The Holi Festival of Colors

Given that there are 3 inches of snow on the ground this morning, we thought it only appropriate to celebrate the arrival of spring. Yesterday was the annual Holi Festival of Colors brought to us by the Hare Krishnas in Spanish Fork, welcoming spring and the downfall of an evil demoness. At 3 times the usual attendance, (with about 10,000 visitors instead of the usual 3000), it was quite the event, especially for Spanish Fork. The thing that makes this festival so much more exciting than the others (Llama Fest, India Fest, Himalayan Fest, all of which involve some type of chanting, dancing, 6 armed gods and delicious food- I love it all) is that for Color Fest you get to throw paint (powdered temper paint, all colors, imported from India) on each other.

First, you watch a play depicting "Holika, a demoness who, immune to fire, burned scores of children before trying to burn a child named Prahlad. When Prahlad prayed to Lord Vishnu, Holika was burned instead." Once the fire is lit under her demonic paper-mache feet, the paint throwing extravaganza begins. This year we were late, and as we were approaching the temple, stuck in traffic, we saw an enormous cloud of magenta suddenly engulf the area around the temple. We thought we missed it all (I was really really mad), but luckily for us, this year's paint throwing continued for more than 30 minutes. Within 5 minutes of arriving, we managed to buy our paint, find some friends, and cover ourselves in color.

And with all the craziness, we only saw 1 cop who was just patrolling up and down the street. Where else in the world could get a group of 10,000 students and not have any drunkenness (or not too much), fights, drugs (not that we saw, at least) or accidents?

Here's a link to the Daily Herald article about it. And in case any of you are dying to know more about the Hare Krishnas (I know you are), go here.

the green table

This weekend, T-rav* and I went on a lil camping trip to Southwest Colorado. We met up with ryry (who has been in law school in Texas for the past 6 months) and saw all sorts of coolies things like...

The Four Corners Monument (think Indians, turqoise, flatbread, and desert), which brings my total-states-visited to 38 by adding New Mexico to the list...








And some Indian ruins at Hovenweep National Monument...











And, of course, Mesa Verde. Unfortunately for us, we came at a time of year when half of the park was still closed due to the weather, so we only were able to see a few of the ruins. But it was still pretty fantastic and I highly recommend going there.




One of the first things I'm going to find out after I die is why so many Indians (Anasazi, Mayan, Aztec, Incan, etc) simply disappeared. Did they die off? Did they move somewhere else but remained undercover for centuries? Did they assimilate into another culture that didn't bother to record their coming? What happened to them? Where did their languages go? Where did they go?

the glories of spices

This evening as I tried to decide what to cook up for dinner, t-rav made a rather...unsettling suggestion that I make something "normal," meaning something that did not involve pine nuts and saffron. "Not normal!" said I, "What's not normal about saffron?!" Then he kindly pointed out that if I were to ask any of the neighbors on our street if they were using saffron or pine nuts for dinner, 99.9% of them would probably say no. And he's right. In fact, most of them would probably reply "what is saffron." My response to them is this: you are missing out. There's a world full of spices and flavors that could make your food ever so much more delectable if you would just brave the world of "weird" and try something new. You might even like it. Normal indeed. bah!