Día de los Muertos

October 31, 2010 has come and gone marking both my beautiful daughter’s birthday and Halloween. It’s a great time of the year. November 1st and 2nd marks the Mexican Day of the Dead – Día de los Muertos —a colorful, festive and celebrative time. “It is a holiday with a complex history and fusion of old traditions. This view of death started with Meso-American cultures such as the Olmecs more than 3,000 years ago. Meso-Americans believed that during this time of the year, the boundaries that separate the living and the dead weaken and that the deceased could visit the living. Unlike the Spaniards, who viewed death as the end of life, the natives viewed it as the continuation of life, as a blend together cycle. Instead of fearing death, they embraced it. To them, life was a dream and only in death did they become truly awake.”

Here’s a Cotner Collection Art poster I did in 1998 commemorating the holiday.

Grandma's Prayer

I'm working on two books, both about my early adventures in the Cotner family of Logan County, Arkansas and Cotner family folklore. Here's a small excerpt from one of them.

"...Boys being boys, I’m sure my brother David and I drove our parents and grandparents to distraction most times with our shenanigans and adventures. The both of us used to get into all kinds of mischief and engage in many activities that probably put early gray hairs on our elders.

In the coldest of cold weather, sometimes with snow falling, wearing nothing more than faded blue jeans, thin socks and tennis shoes that had long since seen better days we’d be out playing football for hours. Or, we would go playing around the creek that flowed through the woods and pasture lands below the house—we had no gloves, no mittens to our names but we’d be breaking ice, wading the creek and throwing snow at each other in frigid, freezing temperatures until sunset. It was all great fun. It never seemed to bother us but it sure bothered our grandmother.

We’d straggle back home, numb, cold and wet to the bone.

“You boys are gonna’ die of pneumonia,” Grandma would say, shaking her head in despair.

Looking back on it now, I think that might have been wishful thinking..."