Meet Virginia Walker

Virginia was our 2009 registration team leader.  She is a PhD candidate in the Art History program at the University of Texas and she is studying ancient Malinalco, a fascinating site located in the basin of Mexico. Her organization skills are outstanding and she put them to work for us by delivering the smoothest registration process that we have experience in several years at the meetings.  Her attitude and professionalism were greatly appreciated. Thank you Virginia!

Say Hello to Lynda Manning-Schwartz!

For those of you who count yourselves among the annual Austin Maya Meeting faithful, you know Lynda's smiling face very well. For many years, she organized the meeting registration and is still among our most active volunteers. This year one of her jobs is to be Michael's Girl Friday, performing important administrative tasks. Her other interests include the ancient Mixtec ("bring back the Mixtec workshops") and she also works as secretary for the Heart of Texas G-Gaugers (hubby, Charles is president) who are "group of families with a common interest in G-gauge railroading, whether indoor or outdoor, regardless of scale." Here is their webpage link: http://www.hotgg.org/?home

Aj tz'ib' Justin Kerr

Aj tz'ib' is a Maya word for "scribe" or "he of the writing". I added it as a title to Justin's name out of respect for the many years of work that Justin and his wife Barbara have done to aid in making the iconography and glyphs found on ancient Maya ceramics available to the public and to scholars. To see and search his online database go here:
http://www.mayavase.com/. Justin has been leading the Iconography Workshop at the Austin Maya Meetings for 26 years and he will do so once again in 2009. His classes are always animated, with lively discussions about glyphs and iconography.

Here is an excerpt from an article about Justin and Barbara that first appeared in Archaeology Magazine, Volume 56, no. 6, Nov/Dec 2006 by Tom Gidwitz "Picture Perfect: How an ingenious former fashion photographer managed to capture on film the mind and spirit of the ancient Maya"

In a cluttered studio in New York's Flatiron district, a thousand-year old Maya vase spins slowly on a turntable. On its painted surface is a puzzling scene: a ruler sitting on a bearded dragon gazes down at a baby in the hands of a black-eyed death god." To read the rest of the article go to: http://www.tomgidwitz.com/main/perfect.htm

Video on how to do rollouts http://www.mesoweb.com/features/Rollout/index.html

Meet Karen Smetana!!

Karen is one of our many talented volunteers who lives in Austin, Texas. Her task right now is to gather questions about the 2009 Austin Maya Meetings and to compile them into a list of FAQs to be posted to our webpages for people to get answers to their questions quickly. This is a great picture of her that was taken while visiting Prague. If you have a question to contribute email her at karens@motive.com.


She works for a company named Motive. Here is one of Motive's webpages that might be of interest to readers. It explains why Motive decided to locate in Austin, Texas. Go to: http://www.motive.com/aboutmotive/careers/aboutaustin.asp.

Location of 2009 Maya Meetings

I am very please to let everyone know that the University of Texas AT&T Hotel and Conference Center is almost finished. It is an awesome location for our meetings that will take place February 23rd through March 1 of 2009. Here is a photo of the front of the building.
This is one of the classrooms.
Elevators - Pretty fancy, right?
Here is the front foyer with the University seal.

One of the many dining rooms...