Happy Halloween and a merry Dia De Los Muertos!

I hope you all had a great Halloween, I know I did. I ended up dressing up both Friday and Saturday in 2 variations of a skeleton pirate. I’ll put up a couple pictures soon. I think my son had a blast, Friday he was a zebra and Saturday he joined me as a miniature skeleton pirate. We took him to several local Halloween activities, so he ended up Trick Or Treating 4 times in all! It was a lot of fun, as he got to participate in a bunch of activities like going through a corn maze, a hay tunnel and running the bases at Giant’s stadium! It was particularly fun taking my son Trick Or Treating around the neighborhood where I grew up, including 2 of my old houses. Oh, I also carved a truly killer Jackolantern this year, I’ll get a pic of that up soon too. I can’t tell you how many Halloween movies and shows I watched on TV throughout the month, and I was able to find a lot of great Halloween music on the college stations this year. Hopefully you all enjoyed Halloween videos I put up on here over the last couple of days. They were a blast for me to find, as I haven’t seen many of them since I was a kid!

That brings me to today, El Dia De Los Muertos, or Day of the Dead for all you non-Spanish speakers. Growing up in San Jose, I’ve grown up around the Hispanic culture, and in fact my wife is half Mexican. I’ve always found this particular holiday to be fascinating. Families go to the cemeteries of deceased loved ones and through fiestas (parties). They have music, food, decorations and spend some real time at these grave sites. It is a way to celebrate and honor their dearly departed. It also has a tradition of some very distinct art that I really enjoy. You can usually see this in the form of drawings, paintings, tattoos and sculptures. They primarily depict skeletons that are taking part in the activities of the living, like getting married, playing music and dancing. They are pretty abstract and very striking. I got to see some great examples of this during my recent trip to old town San Diego. Here are a few examples I found online.

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