TheApple

 Well, it's on Amazon, for one:

http://www.amazon.com/Bellybutton-summer-ombligo-poemas-verano/dp/0...

Whoooaaa!   Hold everything....eeeeerrrrk!

I thought "the belly-button of the moon" was a romantic metaphor for M e j i c o !

Am I wrong?

{Hi, guys....what's da haps?}

debo: I read in your posts in swordbird that you are writing a book related to "ciudad  Juarez" 

are you interested  only in this city  in other place , saddly, there are other places in Mexico where the violence  against  the women is  higher .

I have a date to go kayaking.

I'm outta here 'til tomorrow morning (work!).

ttfn,

~debo

P.S.    It is 109 degrees out there right now!   

JOHN: Yes, you live in the new bellybutton of the moon.!!!!

and guess what I live near Santa Fe . what a coincidence!!!!

Well I sure did not and now I am a bit more educated. Thank you gentlemen!

This is the lake of Texcoco where "La Gran Tenochtitlan" was founded.

                   the bellybuttom of the moon.                                                                                                                   

My ancestors believed that the lake where they lived and the moon surface were alike!!!!

Do you mean there is no more water in the lake?     What has that to do with the population?   Are you insinuating that the people used-up the water?       How many generations are we talking about?    It seems unlikely that the water would be used up....maybe the climate changed and it evaporated?   or there was an earthquake and the water found a new channel to follow....perhaps deepunder the earth?   It just seems incredible that a primitive culture (we're talking ancient history, right?) could use up all the water in a lake that large....

FER,  what does "Cuidad" mean?    You have used it with reference to several different locations, so it doesn't sound like the name of a town...is it a title?    Does it mean something like "community"?

smiles to you this fine day!

~debo

wwwhat????!

you build little islands to grow things upon?   or are they floating barges filled with soil, where you grow food?   

I'm so excited about this FER, it seems so bizarre and unique, and INTERESTING!

You live on a boat?    Oh my....    am I understanding this?   The pictures seem like a fairytale, un-real... do you have actual photographs?

OH MY GOODNESS.... how cool!   Or maybe it's HOT!    

This seems wonderous to me....   please go on...tell us more!

FER says ...

DEAR DEBO: The lake of Texcoco is almost  empty  becuase the population grew and grew. Now we live on what in the past was the lake.

So, you do live on dry land...not upon the water?

Hmm, could it be that we are all LUNA-TICS - especially, you, Mateja, given your hubby's surname.

Luna is Latin for moon, and lunatics were called that because periods of insanity were believed to be triggered by the moon's cycle. 

There's the very persistent urban legend that crime rates go up during a full moon:

"No effect of lunar cycle on psychiatric admissions or emergency evaluations

 Military Medicine. 2006 Dec;171(12):1239-42.

It is a popularly held belief that psychiatric behavior worsens during a full moon. Research in this area has yielded mixed results. Records from Naval Medical Center San Diego for 1993-2001 were examined to see whether there were higher rates of psychiatric admission associated with particular phases of the moon. Records from 8,473 admissions revealed that there were no more admission on days with a full moon, a new moon, any quarter of the moon, a waxing moon, or a waning moon. This held true for psychiatric patients as a whole, as well as for individuals with particular diagnoses, such as those with a mood disorder or psychotic disorder. Records from 1,909 emergency psychiatric evaluations that occurred between 2002 and 2003 were also examined to see whether a higher percentage of patients might present, but not require hospitalization, during a particular phase of the moon. Once again, no significant effect was found. In summary, lunar phase was not associated in any significant way with psychiatric admissions or emergency presentation.

Yet another "old wives tale" that I had utterly believed before reading this...  with our bodies being 95% water (percentage varies according who whose figures one listens to) and the moon effecting the tides so significantly, it would seem logical that the phases of the moon would also effect our persons.    Again, John de-bunks the believeable!

eye-opening!

 Dear debo,

Don't feel bad - I used to believe all that stuff, too. 

It similar to some e-mails that friends send me, warning about different things or giving supposedly valid information. I ALWAYS do a Google search now, mostly to snopes,com and/or urbanlegends.com before passing anything along.

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/internet/

http://www.snopes.com/

About 90% to 95% of the time, I discover that what was in those e-mails is inaccurate.

There's a LOT of misinformation out there, and Lord knows how much of what I still believe to be "factual" actually isn't.

FER....

I love this....look at the designs and the colors...so lovely....oh-thank you for sharing this....so these little flat-bottomed boats with all their wonderful decorations are called "chimanpas".... do you have one?   Do people live on them, or are they for festivals? 

Is Xochilico on the lake Texcoco?  wait-wait...yousay this is in Mexico City, right?   Are these chimanpas on Texcoco, as well?

Does your family have one?  

This may sound a silly question, but....if you live on a lake...where do you teach?   Where do you get connected with the internet? 

Are your facilities...ummm...modern?