May 2012
4 posts
April 2012
7 posts
September 2010
1 post
ON THE ROCKS
I found this in Spain last year, thought it was a clever idea although it will never fly here in the USA. These specialized plastic bags are designed to be filled with water and tossed into the freezer, and in practically no time at all you have ice cubes. Actually, they are more like ice pillows, lacking the sharp edges and corners of cubes that come from plastic trays.
Americans do not...
March 2009
3 posts
February 2009
7 posts
Generalísimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead
In February 1981 I was a graduate student at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid.
It was an interesting time to be in Spain; the dictator Francisco Franco had finally died at the end of 1975, and after 40 years of suppression the country was quickly catching up to the rest of the modern world in things cultural and political. Of course the police, the army, and the hierarchy of the Catholic...
Besides going to class I had joined the Círculo de Bellas Artes, which had a large building with a movie theater, a cafe, an auditorium, and drawing studios on the top floor. Two or three times a week I attended figure drawing sessions from 6 to 9 p.m. I was not a great draughtsman, but determined not to lose the ground that I had gained in art classes as an undergrad in the United States. I was...
August 2008
9 posts
The Adventures of the Grizzly Nipper in the Deep...
During the summers of 1974 and 1976 I worked underground for the Hecla Mining Company in Wallace, Idaho. Hecla had a summer program for college students, most of whom were mining engineering students at the University of Idaho. I was a Fine Arts major at Boise State but managed to get into the program through my dad’s contacts in the company.
The first summer I was put to work in the Lucky...
February 2008
5 posts
The Monastery of Leyre
In 2007 I revisited the Monastery of Leyre, which sits on top of a hill in the province of Navarra, not far from Pamplona. I had been there in 1979 to visit a monk named José Manuel, a good friend of my brother-in -law José Luís. I returned in 1983 with Fr Tom Faucher who was visiting from Boise, my father-in-law Doroteo Cortabarria, and Tom Hanigan. Both times I slept in a monk’s cell...
Monasterio de Leyre, January 4, 1979 At five p.m. we finally left Pamplona. The snow had turned to rain, but we pssed through quite a bit of snow on the highway. It was still raining when we got to Sangüesa. Here I bought a bottle of brandy to take to Leyre, and went to find a taxi. I had to wait nearly 45 minutes before one appeared. I was then told that the road to...
January 2008
7 posts
The Fonda Princesa
While a grad student in Madrid I was lucky to live in a student boarding house on the Calle Princesa in the Argüelles neighborhood, near the university and across the street from a six-story Corte Inglés department store. When I say lucky I do not mean that I had a luxurious or particularly comfortable living situation; it would probably seem to be quite the contrary to most people. My good...
November 2007
1 post
August 2007
10 posts
Revisiting Belchite
Last month I took my family to visit Belchite, a small town in Aragon that was the scene of at least two battles in the Spanish Civil War. The American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade were there, and their Commander, Robert Hale Merriman, a Nevadan and University of California professor disappeared there during a confusing night attack.
It was a hot, dry day, and the breeze sometimes...