The Canoga Park Dia de Los Muertos festival on November 7th was a whirl of color, bounce house generators, music, laughter, the wafting scents of food, and just life out loud. Basically everything the last year and a half were not! After a year of loss, Dia de los Muertos felt especially relevant and celebrational.
We set up an audio Ofrenda for people to honor family and friends who have passed. The presence of loved ones was deeply felt that day. What stays with us the most seems to be the tiniest moments--from toes in the sand, to seeing the world in a flash of lightening, to brushing our teeth with red gel toothpaste. Tiny moments of magical connection.
Thanks to all who so generously shared their stories, their losses and joys.
JJ and AJ Mathis
Carlos Fernandez
Johanna Matamoros
Decklan
Luis Ramone Soler Jr.
Eleni
Anthony Robertson
Quetzali and Ixchel Lopez
Full Transcript:
Betsy Foldes Meiman 0:04 Hi, I'm Betsy Foldes Meiman, and I'm the producer of Connectopod. When my partner, Andrea Longoria Lopez, signed us up for a booth at the Dia de los Muertos festival in Canoga Park on November 7, I have to admit, I wasn't into it. We have so much work right now finishing up with our series, "Changing the Narrative - Unhoused Youth" and prepping for next season of CTN, starting in January with the International Rescue Committee. But as usual, Andrea was right. It was a wonderful day, full of color and life and sounds, and it seems so foreign and so celebrational all after this past year and a half of just remote half life where we're all stuck in front of our screens and cut off from one another. Dia de los muertos celebrates death as a rebirth, grief as an acknowledgement of love. An ofrenda is an altar set up to honor and remember the dead people place items upon it that their loved ones loved in life, and photos and memories of them. We wanted to honor that with our booth. So we set up an audio ofrenda to record memories and tributes of loved ones of anybody that was passing by and wanted to share. Many people were too shy to record but they were eager to share memories. And we heard their stories of sadness of passing and the redemption of joy in memory and sharing stories you feel the power of the people we love to influence us to inspire us to support us in our need, and celebrate what in ourselves they saw and loved. In a way we become living breathing ofrendas. Here, then, is Connectopod's Audio Ofrenda.
Guest Carlos Fernandez 1:47 My name is Carlos Fernandez. I am from Mexico. Specifically I am from Mexicali, which is in the northern part of Mexico. The person I'm monitoring would be my father, Victor Manuel Fernandez Gardella. We moved here when I was seven years old. He passed away when I was 10 years old. But one of my most vivid memories from when I was a child. My dad taught at a high school equivalent of high school. My mom taught at an elementary school. So because they were both teachers that had summers off. So in the summer, we would leave for two and a half months. And my dad retrofitted a '76 . . . '70 something suburban with a queen bed in the back. And he retrofitted the engine so that it would run with natural gas. [It] had two tanks of natural gas and we could go for about 36 hours without stopping for gas, we would go start traveling up and down Mexico. And one of the things that we loved to do was go storm chasing, we would see lightning go traveling to the mountains and around the mountains seeing this little towns following the thunder and the echoing thunder, I remember this one time, we had stopped for the night and it started we could see the storm clouds in the in the horizon. And my dad picked me up and he used to call me "Chaparro", which means shorty, apparently I was really short when I was little. And my dad picked me up and he's like, "Chaparro, vente, vente, vente, vamos a ver! I'm gonna show you something, I'm going to show you something." And he picks me up in his arm
