Day of the Very Much Alive

Today was a cultural day for us. While Danimal slept off the muscle relaxer (his back is fortunately not fractured, but is badly bruised) the children and I went to the library. Geoffrey is starting to do research for a collage that is based on his heritage. We got a number of books about Native Americans, African Americans, and Mexicans. Bronte got a Shel Silverstein book, an Anansi tale and a couple books about dragons. Then we came home, picked up Dan and headed to Boulder.
When we got to Boulder we headed for the Fiske Planetarium. They were having a couple of cool programs today. Both were Mexicano origin. The first one was a program that combined traditional Azteca dancers and music with the creation stories that the Aztec had. They told about the 4 suns that came before the one we have now. Since it was at the planetarium they could project the various images up on the ceiling and have all sort of stars and things going on while the narrator was telling the stories. Then the dancers, who are a local troupe, would come out and do a dance or songs that were relevant to the story.
When they were done we went for dinner at Illegal Pete’s, watched some freaky street performers on Pearl Street, looked for a LaCross padded shirt for Dan. We went over to the new 29th Street Shopping area in Boulder just to check it out. While walking back to the car we ran into Dan’s parents. We chatted for a bit with them and then went back to campus.
The second program was a celebration of La Dia De La Muerte. The musicology department at CU brought in some ethnomusicologists from UNAM and they played their traditional instruments (many that they made) and sang traditional Mexican songs that were relevant to the Day of the Dead. A professor at CU was reading poems first in English and then in Spanish that were all about the day of the dead and then they would play. They were all wearing traditional skeleton masks so it was spooooky. They had people dancing, too. One of them made Dan dance with her, so he danced with the dead tonight. haha! The program was really beautiful and it made me really proud of my Mexican heritage. Click on the link above and check out the "traditions" tab. It’s pretty interesting how the one main tradition has so many different sub-traditions throughout Mexico.
I think we all had a really good time. The kids seemed to really enjoy it and it was really good research for Geoffrey's "Heritage Collage."