Veteran anthropologist and leader of the Global Social Media Impact Study, Danny, says that postdoc research is usually far more successful than dissertation research. Postdocs tend to be more assertive. They are less afraid. They know there’s no reason not to ask the hard questions. They’ve learned from their mistakes and have experienced before the process of starting from scratch and working your way into a community. 

He may be right. In fact, I hope he is. But I think this is precisely the reason starting in a new place for a postdoc is doubly hard.

I remember arriving in La Paz the first time. It was the 15th of July, the day before La Paz celebrates their rebellion from the Spanish (not independence, mind you). The streets were empty. I knew no one. I felt lonely. I thought that I would never feel totally comfortable, never quite safe, never out of scrutiny as a gringa. I thought I would never speak Spanish well. I would never understand the bus system. I’d never go out at night alone. I’m not sure if I really believed that or just felt it (probably somewhere in the middle). I didn’t ever take a taxi alone. I would practice what to say before walking into a store or meeting someone new. I took my default research assistant everywhere. I felt like a foreigner.

And now, a little more than four years later and with a doctorate under my belt, I couldn’t feel more differently. I’m cautious in La Paz, but I don’t feel like I stick out. And if I’m that noticeable, I’m certain whoever is noticing me has seen me around before, anyway. I wouldn’t hesitate to stop someone on the street to ask directions. But I don’t need to. I run into friends in the plaza. I don’t hesitate to pop into random shops asking for seeminly ridiculous things. I know where to buy any bizarre sort of party supply one could possibly want. I can get from Villa Esperanza in El Alto to Mega Center in Achumani half asleep. I’ve taken taxis alone at 4 am from Miraflores to Obrajes and argued with the driver over the price. I’ve walked home because the taxis are trying to rip me off. And yes, I’ve had my ass spanked a few times. But I feel comfortable and relatively safe. Hell, I can pretty much drink for free and avoid paying cover at most clubs when the mood strikes.

But this is not the golden medal of fieldwork for me. That honor belongs to my friends. La Paz is the city with the highest per capita concentration of people I love. There are so many people I know care about me and would go out of their way to help me however possible there. And we have developed something of symbiotic relationships I suppose. We help each other. There is no charity work. There is no owing of favors. Someone needs something and I make it happen. I need something, and someone puts me in touch with the right person to get me some random documents for visa purposes. That’s just how it works.  

But my point is not to wax poetic about how much I love Paceños. My point is, I think this makes starting over even harder. When I got to La Paz, I thought, “ok, this is just how it is to be foreign.” But now I know how good it can get. That you don’t always feel like you’re on the outside. That sometimes, you really do feel more like one of them, than those annoying gringoes that just asked directions to the English Pub. And so, I aspire to more now. This is not just a city where I’m doing fieldwork. It is a city where I live. It’s a city where I will do lots of hard work. But it’s also a city where I will have fun. Where I will grow, talk, and watch movies, and eat food, and laugh and cry, and think, and sometimes not think.

So, to be in this initial phase is doubly hard. It is hard, just as any new beginning is, because I am trying to meet people, and develop a routine, and get to know the landscape, and quell fears. But it is also hard because I have higher expectations than ever before. I don’t just want to be here. I want to live here. 

Today, I retroactively added some blog writing from my first trip to La Paz in 2009 to these fieldnotes. Previously, I had published this stuff on the new practically defunct blog I began when I went to Lima in 2005. I think they're more at home here (if blog posts can be anthropomorphized enough to feel at home anywhere). 

So now, you can read about:
the first time I arrived in La Paz
my first Día de La Paz
the first photographs I took in La Paz
my first lucha libre event in La Paz
and the first time I truly loved La Paz

Last October I wrote about the early history of lucha libre in Bolivia. In my dissertation I trace the history through the 1970s & 1980s through the present. Below I give you the 70s & 80s. The early history can be found here, and a description of the most recent "era" of lucha libre can be found here. 

Much of the information I learned about the history of lucha libre since the 1970s came from Roberto, a wrestler in the Super Catch group. Though he was only 24, he explained to me that “Yo era fanatico! Me metía dentro de los vestidores, escuchaba todo de los luchadores. Es por eso que sé casi toda la historia de la lucha libre en Bolivia.” [I was a fanatic [when I was a kid]. I snuck into the dressing rooms, I listened to all the wrestlers. That’s why I know almost all the history of lucha libre in Bolivia]. He explained to me that during the 1960s lucha libre events took place in the Perez Velasco, a commercial area just outside of central La Paz that is a popular market for working class and middle class people. Luchadores usually wrestled in a makeshift ring and set up seating in a fútbol field. As Roberto told me, the costumes of the luchadores were not as “llamativos” [flashy] then, and almost everything was improvised. But by the mid-seventies, the Olimpic Ring was built in the neighborhood of San Pedro, and with its opening began what Roberto suggests many refer to as the “epoca dorada de la lucha libre boliviana” [golden age of Bolivian wrestling]. 

By the 1980s however, imitation of Mexican luchadores was becoming more prevalent, with both names and costumes being “borrowed.” But this was also the period when some of the legendary figures of Bolivian lucha libre began. Roberto named two in particular: Sombra Vengadora and Medico Loco. Sombra Vengadora continues to wrestle to this day but Medico Loco passed away in 2010. 

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, interest in lucha libre waned in La Paz. But in the late 1990s, a major shift occurred when Bolivian lucha libre first appeared on television. In 1998, a group of luchadores calling themselves Furia de Titanes [Fury of Titans] who were regularly putting on shows at the Olimipic Ring noticed TV personality Adolfo Paco in the audience. They approached him about beginning a lucha libre program on Asociación Televisión Boliviana (ATB) channel 9, and he agreed. The program was filmed in the Coloseo de Villa Victoria, and was an immediate success, which Roberto attributed to the fact that the wrestlers were highly skilled. In addition to large television audiences, the group began attracting long lines of people hoping to see the shows taped live. Luchadores gained notoriety and were featured in local newspapers and magazines. With the addition of several corporate sponsors, luchadores earned about $200 per event. 

But this success was fleeting, because luchadores that Roberto characterized as less-skilled also offered their performances to Paco, he accepted, causing bitter arguments between the groups. By 1999, Furia de Titanes had split in two. Those on one side of the argument kept the name Furia de Titanes and remained on ATB, while others adopted the name Lucha de Campeones and began wrestling on the Uno network, channel 11. The rupture ultimately resulted in smaller audiences, which caused the sponsors to terminate their support and thus luchadores in both groups took home significantly less pay. Lucha de Campeones, for example, offered free entrance to their live shows to encourage larger audiences, but as a result luchadores made only 250 to 350 Bolivianos ($35-50 US) per event. The final problem, as Roberto explained, was that in the year 2000, several luchadores complained to Paco that they had never received the health insurance they had been promised. Paco ignored their requests and in retaliation, the luchadores refused to put on their event the next Sunday. “Y fue lo último. Ni siquiera pudieron despedirse de su público como se debe” [And that was the end. They couldn’t even say goodbye to their audience as they should have. “Desde entonces la lucha libre estuvo casi muerta en Bolivia” [Since then lucha libre has been almost dead in Bolivia].

One thing I’ve noticed about “coming back” for the second time after fieldwork is “complete” is that the overall terrain of my friendships has shifted. My fieldwork friendships were perhaps out of the ordinary to begin with. Though I liked, respected, and enjoyed the company of the people with whom I was doing research, they were not my real friends in La Paz. They were not the people with whom I usually ate dinner, went to the movies, watched tv, danced or drank with on Saturday nights. I saw them often during training and attending lucha libre events. We would eat together after training or stop by the internet café for a few hours. I went to their birthday parties. But I did not call them when I was bored. I did not ask them to accompany me to the airport at strange hours. I did not stop by their workplaces just to say hello when I was bored.

Those were different friends. And there were a lot of them. I think, to an extent during my fieldwork, I felt that accumulating friends strengthened my authenticity—as a non-gringa, as a kollita, as someone who was part of this social scene in La Paz. And I met some very interesting, smart, and dynamic people. And I wanted all of them to be my close personal friends.

I had a rich social life. As I wrote in my less-academicy blog (though that’s a shaky line to draw), In La Paz, I wear vintage, rockabilly dresses or ripped jeans and t shirts given to me by tattoo artist friends. I’m a live music junkie, a tattoo shop groupie, booze-slinging benefactor, restaurant aficionada, mural-painting sidekick, dj enthusiast, and a legitimate luchadora who rarely pays for a drink.

But now, I have different priorities I guess. The people I used to be excited to see can be dreary at times. I lack enthusiasm for all the dining and boozing. I really would just rather hang out with the few close friends that I really care about than taxi around the city hopping from social scene to social scene.

I don’t know if this is what happens as you get older. Maybe it’s being a doctor (ha!). Maybe this is my form of “settling down.” But I just don’t have the energy that I once did. I don’t want to dance all night. I don’t want more than 3 glasses of wine. I want to be able to hear the conversation I’m participating in. I don’t want to impress anyone. I don’t want to prove myself. But maybe what this all means is that I’m more comfortable here now. Friends are no longer a superficial method of accounting my investment or my embeddedness. They are the people who make me smile and laugh and stop worrying about my (possibly non-existent academic) “future”. They are just my friends.

On my first day of training, when Edgar asked if I’d rather my traje have pants or a pollera, I immediately knew pants made more sense. Perhaps they would not provide the visual beauty of a pollera swirling through the air, but they certainly would be easier to wrestle in. And Edgar was not the only person who suggested I wrestle in a pollera. The LIDER luchadoras, Juanita and Benita were constantly trying to get me into one. On a Friday afternoon while we sipped coffee at a stall in Mercado Lanza, the two giggled trying to decide what color pollera would look best on me. Juanita was wearing a blue sparkly shawl and Benita’s was white. They took turns holding them up to my fact to see what color would look nice on a gringa. Even at my dissertation defense, I was asked why I didn’t wear a pollera to wrestle. 

during my dissertation defense, I explain-oh so eloquently-why I do not wear a pollera to wrestle 

My answer, simply, is that I have no right to wear a pollera. The pollera is often considered to be the most visible symbol of Bolivian indigeneity, which is not just a racial category, but a class-based subjectivity and a political identification. The pollera has a long history, from being institutionalized dress for hacienda workers to a visible symbol of working-class women’s political protest throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. Wearing the pollera is not just a clothing choice, but is a performance of identification with these histories and contemporary associations. As a gringa with no stake in any of these categories associated with the pollera, it seemed that for me to wrestle in one would appear as a farce.

Sure, seeing a gringa in a pollera might be just as amusing for Bolivians as the “cholitas luchadoras” are for the foreigners that flock to their shows. But that doesn’t mean that I have a right to wear one. As Jaya Bedi writes so eloquently, “The political context in which cultural symbols exist is important. Cultural appropriation happens — and the unquestioned sense of entitlement that white Americans display towards the artifacts and rituals of people of color exists too. All ‘appropriation’ is not merely an example of cultural sharing, an exchange between friends that takes place on a level playing field.”

And I think my position is actually strengthened by the time I did wear a pollera (outside of the ring). When I appeared at Shirley’s party in a pollera and Gonz shouted “cholita punk.” My friends were amused because my representation was ironic. As I write in my dissertation (I think it’s still in there, but Cholita Punk was sadly cut), “Irony often functions as a ‘frame shifting’ mechanism (Coulson 2001) in order to express humor. When I entered the party wearing a pollera, Gonz shouting ‘cholita punk’ shifted the frame from the representation of cholitas as traditional and thoroughly Bolivian icons, to something integrated with the international youth culture of punk rock. Even my own laughter at wearing the pollera and braids played on the disjuncture of a U.S. gringa in clothing with cultural meaning in the Andes. And most certainly, when Luis suggested I wrestle, irony was used to disrupt the usual interpretation of a mujer de pollera.”

Now there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging the ways cholitas are no longer merely a form of local subject, but now are globally active citizens (I have 2 chapters on that). But the point remains that for a gringa to appear in public (versus the private party) in a pollera most certainly degrades the rich history of the skirt and the complex ways of identifying employed by the women who wear them daily. And we must not forget that ways of identifying are not neutral. The “chola,” the mujer de pollera, the indígena are marginalized and historically stigmatized categories in Bolivia. And the “Bolivian woman” in general is discriminated against all over the hemisphere, from Buenos Aires to Phoenix. 

Again I refer to Bedi, who writes, “If the use of the bindi by mainstream pop stars made it easier for South Asian women to wear it, I’d be all for its proliferation — but it doesn’t. They lend the bindi an aura of cool that a Desi woman simply can’t compete with, often with the privilege of automatic acceptance in a society when many non-white women must fight for it.” To paraphrase her, what makes a white woman’s use of the pollera problematic is the fact that a gringa wearing one is guaranteed to be better received than if a Bolivian woman were to step out of the house rocking one. On me, it would be a bold new look (sure to catch lots of stares, but no one’s going to shew me away from a fancy restaurant). On a Bolivian woman it’s yet another marker of her Otherness. A symbol of her failure at whiteness, at cosmopolitanism, to participate in a global citizenship. 

Dina, Juanita, and Claudina (from LIDER) show off their bad, cosmopolitan selves

Of course the cholitas luchadoras work hard to combat this image of the mujer de pollera as local not global, stigmatized not empowered, marginalized not powerful. And they have made excellent advances. But we’re not there yet. Despite the mujeres de pollera that have been elected or appointed to high profile government positions, it is still an Other form of dress. One worth celebrating. But not yet ready to be paraded in public as the funny thing the gringa’s wearing. Maybe some day…..but for now my beautiful pollera will stay in a closet in Illinois. 

Friday was the birthday of my friend Carrie (who I met in Potosí), a Canadian woman who is a graphic designer in La Paz. To celebrate, I met she and her friend Lisa who had flown in for the occasion at 2pm to get massages. They had just climbed Huayna Potosí, a 6000+ meter mountain, and their bodies were aching. I had been promising myself since finishing the final draft of my dissertation that I would relieve the aches of hunching over a laptop for months with a massage. We had reservations at a small local beauty shop on Calle Linares for 2:30, but as we were about to start walking they called us back. “Necesitamos cancelar la cita porque apagó la electricidad.” Well, what should one suspect in La Paz? Instead we walked to Hotel Europa, where my friend who works for the Inter American Development Bank always stays when he is in the city for business. 

We walked through the giant automatic revolving door and the climate was immediately different. Warm and slightly humid. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they were pumping oxygen into the building as well. After consulting the front desk, we walked through the lobby to the pool and spa and asked for massages. They could only accommodate one every 15 minutes, so Carrie began first, while Lisa and I used one of the saunas. We chose the “wet” sauna (labeled in English), thinking that some humidity might be nice in contrast to the usual dry altiplano air. This was a corporeal experience I had never had in La Paz. My body has been exposed to sunburns, dog bites and subsequent rabies vaccines, many scars from cut glass, back spasms, dislocated knees and other various injuries from wrestling, constant colds, constant shivers, a month-long undiagnosed illness I swear was typhoid, and what must be at least 90% of the parasites known to humans—not to mention the general lack of oxygen one lives in every day here. 

But in the sauna it was hot, wet, and smelled of lovely herbs. Water droplets pooled on my skin and I couldn’t tell if it was sweat or condensation. Either way, the outside air is never moist enough for either to happen. At first I didn’t like the sensation of the hot wet air I pulled into my lungs, but after five minutes I breathed more deeply, hoping it would clear away any mucus that might be stuck in the respiratory system waiting to make me resfriada (or worse). After ten minutes it was time to start my massage. 

I was completely naked beneath my towel and slightly embarrassed in the brief moments between hanging it up and having my but covered as I laid face down on the table. But the young Bolivian woman didn’t flinch, and she set to work rubbing the backs of my thighs. I thought about how she might have learned to be a masseuse. How she came to work at this hotel. What neighborhood she lives in. Whether she lives alone, with her partner, with her parents. If she has children. If she takes a trufi or minibus back to her neighborhood after work. If she prefers tucumanas or salteñas. How she celebrates her birthday. 

After forty five minutes I wrapped my towel around me again and went to the shower with the small pack of shampoo and soap I was given. It was a nice hot shower and I wondered if the women who work in the hotel ever shower there, or if they’re stuck with the electric showers in their frigid bathrooms at home. Do they even notice, having grown up in this place that is always cold?

I am so much cooler in Bolivia.

“Really, I am!” I want to shout at people I meet here in DC.

I suppose it’s a matter of social positioning, and I can’t really help it. Here I am a grad student and adjunct professor. I either stay in sweat pants all day or try to fight my younger-than-I-actually-am appearance by trying to dress like an academic. I hate when librarians ask me if I’m looking at information for a class paper. But in La Paz, I am one of the cool kids. I wear vintage, rockabilly dresses or ripped jeans and t shirts given to me by tattoo artist friends. I’m a live music junkie, a tattoo shop groupie, booze-slinging benefactor, restaurant aficionada, mural-painting sidekick, dj enthusiast, and a legitimate luchadora who rarely pays for a drink.

I wrote in May that I’m famous in La Paz (only half-jokingly), and its (half-jokingly) true. La Paz has the feeling of a small town, and if I don’t know everyone, I at least know someone who knows them. DC is small too, but rather than being comforting, its almost oppressive. When I left here in April 2011, I had good friends and a comfortable repertoire. I return to a place that feels empty. Most of my friends have left (such is life in such a transient city). With others I have grown apart. Evenings feel empty here as I crave distraction, camaraderie, excitement.

I came back in a depressed state, and googled “post-fieldwork depression.” Most of what turned up was written by people who disliked their field site and were depressed in the field. I felt the opposite. I longed to return to my friends, my usual days of training, reading, writing, visiting friends workplaces or homes, nice dinners served by my favorite Belgian, and the free tequila shots that went along with it. I missed the guessing games of who I’d run into on the street (there was always someone, but you never know who). Slowly it gets better. Easier. I instinctively put paper in the toilet, and don’t turn my nose at tap water. I wait patiently at bus stops, and thoroughly appreciate my electric heater. But I’d happily give it all up, even knowing there are horrific electric showers waiting for me on the other side.

But this is how it happens. We re-integrate ourselves to the best of our abilities. We find the little things that make us happy (hot water in sinks) and try to forget the things that were so magical about our other home (evening light on Illimani). And at the very least, I’ve found a bartender here who hooks me up as well as I was taken care of in LPZ.

I had been back from a 2 week rendezvous in Bolivia for about 48 hours, and was contemplating returning to vegetarianism. For lunch, I made myself a tofurkey sandwich with vegan cheese and spicy honey mustard. I washed it down with the overly sweet canned maracuya juice I had been so excited to find at Safeway. As I chewed the last bite and slurped the last bit of juice, I walked into the kitchen to put my plate and cup in the dishwasher. There was some mustard stuck to the plate, so I turned on the sink to rinse it off. I put the plate and my hand under the water, and I literally jumped backwards. The water was hot.

Plenty of times in my life I’ve had a similar reaction. Scalding water gushes out of a sink, or the shower suddenly turns ten degrees hotter with no warning. But this was not one of those cases. The water was not painful. It was just hot. Maybe even just warm. But I had become so used to washing dishes in cold water I was startled. I was so used to the possibility of warm water coming out of a faucet being entirely beyond comprehension that I had a physical reaction.

And it got me thinking…..

Now, before I go any further I want to remind all the dear readers that I am truly, utterly, madly in love with Bolivia. I don’t necessarily agree with all the politicians or politics. I don’t even necessarily agree with labor union tactics, or all the artistic expressions of Bolivians. In fact, I tend to critique the overly-romanticizing gaze many in the North Atlantic cast on Bolivian revolutions and protest and the like. But I love so many of the people, I love the thin air, I love the sun, and gazing up at Illimani, and buying Viva phone credit, and salteñas for breakfast, and even the long ride back from El Alto after a long day of having my body repeatedly thrown onto blanket-covered wood palates.

me & illimani

But I don’t love the water in the Bolivia.

Point 1-Sinks. Only cold water comes out. This is all well and good, but when your hands are freezing from just the general cold that permeates daily life in the shade (and most sinks, being indoors, are in the shade), it’s a new level of annoyance. And since it is quite cold in the shade, and it seems that most water tanks are kept in the shade, when I say cold I do not mean room temperature, I mean a few degrees above actually freezing. Now, you can always boil water for washing dishes, doing laundry, etc., but that is not always particularly convenient. Though at least water boils at a lower temperature at such high altitudes.

Point 2-Drinking water. Don’t do it. I brush my teeth with it, and rinse glasses (see above), and use plain old tap water for most daily activities. But I’ve also had enough cases of parasites and vomiting or diarrhea from unknown causes that I stay away from drinking the stuff. And Agua Vital by the 2 liter is cheap enough. But if you find yourself parched late at night without a bottle. Or worse, if you’re sick and go through your supply and feel too weak to walk uphill to the tienda to get more, knowing better than to drink tap water can be truly excruciating.

Point 3-Showers. I have had good showers in Bolivia. Ekko hostel has some very nice gas-heated showers and I love them. Most of the places I have showered in Bolivia, however, have electric showerheads, which come in a variety of qualities. The good ones are good. Nice hot water comes out and lasts at least 5 minutes so you can actually wash everything you’d like to. But even these never seem to be powerful enough to heat the whole bathroom, so you’re still left stepping out from behind the curtain to a chill-inducing tile room. And then there are the bad ones. The electrocute you when you turn them off. Or sometimes start spewing sparks. Sometimes they only get luke-warm. Sometimes they just decide not to produce any warm water at all. And that might actually be preferable to the ones that purposefully trick you with about twenty seconds of warm water—just enough time to lather the shampoo in your hair—before they go cold for good. And others tease you with two-second alterations between pleasantly hot and scream-inducing cold. Oh, Bolivian showers, I do not miss you.

the nicest bathroom i had in la paz, still with electric showerhead

In February, I had the first of several flu-like experiences of last year. While chatting online with my friend Kate in New York, I complained: “If only I could just take a good, long, hot shower, I feel like it would clear out all the mucus in my head and I’d feel so much better.” She responded. “Do it! Better yet, fill up the tub with hot water and take a nice long hot bath!” I laughed to myself. My shower at the time did not even have a defining border. It was simply a shower head hung over the drain in the center of the bathroom floor. Oh a nice long hot bath. Sounds nice….

I realize these are complaints one could have about more than half of the places on this big earth. And these water issues won’t keep me from going back. But they sure do make me appreciate the water in the US. But the real point is, that the body adapts so quickly. When I pulled my hands back from the sink, it was not a mindful experience of water, but an embodied, conditioned response. And its only a small example of the ways that our conditions of existence, whether they be life-long, or temporary, impart themselves on our techniques of the body.
 

So, a few days before I left La Paz, I got a tattoo. I suppose it was a long time coming. Quite a few of my tatuador friends had offered free services over the last year and a half, and in the end, as Juaquin told me, I just couldn't leave the country without some ink. So, in the parlance of tattoo culture in La Paz, I become one of the "con."  

It was not a decision I made lightly, but one I had been thinking about since my sister visited in June. She wanted to add to her growing collection of inked art, but in the end we ran out of time. However, this set me thinking about if I might want something, what I might want, where I might put it, and who might be my artist.

Since I arrived in La Paz the first time in 2009, I have had a bit of a love affair with Illimani, the beautiful mountain that towers over La Paz. In fact, his picture has graced a number of blog entries here. Some of my favorite places in the city have a view of the mountain, and I always feel lucky when I'm allowed to be alone while viewing him. Its something of a centering mechanism. When I'm frustrated, confused, troubled, or even relieved or happy, it always feels better to stare at Illimani, meditatively. And on cloudy days, when the view's obstructed or he just appears to be another fluffy cloud in a blue sky, I'm a bit disappointed.   

And so, my desire to be able to see Illimani at all times--even when its cloudy, even when I'm far away--made it the perfect choice. And my wrist seemed like the perfect place. Easy to see whenever I want. More visible to me than others. But easily covered by the watch that I go crazy without.  

But the question of who was possibly the most difficult. And obvious choice would be Edwin, owner of Tito's. But then there was Andres who had become my best friend in the last few months. And Hugo had drawn up possible tattoos for me before, unsolicited. Both Diego and Caro had run off to Argentina to tattoo there for a stint, so they were out, and Gonz was in an argument with Edwin and had left the shop. Everyone told me to go with the best artist, but I knew it was only a line. And I knew the politics would catch up with me. So, I went with the underdog, my old friend Alé who had just set up a studio on the floor beneath his apartment. I hesitated for a number of reasons, but I knew in the end my loyalty lied with him. 

I am officially home from the "field." I officially have a draft of a dissertation (excepting the introduction and conclusion). Thus, in a way, this is the beginning of a new stage of student-hood (really really ABD), and a new stage of life. So, to celebrate, commemorate, and lament (just a little) I have spruced up the website. The same pages exist, though some descriptions have been updated (see my dissertation page), and I have added links to my page on Lady Blade now that my secrecy is no longer important and I can tell the whole world how much fun I have doing mariposas and tijeras. Enjoy!