black and white dancer was from a color original, which I can't find. The others are of a dance entitled Los Moors y Los Cristainos. I shot this when I was in Mexico in the 1970's. I forgot the year. I took a car trip with some friends from Sacramento, CA to Mexico City. I took these photos in the Sierras of Michiuacan, Mexico. It re enacts a battle between Christian Spain and Moorish Spain. And of course the Christians win. It is interesting how Spanish colonialism even imposed on the Indian populations of Mexico a history that still glorifies their Spanish conquerors. However the indiginous populations like those here in these photos have taken this story and recreated it in their own terms, even if it was just the costumes. They were all hand made and the close up of the helmet was to illustrate how they cut them and painted them from tin cans.

Barry says I should copyright my photos. Anyone can copy them and use them. But I doubt if anyone, outside of friends and family that will be interested in them. They are very ordinary descriptive scenes. They don't qualify as fine art, and I have tried to sell them.

Once in the 1970s when I was trying to get a job in San Francisco at United Press International as a stringer. I took a portfolio filled with scenes like these: Mexican dances in Sacramento and Mexico, people in the Latino Mission District of San Francisco. At that time I was photographing my community, in every city that I lived. While I was waiting in the reception area I saw a recent photo essay of the zoo with gorrillas hanging on tires from a tree. When the photo editor looked at my portofolio, he didn't say my photos were technically bad. Since I developed and printed them in a darkroom, I could see how the gray scale was off on some of them. No, he said, "Mexicans don't sell." He noted that I should look at their recent photo essay of the zoo. Yes, Mexicans don't sell, but gorrillas did.

It takes a lot of time to download and write a blog. I still have to do my lesson plans for the week. Also the editing screen I use to post my blogg, takes forever to type, proof read, and edit what you have written. The only way I have figured out how to save what I have written is by saving the entire document as a draft, which also takes more time. Well I'm learning. Now I am experimenting with writting this on Notepad and seeing if I can do a block copy to post on the blog. Let me see how this works. It works!

This is the match to the male Mexican Aztec dancer which I previously posted. I have taken a lot of Mexican folk dancers. I think they are vibrant, colorful and fun to shot. I began with my first college photography class in Sacramento and many of them are taken at Mexican festival. This one was taken here in Los Angeles at Olivara Street. For people who don't live in Los Angeles, it's the Los Angeles version of what a Mexican street market would be. It was actually built on the site of what once was Los Angeles' original Chinese neighborhood. The Chinese do have their own Chinatown, which is about 4 blocks down from Olivera St. I have photographed it also. It and Olivera Street are popular tourist attractions, but don't really speak to the reality of what life is and was for these immigrant groups. How ever their facades are photographic.