Potayto, potato. How about tomapotatl as pomato is already taken?

Do check out Cultivariable, a great site for everything potato, including buying seeds.

The other day I recalled reading an article in July, 2017 that claimed that potatoes also grew in North America, and I thought what was dubbed the Indian potato was merely a simile, something lost in translation, or a case of mistaken identity. There was almost no follow-up information on it. I chalked it up to a mistranslation. Looks like, but is not equal to….and then Covid came along and I forgot about it. 

Yesterday, on Facebook, Discover Magazine reposted an archived article from 2021 on Solanum jamesii, or the Indian potato, now renamed the Four Corners “potato,” which renewed my interest. But the somewhat updated article compared it to domestic potatoes because it produces tubers. I thought to myself: hundreds of others solanum species have tubers too. 

However, the Four Corners potato, Solanum jamesii, is not what we think of as the ubiquitous potato. It's related to, but not the same as the garden potato, Solanum tuberosum, domesticated in the Andes 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. 

I let my fingers do the Googling, and found that what are called Apache and Navajo potatoes were hybrid varieties of the domestic potato. A dead end. Back in the summer of 2017, potato farmer /poet Art Goodtimes piqued my curiosity about Solanum jamesii which led to a spirited discussion about the origin and nomenclature of potatoes. And researching "Indian potatoes" led me to another order of plant altogether, an aquatic species related to taro root, Sagittaria latifolia, or duck potato. If it walks like a duck... What quackery!

Growing up Irish meant I ate potatoes every night for dinner. When I traveled through the Andes, I ate many varieties of strange potatoes, the most bitter was black, and grew on the island of Amantani in Lake Titicaca. My GI tract never forgave me. Apparently I was supposed to also eat the arcilla de chaco, or clay jacket—which absorbs the bitterness. When it comes to eating wild potatoes, bitter is not good, and sour is even worse. Spit it out, I tell you.

Astonishing diversity of Incan potatoes in CIP International Potato Center's seed bank.

There are something like 53 known species, and 4000 types, or varieties (not sub-species) of domestic potatoes in Peru alone. And even more in Bolivia and Chile—not to mention the Amazon. According to CIP, the International Potato Center, a genetic seed bank located in Lima, Peru, there are 151 to 180 species of wild potatoes, worldwide. The actual count is in dramatic flux as we discover new species, lose others due to climate change, and make advances in DNA sequencing. 

In fact, the entire Solanaceae family is undergoing genetic reconstruction. Solanaceae is a huge family, there are over 3000 to 4000 species worldwide. And solanum includes a whopping 1500 genera: potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, tobacco, datura, and petunias, to name a few. They’re all members of the nightshade family.

And like most solanum species, the Four Corners “potato,” Solanum jamesii, prefers to grow in disturbed soil—which suggests to ecologist Bruce Pavlik and his wife, Lisbeth Louderback, who is an archaeology curator at the Natural History Museum of Utah, that this wild potato may have been domesticated as early as 11,000 years ago. I'm not so sure about that. It’s not like hybridizing teosinte.

Escalante Valley was once referred to as Potato Valley. Pavlik and Louderback have been genome sequencing the wild potatoes near the pueblos for signs of domestication—they're looking for a genetic bottleneck. Ok, so I have trouble with their advanced reference date, as it predates Andean domestication, and, besides, it was the end of the Ice Age. Potatoes hate frost. (In the 2017 Salt Lake Tribune article, Louderback, in her doctoral thesis, quoted 10,000 to 11,000 years. See also University of Utah News).

Everything about the Four Corners “potato” is toxic—like many members of the nightshade family—unless you boil or eat the immature tubers with gobs of white clay called gleesh’ (think Kaopectate) to counteract the toxins—so it’s different than the domesticated South American potatoes of Bolivia and Peru. It’s more of a dangerous wild potato cousin with a deadly kick.

It also turns out that the Four Corners “potato” toxins are also different than those found in domestic potatoes. The toxin is the same found in tomatoes. So maybe cavalierly calling it a potato just because it has a tiny tuber the size of a grape, is a bit premature. Maybe call it tomapotatl? 

Oddly enough, Santa Rosa, horticulturalist Luther, Burbank, the man who invented the Burbank, or russet potato, aka the Idaho potato, did developed an edible white potato-tomato berry called a pomato. But, unlike the ill-fated Wonderberry, also a nightshade, which resembled a huckleberry, victim of a smear campaign touting its toxicity, the pomato didn’t breed true, so he gave it up. But in 1934, an Australian successfully bred a pomato. Many flowering ornamental solanum produce tubers too, but noshing on them could be a one-way ticket to paradise—no matter how you roll the old snake-eyes.

I realize that it’s a handy linguistic shortcut to call this wild potato cousin a "potato," because it’s so much easier to say potato family instead of saying the nightshade family. Old habits die hard. And then there’s the toxic baggage attached to the word nightshade. Think Atropa Belladonna and deadly atropine. How about an expansionist mindset, with a new name, instead of a reductionist one handcuffed by the tyranny of simile?  

The Diné word for the potato is Nimási. Maybe we should call the Four Corners “potato” that. But then we’d also have to include the Apache, Hopi, Kawaik, Southern Paiute, Tewa, Zia and Zuni names, etc., not to mention the Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) names. So maybe calling it the Four Corners “wild potato” is a far better name. Otherwise we’ll have hordes of eco-nuts going afield to nosh on them thinking they’re benign.

For the record, botanists insist that pretty much all wild potato species are not safe to eat, other than in small amounts, due to their high glycoalkaloid content. Also, Solanum jamesii is not native to California, which means it was introduced from somewhere else. But where?

Wiki spells it out: “Solanum jamesii is a species of nightshade. Its range includes the southern United States. All parts of the plant, and especially the fruit, are toxic, containing solanine when it matures. Immature tuber roots are edible.” But they’re the size of grapes, so how do you know if they’re immature? They tell off-color jokes? 

It turns out that Solanum jamesii is not the only “wild potato” in the old pueblo. One or two other southwest wild potato species, depending upon how you count your potatoes, are Solanum stoloniferum aka Solanum fendleri, or Fendler’s horsenettle—genetically speaking, they are variants of one species, the controversy rages on. Horsenettles are generally not called potatoes, BTW. 

Because of the toxicity, they are often considered famine foods. And people sometimes eat the ripe berries, or ground cherries. And since they vary in toxicity, you never know which ones will be real stinkers I’m not willing to be the guinea pig.

Let’s talk toxicity. “The primary glycoalkaloid in this Solanum jamesii species is tomatine, unlike the domesticated potato, in which the primary glycoalkaloids are solanine and chaconine." And there’s also a smidgeon of the nicotine alkaloid too! Tomatine puts this species firmly in the tomato camp—name your poison. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. 

Wow! Potato blossoms. Cultivariable is a great site for everything potato, and then some.

The question begs, how closely related is the Four Corners “wild potato” to South American potatoes? As James Dinneen in The ancient potato of the future, quipped, DNA-wise, “The Four Corners potato, Solanum jamesii, is related to the common potato in somewhat the same way coyotes are related to dogs.” Both are canines and can interbreed. But the domestic dog is descended from wolves. You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think they're siblings.

Why does any of this matter? Because, Dear One, genetic diversity. Wild species carry a wide range of unusual survival traits. Take the Irish potato famine—had there been a way to introduce more resilient genes into the potato monoculture against the potato blight (Phytophthora infestans), then one million people might not have needlessly died. Or immigrated.

The USDA is interested in the Four Corners potato’s astonishing 8-year shelf life, resistance to disease, and to drought. Climate change is affecting domestic monoculture potatoes, which is the world's third largest important food crop. Potatoes need specific heat requirements and 12-hours of daylight in order to reproduce. Not all nightshades reproduce by seed, some spread via tubers, or reroot via creeping stolons.

I plowed through a lengthy list of solanum section of Petota, and found that Solanum commersonii is resistant to root rot and nematodes. Solanum demissum, Solanum pinnatisectum, and Solanum bulbocastanum, an ornamental nightshade, are resistant to the potato blight, and "has been used to genetically engineer resistance into the cultivated varieties of potatoes around the world." —Wiki 

Genetic traits from tough wild potato species can be hybridized into our domestic potatoes. And before you go off the deep end about genetic modification, every plant we consume has been genetically modified—from aubergine to zucchini. Especially corn and broccoli. Besides, the voodoo magic of crossbreeding solanum species is far better than sticking pins into a potato. 

Where is Mr. Potatohead when you need him?

Remembering Jan Morris (10/2/1926 – 11/20/2020)

Way back in the yonder age, when I was an art student at Sonoma State University, circa 1976-78, Welsh travel writer Jan Morris came to give a lecture in Inez Storer’s art history class. That semester we met so many extraordinary artists, including artist and inventor, Don Farnsworth, whose grandfather invented the TV, and Sam Francis—who walked to Cotati from Point Reyes to meet us, as he was eschewing all forms of modern transport. 

I don’t exactly remember the details or the lecture itself. But what I do remember is that Jan had lunch with us afterwards in a Cotati pub and the afternoon stretched out beyond the fringes of eternity, embellished with her amazing stories. Beer-in-hand, she was on a roll. The story I remember most vividly to this day is of Jan telling us when she was in Mongolia riding a horse across the vast plains. And something about red cowboy boots stuck in the back of my mind. 

Of course, in those days, Jan may have still been a man (aka John Humphreys Morris, who was the only journalist on Sir Edmund Hillary’s ascent team of Mt. Everest). But, Mongolia! When John began his ascent toward the feminine gender and reassignment in 1972, in Casablanca, Morocco, it rocked the world. People couldn’t wrap their minds around it. 

To this day, I don’t know if I imagined the story of the red Mongolian riding boots, or if I saw them in a photo. See, in those days, I was not yet a writer. It could’ve been a misplaced associative story fragment from Carolyn Leilani Lau, who followed Jan’s Mongolian path during the 1980s. I remember seeing the framed photo on her kitchen counter in Oakland. Celia Woloch too had a pair of red cowboy boots. 

Maybe it’s a poet thing. Those red boots, whether real or imagined, whether they were Jan’s or Carolyn’s, or Celia’s—on her tsigani journey to Romania—became a powerful symbol for my own wanderlust, and the metaphor led me to the far corners of the earth including crossing the Andes, the Galapagos, and to the Russian steppes when it was still the USSR. Not quite outer Mongolia. Or inner Mongolia, but I caught the firebug of travel. And ignited my mind, and my writing.

And no, I’ve never owned a pair of red riding boots, but I did travel to some of those places with red Reebock boots. Not quite the same thing, but infinitely more comfortable. I wore them out a few times over. Duct tape was my friend. In Leningrad, I discovered the Cossacks, and the ancient Scythians also wore beaded red riding boots, so I was in good company. 

But those red boots became a symbol within the distant vistas of my mind. Rest in peace, Jan Morris, and may the Elysian Fields of your mind lead you ever onward. And may you always wear those red riding boots as you travel the great plains of the great beyond.

From a Facebook note to Pamela Robertson-Pearce; rev. 11/21/21.

The Last Rope Bridge

We crossed the last remaining Inca rope bridge, across the Apurímac Gorge north of Cuzco. I didn't dare look down. But then, just before I got to the lowest point, I caught my boot in a rope guardrail, I looked down. Watched something fall into the night-dark pool. A pebble? a twig? something from my backpack?

I froze, causing a traffic jam. John yelled: No! Don't Look down. Look to the far pillar. Look at me. He was throwing me a lifeline. The water swirled like a vortex, sucking me down. His eyes were the color of clouded winter skies.

They say the Q'eswachaka rope bridge was the inspiration for Thorton Wilder's novel, "The Bridge of San Luis Rey." I still have an original 1927 copy in my bookshelf, it belonged to my lovely Argentinian Spanish teacher. I feel bad that I never returned it, she's long gone now, having crossed over the bridge decades ago.

Once there were numerous rope bridges in the Andes. It is mid July. Anniversary of the bridge collapse. Am I Doña María or Pepita? Please don't let this one collapse, I prayed to any gods who would listen. If it collapses, it is God's will.

Every June, the rope bridge reinvents itself with renewed braids of ichu feather grass and sedges. Yes, there is also a modern bridge but this is not about convenience, or about the modern world. It is a longstanding cultural tradition dating back 600 years or more, the bridge is a gateway the Inca Trail.

They say this is the last rope bridge of its kind in the Andes. Family clans on both sides of the gorge make bundles of grass-ropes and plait them into long cables, they bind rock pillars on either side of the gorge to honor their ancestors and to honor Pachatata and Pachamama.

On each side of the gorge, the villager twine and plait the ropes carefully, untold lives depend upon their strength and fortitude. Spans that once held the weight of an invading army on horseback. The handrail is the width of a man's waist, the woven floor, punctuated with boards and twigs, grows new grass in the crevices, seed-holds, both its origin and its destruction.

It takes a week to renew the vows of bridge and trail, of sky, water and rock, and it ends with festive rituals honoring the apus, or mountain guardians. They say Apurímac, headwaters of the mighty Amazon, means gods of the laughing river. Or more accurately, divinity oracle.

The oracles in the gurgling river were laughing at us, all right. It seemed like it took a lifetime for me to cross that bridge to get to the other side. There was no thought of turning back. It was also the beginning of the end. We could only go on from there.

I Remember the Stars

I remember the stars. As a kid growing up in West Marin (before there was light pollution), and later in West Sonoma County, I spent many nights just gazing up at the stars. By the time I grew up, it was almost impossible to escape the pollution from city lights. Who among us has really seen the stars in all their glory with no light pollution at all? It's truly amazing. Rare times at Sonora Pass, the Galapagos, or high in the Andes during the early 1980s, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa—unfathomable myriad stars that took my breath away. Who among us ?

2/11/14

riding a packhorse in the Andes fragment

Addendum to falling off the wagon post...

Once I was riding a packhorse up Dead Woman Pass in the Andes, and she swung around on the incredibly steep hill into a massive madrone limb, so I did the leg flip to dismount uphill. Now I was used to riding up steep hill as our hill in Forest Knolls nearly defies the angle of declination—but I forgot about the weight of my camera bag/backpack, so I rolled off the OTHER side, ass over teakettle as he swung back around. I was admiring his legs from his belly. Same instinct saved me then.

I might add that the pack horse had NEVER been ridden before in his life—he really was a pack horse with a wooden frame and blanket. But he was the only horse in "town" (wide spot in the Inca Trail) as we got off the train late—so I fashioned a crude hacamore out of stiff leather that was next to useless—He ran away with me earlier—into the wall of a chicha bar—the Andean men scattering like flies. I merely lifted my leg over his withers as he slammed sideways into the adobe wall at 30MPH. The hut shook, sounded like s drum! So he was more inclined to pay me very careful regard—though I didn't speak Quechua, I did speak horse well enough.

From a Facebook post

AFTER THE SOLSTICE, MACHU PICCHU

© Maureen Hurley 1984 All rights reserved.

On the northern slopes of the Andes, 
the packhorse veered sharply from the trail
that led to the fabled lost city of the gods,
makeshift hacamore biting into his eyes
he was running blind, but his hooves knew
the paths, both sacred and profane.

I pulled the runaway's head into in my lap,
I gasped as the thin air whipped my face
thigh muscles burning to maintain balance,
but his eye was a lake of fear rimmed by a pale shore
as I hammered on his hollow forehead with my fist.
Perhaps he was remembering his Andalusian blood,
his tail was a prayer flag raised high to the wind.

The grey gelding raced up the slope to a chicha bar.
Unaccustomed to the live weight upon his back,
his hooves tattooed a drumroll of panic on hard clay.
At the last second, I hoisted a leg over his neck,
as he slammed sideways into the adobe wall,
the wooden pack frame splintered into kindling
and the hut resounded like a wooden drum.

The startled Indios abandoned their beer gourds
and scattered to the four directions like crickets
away from the flash and churn of hooves and teeth,
and a crazy gringa astride a wild packhorse, sidesaddle,
without a bridle, only a stiff lariat across his nose.


* * *

Like Frost's pony, the dappled packhorse

was used to stopping there. No frozen woods
or downy lake, this was an alien land. He stood shaken,
with heaving flanks, head hung low, nostrils flaring red,
as the Indios gathered around a crazy Epona in their midst.

The Poet rode up to translate us out of that mess.
The Gates of the Sun and Moon to the Lost City
of the Incas opened wide to let us in.
We made peace offerings on the intihuacana.
We made poetry, equating it to eternal love,
we played a benediction of mathematical equations
with the piercing stars of the Southern Cross,
compared it to the emptiness of the sky to the south,
and descended into the inferno, as a forest fire
raged on like a ruby-throated monster gone mad
on the terraced slopes of Machu Picchu.



But when we returned home from the Cordilleras,
the Poet went south, without so much as a tu
or an entonces or even a pues, he translated
the burden of a mid-life crisis, into the classic
binary subdivision with a blonde student—
younger than his daughter. Of course. She was
a descendant of the ill-fated Donner Party,
she was born into a cannibal hunger for men,
and a survivor's lust for horseflesh and melodrama,
he blamed her strange appetites on the vagaries
of weather and stars but in the end, 
she left him for another woman.

Poetic justice.
4/24/2009  
24 Write a travel-related poem

Intangible Take 2

I never wanted the plane to land, but the Andes rose like a white dream puncturing the sky. All the blue leaked into the eyes of mestizos. Time flowed backward, lined up like basureños in shacks along the Apurimac. Lined up like the locked eyes of death on several continents. The snake dancer from the selva cursed me. I was banished from the garden. The bridge at San Luis Rey failed me. The six-legged nightmare rode on the smoke. Ask me what this means, I can’t read your history written in the smoke of the victor. The garua fog hid our feet. A gorge divides water from water, brings it together again. Except the L.A. river. What leads us on? A child’s face buried in the moon’s path.

She stored apples under her bed. She said she was afraid of time. The teeth of graveyards. Riderless horses. Fear of Eden. Fear of the scent of money, fear of poverty. Fear of the telephone in the dead of night. I said I stayed in my dreams. Memorized floor patterns, but specific moments never came. The desire to return was embedded in the fear of fear. But I said there are many fears to choose from. Fear of not growing up. Fear of control. Of growing up and not being in control. Or of growing up and being in control. What if I ran away and no one stopped me? That moment of star-crossed thresholds. Not saying, Now I lay me down to sleep. Saying, I see my future as nothing, becoming nothing. The thrones of angels. Fish with the hearts of men. Each belabored breath blinded by the light, I opened my eyes. Looking forward, looking back. My dreams littered with scorpions. Descend with eyes open wide, like Beatrice.

Do you remember when we danced face-to-face? Your mouth opened into my darkness. We swam to the ceiling. You flew into the light, grew fins. We needed to rearrange definitions of speech, of the forgotten rain. Kiss me while the bones of humanity learn to sleep in doorways, and eyes learn not to see. They bathe in the streets where privacy is closest held, yet farthest away. To suckle memory. Whose tongue in my mouth? Por el loro, he said. Van Gogh’s sunflowers weren’t gold enough in the city of bankers. Raucous words flock to the trees like wild parrots. The computer is the 13th muse.

Fear of your thoughts. A code trickling down my thigh. What I ought to have said. Or, if I said too much. Fear of my thoughts. The audience dreaming of an audience dreaming. On bulkheads facing the sea, and in stairwells facing dark alleys, fear the semen trapped or not trapped in translucent orbs, a tangible sign on all the continents. The bridge becomes a flamenco skirt for the moon. Who wears the moon’s mask? The lover’s hand under the dress. No mermaid’s tail. When I said love, I got religious. Learned to walk, then crawl. Post-modern love deconstructing beneath city clocks without hands. Orgasm is closest to art. I didn’t mention syringes or T-cells.

What are we willing to accept? Kennedy shot again and again. And now this. Everything post-catastrophe. The TV channel-surfing in an empty room. Think of random blue noise as a way of life. Intangible instructions. When will blood learn to become stone? Was it better than anything, walking on the moon? Were we ever in the garden? One thing is certain: Night is neither noble nor sacred; her indifferent legs are open wide.

See also

© 2002 Maureen Hurley

IN THE CLOUD FOREST

IN THE CLOUD FOREST

                           —for JOS

A través de la noche de piedra, déjame hundir la mano

y deja que en mí palpite, como un ave a mil años prisionera,

el viejo corazón del olvidado!

     —Pablo Neruda, IX, Alturas de Macchu Picchu

On the trail to Machu Picchu,

fire opened the door to memory.

Our eyes mirrored the struggle

of the selva’s final story in the cordilleras.

Smoke peddled light across the sky.

Speculatively met us at the pass

of the abandoned fortress, Huaylabamba,

with tarnished masks and season tickets.

Gave us ringside seats—our eyes fondled

the cleavage of the Andean night chained

in firecrested ruby and golden necklaces—

the angry mantle of a campesino’s escaped milpa fire.

Cut off from the wounded hems of snowfields,

and chained to the heights, we dreamed of baptism by fire,

meteors trapped within the smoking mirror of the sun,

and of honor among thieves in this crucible of silence.

We climbed the long ladder of the earth to balconies of the sky,

to draw cool air through Neruda’s wet shrouds,

to firewalk on the coinage of coals and seasoned stars,

and to navigate the adamantine flame of the Urubamba river.

We kissed the secret eyries of crowned solitudes,

we gathered orchids, we entered the shining path to the heart

of the city of stepped stone, we burned poems written in blood

on the intihuacana. We emerged unscathed only to lose faith,

we scattered our ashes to the wind for seven years.

Waited for something—anything—to happen;

perhaps an irrefutable sign from the gods.

7/6/94

COMIDA DEL MUERTE

COMIDA DEL MUERTE

At the outpost on the edge of civilization

there they were, black and wheeling

against bright storm clouds,

a vortex of condors cantilevered and herring-boned

at right angles to the sky.

A thermal updraft juxtaposes bird against bird,

until feathers weave the wind into funnels.

Seeking new heights, they spiral

in apocalyptic formation and make quenas

with their wings; group mind gives shape to the wind.

Caught between two worlds, a Quechua woman

palms intis from gringos who steal

small pieces of her with cameras

and in return, she gives thanks to the sun.

A bone of light falls on a hammer and sickle,

graffiti on the limestone of Puku Pukara,

the kremlin of the first Inca.

In the cordilleras, Sendero Luminosos

blaze shining paths with AK-47's.

Too much history, too much past.

We sing Que Condor Pasa?

and descend into the rings of Cusco.

When solitary creatures congregate

in all the skies of the world,

one begins to understand the uplift of continents,

but not the extinction of a species.

If my arms were feathered,

it would be easier to take

what is coming.

3/26/89

Andean Music: Chaskinakuy

Chaskinakuy

In the Incan Quechua tongue, the word chaskinakuy (chas-keeNA-kwee) means "to receive from hand to hand among many people." Sonoma County musicians Edmond Badoux and Francy Vidal of of the Andean music ensemble, Chaskinakuy, founded in 1985, continue the tradition of interpreting and sharing the roots of Andean music—from Ecuador to Argentina— with attentive audiences. The sold-out performance at the Cinnabar Theatre on Jan 21st, is an indication of the popularity of this dynamic duo. 

Edmond Badoux, who hails from the Swiss Alps, moved to Canada where he met Andean musicians. Baxoux was a founding director of the internationally acclaimed Andean group, Sukay (open the earth for planting), they settled in San Francisco in 1975, but Badoux left the group in 1985 to do research and founded Chaskinakuy. 

I've listened Sukay on many a street corner—they were my first introduction to the nueva canción style of Andean music. (Simon & Garfunkel's iconic El Cóndor Pasa is in the nueva canción style). Badoux makes most of the instruments we see on stage. And there are a lot of them. Vidal and Badoux typically play 30 to 40 instruments during their set. 

Both Badoux and Vidal have traveled extensively throughout Latin America, collecting music and instruments—made of reeds, feathers, horns, hooves, bone, and clay. Badoux traveled extensively in South America for over a year, collecting and recording Andean music, "literally receiving it from hand to hand and heart to heart," says Vidal. 

Vidal said, "imagine you're on the road to Otavalo." That was easy. I'd just returned from the Andean town where eucalyptus forests flanked the slopes of the Andes, and Vulcán Chimborazu punctured holes in the equatorial sky. 

The other half of the Chaskinakuy duo, Francy Vidal explains that the musical instruments covering the stage are mostly wind instruments. Vidal is an eighth-generation Californio from Sacramento, by way of Mexico and the Old World. Vidal first became interested in music when her mother played the organ for the Mexican church. 

Ironically because tourists expect to hear El Cóndor Pasa, Andean musicians everywhere have learned to play the song. Francie sang songs in Spanish, "I come from the puna. In my saddlebags I bring hopes, dreams and sorrow," and in Quechua, she sang a tinku, or planting song, "...Come on little brother, it's time to get up./ The golden sun is rising." 

Tinku is a ritualistic warlike form of extreme combat dance (or brawl) both in praise of Pachamama, the World Mother, and a denouncement against the conquistadors who made them slaves. In both cases, blood sacrifice is involved. 

Vidal used the downtime between songs, as they swapped instruments, to educate the audience. The most common Andean instruments are the double-row cane panpipes, and drums ceremonially used for the agricultural calendar—planting and harvesting of potatoes, amaranth, maize and coca. 

The traditional Andean panpipes, the zampoña, or sikú—from the tiny chuli to the monster toyo—are divided into two instruments sharing one harmonic scale. To play music on these panpipes requires two people being of one mind, one breath, to coordinate the melody. Vidal and Badoux take turns demonstrating a scale. One half of the panpipe duality (or moiety) is called the ira, and the other, the arka (both male and female—or Pachatata and Pachamama). The complexity of these pipes adds a whole new level meaning to make sweet music together. 

Vidal held up what looked like wayward pipes from a disemboweled church organ. The toyo (or jach'a in Aymara) the largest panpipes in the world, are five feet tall, and contain every note (A-G). Some toyo are even bigger—up to six feet tall.

Before the arrival of Europeans, the indigenous panpipes, dating back 5000 years, were tuned to a pentatonic scale. The pipes have a deep resonating sound like Pachamama, the earth breathing, the Andean air alive with electricity and howling winds—or like insects buzzing in the jungle. 

The panpipes, divided in two parts, require two musical partners to play a scale or a melody. While one musician breathes, the other plays—to a stereo effect. The word conspiracy means to breathe together. At high altitudes. it requires a conspiracy of musicians to properly play the panpipes. What's amazing about these pipes, aside from the sheer size, is that they're typically played at altitudes of 9,000 to 14,000 feet-—more than two miles above sea level. Talk about playing in thin air and breathing together. 

We learn practical applications as well. "If your panpipe gets out of tune," adds Badoux, who makes many of the pipes, "you can drop ball bearings or lentils in the pipes to tune it—but you can only sharpen it." 

Vidal, a flautist by training, explains that the quena (kena), or the seven-holed notched flute, has at least a 3,000-year tradition and is made from bamboo, reed, flamingo legs, or even human thigh bones. The smallest, the pinquillo, or kamacheña is an annoying mosquito-pitched 3-note flute. Not recommended after a bout at the chicha bar. 

Ocariñas, are globe-shaped hunting flutes with four to six (or more) holes, often made of ceramics, in the form of flat faces, turtles, and birds. "Traditionally, women weren't allowed to play the flute but that attitude has changed since the 60's," said Vidal. 

Unusual traditional Andean musical instruments include an antara—a single row panpipe, or sikú panpipes made from the quills of turkey vulture wing feathers. In Peru and Bolivia these panpipes are made from the larger quills of condor feathers. I heard one being played on Lake Titicaca. Shrill and mesmerizing. 

Perhaps the most odd instrument was the clarin, or cana, a ten-foot long bamboo French type horn with all the kinks removed which sounded more like a trumpeting mastodon, than a horn. Cow horns (bocinas) and conch shells are also used. 

Vidal explained the European influence, musica criolla, brought to the Andes the sound of stringed instruments which all lend their charm to the native Andean tunes. The guitarra, the mandolina, the charango—the ubiquitous armadillo soundbox mandolin, and la arpa— the Irish harp—played upside down! 

Several percussion instruments include rain sticks, a goatskin drum and chullus made of hooves. "The rattle made of goat hooves was very expensive by Andean standards," explains Vidal to the audience, "a whole herd of goats went into the making of that rattle." Like a herd of castanets. Vidal and Badoux's performance is educationally entertaining and uplifting as the Andes themselves. 

Badoux & Vidal are celebrating the release of their first cassette, Chaskinakuy: Music of the Andes. The cassette features traditional instrumental Andean music played on native panpipes, flutes, drums and strings. The cassette, available at the concert, was recorded locally at Joe Hoffman Studios, Occidental. Or you can order a tape directly from Chaskinakuy, PO Box 943, Penngrove, CA 94951. The duo also teaches music classes in Penngrove and perform in the schools as well. Chaskinakuy will be at Guerneville Community Church, Fri. Feb. 3rd (1988) at 8 pm. Tickets are $6 at the door. 

Lest you think this review is no longer relevant, the out of print Music of the Andes is soon to be released on CD. Visit Chaskinakuy's website to pre-order it, or pick up one of their other CDs Cosecha, or Flor de Tierra there, or at CD Baby. 

Chaskinakuy's 2014 address is PO Box 11421, Santa Rosa, CA 95406. If you want to book them for an event, or a school assembly, contact Francie at Bookings@chaskinakuy.com

The Paper, Jan. 1988, there were photos too. Alas, no tear sheet.
rev. Feb. 27, 2014

Chicuchas Wasi, the Children's Home of Cusco (notes for an article)

FIRST DRAFT NOTES  Most of my Chicuchas Wasi files won't even open, and the ones that do open are in far worse shape than this one. And this one's in bad shape. Will I ever be able to resurrect this? Alas, the dot matrix hard copy version I finally found is basically what you see here, not a finished article.

Peru’s capital city, Lima, founded in 1537, was once considered the Paris of the New World. But even the new Paris foundered quickly. Patron of Peru, born in 586AD, Santa Rosa de Lima, the new world’s first and only saint, housed, fed and nursed the poor, teaching them to read and write. 

By 1823, when the Gran Liberator Simón Bolívar arrived, he was appalled by the filth and poverty. Cuzco has always been the naval of the world, the capital of the Inca empire. 

In the center of the world, carrying on the tradition of Santa Rosa de Lima, is a modern 20th century healer, nurse Rae Pieraccini. When Pieraccini, a Sonoma County resident and Kaiser nurse at Santa Rosa (named after Rosa de Lima, incidentally), went to Peru with a Sierra Club expedition in 1985, little did she know she’d move to Cuzco and found a home for poverty-stricken children of the street, Chicuchas Wasi, which in Quechua, the Inca language, means Children’s Home.  

NOTES Pieraccini said when she arrived in Cuzco, she had a sensation of being here before and vowed to come back to live. Se didn’t even know Spanish. She was put to work as a nurse soon after when the tourist train to Machu Picchu was bombed in 1986. After the bombing, tourism dropped off because of war and terrorism but the children are insistent. Pieraccini came to Cuzco with a nurse friend whose brother was an archaeologist at Stanford. Pieraccini had the feeling of deja vu, of having been here before. 

Rae Pieraccini has 3 grown sons in Santa Rosa, 21, 23, 26. In 86 it was rough. Her youngest son was in Cusco when the train was bombed. She was the only bilingual nurse. She said that she tried not to work in medicine…but Rae at Kaiser was into alternative healing practice. Psychic healing, stress reduction (Kaiser administrator Michael Peterson was supportive of her efforts.)

Rae: I don’t know anything about US policies. This is a project of the heart..so we can get to know eachother as people. When you finally have all the things you need, then what? You come here where they have nothing. The only luxury we have is  a black and white TV. I have a VCR wish out. I’m writing a lot, mostly out of need. Perhaps for a nursing journal.

Rae works in the countryside with a Peruvian nurse, Enriquetta, and house manager, Phil Voysey, an Aussie.. Phil & I are on max burn-out level 24, hours a day. (

see PD article july 19, and TV interview on Chamnnel 6?  

Rae returns home to Sonoma County every 6 months to keep the flow (cash) going)

How people can help. Send money, says Rae. Chicuchas Wasi needs to become self-sufficient. to buy land in the country and to raise vegetables, there's always a shortage of greens in the Andes. She wants to take the kids back to the country.  But there's no electricity, she talks about the dangers of using a kerosine stove. No hot water, etc.

This is an outreach perogram, She has to contend with officials. credibility Ifactor.. story of sold kids... She has the way paved with the ministry of Health. She has an administarative role, something she doesn’t like to do…but it needs to be done. Chicuchas Wasi is in her name. She married a Peruvian.. Americans can’t own land (doesn’t want this mentioned…  )

Chicuchas Wasi's legal foundation is in Santa Rosa, because the money is in California. She says Chicuchas Wasi isn’t my house. it’s the kid’s house. She sees herself in the role of country nurse who's duties include birth to autopsy to dentistry (not in that order). She’s tryiing to incorporate both local healing, herbal and modern medicine practices.

We hiked three hours and 1,0000 meters up to vaccine kids and teach birth control. Cuzco at 11,100 ft. is base camp.

KINTERPLAST—group of surgeons plastic, at Stanford. She’s liasion. She says there are lots of burns, cleft palates, and told a story about a baby in the campo with a cleft palate. The parents wanted to leave it out, exposed to the elements, to die. Many superstitions.

But things are improving, there are several groups working together to serve the community better.

Sociology syndrome. There are kids living  in the street everywhere. The poverty is appaling. It’s time to take another look at how the children of the world are suffering. We’re chasing the wrong rainbow.. The time is now.  

CHILDHOPE in Guatemala City gave Rae a foundation grant.

She tells a story about one of her first charges, Ronald, now 15, twho ook everything we had. He’s now on his own working in a bakery painting faces on tarts. He earns 1,500 intis a month ($7.50 us) 500 intis go for a room. ($7 buys a good meal for 2 in Cuzco—barely). He lives on this a whole month?

He was their first street kid. She said, old habits die hard. Stealing and lying are a big problem. He still lives on the outside. His brother Lucho, we’re having better luck with him.

We’re trying to get little girls off the streets and into the home. The problem is 99% have parents so we legally can’t do much for them. For the first few months I was out there every night pounding the pavement. They won’t talk to Phil bevcause he’s a man. There’s a lot of abuse…mothers won’t let them come here because they won’t be earning money.

Foreigners have come here in the past to “adopt” kids and have turned around and sold them.

The story of Eva, the 8 year old selling her body to tourists on the streets of Cuzco. pix

People here are blind. It takes a foreigner here to see what the needs are, and what can be done for these kids. The question is, there’s so much to do, where do you start?  

Her mail’s being lifted? She said that she can’t trust officials.  >she describes herself as a woman in transition. Trial by fire.  

See article in the Christian Science Moniter on street kids. june 30, 87.

Phil Voysey’s been in Peru since January. He received a phone call at 4 am from Rae asking for help. Phil worked in Zimbabwe for two years teaching English & African history. He's had a lot of experience with the 3rd world. He first came to Peru in 1985. He said that he wanted to work in Latin America. And he  intended to go to Chile, but never mde it.

Though Rae doesn’t want to talk about the political structure, she said that Peru is one hell of a political hot spot for a middle class single gringa with 3 kids.  

She takes a more holistic approach—medicine. quote on wall— in spanish— your children are not your children. They are *sons and daughters of life—-Kalil Gibran  

Her own children having fled the nest, she’s now raising Quechua chiildren.  

I can’t figure out the politics. Like Pol Potismos, Viet Kong terrorists—nobody seems to be for the Sendero Luminoso. Carlos, our Limeño friend, a member of the miiddle class, feels a Sendero takeover is inevitible. He hopes they’ll have learned something and mellowed in the process. 

Chichua means pregnant. Chicuchas means children. Wasi means house.

Ronald who’s 15 looks about 10, from malnutrition, she said that he grew 4” in 4 months after she took him in.. .

Rae now has his brother Luis who came to Chicuchas Wasi —because I was walking the street looking for Ronald & they told me he was living with a gringa. Need translation of story...

Gillermo’s story, In the hospital, my mother died, my papa died .

Santusa’s story. She says they suffered a lot in the country taking care of the sheep in the rain? and she likes it better in the city. She likes it in Chicuchas Wasi because she wouldn’t have anywhere else to go if she left. She’d like to be an empleada (a domestic) when she grows up and work in somebody’s house. She’d like to work & put Rosita her little sister through high school.

John, who was translating their stories said, One thing that strikes me is that these kids have limited aspirations. Carpenter, maid. All my chicano kids in Oakland want to be doctors, lawyers, models. Or is it that a carpenter or maid is as high or unreachable or semi-realistic a goal as these :professional glamor positions are for most of my students?

Chicuchas Wasi was founded for puroses offering practical assistance, a future with hope to the abandoned street children of Cuzco. We were striving to create a home environment, where together we can become strong in body, mind, and spirit. Daily existence here is a struggle—even for the educated.

An economic crisis exists in Peru—so the children are forgotten. The government has no financial ability to help them. They simply exist by whatever means they can find, they are alone, afraid, hungry, sick, and without hope for more; or they die.

We are trying through love, affection, imnproved diet, health and education *to give them hope and a productive future.

Goals: to establish several permanent homes.
Self care education. Kids in local schools, apprenticeship with artisans. I’m looking for a mechanic apprentice to work 1 to 1 with the kids. We need community volunteers as well as US health care providers.

I’m here alone with the kids for days at a time. Kids have humble goals, but not too humble. A carpenter, a maid, I teach them basic living skills, washing and cooking. It’s a lonely profession. You have no one to share the hard times with—especially street kids—Ronald, I had to send him back to the streets because he exausted me.

Rae would like to see the home staffed with members from the local community. Creating a sense of extended family where children can reestablish their capacity to trust, and reenter their culture with a future that will include  a job, self-respect and dignity.

Rae lives in a modest 3 storey complex of adobe with a tiny courtyard the size of a hallway where the laundry chores are shared by all the children. The bright red plastic tubs are nearly as big as the kids. The kerosine stove is also outside.

Kerosine stoves account for nearly all the burns that Interplast tries reconstructive surgery on. Rae says we theoretically could expand Chicuchas Wasi.

Chicuchas Wasi currently has 6 kids; 4 brothers & sisters). We can put 4 more boys (8 total) at 2 to a bed, and 4 more girls. We have the space but not the resources. This includes care providers and money.

There’s also the problem of neighbors complaining about the noise the kids make while playing.

What Rae really wants to do is to relocate in the country and build a large hacienda where kids can raise their own vegetables to sell.—to become self supporting. She needs large cash outlay of several thousand dollars. $12,000 to buy a truck, $7,000 for land and another $3,000 for building supplies for starters.

We're outgrowing our house. Rae would like to see graduates from the home return to participate in its continued existance. As a registered nurse, and help in the community…. outreach

The kids always say, “are you going to hit me? There’s so much alcoholism here. They are always speaking Quechua when they don’t want me to understand. They tell us, you and Phil speak English when you don’t want us to understand. I need to learn Quechua. No one speaks Spanish in the campo.

I was in the park, when I first arrived here—- I lifted my hand from my backpack for a moment and it was stolen right out from under my hand. I didn’t have a place to live, I didn’t have a job and everything I owned was stolen. I had enough change to get a cup of coffee and a friend saved me. He took me up to th English Language school and got me a job.

Rae is care provider for six kids; 4 boys and 2 girls. All are without family. One child has Spina Biida or Spinal TB, they’ve had parasites, worms, typhoid—many street kids come to lunch to eat their main midday meal—usually their only meal.

Rae needs more space & help. She says we have a policy not to take in kids on a permanent basis under the age of five years. The economy here is crazy. The price of food has more than doubled in six weeks. The majority of the street kids are boys.

All I want to do right now is administartive stuff— I’d like to start a cottage industry. Make cookies to sell to the gringos. All the kids are way behind ifor their age— physically, emotionally & educationally. I must be crazy to do this (to raise kids) for a second time. I look at all those kids soaking it up In Cuzco, there are similar projects.

The orphanage run by nuns and Jhurch-related orphanages tend to take in babies but they don’t deal with Iindependent street kids. There’s a woman from France who also takes in street kids but she doesn’t offer them the kind of support Rae offers her charglings. Giving them a place to sleep and food isn’t enough—like Oliver Twist in the poorhouse in England—-

Rae said, I went home to get rested and I worked like hell to raise money. We had two interviews. The crowd she wants to reach are the west county folks. She says the 8 to 5’ers don’t respond. It’s the alternative lifestyle people who will help this project. Who knows what’s going to happen here politically? The Peruvians don’t understand our motives. Gringos robbed them of their children years ago and sold them into slavery and prostitution.

Her nurse companion Enriquetta Ccapatinta has been instrumental in helping Rae get through the legal work. ON her bookshelf, City of Joy, 501 Spanish verbs. Pediatrics, Carlos Casteneda, candles, crystals, shells and herbs. A poster on the wall. Love is the power that heals. A calendar of street people of the world. Stuffed bears and rabbits. Large butcherpaper notes of Quechua suffixes and tenses plaster the walls. Mi casa wasi y, tu casa wasiki, casa wasi.

There are no stipends she can offer house manager Phil Voysey. Phil’s had to pay for everything out of his own pocket. When Rae came to CA to raise money, someone donated $100 so he could take a vacation. When we get the oven working, we’ll sell cookies and wear our twe shirts that say Chicuchas Wasi and sell them to the gringos on the plaza.

Her dream is to open a *tienda, a store and export Peruvian goods. Rae was raised in Sausalito, the daughter of a fisherman, I was his crew & deck hand. We were berthed down where Spinnaker's is now. Her father went into boat tours and they moved the business over to SF’s Pier 43.

I was the oldest of two daughters. I did all the PR and contacted the hotels. For ten years. II passed out literature, sold tickets, etc… this survival skill was to later help her with Chicuchas Wasi.

She was married at 18 to someone who lived around the corner, had three sons by the time she was 24. She moved to Hawaii, sold real estate in Oahu and Kauaii.

She returned to San Rafael, had the ticky tacky house, station wagon and dog—the whole middle class scene. And I woke up one day when I caught my children out in the back yard taking the temperature of the pool with a thermometer to see who had the warmest pool in the neighborhood. I said, something’s wrong here.

We took a ride up to Sonoma (74) and bought six acres south of the town on Watmaugh And built a home for ourselves. We went back to the land. We were very domestic. We had a farm, joined 4H, raised pigs. I had a truck, with pigs in back, kids in front—pigs have a tendency to escape. I wound up chasing pigs with a tennis racquet.

We had goats, made cheese, home canned, etc. The kids were involved. Like with coming here, I lived by that inner force that's always led me. IMy dream as a kid was to be a nun and to work on the hospital ship, Hope.

Rae did become a nurse. Took courses at Napa Community college for 5 years.. She worked at Queen of the Valley hospital, Yontville Veteran’s Home, Sonoma Valley Hospital, before coming to Kaiser Permanente for six years.

She officially quit last year. She did ICU intensive care nursing at San Rafael for two years—before she burned out. Working at Santa Rosa Kaiser, in general medicine, five days a week from 8 to 5, was great. She taught stress reduction classes, and worked in OB/GYN.

She said, I wish I had more pediatrics training. What I like most is country nursing. I was involved in psychic healing long before I became a nurse. When I worked as a student nurse, I’d use psychbic healing and the moniters would go down. ‘I use touch, channeling energy fields.       

See PD ARTICLE Fall 85 Rae visited Cuzco, the magnetic center of the earth. where she found the place & its indigenous Quechua people so compelliing that she knew :she had to go back whether or not she could make a living.  

10 year resident of Sonoma co. critical care nurse at Kaiser Pernanente. her 3 sons live in sonoma, their father is in Stockton. (Sausalito story…3 mos. later, she took leave of absence from her job to spend a year in Cuzco and be a volunteer nurse, to learn Spanish, to make connections with the Quechua culture.

During her year in Cuzco she became acquainted with the street kids. seven year olds with families so impoverished, they live solely on potatoes. She blames the problem on declining economy and high birth rate. This forces the kids on the street to work, beg, steal at an early age. Soon, they’ve moved onto the streets.

After months of fundraising, Rae bought the apt 3 blocks from the town’s main plaza and invited the street children in. Her project has attracted the attention of foreign Peruvians in Cuzco.  

Contingents of interested Sonoma County  people are fundraising on the home front. Rae says Peruvian participation is crucial if this projets is going to survive. Rae wants project to be acceptable to the Quechuas and then she’ll turn it over to them when it’s established.  

In June, Rae drummed up donations of time, clothing, and medical supplies. Cuzco is an Inca museum filled with peasants. Those coming from primitive mountain villages find the adobe houses, electricity, and cobbled streets, very urban. Lack of high rises, poorly equipped hospitals and a severe absence of services for the poor…   

get back to PD article 

Chicuchas Wasi Rae Pieraccini, President, 

Casilla 636, Correo Central, Cuzco, Peru, 

SA tel 22772 Domicillo: Alabado 525 

FAX 51-84-236140 

Sra. Rae Pieraccini tele. 22-77-20 c/o La Positiva, Cuzco Peru 

Capp Street Foundation flow thru— went belly up. Chicuchas Wasi needs another flow thru. List of foundations sent to Steve Burdick to FAX to Rae.  or PO box 2031 Sonoma CA 95476 CA Prez. Steve Burdick, 1860 Sobre Vista Ct., Sonoma w. 765-9125, h. 938-0267 Kaiser ortho Dr.Jon Lopez H. 579-9065 W. 571-4123 9 Carol Stewart 539-4563, 538-2468 leaving for Peru in Oct? Leann Geiger 578-2606, 19, wants to work with Rae. Read about Chicuchas Wasi in PD. See also, Betty Woods—back from Nicaragua. Still at Kaiser? She may come down to help Rae later….

• see also
• Flying through the Andes from Quito to Lima, Ecuad...
• Lima
• Letter to Luis Kong, from the Necropolis, Paracas,...
• PUNO/AREQUIPA Festival of Santa Rosa de Lima
• Children's Home of Cusco (note...
• Amantani, Lake Titicaca, Peru
• Machu Picchu: Hiking the Inca Trail (photos)

• Are the French Really Rude? On the Gringo Trail

Lima, portrait of a city

“When you no longer see any trees you will be in Peru.”
—Simón Bolîvar's boat pilot, 1823

From the air, the outskirts of Lima, even the multitudes of red and white Peruvian flags fluttering over the pueblos jovenes, the shanty settlements don’t hide the smoldering heaps of garbage lining the dry banks of the Rímac River. In Quechua, the Inca tongue, Rímac means talking, or singing river.

If the river could speak, it would not have much to commend during the 400 turbulent years of European settlement. Twelve degrees south of the equator, Lima, the capital of Peru, is situated on the great coastal desert, the driest in the world, where precious rain is measured in millimeters a year.

South America’s Gran Liberator, Simón Bolîvar described it in letters as “the land was almost impossible to believe. Along the coast it was not only dead— for dead implied having once lived— it was unlacing, desolate, without trees, grass, or even cactus. The air was chilled; a cold ocean current prevented the fall of rain, and transformed a thousand miles of coastline into an utter wasteland.”

Though the explorer Pizarro is credited with the founding of Lima in 1535, there are huacas, adobe pyramids that predate our current calendar (Año Domini) by 1000 years.

For 400 years Spain generously suckled riches from Peru’s golden breasts until there was nothing left. I imagine most of that melted gold still slumbers in the tombs of numbered Swiss vaults.

Some Peruvians claim the Incas, with subtle revenge in mind, suggested the site to Pizarro, because, unlike the rest of the coast, it was so gloomy and cold five months of the year. Perhaps the Inca’s best revenge is that Pizarro's mummified body is on permanent public display.

Because of the Arctic Humboldt current, Lima is blanketed with heavy fog, the garuá, which lets in little sun from June to October. In 1823, Liberator of Colombia, Simón Bolîvar described Lima— once considered the Paris of South America, “Lima had a down at the heel look. The avenues were filled with filth and the water which ran down the gutters in the centers of the streets was dammed with a concentration of litter.” Not much has changed.