Dias de los Muertes

Buen Dia. Yesterday began the celebration for the Day of the Dead. Dias de los Muertes is what it is called and it is a three day, two night celebration.


Yesterday was All Saints Day, and people stayed throughout the night at the cemetery to remember the children.
Today is All Souls Day, where everyone is remembered.

Last night was very noisy, lots of music could be heard all over town and there was a great deal of celebrating. There was still music across the street in the old tequila ranch at three am. Then around four am, three men were out in our street, strumming guitars and singing very off-key.
My Mexican friends at the track this morning said...............the big party is tonight.


The new mayor cancelled the Calaca Festival, which celebrated the Katrina, the female skeleton that is so well known. I was told that he felt it was just too much of a party and very touristy.
Also, prize money was given for the best altars and he felt that should stop.

The museum curator told me this.............Mexico................he said............ we are all about party, but Day of the Dead, it is about respectful party.



On Friday, three of us put up the history Club altar for Ida Franklin. Below, is the finished work and I took a photo of one of the workers. Marigold petals are sprinkled all over the table top.The lady who asked me to help with the altar creates beautiful miniature scenes and she envisioned that this might be something Ida would have liked. It is so delicate and pretty, right down to the crystal chandelier and the photographs on the wall. These are copies of the covers of books she wrote while living here in Alamos.Here is the altar created by the indigenous indian tribe, the Guarajitos.and an altar the museum created to honor a Mexican poet.The Palacio was filled also with altars that were created by the school children. Each was dedicated to a different person.

After the altar was finished, I went home and read a recent post on the http://alamosportfolio.com/ website. It was about the 'adopt a grave' program. There are over sixty identified graves of foreigners in the Pantheon. The History Club wanted to find people to take care of the graves, not just for Dias de los Muertes, but all of the time: weeding, sweeping, painting, any general clean up needed throughout the year.

I noticed that Ida Franklin's grave did not have a caretaker, nor did her son's, so of course, I adopted them immediately.

Fortunately, Senor did not mind that he was not consulted, so we took off for the Pantheon with gloves and a broom.

We discovered the graves were on top of each other, the son on the bottom, as he died first around the age of fifty-one. Ida was on top. We thought that would make for easy maintenance until we saw that Walter's inscription was barely legible. So, we just swept and tidied up.

When we left, we walked in a different direction, reading names on graves and watching other people as they worked.

We discovered two foreign graves that are not on the list, Thomas Morgan Wood and his wife, Helene Adams Wood. Well, their inscriptions could barely be read. When we got home, I called the 'adopt a grave' contact and claimed those two as well.

On Sunday, I loaded up the basket of new old bike and went to the Pantheon. A friend suggested I do a rub to find out what all the inscriptions said, so I did that. Then I painted in all of the letters with black oil paint.

I have had so many remarkable experiences in the last year and a half. This is truly one of them. After I painted the inscriptions on all four graves, I added wreaths and ribbons and candles.

While I worked, I saw other foreigners out walking, looking for their 'adopt a graves'. One friend I saw has a very old grave, an Englishman who died in the mines in 1902. I loaned her my paper and pencil so she could also do a rub.





I wondered alot about the Wood couple. Do they have any family? Thery were a mother and father. Where is their family? Why were they in Alamos? At the top of his grave there is a brass plaque. It says T. Morgan Wood and there is a music cleft and three music notes on it. Does anyone know who these people are? They are no longer alone, their names have now been added to the History Club list.

We now have four adopted graves. Dias de los Muertes mass is at four this afternoon. We will be there. We will buy marigolds and maybe other little trinkets to lay on the graves and we will light the candles.

And we will join in the celebration of the Day of the Dead in Alamos.

adios...linda lou

The Pantheon

Buen Dia.
It is very hot out, something over a hundred. We are now through working for the day and hibernating in the back room with the mini split.

Senor is getting very good lately about taking photos. I do have to delete some of them because they are out of focus. Sometimes he accidentally takes a video instead and it is usually of his shoes, but he really seems to enjoy looking for the camera and taking a picture now and then.


He took the beautiful sunset below and the first lily bloom. I cannot recall the name of our lilies, but they are night blooming only and live just through the dark. Most are pale white with maroon centers and light streaks of pink on the petals.

Year of the Gun was a bust. The dvd would not even load. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

So we sat out in the dark, in the garden room and listened to the crickets chirp.

This morning I was up at five and on new old bike for a ride out to the Pantheon, which is the cemetery. I detoured through town to check the water level in La Aduana Arroyo and there was a little trickle. The ride took about half an hour because of the detour.

Below are the gates to the main entrance of the Pantheon. I rode all around the cemetery until I found a smaller open gate and went in with new old bike. It became crowded very quickly and as I turned to go put new old bike outside, the caretaker came up to me.

He said something very quickly in Spanish and I said I did not understand and could he speak more slowly. He pantomimed a scene about my bike by shoving something imaginary way above his head and pretending to walk off. I finally realized he was telling me to leave my bike with him to watch because otherwise someone would lift it up and walk away with it.

I shook my head and he followed me outside, where I locked up my bike to the lamp post. He stood over me and watched what I was doing. When I was done he said........tiene usted llave.....do you have the key..............i said, si, senor, tengo llave.....yes, sir, i have the key....................bueno, he replied.

I followed him back through the gate and he started talking and waving his hand through the air. I think he was telling me something about the graves, but I am not sure. He may have been inviting me to sit down for desayuna (breakfast) because he sat down on a grave where he had earlier laid out his tortillas and a little plastic baggie of salsa. He also had a bottle of juice which he offered to me. I do not generally like to decline gifts, but I did.

I said gracias and started walking around the Pantheon.

After a while of looking at graves and names and dates, I came around a rather large stone grave and he was standing right there. I just about jumped out of my skin. It scared me to death. I was already scared because I had seen two large gravesite holes about eight feet deep with nothing in them.

He smiled and asked me something. It was difficult to understand him. He didn't have any teeth, but I think he was asking me who I was looking for. I asked him where the foreign graves were located. He walked ahead of me, through alot of tall grass, to the opposite side of the Pantheon. We went up a slight incline and near the top he turned and smiled a very toothless smile and said................aqui. Then he turned and left me alone.

I was fascinated by what I saw and read. I counted at least fifteen gravesites with what I will call American names since I don't know the true heritage of any of the names. Even more fascinating were the dates of birth. Many of those birthdates were from the late 1800's and the deaths ranged from the 1960's to the 1980's.

Some of the graves had names that are still familiar here in Alamos, where relatives still live. And there are probably even more gravesites of foreigners that I did not see.

A very popular club here in Alamos, is the History Club. I believe I have read that they have all of the facts for all of the graves. I think it would be very interesting to know more. While looking at some of the graves, I could only imagine what it must have been like here in Alamos, when they were alive. There are a number of books on life as it was here years ago. I will definately have to read some of those.

I brushed against a tree branch while I was walking and a swarm of little honey bees came out of the branch. I scooted away as fast as I could, waved goodbye to the caretaker and went and unlocked new old bike.

When I rode away I couldn't help but think about the graves in the Pantheon. Last year's Day of the Dead came on the heels of Hurricane Norbert. We went to the Pantheon for a short while one night. Very few people were sitting with their departed loved ones. There was very little celebration.

I think people were still in shock and in awe of what Norbert had done. Maybe this year's Day of the Dead will be a merrier, happier time for the town and the Pantheon residents as well.