CantoyaFest /  by Rob Fleming

The small town of Paracho, Michoacán hosts an annual balloon festival where hundreds of hand-made balloons are launched over the course of a weekend. Ranging in size from pumpkins to small houses, the balloons are constructed from nothing but tissue-paper and glue.

Aloft on Butterflies' Wings
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Saturday, July 19, 2014

A flame-lit cloth, soaked in paraffin or kerosene, provides the heat needed to lift the balloon high into the sky. 

Starflight
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Saturday, July 19, 2014

Variations on a Theme of Magenta
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Saturday, July 19, 2014

La Danza de los Viejitos (The Dance of the Little Old Men)
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Saturday, July 19, 2014

Impossibly-complex shapes and designs are the stuff of dreams. All you need are a pair of scissors, buckets of white glue, some cellophane tape, endless reams of tissue paper, and many skilled hands. Added plus: a creative visionary who has an eye for symmetry, graphic design and an understanding of geometry & physics.

Willy Wonka's Fantasy
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Sunday, July 20, 2014

Locals and visitors alike crowd Paracho's plaza to watch teams inflate and launch their balloons.

Elders
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Saturday, July 19, 2014

Bell Tower
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Saturday, July 19, 2014

Points & Peaks
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Saturday, July 19, 2014

Tissue-paper balloons are truly an ephemeral art. Designed for a single launch, months of hard work are greeted with either immediate success or immediate failure. When a balloon clears the ground, it climbs high in the sky—never to be seen again. Conversely, an uncooperative gust of wind can dash one's dreams—sending the delicate art/aircraft up in a quick-burning puff of smoke.

¡Qué Lástima!
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Saturday, July 19, 2014

Boy with Two Balloons
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Sunday, July 20, 2014

Visions in Pink
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Sunday, July 20, 2014

In addition to local and native-Mexican entrants, select, foreign designers (from Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, & France) were invited to participate in the weekend's festivities.

The Joker
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Sunday, July 20, 2014

Locals ply their wares to festival goers.

Wearing Sunday's Best on Saturday
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Saturday, July 19, 2014

Stars & Stripes
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Saturday, July 19, 2014

Darkness Falls
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Saturday, July 19, 2014

Activities for everyone.

Quiet: Artist at Work
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Saturday, July 19, 2014

Pincushion
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Sunday, July 20, 2014

Japanese-esque
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Saturday, July 19, 2014

Liftoff
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Sunday, July 20, 2014

Muchacho
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Sunday, July 20, 2014

Checkerboard
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Saturday, July 19, 2014

Seemingly, every-other storefront in Paracho is a luthier—filled with locally-made (and nationally-famous) guitars & vihuelas.

Strings
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Saturday, July 19, 2014

Troubadour
CantoyaFest: Paracho, Michoacán, Mexico — Saturday, July 19, 2014

 All Photos © Rob Fleming, 2014 

Cincinnati's "Old Main" /  by Rob Fleming

“Cincinnati, Ohio’s current downtown public library branch is grand in its own right as one of the busiest branches in the country. But its predecessor, demolished in the spring of 1955, was nothing short of stunning. Built in 1874, the ‘Old Main’ library was originally intended to be an opera house, with a towering atrium that instead became home to five tiers of stacked bookshelves. ”
— Allison Johnson

And per se "and" /  by Rob Fleming

“Today we just use it for stylistic purposes (and when we’ve run out of space in a text message or tweet), but the ampersand has had a long and storied history in English, and was actually frequently included as a 27th letter of the alphabet as recently as the 19th century.

In fact, it’s because of its placement in the alphabet that it gets its name. Originally, the character was simply called “and” or sometimes “et” (from the Latin word for and, which the ampersand is usually stylistically meant to resemble). However, when teaching children the alphabet, the & was often placed at the end, after Z, and recited as “and per se and,” meaning “and in and of itself” or “and standing on its own.”

So you’d have “w, x, y, z, and, per se, and.” Over time, the last bit morphed into “ampersand,” and it stuck even after we quit teaching it as part of the alphabet.”