Welcome to my blog! It seems fitting that my first entry should be about the country of my birth, Guatemala. I spent Christmas 2006 there with my parents and my brother Ben (pictured here with me). My other brother Steve and his wife Beth could not make it, since they just moved to Niger, West Africa. As per tradition we lit fireworks at midnight on the 24th after eating a traditional tamal (made of maize with meat and sauce, wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed). It was all muy alegre (very fun) as we like to say.
One of the highlights of the trip, besides spending time with family and old friends, included visiting the contemporary art gallery owned by Ben's girfriend's family called Sol del Rio. It is one of only two contemporary art galleries in Central America. The photograph you see in this picture is by Luis Gonzalez Palma, one of Guatemala's most famous artists.Then there was the tour of the mushroom lab where Ben's girfriend Maria Rene works; it is one o
f two places in Guatemala that produces shitake and oyster mushrooms. It's quite an involved process that involves reproducing mushroom spores, innoculating sorghum grain with the spores and placing them into a sterilized bed of sawdust, keeping them in a dark room until they start to "flower" and then keeping them moist until the 'shrooms are ready to harvest. Now I know why they are so expensive!Mari is also experimenting with a new variety called "Hen of the Woods" shown here:
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