Elizabeth Taylor's Premonitions of Death

Hearing of Liz Taylor's death saddened me, although I never met her, because I almost feel we grew up together, ever since "National Velvet" in 1944.  Well, I was only 3 then, and she was 12, but I've always followed her illnesses and romantic adventures with interest.  And I always thought she was intelligent (if not in her choice of husbands), honest and selflessly dedicated to the cause of eradicating AIDs.

I also vaguely remembered hearing that she had ESP and twice demanded to get off an airplane because she (correctly) believed it was going to crash.  I just started googling to confirm that memory and found this quotation from an interview with her, but I wasn't able to ascertain when it took place or who was asking the questions.  But here are her (alleged) words:

"The first time it happened to me was when I was nineteen and Michael Wilding was thirty-nine. He was such a gentle gentleman. We were going to Rome for the weekend and I turned to him and said, Michael, we have to get off this plane now. I said it with quite certain knowledge. The stewardesses helped us get our bags. Since we were well-known they did it as a great favor. They got us off, the plane took off, and it dissolved in mid-air just outside Rome. Later, I asked Deepak Chopra, How do you know the difference between a premonition and certain knowledge? And he said that’s it, it’s a certain knowledge.

"I saved Richard’s life and the people he was working with, his secretary and his make-up man. We were staying at President Tito’s house in Dubrovnik. And they were shooting on all the real locales and it took two helicopters to get them up to this battleground. I said, Get off the helicopter and get into the other one. I said this to Richard Burton, the man who took no shit from anyone. They got on the other plane, and the helicopter plowed into the mountain, killing everyone.

"It has happened throughout my life, but it has slowed down now–and nothing disastrous has happened."
     
She also claimed to have foreseen Michael Todd's death in a plane crash--She said when she told him good-bye and he headed to the airport and his death,  they were both weeping.


 And she claims that during her various illnesses, she has already died  four times--once when she saw Mike Todd waiting for her on the other side but he told her she must go back, because she had important work to do. 


 I suspect she's in heaven now surrounded by Mike Todd and Richard Burton and many other lovers.

          

Since I occasionally nominate women of a certain age as "crone of the week" for something remarkable or courageous or outrageous they've done, I hereby propose the late  Elizabeth Taylor for "Crone of the Year.

Times Square, Pompeii, and Japan

 (Please click on the photos to enlarge them)

Every time I return to Manhattan I’m reminded of why it’s my favorite city in the world.  Nowhere else can you find such a mix of faces, languages, rituals, talents, and incredible sights.  This past weekend, as the weather turned spring-like, I was constantly reminded of a P.R. slogan from the 1970’s, (when Manhattan was so much scarier, dirtier and less friendly),  that we single working-girls would toss around with heavy sarcasm during the  sweltering, foul-smelling hot months:  “New York is a Summer Festival.”  This past weekend, the city was indeed a spring festival with crowds on every corner in a party mood.

On Friday, we walked from the hotel at 56^th and Seventh Avenue.  It was the first time I had seen Broadway and Times Square since they turned it onto a pedestrian walkway.

In the olden days, the only moving sign on Times Square was the Camel-smoking man on a billboard who blew real smoke rings into the air.  Now, all the billboards seem to move with mind-blowing activity and color. 

One huge billboard projects the actual crowd of pedestrians on the sidewalk below, who are frantically waving at the camera.  There is a pretty woman on the billboard with a magnifying glass who periodically magnifies some of the eager wavers.  In other words:  go down to Times Square and you can be on a billboard like all the models and actors.  After some searching, I decided that the pretty girl a with magnifying glass does not actually exist—she is virtual, but the waving tourists are real.

Of course I photographed the statue of George M. Cohan. (For you youngsters, he was the guy who wrote “Give my regards to Broadway”—a song that inevitably gets stuck in my brain and drives me crazy.  He was a songwriter, playwright, actor, singer, dancer and producer who lived from 1878 to 1942.)

Crowds of eager tourists surrounded the sight-seeing-bus stops and watched an artist who seemed to be creating his paintings out of spray paint and selling them on the spot.

Times Square is a photographers dream.  

The reason we were going to Times Square was that I wanted to see the Pompeii exhibit which had gotten a good review in the New York Times.  I realized that, even though it was tourist-y, that was probably the closest I’d ever get to the real Pompeii, which has always fascinated me. 

At the climax of the exhibit,you are herded into a closed room where a vista of the city of Pompeii and the volcano Vesuvius are projected on one wall. Thanks to special effects, you see the slow pattern of destruction as the volcano smoked, then erupted over a period of about 36 hours.  The floor shakes and the sound intensifies as the roofs collapse. There is smoke, fire, lava, and then at the climax, a giant wave of hot ash and intense heat overwhelms everything including the audience.  The winds whips by you and then the wall in front of you opens and you see the white plaster casts of the dead bodies (including a dog and a pig curled in their last agonies.)  You can walk among them--the family of four including two children and the man who died trying to crawl up a staircase, the couple reaching out to each other and a room full of 12 skeletons including nine children. These casts were made by pouring plaster into the hollow impressions left by the bodies that were encased by the ash as they died.)

Although I had planned weeks ago to visit the Pompeii exhibit, the drama was made so much more real and poignant by the tragedy in Japan. It was impossible to watch the tsunami of ash coming at you without thinking of the thousands of innocent people there who suffered a death much like those who died in Pompeii, but they were swept out to sea without  even the memorial left  by those who died in 79 A.D., who were preserved in solidified ash so that we can share their agony two thousand years later.

A White Slave Girl “Mulatto Raised by Charles Sumner”

The Story Behind the Photo

(Please click on the photos to make them bigger.)

When I began collecting antique photographs about twenty years ago, like most collectors I started out buying everything I could find. Then, as I gained expertise, I began to specialize, gravitating toward early images of children, twins (which I wrote about in a April 29, 2010 blog post: “Diane Arbus and Spooky Twins”) and photographs reflecting attitudes toward race and slavery.  (For example, I wrote about the image of “The Scarred Back of a Slave Named Gordon” in a post dated Oct. 2, 2009.  My information about that image was also printed in the New York Times book review of Oct. 4, 2009).

 While collecting slave photographs, I became fascinated with the “white slave children of Louisiana” as I call the series of CDV (carte-de-visite) photos of freed children from New Orleans who appear to be completely white. These small, cardboard-mounted photos were sold in great quantities by abolitionists during the Civil War.  On the back of each photo was printed: “The nett [sic] proceeds from the sale of these Photographs will be devoted to the education of colored people in the Department of the Gulf, now under the command of Maj. Gen. Banks.”

I had so many questions about these CDVs.  First, why did the abolitionists go down to the schools of freed slaves in New Orleans and pull out only those who appeared to be white, then send the children up to New York and Philadelphia to be dressed in fine clothes and posed in sentimental scenes for photos to sell?  Why did black-appearing children not get chosen for this? And how did these former slave children feel about being taken away from their mothers, paraded up north for the media like zoo animals and then sent back down South?  (They even got kicked out of their hotel in Philadelphia when the owner discovered they weren’t “really” white.)

Through research, I’ve learned the answers to some of these questions about the Louisiana CDVs, but that story is for another day when I’ll have enough space to analyze this early attempt to raise funds and arouse anti-slavery sentiment through the new-fangled “scientific” process of photography.

Today I’m only focusing on one photograph that was made about nine years before the Civil War CDVs.  It’s a ninth-plate daguerreotype of a little girl in a plaid dress that I bought on E-Bay in 2000. 

The seller, from Tennessee, included with this cased image information on where it was found. “This…photograph was purchased at Headley’s Auction in Winchester VA, July 1997.  It came…out of the “Ashgrove” estate in Vienna, VA. The house originated as a hunting lodge in 1740 …and was  sold to James Sherman in 1850, who would never  own or hire a slave.  He died in 1865 and passed it to his son, Capt. Franklin Sherman, Tenth Mich. Cavalry.  Capt Sherman’s wife Caroline (Alvord, a native of Mass.) came to the country in 1865 to teach the children of the newly freed slaves.”

The most intriguing thing about this daguerreotype, of course, was the faded inch-square piece of paper glued to the back of the case upon which someone has printed  “Mulatto raised by Charles Sumner”.

I put this image aside in 2000 along with the papers the buyer had sent me about the Ashford plantation, and forgot all about them.

Then, last November, I had a visit from Greg Fried, a professor at  Suffolk University in Boston who wanted to scan some of my photographs for a new web site he was preparing called  “Mirror of Race” (www.mirrorofrace.org.) I showed him the Louisiana CDVs and the daguerreotype of the “Sumner-raised” child. After he left, I went on Google and typed in the words  “Charles Sumner” and “slave”.  I discovered a short article from the New York Times dated March 9, 1855, which read:

A WHITE SLAVE FROM VIRGINIA. We received a visit yesterday from an interesting little girl, — who, less than a month since, was a slave belonging to Judge NEAL, of Alexandria, Va. Our readers will remember that we lately published a letter, addressed by Hon. CHARLES SUMNER, to some friends in Boston, accompanying a daguerreotype which that gentleman had forwarded to his friends in this city, and which he described as the portrait of a real "Ida May," — a young female slave, so white as to defy the acutest judge to detect in her features, complexion, hair, or general appearance, the slightest trace of Negro blood. It was this child that visited our office, accompanied by CHARLES H. BRAINARD, in whose care she was placed by Mr. SUMNER, for transmission to Boston. Her history is briefly as follows: Her name is MARY MILDRED BOTTS; her father escaped from the estate of Judge NEAL, Alexandria, six years ago and took refuge in Boston. Two years since he purchased his freedom for $600, his wife and three children being still in bondage. The good feeling of his Boston friends induced them to subscribe for the purchase of his family, and three weeks since, through the agency of Hon. CHARLES SUMNER, the purchase was effected, $800 being paid for the family. They created quite a sensation in Washington, and were provided with a passage in the first class cars in their journey to this city, whence they took their way last evening by the Fall River route to Boston. The child was exhibited yesterday to many prominent individuals in the City, and the general sentiment, in which we fully concur, was one of astonishment that she should ever have been held a slave. She was one of the fairest and most indisputable white children that we have ever seen.

This discovery got my adrenaline going. I googled “Mary Mildred Botts” and learned that the white-appearing slave child who was  admired by the New York Times was discussed in a 2008 book called  “Raising Freedom’s Child—Black Children and Visions of the Future after Slavery,” written by a University of New Orleans professor, Mary Niall Mitchell, who (small world!) was someone I had communicated with six years ago while trying to research the Louisiana CDV’s.  I immediately ordered the book from Amazon.

When it arrived, I was stunned to find on page 73 a photo of Mary Botts that was the mirror image of MY dag. (The one in the book was from the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.)  Prof. Mitchell gave more explanation about why this young girl was photographed and brought north by Charles Sumner.

“By the eve of the Civil War, abolitionists recognized the potential of white-looking children for stirring up antislavery sentiment…Although it was the image of a raggedy, motherless Topsy that viewers might have expected to see in a photograph of a slave girl, it was the “innocent”, “pure,” and “well-loved” white child who appeared, a child who needed the protection of the northern white public.

“The sponsors of seven-year-old Mary Mildred Botts, a freed child from Virginia, may have been the first to capitalize on these ideas, as early as 1855.  Her story also marks the beginning of efforts to use photography (in Mary Botts’s case, the daguerreotype, as the carte-de-visite format was not yet available) in the service of raising sentiment and support for the abolitionist cause.  (bold-facing mine.)

“…In his own characterization of Mary Botts,” Mitchell continues, “Sumner set a pattern that other abolitionists would follow.  In a letter printed in both the Boston Telegraph and the New York Daily Times, he compared Mary Botts to a fictional white girl who had been kidnapped and enslaved, the protagonist in Mary Hayden Pike’s antislavery novel Ida May:  ‘She is bright and intelligent—another Ida May,’ [Sumner wrote] ‘I think her presence among us (in Boston) will be more effective than any speech I can make.’”

This comparison of Mary Botts to the fictional kidnapped white girl worked well for Sumner and the Abolitionists and made the little freed slave quite a local celebrity.  Prof. Mitchell quotes the diary of a Quaker woman named Hannah Marsh Inman who saw Mary Botts at  a meeting house in Worcester, MA (which happens to be where I live now).  On March 1, 1855, Hannah wrote:  “Evening all went to the soiree at the Hall.  Little Ida May, the white slave was there from Boston.”

Sumner realized that he was on to a good thing and circulated   daguerreotypes of the child to prove her whiteness to those who might doubt.  (Keep in mind—the daguerreotype process was the first one ever made available—by Daguerre in 1839-- and the images “written by the sun” on the silvered copper plate were considered undeniable scientific proof of the sitter’s appearance.)  

Sumner passed a daguerreotype of Mary Botts around the Massachusetts State Legislature “as an illustration of slavery” and sent one to John. A. Andrews, the governor of Massachusetts.

Only a year after parading Mary Botts through New York, Boston and Worcester and dubbing her “The real Ida May”,  Charles Sumner’s devout abolitionist views  led him to a crippling disaster, when, in 1856, he was so badly beaten on the floor of the Senate by South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks,  who broke a cane over his head, that it would take years of therapy before Sumner could return to the Senate.

As soon as I realized that my dag of Mary Botts was one of the images used by Sumner himself to advance the abolitionist cause, I got into an excited e-mail correspondence with the book’s author, Professor Mitchell, and  Prof. Greg Fried, who pointed out something I’d forgotten: an advertising card on the back of my image showed that it was “Taken with the Double Camera For 25 Cents by Taber & Co., successors to Tyler & Co. Cor. Winter & Washington Sts. Boston”,  while the mirror image belonging to the  Massachusetts Historical Society was taken by Julian Vannerson, probably in Richmond,  Virginia, and seems sharper than mine, so mine must be a copy dag. (The only way to copy a daguerreotype is to take a new daguerreotype of it.  Each daguerreotype is one of a kind.  Taber’s price of 25 cents sounds affordable, but at the time, the average working man made only about a dollar a day.)

 Prof. Mitchell is currently working on a book about Mary Botts that will tell more about this former slave’s life, including the drama of how Sumner purchased her and spirited her out of Virginia, how he introduced her to the media and society as a  living advocate for the abolitionist cause, and how her family settled in the free black community in Boston.

I’m eager to learn the rest of the story, but, for now, it’s enough of a thrill just to know that the daguerreotype, taken in 1855, that is part of my collection may represent one of the first efforts EVER to use the modern discovery of photography to touch people’s emotions and change their minds.  This small image of a seven-year-old girl may be an example of the first time photography was used for propaganda, but it was certainly not the last.

Unsung Mexican Artists

Most people use their skill and energy every day to do a job that they don’t like, but need to survive:  everything from flipping hamburgers or laying bricks to drilling teeth or programming computers.

But some people use a special talent or skill with such pride in what they’re creating that they qualify, in my opinion, as artists, whether the creation is food, clothing, embroidery, furniture, music, ceramics or whatever.  And these artists are usually happy to demonstrate their art and to allow me to take their photos, even in Mexico where many people don’t want their photo taken. (I think this reluctance is because of concern about the Evil Eye, rather than fear, as in some countries, that the camera will steal their souls.)

Here’s one example of an unsung Mexican artist I met a couple of years ago in San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico.  Her name is Maria and her embroideries knocked me out—I thought she was the most skillful of the women displaying their textiles in the city’s marketplace.  I wanted to buy all of Maria’s creations, but could only afford one.  (Her costume or traje indicates that she comes from the village of Cholula.  One of the great things about San Cristobal is that all the women still wear the trajes from their native villages.)

On my visit to Morelia, Mexico, a month ago, I met several more of these  “unsung artists” as I like to think of them.  They each take pride in producing the best product they can and are happy to display their technique to a gringa  from the U.S. who can’t even speak Spanish.

(I already wrote, on Feb. 13, about two indigenous Mexican women, Benedicta and Cayetana, who have improved the quality of life for themselves and their families and won prizes and renown through their skill at the labor-intensive, pre-hispanic cuisine of Michoacan.)

On our way from Morelia to see the Monarch butterflies at the El Rosario mountain sanctuary, we stopped at a humble restaurant on a curve in the highway to try their carnitas and were fascinated by the skill of the Tortilla Lady, who was turning out tortillas on a primitive  wood-burning stove with amazing skill and speed.  She was happy to demonstrate, and even offered us a chance to try our hand, but I already knew from experience that tortilla-making is a lot harder than it looks.

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Back in Morelia, the leader of our culinary tour, Susana Trilling, (www.seasonsofmyheart.com), led us to the small store where she said we’d find the best gazpacho in the city.  You probably think, as I did, that gaspacho (that’s how they spell it) is a cold tomato soup, but in Morelia it’s a mixture of exotic tropical fruits topped off with just the right seasoning of chili flakes.  I could see by the care and concern (and pride) that the owner, Sr. Sandoval,  showed while demonstrating his specialty that he was a true artist, determined to produce a gazpacho that lived up to Susana’s  praise.

The unsung artist who stole my heart was the star of a mariachi group whom we met when a new friend—who makes the famous Cotija Cheese –took us to a beautiful national park, Lago de Camecuaro, filled with families boating, swimming and partying around the  crystalline lake shaded by ancient  trees.

One family invited us to join them at their table, and soon we were surrounded  by a group of mariachi musicians. The older man who seemed to be their leader sang with such intensity and passion that I couldn’t stop taking his photo, and everyone else kept requesting more songs. Now I’m obsessed with painting his portrait.

I love painting the people I encounter in my travels, --portraying them in their  native surroundings, especially involved in their daily work.

The gray-haired Mariachi singer reminded me of an even older musician, well into his eighties, whom my daughter and I met in Crete a few years ago.

He came up to us as we were drinking coffee in his mountainous village of Axos. We learned that his name is Yiannis Demarachoyiannis and he is the self-appointed mayor and greeter for his village. He said he wanted to practice his English with us. “You look so young,” he said to me, full of Cretan flattery and charm, “that I thought you were brothers.”

He insisted we come to his barbershop where he served us pears and his homemade raki (moonshine) and played and sang to us on the lyra—a rare instrument native to Crete. He sang mantadas—the Cretan songs  which the singer makes up in rhyming couplets to suit the occasion. “Take me to New York as your bar-bear,” he sang to Eleni, “and I will style your golden hair.”

I hope he’s still playing the lyra on his mountaintop in Crete.  He probably is, since both his parents lived past 100.  Like the Mariachi singer in Michoacan,  Mr. Yiannis deserves to be remembered in a painting, because he is an artist.

Famous Oscar Flubs & Moments

(Note: I'm re-posting this from last year, since w'e're counting down to a new Oscar night.  I just read in the New York Post that everyone is anticipating a new series of screw-ups on Sunday, especially when we see mothers of nominees talking about their famous kids. Also, the Post said,  keep an eye on whether or not John Travolta unveils his bald head without his usual weave, "inspiring Nicolas Cage to finally own up to his own hair 'issue.'")

I hope to watch the Oscar Ceremonies on Sunday—along with half the world’s population -– but let’s face it, we’re not watching to see which films will win the little gold men, nor to see who cashes in on the office pool. We’re all watching to see which of our favorite actors, appearing under stress and without a script, will make a fabulous flub or world class blunder.

I’ve been watching the Oscars since just about forever, and I remember them all. Well, I wasn’t old enough, (nor did we have a TV) back in 1945 when Joan Crawford, with her usual diva-ish behavior, feigned illness and graciously accepted her Oscar for “Mildred Pierce” at home in her “sick bed” while the cameras rolled.

Here are some of my favorite ill-planned and poorly executed Oscar Moments – in chronological order. If I’ve forgotten some of your favorites—let me know by leaving a comment below or writing me at joanpgage@yahoo.com. And if I have the wrong year, please forgive, because the 1990 Oscars happened in 1991, for example, which is confusing, and I haven’t taken the time to double check my dates. (Don’t tell my old professors at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. I’m writing against deadline and sometimes, as they often told us, you just have to “Go with what you’ve got.”)

1969—Katherine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand tied for an Oscar but everyone remembers Streisand’s gauzy bell-bottomed pants suit which became transparent under the lights.

1973 – Marlon Brando won the Oscar for “Godfather 1” but in his place he sent a Mexican actress whom he called Sacheen Littlefeather, dressed as an American Indian, to accept for him, while she issued a diatribe against the portrayal of the Native Americans on film. (I vaguely remembered her name as Princess SummerFallWinterSpring, but of course that was the Indian princess on Howdy Doody, which was my very first TV show after we got a television set back in the early fifties.)

1974—Everyone’s favorite Oscar moment was when the trendy, mustached streaker sped behind David Niven—stark naked on camera. Niven never blinked as he remarked that the only laugh the fellow would ever get is for showing off his shortcomings.

1985 – Everyone knows about Sally Fields “You like me, you really like me!” acceptance speech—which is often misquoted and parodied. I wonder how much she’d pay to erase that exuberant speech from history.

1989 – The career of Rob Lowe hit its nadir as he sang and danced with Snow White in the opening number. Think how far back he’s come since then!

1992 – When Jack Palance leaped on stage to accept an Oscar and celebrated by demonstrating his skill at one-arm push-ups, Billy Crystal kept spinning jokes off of his performance all night. (Referring to a choir of children he cracked, “And all them were fathered by Jack Palance.”) The ability to think on his feet is what makes Billy Crystal my favorite Oscar M. C.

1995 – David Letterman’s opening monologue fell nearly as flat as Rob Lowe’s when his “Uma – Oprah – Uma – Oprah” chant left everyone staring, not laughing.

2000 – Angelina Jolie, was so delighted at receiving an Oscar that she enveloped her brother, James, in a passionate, long, sloppy kiss that left everyone else slack-jawed in shock and wonder.

2003--And Adrian Brodie did the same as he attacked presenter Halley Berry in a big sloppy kiss to celebrate being the youngest actor to win an Oscar.

I actually got to attend the Oscar Ceremony in 1991 – (It was the 1990 Oscars.) The reason I got to go is that my husband Nick was executive producer for Godfather III, which was nominated for (but never got) best picture. I’m glad I got to go that once, but I wouldn’t want to do it again, because it’s really boring.

The people who are nominated for something get to sit on the first floor down front, while the rest of us sit in the balcony. The amazing thing is how bizarre are the outfits worn by the folks in the balcony who seem to be mostly would-be actors trying to get attention because they haven’t made it yet. There are long pauses for commercials and people are hired to drift about and sit in the seats of the famous folks below when they nip out to go to the bathroom. The only thing I actually remember about that Oscar ceremony is that Michael Jackson and Madonna, both in white, appeared together as “dates” and sat right in front of my husband.

On Sunday I expect to have more fun than when I was there in person, because I can talk back to the screen and get up to get snacks and drinks and even take a bathroom break.

Recent Oscar ceremonies have become sort of boring because they’re so carefully organized, but I’m still hoping for a world-class flub or blunder tonight to add to my Oscar Memories.

The Mystery of the Monarch Butterflies of Michoacan, Mexico

They are one of the great mysteries—and beauties—of nature. No one knew where the migrating Monarch butterflies spent the winter until 1975, when the mountaintop in Michoacan, Mexico was discovered by an American named Ken Brugger and his wife Catalina Aguada. The Bruggers had answered an ad in a Mexican newspaper  asking for volunteers, placed by Dr. Frederick Urquhart who had been trying to find the Monarchs’ wintering place since1937.

    The discovery of the Monarchs’ winter hiding place, according to another scientist, was “Like discovering the eighth wonder of the world.”

     For the native Purépecha Indians, the place of the Monarchs had never been a secret.  At the beginning of November every year, the church bells rang, signaling the arrival of millions of butterflies (which had flown all the way from the United State and Canada.)  The Purépechas believed that the mariposas were the souls of dead children, and the annual arrival frightened them, so they did not speak of it to outsiders.

     One of Mexico’s most celebrated poets, Homer Aridjis, who was born in a small village near the hibernation site, had known about the butterflies all his life, since he first discovered them while exploring near his home.  Here is what Christine Potters, an American fellow blogger, whom I met during my recent trip to Morelia, wrote about Aridjis in her excellent blog “Mexico Cooks”

        "In the town of Contepec, Michoacán, a small boy, Homero Aridjis, born in 1940 as the youngest of five Greek/Mexican brothers--used to climb Cerro Altamirano near his home to look at the monarch butterflies that flooded the forests for almost four months in the winter before they left again, heading north. No one living in his area knew where the butterflies came from or where they went. "When I began to write poems," Aridjis said, "I used to climb the hill that dominated the memory of my childhood. Its slopes, gullies, and streams were full of animal voices--owls, hummingbirds, mocking birds, coyotes, deer, armadillo. The natural world stimulated my poetry." But of all of these animals, he says the monarch butterflies were his "first love." Aridjis won Mexico's very prestigious Xavier Villarrutia Award at age 24 and years later, monarchs were still making their appearance in his writing. His 1971 book, El poeta niño, includes a beautiful poem that goes like this: "You travel/by day/ like a winged tiger/ burning yourself/ in your flight/ Tell me/ what supernatural/ life is/painted on your wings...."**"

      Early on, after the discovery of the hibernation site, Aridjis became an activist trying to protect the butterflies’ hibernation place and to prevent the deforestation of the fir trees on which they depend for their survival in the winter.

     When I entered the butterfly sanctuary at El Rosaria, in the Mexican state of Michoachan, on Valentine’s day, last week, as part of the first tour to the area sponsored by Susana Trilling, a chef who is based in Oaxaca, (www.Seasonsofmyheart.com)  the people of El Rosario were still digging out from a tragic storm, exactly a year earlier, which  caused mud slides and floods that buried homes and people and washed away cars, homes and animals, leaving 30,000 homeless and at least 45 people dead. We could see the construction to rebuild roads and bridges as we approached Rosario.

 Nevertheless the path up the mountain to the butterfly sanctuary was clean and paved with cement and stairs, punctuated by frequent benches.  Once inside the gates, our group was assigned a local guide, Guadalupe, (men named Guadalupe  are called “Jose”, we learned) but he scarcely said a word during our climb—it seems his only function was to watch us to make sure we didn’t harm the vegetation and the butterflies and didn’t get lost.  We had brought our own guide from Morelia—Raymundo Solorio Vargas (email: rayturismo55@hotmail.com ) who gave us a moving account of the deadly storm a year before.

In our itineraries for the trip, Susana had quoted an account of a  storm in 2002 that killed a majority of the wintering Monarchs.  It turns out that the butterflies, who don’t move, but cling to the fir trees when the weather gets cold, can survive temperatures well below zero, if they have little liquid in their bodies, but if they are wet, as they were in 2002, they freeze.  On the day after the storm, acording to Lincoln Brower, an entomologist at Sweet Briar College in Virginia,  “We were wading in (dead) butterflies up to our knees.”  He and his colleagues estimated that 500 million monarchs had died from the storm—five times more than they thought had even existed in the colony.

The scientists feared that only a fraction of the usual number of butterflies would return the next year, but to their delight, they found that the devastated Monarch population had returned to normal.

In my visit last week to the butterfly sanctuary at El Rosario, I learned a lot, including how to tell a male butterfly from a female.  A male has the two dots that you see below on the back part of his wings.   The dark veins on a female are wider

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The butterflies that flock to Mexico from the U.S. and Canada to spend the winter are the fourth generation, the “Methuselah Generation” of their breed.

An adult butterfly lives only about four to five weeks, The eggs are left on the milkweed plant, three or four days later the brightly striped caterpillars emerge, and during the next nine to 14 days they shed their skin five times.   On the sixth molting, the caterpillar transforms into a chrysalis, and after eight to 13 days, the adult butterfly emerges. (This is illustrated by a five minute film in Spanish for visitors at a theater inside the Rosario sanctuary.) 

Three days after emerging, the adult butterflies develop sex organs and, five days later begin to reproduce. This cycle occurs three times during spring and summer as the butterflies travel north into the US and Canada until, in the fall, the fourth or “Methuselah” generation is born.  This fourth generation will survive seven or eight months, will  perform the astounding feat of traveling from Canada and the United States to Mexico, and after mating, the females will return back north again to the United States. (The male Monarchs in Mexico after enjoying the 72-hour mating season in February, during which they will mate with numerous females, will then drop dead—their work is done.  Only the females fly back north to lay their eggs.) 

                                      photo of butterflies mating

On the day we walked up the mountain to the most butterfly-crowded sections of the forest, what our guide Raymundo called “The Nucleus”, it was a warm day and the beginning of the mating season, and the air around us was alive with butterflies, while millions more hung on the trees like orange autumn leaves.   We were very lucky, because in the early part of the winter—November and December-- the butterflie tend not to fly, but just to hang still on the trees, and on cold days they’ll do the same.

Our guide told us that only one day in ten will provide the optimum conditions that we saw on Valentine’s Day. As we started up the steps toward the apex of the walk it became clear this was a harder trek than I expected.  (We walked 2008 meters up and 2008 meters back for a total of 6 kilometers, our guide told us—And when we started at Rosario we were already 1850 meters above sea level.)

It looked easy at the start, but only about 100 feet up I was gasping for breath  I quickly realized that the altitude was a major factor in whether or not I was going to make it all the way.  As it turned out, half of our group of six—most in their thirties or early forties—had little trouble making the ascent but the other three of us—with me at 70 being the oldest—had to stop at nearly every bench to catch our breath, while marveling at the scenery around us. (For those not able to make the ascent, horses can be rented, but the last 300 feet up still has to be on foot.)

The butterflies were a constant commotion all around us.  As one book said, the miracle is that they never collide.  In spots where there was water, like a small stream over the road, they clustered. 

The view of the sky, of the laden fir trees, the beauty all around us was indescribable.  When I sat down to catch my breath, the silence was complete-- almost eerie.  But then, as I sat there and my heart stopped raced and my breath returned to normal, I could hearing, ever so faintly, the rustle of thousands—millions—of butterfly wings.

It was a transcendent experience, even for those who have no religion.  No wonder the Purépecha Indians thought the butterflies were the souls of their dead children.

We all took photos and then we realized, as one of the women in our group remarked—there is no way a still photo could give any idea of the indescribable experience we had.  So I tried for the first time to take some videos with my camera, and I’m attaching below a link to one of those videos.  It lasts 55 seconds and if you watch it to the end, you will see some of the members of our group.

This trip to Michoacan, Mexico was a gift from my husband for my 70^th birthday—and I can’t think of a better way to mark a milestone in life.  It was something I’ve always wanted to do before I die, and I wish you an equality miraculous and moving experience, to mark a landmark birthday.