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Here it is, at long last. A series of talks that my partner in crime, Carolyn Cooke, and I organized in the Spring at the start of COVID at the California Institute of Integral Studies. The talks now immortalized into a series of podcasts: Art and Survival. Enjoy!

Just back from a trip to Mexico City trip, spending time at a home for elderly sex workers. Went with a friend George, and met there Claudia, co-directors of an extraordinary documentary about these women: The Ugly Doll / La Muñeca Fea https://www.amazon.com/Ugly-Doll-Muñeca-Fea/dp/B07FCSKR5F.

Mexico City was amazing – a kind of paradise: green and sprawling and full of boulevards and garden walkways, buildings collapsed in successive earthquakes, but a city rebuilt on top of itself. Downtown, in what used to be an island on a lake, a 14^th century temple built to the gods of war and rain and agriculture, then destroyed by the Spanish in the 16^thcentury to build a cathedral, the temple lost and rediscovered 100 years ago, its ruins living among the city and cathedrals.

Then the women – I know some of their stories: brutal rape and abuse, many went into sex work to support their children, some pimped out by their husbands. Now their families (and society) mostly abandon them, but they’ve reclaimed an abandoned building and created a home together – a band of women bonded and brutal, all the complexities of a family. They are an inspiration: survivors like I’ve never seen, tough beyond measure. George and Claudia say if aliens came down looking for the best humanity had to offer, it would be these women. I agree.