Border-crossing journalism from the Sacramento Valley
by Leslie Layton
Thomas Lewry and Scott Marshall had stopped for a blood-pressure check on a November Thursday at the Fire House Certified Farmer’s Market in Oroville’s Southside.
A pair of Chico State nursing students wrapped the cuff first around one man’s arm, then the other’s, and started pumping. Marshall talked about his health problems, and as he did, the screening began to seem increasingly inconsequential.
I rigged the stars
to defy
the rolls of men,
l i g h t p o l l u t i o n,
smoke
rolling with
fog
in the hills of los angeles.
so much is on the side of the solid blues:
freeways crisscrossing a landscape
that we cannot walk
an earth that will shake massively
any day now, we are told
roar at the millions of dead-
end carbon footprint trails
traversing its skin
ChicoSol contributing editor Lindajoy Fenley is traveling through Mexico, exploring influences on traditional music. She files this report from Mexico City after visiting with the well-known group Yolotecuani that plays the music of Tixtla, a small mountain town in central Guerrero state on the Pacific coast.
by Lindajoy Fenley
Years ago, 2-year-old Osvaldo Peñaloza captured my heart as he adeptly beat syncopated Tixtleco rhythms on a small wooden box — one open palm delivering solid sounds, while the other, gripping a wood block, created sharper accents. On this return trip to Mexico, I watched him play again. At 13, he’s an integral part of his parents’ band, Yolotecuani (Heart of the Tiger).
