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Sacred Valley
I’ve been taking a break from work this week and following the course of the Vilcanota River through the Sacred valley of the Incas. We started in the market town of Pisac and wandered through...
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Singing garbage trucks
We were awakened at 6:30 AM by loud music blasting from a megaphone on a truck. I was puzzled – could it be a political campaign? Anywhere else, blasting music so early would count against you! No,...
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Spring Break
Many students and faculty in the US celebrated Spring Break last week and I did too, though it is Fall here. My husband, sister and brother-in-law came down to join me in these extraordinary places. If...
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Blockade
I know I’m back in Bolivia because I was immediately greeted by a blockade. As I emerged from the airport in Sucre, I was accosted by a taxi driver who offered to take me down to the city, but at a...
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Killing Time
How does a person who is crazy about teaching and learning languages kill a little time? The people I was supposed to work with haven’t arrived yet, and a friend who is qualified to teach Quechua at...
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Holy Week
Selling palms for Palm Sunday in Cusco, photo by Judy Kalt Skeels I’ve always been curious about the things people consider important enough to celebrate on a regular basis – whether daily, weekly, or...
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Connecting rituals
I’m a person who gets really excited about the underlying connections among different people’s rituals. So let me continue by recommending the first chapter of the book Zealot: the Life and Times of...
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Paying attention
The woman who wove this belt was obviously paying attention! First, I see a llama, then a condor attacking a rodent, a surprised fox, a rooster confronting another condor attacking another rodent, a...
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Welcome to the field
I’ve been putting off writing this next blog post… where to start? When entering a community to conduct field research there is a need to establish trust and common ground – two elements that are hard...
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If you are a newcomer to this blog, or a former fan, you may have wondered what happened to all the posts from the field. Why are there big gaps? I began blogging in 2008 while participating in the...
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