The First Daze of School

Speech at James River Day School 8th Grade Graduation, June 3, 2011

2011-06-18T11:29:00.004-04:00

Thanks for that introduction. It’s really an honor to be here speaking at James River, although I have to admit the real reason I accepted this invitation is that I was under the impression I’d be getting an honorary degree.

Once I accepted the invitation to speak, the hardest part was actually getting the day off of work. When I told my boss why I needed the day off, she actually thought I was joking. “A commencement speech?” she said. “What wisdom could a 29-year-old possibly have to pass on to graduates?” And I said, hey, it’s fifth graders, it’ll be a breeze.

Now they tell me James River goes up to eighth grade -- not fifth grade, which was the case when I graduated. And I thought, whoa, this is really going to be a tough audience.

So please. I’ll promise to make my speech short if you promise to go easy on me. But just in case, I’ve asked AT&T and Verizon to block cellphone coverage for this entire area so there can be no Tweets or Facebook postings about how boring or lame or long this speech is. If you want to make a comment, you’ll have to do it the old fashioned way, by shouting it out or throwing something at me.

You know, a lot has changed around here since I graduated from James River in 1993. Besides only going up to fifth grade, we had a lot fewer buildings and no Field House. And,a s some of you may know, instead of the Cardinals, our mascot was the River Rat.

Those were just some of the changes I noticed the last time I came back to James River in the fall of 2007. The reason for my visit was simple: to apologize. At the time I was teaching second grade, and -- having myself experienced the frustration day in and day out of students acting out and failing to following class rules -- I felt I owed my James River teachers an apology. Because even though you may not realize it from the articulate, well-adjusted person I am today, I was a quite a terror in elementary school.

That apology really goes to the heart of the message I want you to take home today. Which is this: You may not realize until later how lucky you have been to have nurturing teachers at James River who have been crucial in shaping the people you are today.

To help illustrate this I’m going to tell you a story in two parts. The first is about how I did not appreciate – and sometimes not even respect – my teachers when I was at James River. The second part is about how later I realized that their support was critical in shaping the person I became academically and professionally. And finally, I’m going to wrap up with some brief recommendations for you graduates about what you can take away from your James River experience.

Let me start out by saying that the reason I ended up at James River in the first place is that my parents felt that public school was not for me. Of course, that may have been due to the fact that while still in Kindergarten I both threw a chair across the classroom AND told off my teacher. My report card was filled with O’s for outstanding and S’s for satisfactory when it came to reading, writing and math -- but always an N for “Needs Improvement” when it came to self-control.

So my parents sent me to James River starting in second grade. Here my behavior improved somewhat, but I still had what my Dad called a “short fuse.” As I’m sure some of my former teachers remember, I would throw a temper tantrum whenever something didn’t go my way. This was compounded by a fierce perfectionism, which meant that anything from a strikeout in Ms. Schoew’s gym class to a less than perfect paper in Ms. Daniel’s second grade could set me off.

As a result, I spent a good number of afternoons in the office of the headmistress, Ms. Shiers. I can remember sitting alone, waiting for her to come in, thinking of endless explanations for my behavior and ways to plead with her not to call my mom.

II.

Years later, after becoming a teacher, I saw my experience at James River differently. I wanted to go back and apologize to my teachers -- Ms. Daniel, Ms. Fielding, Ms. Gough and Ms. Keefer, among others -- for what I put them through. I realized not only the patience that being a teacher requires but also the passion and dedication you have to put into the job.

When I look back, I realize how important these and other teachers were to inspiring me to be creative and pursue my interests. In fourth and fifth grade, for instance, my teachers encouraged my interest in creative writing and helped me enroll in the Piedmont Area Young Author’s Contest, which I won both years. Their insistence that I had a unique gift for written expression stuck with me, acting almost like an internal compass as I pondered several career paths before settling on journalism.

Besides encouraging me to write, my James River teachers also dreamed up memorable projects that stick in my mind even today. They nurtured my interest in government through James Rivers’ famous “Hall of States” and a mock presidential debate in which I got to play Bill Clinton. And they launched my theatrical career as “Dark Chocolate,” the notorious arch villain in “Food Wars,” a Star Wars parody we put on in second grade.

Having nurturing teachers and building close relationships with them is crucial because that’s really how you learn the best. Years later, I went to a large university, where sometimes I felt like a little fish in a big sea and I missed that personal attention I got from my teachers at James River.

III.

So as you graduate today, just take a moment to think about how lucky you have been these past nine years, or however long you’ve been here. No doubt, like me, you’ve had teachers during that time who’ve inspired you and brought out the best in you.

As you take the next step in your academic lives, try and replicate those close relationships. Because that’s really the environment where your best learning will take place.

And before you leave today, take a moment to thank those teachers who’ve helped get you here. Don’t make the mistake I did and wait 14 years.

Oh. And also, if any of you told off the teacher, now’s probably a good time to apologize for that, too.

Congratulations 8^th grade class of 2011!

Fraternal Twin Quakes

2010-03-01T23:34:00.004-05:00

Even before the dust seemed to settle following the 8.8 magnitude earthquake that rocked Chile Saturday early morning, news anchors were already comparing it with the catastrophic quake that struck Haiti in January. In the initial hours, at least on CNN, coverage seemed to focus not only on reporting the latest breaking news from Chile, but drawing parallels between the two events, without making apparent to viewers the immense differences between the two countries. I waited at least 45 minutes before hearing some sort of qualification to that effect (provided by CNN's Rick Sanchez, who also took it upon himself to simultaneously translate broadcasts from the network's sister channel, CNN Chile).

As someone intimately familiar with the Latin American and Caribbean region, the contrasts struck me even before I heard reports of the damage; on the one hand you have Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest country and, on the other, Chile, Latin America's poster child of economic success and now a member of the OECD, an elite grouping of the world's most developed countries. But I am also aware of the American public's widespread lack of knowledge about countries south of the border. CNN's coverage of the Chile quake seemed to focus mostly on the devastation, the damage, the human tragedy (having already proven itself an expert in tugging America's heartstrings in the wake of the Haiti disaster)—all of which are necessary but not sufficient in explaining a massive and complex event such as a natural disaster.

What made Haiti's 7.0-magnitude quake so much more devastating than Chile's?

While maybe not as soon as I'd hoped, the press later began trying to unravel this question—with a vengeance. Here are articles on this from the AP, TIME, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, The Christian Science Monitor and CNN (this not an exhaustive list). News report have zeroed in on a few points, including Chile's preparedness as a nation chronically hit by quakes, particularly in its establishment of sound building codes. But to say that Chile was better prepared because its buildings were made of reinforced steel and concrete barely scratches the surface. I think fundamentally you have to take into account a number of factors, which eventually all boil down to Chile be a richer, more developed country and thus having a government with the capacity to respond to a disaster of this magnitude.

Here is where I disagree with Tim Padgett of TIME, who wrote, "Chile can do things right, Haiti defenders argue, because it's more developed. Wrong. It's the other way around: Chile is more developed because it's doing things right." Wrong, Tim. It's because of both things, which are mutually reinforcing.

So let me present (in order of importance) the factors that I believe adequately explain the differences between the two events. Before doing that, I'd like to reiterate that are both significant tragedies and shouldn't be minimized.

1) Geoseismic factors. The quake in Haiti struck near from the capital city of Port-au-Prince, home to the country's greatest concentration of population and economic activity. Its epicenter was only 8 miles from the surface. Chile's temblor was centered 21 miles below the surface off the coast in a relatively unpopulated area (which led, unfortunately, to the tsunami that caused the greatest number of deaths), although close to Concepcion, the second-largest metropolitan area.

2) Economic development means a government capacity to respond quickly. Chile is a richer country than Haiti by a factor of ten, with a per capita income of $14,900 versus $1,300. Not only does it have well-developed infrastructure such as roads, a power grid and telecommunications system, but its citizens have a higher standard of living: they can afford basic necessities, well-built homes, cars, cable TV, etc,. and they pay taxes to the Chilean government. Chile is home to large companies—both private and state-owned—that also help fill the government's coffers with pesos through taxes. And sound macroeconomic policies have helped sustain modest growth for the past 20 years. Government institutions are therefore not only strong and trusted, but they have the capacity to react by deploying emergency responders, police and national troops. Compare this to Haiti, whose government struggled to provide anything for its citizens even before the earthquake. Afterwards, that capacity was essentially reduced to zero, compounded by the destruction of a large number of government buildings.

3) Earthquakes on the brain. Chile was struck by a massive earthquake in 1960—the largest ever on record—and Chileans, like Californians, have built their homes and lives on ground they know is a little bit shaky. This led to the development of sound building codes, put into practice because Chileans could afford their relatively high cost and enforced because of the capacity of the government to do so with minimal corruption. Haiti, on the other hand, had not suffered a major quake since the 18th century, and instead perpetually prepared (albeit not well) for hurricanes. As some have pointed out, Haitians were used to building dwellings with heavy, concrete roofs to resist high hurricane winds, a practice that turned deadly when those same roofs crumbled.

4) Capacity for recovery. Chile strong economy will be able to bounce back and grow following the earthquake. It is broad and more spread out geographically (obviously Chile is a bigger country), while Port-au-Prince essentially was Haiti and its entire economy. Chile's government will be able to step in and help fund rebuilding efforts—initial estimates of losses range between $15 and 30 billion, Chile's ambassador to the U.N. told the Latin America Advisor—as will the private sector. Early estimates cited by Dow Jones suggest insured losses are within the range of $3 billion to $8 billion, reaching potentially 25 percent of the total. In Haiti, recovery and reconstruction will be funded entirely by foreign donors and remittances from abroad.

Let me close with two additional thoughts.

First, let me address a factor that has factored heavily today in news coverage of the quake in Chile: looting and "a widespread breakdown of social order" in Concepcion (as WSJ put it). While this appears to differ from in Haiti (which did see sporadic looting and unrest at food distribution points), it could just be because in Chile there's actually something to steal, as my IAD colleagues noted today.

Second, it's true that even developed countries can be unprepared and suffer devastation from natural disasters, with Katrina of course being the textbook example. (But who would have expected a flood in New Orleans, really?) So I guess I would argue that being a more developed country gives you the capacity to respond, but doesn't necessarily ensure that you will do so diligently. The U.S. can learn from the quakes in Chile and Haiti—not only to aid other countries in responding to natural disasters, but to help protect our citizens from future calamities.

As one colleague noted today, if the Chilean earthquake shows us anything, it's what California's Big One might look like.

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Accident Waiting to Happen

2010-01-18T16:30:00.005-05:00

If you wait long enough without blogging, an appropriate topic will usually present itself. Sometimes it hits you like a broken wrist, a bloody chin and half a tooth knocked out.

I woke up on Friday, January 8 at 8 am, which it just so happens is the time I’m supposed to arrive at work. But Fridays are usually laid back at the office, so I wasn’t too concerned. I did fire off an email to my boss telling him I’d be late, before jumping on my bike for the approximate seven minute ride to work. There had been a light dusting of snow, but once I hit 18 Street everything was clear.

Weaving in and out of lanes, rushing through red lights and narrowly avoiding potholes, I hurtled toward the office in record time. I was the king of the road, leaving other bikers in my dust and pedestrians puzzled as I made the final right turn into the alley behind my building. I had a brief scare when a garbage truck nearly backed into me, but like most bike commuters I shrugged it off with an air of invincibility.

Finally, I started my descent into the lower level parking garage, where I had locked my bike every day for the past year. On the 45-degree ramp, I could see the salt crystals the parking attendant had laboriously sprinkled the night before. “Cold out there?” I’d asked him as I’d left work yesterday. “Yes, it’s supposed to snow tonight. Be safe!” he’d replied ominously.

Nearing the bottom of the ramp, I started to pick up speed and could hear the salt grinding beneath my wheels. Suddenly the grinding stopped, the bike slipped from under me, and I hit the ground face first.

At this point, I should note that although I was wearing head protection, a standard bike helmet doesn’t do much for the face. Perhaps a hockey mask or motorcycle helmet could have provided the necessary prophylaxis, but I have yet to see any cyclist go to such lengths.

I didn’t lose consciousness, but when I opened my eyes I knew there had been some serious damage. I couldn’t feel much pain, but I could see blood on the concrete and had enough sense to realize that I had lost or damaged a tooth. My vision was flickering in and out of black. Without thinking, I dragged my body and bike out of the thoroughfare—leaving a trail of blood on the ground—and propped myself up against a wall. Then I called my boss, who was working from home that morning, and told him to send help from the office. Soon, two of my coworkers arrived and hailed a taxi to take me to the emergency room. Later, one of them said the floor of the parking garage had looked more like a “crime scene” than the site of an accident.

So, you might say, I made it out of the frying pan and into the fire, the latter being the U.S. health care system. Accompanied by one of my coworkers, I arrived at the George Washington University hospital, and made it surprisingly quickly through the waiting room and triage. Finally, I was ushered to the hospital floor and into a small curtained-off area, where I was greeted by a pretty female physician’s assistant. So far so good.

She asked me what had happened and I gave her the short version, telling her I hadn’t blacked out but felt a little woozy and that my arm was either broken or sprained. “Do you know where you are?’ she asked. “Yes,” I replied, hoping to convince her of my lucidity. “Well, where?”

Next they had to X-ray my wrist. An assistant came and wheeled me to radiology like a shopping cart, with my legs sticking off the end of the gurney. He deposited me in a waiting area in the middle of the hall, next to two or three other patients in transit. It was then that the full hospitalness of it all hit me—the smell of sickness and sterility mingling in the air; the other patients, worse off than me, trying desperately to get someone’s attention; doctors, nurses and other employees wandering the halls, always with somewhere to go that wasn’t here.

After the X-ray came the next stop on my bizarre journey: the suture room. Here the pretty PA handed over the reins to a clueless fourth-year medical student, who claimed he had experience sewing people up but was out of practice. “Well, the good news is that your chin laceration appears to be superficial,” he said. “Good, because I’m a very superficial person,” I replied, and we all laughed. But I wasn’t laughing 10 minutes later, when the PA came to over to examine the five stitches he had put in me. “These aren’t good,” she said. “You need to take a bigger bite, like you did on the first one.” I was completely conscious, although they had numbed my chin and put one of those green sterile cloths over me, with a circular cutout over my wound. “Take all of them out except for the first one, and then I’ll show you what I mean,” the PA said.

I was too timid to protest, so he did exactly that. By the time they removed the bad stitches and were finishing up the new ones, I had almost completely regained sensation in the affected area. “Just one more!” the medical student said, as I writhed with every prick of the needle.

They finished with the stitches, and decided now would be a good time to tell me I had fractured my radius. They fixed me up in a splint, and a nurse came around with some Percocet, since the shock had worn off and I was now beginning to feel a modest amount of pain in my right wrist. When I complained that I was also feeling some pain in my left arm, they ordered a second X-ray, which took another 20 minutes and came back negative.

As far as my chipped tooth, which was becoming highly sensitive and painful, they offered little advice, like it wasn’t even part of my body. As the nurse went over the discharge with me, I said, “I guess I’ll have to go see the dentist about this,” barely eliciting a response.

Then, I was back on the street, flagging down a taxi to take me home. All in all, I was in pretty good shape, but still needed help around the house, especially with my arm immobilized in a sling. Luckily, my girlfriend flew in for the weekend to take care of me, which turned out to be the best thing to come out of the entire episode.

Now, a week later, I’m making a fast recovery. My tooth is repaired, my stitches removed, and finally, after a week of trying to find an orthopedist and being rejected by GW hospital, I got a nice, blue cast to match the color of my eyes.

I only have to wait six weeks for it to heal; hopefully, it won’t take that long to come up with a new idea for a blog.

Brazil Under Scrutiny

2009-11-14T18:30:00.019-05:00

Brazil is assuming a new economic and political prominence on the world stage—"taking off," as the editors of The Economist would have us believe.

A combination of a booming economy, a stable political environment and a growing middle class—plus the luck of finding 50+ billion barrels off its coast—have made Latin America's largest country both a good place to do business and a regional powerhouse. Brazil has also become a leader on issues of global concern: clean energy, the world financial system (through participation in the G-20, and now as a creditor to the IMF), and the Doha round of world trade talks.

Most recently, the country won its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro—the first time the games will be held in South America and only the second time in Latin America. In the end, apparently International Olympic Committee members found Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's calls for redressing the "imbalance" of the Games more convincing than Obama's description of Chicago's "rich tapestry" of diversity.

The moment the IOC awarded the Games to Rio, the press and pundits began asking if Brazil was actually ready to host what is arguably the world's most prominent sporting event (save, perhaps, for the soccer World Cup, which Rio will host in 2014), citing lingering concerns about security and infrastructure. These folks must have felt quite vindicated when Brazil received international coverage in October for a major drug gang war that broke out in Rio, killing at least 32, and a blackout last week that left parts of 18 Brazilian states in the dark (oh, plus the entire nation of Paraguay, which luckily is not bidding on the Games any time soon—Ciudad del Este 2024!).

My guess is the "Olympics card" will continue to be played in nearly every article on Brazil in the international media over the next seven years. That certainly won't be a deviation from the past; both times the Games were held in the developing world—Mexico in 1968 and China in 2008—issues of whether these countries were economically, politically and culturally ready played into the debate (Note: Sarajevo, which was part of Yugoslavia when it hosted the 1984 Winter Games, is now part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, considered a developing country).

The spotlight of the Olympics could also focus scrutiny on other aspects of Brazilian policy. While Brazil is domestically stable and a regional leader, one possible area of contention is its ties with Iran. The two countries have long maintained a substantial trade relationship, which totaled $2 billion in 2007, quadrupling from 2002. Brazilian exports to Iran about as high as those from nearer neighbors India and Turkey, according to Farideh Farhi, an Iran expert at the University of Hawaii. In addition, Lula was one of few leaders to speak out in support of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad following the latter's widely contested victory in Iran's June presidential election. He's also defended Iran's right to a peaceful nuclear program.

And next week, the windbreaker-wearing Ahmadinejad will visit Brazil for the first time ever, raising concerns in both Washington and Jerusalem. The US Congress last month held a hearing on Iran's role in Latin America. While the timing was a coincidence (the hearing had been postponed from earlier in the summer), Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), who heads the subcommittee that deals with U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere, had this to say:

When Venezuela expands its relations with Iran, I may not like it, but I chalk it up to President Chavez and his altered sense of the world. But, when Brazil expands its ties to Iran—just as the world is trying to deal with the secretive Iranian nuclear program—I’m left bewildered. Brazil is a rapidly modernizing country which wants to join the UN Security Council and be a world leader. I truly hope Brazil reaches that point, but expanding ties to Ahmadinejad, who denies the Holocaust and calls for the destruction of another nation-state, Israel, is not the way to get there. In the future, I think we have to expand our dialogue with Brazil on the dangerous role of Iran and encourage our friends in Brasilia to reconsider their ties with Tehran.

Last week, Israel dispatched its aging president, Shimon Peres, to Brazil, where he urged Brazilian legislators to be a "voice against terror" and condemn both Iran's alleged funding of terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and professed desire to destroy the Jewish state. In a joint press conference with Peres, Lula condemned terrorism but defended Ahmadinejad's visit: "You can't build the peace necessary in the Middle East if you don't talk to all of political and religious forces that want peace or oppose peace."

Could any good come from Ahmadinejad's visit? Perhaps the best to hope for are a few public condemnations from Lula of intolerance and terrorism plus some private efforts to push Iran on the intentions of its nuclear program. Lula's top foreign policy adviser said in August that both the US and Israel have asked Brazil to "exercise its influence" on Iran regarding the nuclear issue. It's worth noting that Brazil has its own nuclear program, complete with a uranium enrichment facility, and has so far opposed signing the International Atomic Energy Agency's additional protocol on nuclear safeguards, to which Iran is already a signatory.

But don't expect Lula to criticize Iran directly. In fact, one parallel might be Obama's approach to his China visit; while putting the economic and trade aspects of the relationship with China first, Obama is engaging the Asian country more quietly on issues like human rights, Tibet and treatment of ethnic minorities. He has avoided criticizing Beijing's policies openly, but in a town hall meeting with Chinese students sought to share America's "core" values—"freedoms of expression and worship, of access to information and political participation." He also promised to discuss those issues in private meetings with Chinese officials.

Perhaps Lula can in his public appearances with Ahmadinejad uphold Brazilian values like tolerance and peace, while in private coax Iran to act on some of the promises it has recently made to the international community.

Burning the Midnight Oil; or, A Blog is Risen

2009-10-31T21:30:00.008-04:00

It's Halloween night, and I'm breathing life back into this blog, which has lain dormant for over eight months. Spooky, I know.

From now on, I hope to write more frequently and informally in an effort to achieve this blog's original goal, which was not to write insightful commentary or recount the travails of travels but rather to improve my writing through practice. While these days I get to do a lot more writing at work, I definitely miss having an outlet for personal reflection and sharing thoughts with others.

I'm starting with a few words about my most recent obsession: The Prize, Daniel Yergin's Pulitzer Prize-winning history of oil and its impact on civilization during the 130 or so years since its widespread commercialization. This is a book that I felt drawn to in part because of my burgeoning interest in energy journalism, which itself is predicated on a realization of the importance of oil and other sources of energy as a driver of our local, national and global economy. With the Senate preparing to take up climate change legislation soon and global efforts to reduce carbon emissions slated to culminate in Copenhagen in December, our energy consumption and production patterns will likely experience major changes in the years ahead. In order to understand where we are and where we're going, I figure it's key to understand how we got here.

Mind you I'm only on page 100 (out of 908 in all and 773 of text), but I'm already fascinated by the story of oil; it's easy to get wrapped up in the "oil enthusiasm" that so captured the hopes and dreams of those who hoped to strike it rich, and the few who actually did so. As Yergin points out, the story of oil is closely tied to the story of capitalism at every twist and turn, in all its positive and negative connotations. Not only do you have the John D. Rockefeller who built up an empire from a modest produce and meat trading business, but also the one who ruthlessly gobbled up competitors who agreed to absorption and drove those out of business who refused.

I didn't know that oil was first commercialized primarily for kerosene, or that the nascent oil drilling business originated in western Pennsylvania (followed soon after by Baku in present-day Azerbaijan). It's hard not to admire those visionaries who realized that the future of the oil business was in integration; it was fruitless to control distribution and refining if you didn't have control over production, and vice versa. The barons of industry realized they had to control it all, and their efforts quickly transformed into oil companies still recognizable today: Royal Dutch, Shell, Gulf, Texaco, Sun. Later, the breakup of the Standard Oil Trust would lead to another set of familiar players: Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Amoco, Continental and others.

Still, at that point in the game, the early twentieth century, oil was primarily used as an illuminant, although the automobile industry was rapidly opening up a new market. While a catalyst for wealth and progress, oil had not yet reached the point of geopolitical significance. To put it another way: oil was a maker of men, but not yet of a maker of nations.

Describing the efforts of Shell magnate Marcus Samuel to popularize oil as a fuel for transport, Yergin writes: "Here, on the eve of the twentieth century, he looked ahead to prophesy, and rightly so, that oil's great future would be not as a source of illumination, but as a source of power."

I'm not sure if Yergin intended "power" here to have a double meaning, but it certainly encompasses two Merriam Webster definitions: "a source or means of supplying energy" and "possession of control, authority, or influence over others."

It's hard to imagine a world economy that didn't hinge on oil, but that was the panorama at the beginning of the twentieth century. (As Yergin notes in his introduction, a crucial moment in the history of oil came later, on the eve of the First World War, when Winston Churchill, then Britain's Home Secretary, decided to refit the Royal Navy to run on fuel oil instead of coal.) State-owned oil companies, which today are some of the biggest players in the oil business didn't yet have a rationale for existence; a Hugo Chavez or a Lazaro Cardenas (who nationalized Mexico's oil sector) were not only unimaginable but unnecessary.

Even if the world one day finds a way to replace its oil habit, it's likely that access to energy resources (whether from hydroelectric, geothermal, solar or wind power or biofuels) will still underpin the global economy and drive geopolitics. However nostalgic or indulgent, it's nonetheless striking to look back on a world where oil was just oil and not yet "a source of power."

25 Things About Me

2009-02-16T22:46:00.005-05:00

In response to a recent Facebook/Internet trend, I've decided to have a go at this "25 Random Things" post. I hope it will leave you who are reading this at least somewhat surprised about what you don't know about me and also touched by my deep-down complexity. I know I'm not what I seem at the outset; that's what makes me so much better than you.

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

1. I prefer the British version of the Office to the American one.

2. My favorite meal ever was a delectable paella in Torremolinos. I love Spanish cuisine.

3. If I write a book one day, it would probably be non-fiction.

4. As a kid I read any comic book I could get my hands on. My favorites were "X-Men" and "The Flash."

5. In 11th grade, my ASVAB test results predicted I would be a journalist.

6. I HATE Michael Moore.

7. I experienced my first kiss in eighth grade on a bus trip to Orlando with the school band.

8. I love writing letters.

9. Despite having a number of girlfriends who considered themselves to be Jewish, I've never actually dated a girl who had two Jewish parents. Just a bunch of half-breeds.

10. Although I've traveled to seven countries outside of the US, every single one of them was a Spanish-speaking country.

11. If I could learn to speak any other language besides Spanish, it would have to be Hebrew.

12. When I was a teacher, I was once accused of deliberately failing to administer medicine to a kid.

13. I walk slow and run fast.

14. One thing that really pisses me off is when someone says "Thank you" but the other person, instead of replying "Your welcome," says "Thank YOU." There's too much thanking and not enough acceptance of thanks going on in this world.

15. One of my ancestors was a Dutch settler in Pernambuco, Brazil. He and his family fled to New Amsterdam (later New York) when the Portuguese took control of the area.

16. When I was in 4th grade, I got sent to the "Headmistress's Office" for flicking off a teacher.

17. My favorite author is Don DeLillo. I consider White Noise a masterpiece.

18. I once dated a Marxist, but she refused to burn me a copy of a Pixies cd.

19. I liked Craig Kilborn better as the host of the Daily Show. Sorry, Jon Stuart Leibowitz.

20. The first dog I ever had was named Max. He used to lick himself "down there" and my mom would say he was just doing doggy aerobics.

21. When I was six, I tried some doggy aerobics of my own with less-than-stellar results.

22. Lots of people think I'm shy. But if you're one of those people, I'm probably just not talking because I don't like you.

23. The only sport I watch religiously is college basketball. Why? Because I went to Duke, and no one escapes that experience without becoming a fan.

24. I travel most weekends, so I could not live without my Garmin GPS. Thank you, God, for giving us Garmin.

25. I'm not as gullible as you are. Only 14 is true. 16 is close, except that it actually happened in kindergarten.

Ask the Experts

2009-02-01T19:59:00.015-05:00

There's a symbiotic relationship between journalists and experts: in order to survive, they need each other.

What good is a news story if it doesn't provide expert analysis of an issue from multiple sides? And what makes an expert more credible than being quoted in major news media outlets?

Although this relationship is mutually beneficial, the roles of both the journalist and the expert must be clear-cut. We should not allow the line between news and opinion to be shamelessly blurred as so often happens on 24-hour "news" channels.

I've worked for the past six months at the intersection these two worlds. As a reporter for a daily newsletter published by one of the top twenty-five most-cited think tanks in US media, I work alongside experts who routinely field questions from the AP, Reuters, BBC and even Al-Jazeera English. One of them even made it into my mom's local paper, The Corning Leader: now that's notoriety.

A journalist's job is to report the facts, but "just the facts" doesn't always suffice. Sometime you want to recount what happened and who said what, but you also want to examine the event's significance or implications for the benefit of your readers. Since journalists are supposed to abstain from voicing their own opinions, that means calling in a third party: the expert. These usually consist of academics, stakeholders, corporate analysts or an eminent scholar with such-and-such think tank. As long as you make sure you're giving equal space to differing points of view, the job of the journalist amounts to something like a referee.

From the perspective of the expert, the relationship is also attractive. He gets his name in print plus validation for his opinion and a boost in credibility. Other reporters start to call and this can create somewhat of a feedback loop. The danger here is that one bad choice of commentator by a journalist can validate someone on the fringes of credibility, and other media outlets could propagate that if they don't double-check their sources.

There are a couple of ways in which the line between journalist and expert can become blurred.

The first happens often enough: a reporter, by virtue of witnessing an event firsthand, takes on the role of "expert" in a conversation with a newscaster who is farther removed from the action. This arrangement is peculiar to radio and television, in which journalists are charged not only with creating prepared reports (the limit of print journalism) but engaging in real-time conversation about the news. Take, for instance, this report from PRI's The World, in which Jeff Barbee, a journalist for the Global Post in South Africa, describes first-hand the situation on the ground in Zimbabwe in the midst of a cholera outbreak last December. Barbee does a good job of fielding the newscaster's questions by citing specific sources, including MSF and members of the Zimbabwean military. His job is to recount events, not to analyze them.

When this can turn ugly is when journalists are brought on camera or radio to speculate instead of report facts. This is what happens 24/7 on cable news, where so-called journalists from reputable media outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post or Politico, sometimes take on the role of pundit, providing their views and analysis on the day's news without distinguishing between fact, speculation and opinion. The trifecta noted above actually appeared this week on PBS's The News Hour, of all places; reporters from each of these publications shared their thoughts about why TurboTax-challenged Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer withdrew their nominations for Cabinet posts. The problem with that segment is that each "reporter" gave their own analysis (i.e., opinion) on the situation, which included speculation about whether the Obama team had asked these two nominees to step down--something that had no basis in fact (they did acknowledged that).

If news organizations need someone to provide speculation they should call either upon independent experts or on their own "political analysts," which many of the networks do have these days (CNN Senior Political Analyst, etc.). Obviously PBS has a more limited budget so perhaps that explains why they turned reporters into experts.

Another type of overlap that often occurs is when journalists retire or take leaves of absence to work as "experts" in their specialized field. I've seen this happen in DC when individuals who once served as foreign correspondents for their country's own newspapers then flip the coin and emerge as director of a prominent policy center or think tank. One time, while I was attending a a panel discussion, one of these people asked a question and I was stumped as to whether he was asking it as a journalist or a policy wonk.

One sure thing is that for journalists, having a close relationship with some experts in your field is beneficial not only because it can provide you with handy quotes, but because it helps provide the background necessary to fully grasp your subject.

It may seem contradictory, but to be a good journalist is to be an expert in your chosen field. The difference is that, in print or on the air, your efforts should be focused exclusively on telling the story.

And if you don't want to keep your opinions to yourself, go work at a think tank.

Inauguration Ups, Downs, and In-Betweens

2009-01-21T22:15:00.015-05:00

In order to fulfill my new pledge to post every other Wednesday, I'm providing this brief recap of inauguration festivities. Besides watching the parade on TV Tuesday afternoon, I didn't follow any media coverage of the events, so consider this a true first-person account.

Ups

- The swearing-in ceremony. Short, sweet, historical, and best of all, no more Bush! The audio was muddled so I didn't quite catch the oath of office snafu, but I did breathe a collective sigh of relief with millions of other Americans at knowing our country is in the hands of a different leadership.

- The opening of the "We Are One" Inaugural concert with Springsteen singing "The Rising." I always kind of liked this song, although I don't think it (and the album to which it lends its title) is really considered top Springsteen material. However, taking into consideration that the song was inspired by September 11th, the choice of the "The Rising"--in combination with its fire imagery and the accompanying gospel choir decked out in red--evoked an image of America the Phoenix rising from the ashes of the Bush days.

- My brisk walk home after the inauguration. After trying to exit the Mall to the north, I eventually gave up due to the crowds. Then I headed south from the Washington monument until I hit I-395, which was closed to traffic. So began the walk of a lifetime....Since I was familiar with the route, which I use on weekend roadtrips, I decided to take 395 all the way to its terminus at New York Avenue and continue on to my house. On the way, I experienced a scene out of a zombie movie as crowds of people swarmed into the tunnels searching for a way out of the city center.

In-Betweens

- Alas, I'm putting Obama's inaugural speech in this category. After all the hype and comparisons to Lincoln, FDR, and Kennedy I expected Obama's speech to leave something for posterity, a quote that would live on alongside "We have nothing to fear..." and "Ask not...." Listening to the speech I found little substance, although I was moved by his promise that America is "ready to lead once more."

- I found the invocation given by New Hampshire clergyman Gene Robinson at Sunday's concert and the one given by Rev. Rick Warren to be strikingly different. Putting aside the hubbub about the preachers' differing views on homosexuality, the former struck me as what a prayer at a governmental event should be--appealing to those qualities we know live within us, although sometimes we fail to achieve them--as opposed to Warren's, which called upon God to solve our own problems. In Robinson's speech, however, I did find comedy in the fact that he followed up "our new president is a human being, not a messiah" with "And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack." As for Warren's, I of course noted his inclusion of the Sh'ma, the Jews' holiest prayer, which for some reason alienated me almost as much as his appeal to "the one who changed my life, Yeshua, Isa, Jesus, Jesús." It's a reflection of narrow-mindedness that he interpreted "diversity" as naming Jesus in a few languages, and limiting himself to Judeo-Christian beliefs. On the other hand, at a time like this it's important to note that roughly 79 percent of Americans consider themselves to be Christian, which seemed to be borne out by the large number of people around me who joined in to recite the Lord's Prayer.

- Seeing Bush walk out was a mixed bag. Although I'm glad that idiot is finally out of the White House, I did find it rather disrespectful that many in the crowd started booing him (although they may have been chanting "boo-ush," I'm not sure). To me, it brought back the image of Republicans booing Obama during McCain's concession speech, even as McCain tried, characteristically, to get them to stop. Few seemed to agree with my philosophy at Tuesday's inauguration, except for one bystander who chided the booers, shaking his head and muttering: "Come on now. You gotta respect the position!" Maybe we all need to find a little McCain inside of ourselves.

- Although I attended the inauguration alone, at least there were more than 1 million other people there with me!

Downs

- My trek to the Mall on Tuesday morning was an exercise in futility, although it did reveal good results in the end. I took the metro at first to Chinatown, only to find the Mall was blocked from the north, due to the security blockade around Pennsylvania Avenue--the inaugural parade route. "The only way to get there is to walk around or go under," one official told me. "Okay, so what's the best way to get to the Washington monument?" I asked in response. "I'm from California," she said, "how should I know?" So I hopped on the metro again and took it south to L'Enfant plaza, where I de-trained only to find the station's exits clogged with bodies, which meant people were waiting as far back as the train platform to get above ground. I felt trapped and overwhelmed at the thought that I couldn't even get out if I wanted to. Eventually I went out the less-crowded back exit, and once above ground, diverged from the crowd as soon as possible. Thus I made my way to the Southwest waterfront and followed that up to the Washington monument to claim my place in history.

- On my way home, I resolved to buy some Obama buttons for posterity, to have something (along with this blog posting) to prove to my kids that I was there. At a neighborhood church on the corner on New York Ave and 4th Street NW, I bought three buttons with Obama's face on them, but at an exorbitant price. Ten dollars for three small pieces of history...that's American entrepreneurship at work! Oh well, at least I steered clear of the Obama commemorative plate!

Interview With a President

2008-11-16T21:15:00.010-05:00

In five months I went from tying second graders' shoes to interviewing the former president of the world's 13th largest economy.

I met Vicente Fox, Mexico's president from 2000 to 2006, in a dreary board room overlooking the Missouri River. We sat down face to face -- he a washed-up world leader trying to maintain his relevance, and me, a nervous kid itching in a cut-rate Men's Wearhouse suit. On our left, we could see the "Mighty Mo'," filtered through a fog that never seemed to disappear the whole time I was in Omaha.

I had arrived in Omaha the previous night, my mind permanently swamped with the daunting task of interviewing a figure I perceived as nearly superhuman. What questions should I ask? How should I ask them? How in the mere fifteen minutes allotted to me could I establish the rapport and the confidence necessary to probe him on more difficult questions? And, perhaps most importantly, would we converse in English or Spanish?

With the help of my colleagues on the "editorial staff" I had come up with an outline of five general topics: the ex-president’s new presidential library and think tank "Centro Fox", his impressions on free-trade and the President-elect’s campaign promise to renegotiate NAFTA, the outlook for cooperation between Mexico and the US under the new Obama Administration, his thoughts on crime and security in Mexico, and an assessment of the internal political situation south of the border.

To research these topics, I spent hours poring over interviews Fox had given in recent days, particularly a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer, and a roundtable discussion on NPR the day following the US election. I was at first taken aback by Wolf Blitzer's lack of patience with Fox, asking him a question and then moments later cutting him off mid sentence. I later learned that the "big-shot interview," as one fellow journalist called it, is as much about negotiating the conversation as it is about asking the right questions.

I spent the entire day on Tuesday in preparation, re-reading my notes, searching Google News for statements Fox had made to the Mexican media. My interview was scheduled for 3 pm and around 2:15 I hopped on the valet shuttle to the site indicated by my press contact, Gallup University, which is not a university at all, but the headquarters of the Gallup Organization, which in addition to polling, manages a worldwide business consultancy.

It was here that Fox had come to meet Gallup's CEO, I later learned, to confirm a deal between Gallup and the Centro Fox to hold joint forums on leadership development in Mexico, and to make Gallup polling data available to Fox’s research center. I stated my purpose at the front desk and was ushered to a chair alongside a rotund woman, who told me she was a reporter for the Associated Press.

“How do you like the AP?” I asked. For a reporter, she was unexpectedly stolid. “It’s alright,” she said, tight-lipped. I figured this was a good opportunity to improve my small talk skills in anticipation of the big enchilada.

“Do you work all the time? Is it a round-the-clock job?” When I'm around reporters I always feel like they know something about this job that I don't, and I vacillate between trying to prove I know what I'm doing and, conversely, asking a ton of questions about the job I'm supposed to know how to do. She opened up a little but, telling me about her beat—immigration and refugee communities in Omaha—and eventually the press person came to herd us into another waiting area.

Minutes later, Fox, trailed by is wife, handlers, and bodyguards (who, oddly, wore suit jackets on top of turtlenecks), strutted into the boardroom where he would receive reporters. The handlers ushered the AP woman in, and I learned that I was to be Fox's third and final interview before he was off to speak at a public engagement in Omaha’s Orpheum Theater. He was already running late and one of the handlers told me he'd have to leave the building at 3:25, which seemed to pretty much reduce my time to nil. But the aide reassured me I would get my fifteen minutes, echoing Andy Warhol's now famous pop culture prediction.

Before I knew it they came for me, and rushed me into the boardroom to an immediate confrontation with Fox, a large, confident cowboy with a mustache leaping off the sides of his narrow face. To put it plainly, I was nervous as hell.

I greeted him with a stuttering "Buenos dias," to which he immediately corrected me. "Buenas tardes," he said. "It’s the afternoon." Surely judging my Spanish to be inferior, he spoke to me from then on in lilted English reminiscent of Speedy Gonzalez.

I asked him first about what he was doing in Nebraska and his Centro Fox, as my superiors had wisely suggested. He warmed to this, but the now the problem was getting him to shut up before he wasted all of the time. As he rambled on about the Centro Fox and its goals I got increasingly worried that he was hijacking the entire piñata.

Suddenly I realized what I had to do. I summoned Wolf Blitzer. In the most diplomatic way I could, I cut him off—or tried to at least. He continued talking, but wrapped up his sentence, sensing my urgency to get on with it. From that moment on, I tried to control the conversation better, setting the ground rules for every topic by saying "You've said..." (e.g., you've called President Calderon's energy reform 'pyrrhic and small').

As much as I tried to dig deeper, I struggled to maintain depth considering the breadth of topics I had established for conversation. More often than not, by the time I felt comfortable with the topic and ready to ask a tougher, more probing question, my watch -- or a glare across the room from one of Fox's handlers -- told me it was time to move on.

Finally, one of his aides told me my time was up. Not wanting to miss a good photo op, I took advantage of the break in the conversation to snap a photo of Vicente and me. Then I followed him down the hall with my voice recorder in hand, trying to get a few final quotes on Mexico's energy reform (a Gallup aide later said I looked like a "young Tom Friedman").

And that was it: "adiós." My first big shot interview concluded in less than 15 minutes. On the whole, I thought it could have gone better, but it definitely taught me some lessons for next time. In any case, the article ultimately came out well, and both my bosses seemed happy with the end result.

Gracias, Señor Presidente.

What I Want in a President

2008-05-03T08:29:00.009-04:00

Three more days until North Carolina goes to the polls, and signs of the impending election are everywhere: yard signs, bulk mailings, TV commercials -- even "personal" emails from candidates arriving daily to our inboxes (Michelle Obama, you've been warned). The wave we've been surfing for the last two years is coming to a crest (albeit preliminary), and it's got me pondering what exactly I want in the next president. Let me start simple:

1. First of all, he or she should be a human being. Too many dystopian visions of the future point to sentient machines, extra-terrestrials, or even newts as the cause of humanity's downfall (that's newts not Newt). Let's not make the same mistake when we go to the ballot boxes on Tuesday.

2. Our next president should be someone who has no political, familial, or amicable ties to any other human being on Earth. As recent developments in electoral politics have made perfectly clear, having a friend, neighbor, pastor, mother, or former roommate is simply a liability in this day and age. Why waste your vote on a candidate who at some point in his/her life came into contact with a private individual holding incendiary political views? The consequences for our nation would be disastrous: war, job losses, economic downturn -- these possibilities are too scary to risk. Better we choose someone so unconnected to human society, so untainted by the faults of man, that no one can bring him/her down. In short, something like...say...a newt? Damn.

3. He or she must be a bestselling author who has written at least two books, preferably with a shared byline. These books must be longer than 300 pages and capable of numbing the most devout reader into a coma of sublime dispassion.

4. Our new president must be willing to negotiate with America's enemies. Instead of the cowboy diplomacy of the Bush Administration, this country needs a better way to solve disputes with Iran, North Korea, Syria, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Al-Qaeda in Dayton, the Taliban, skinheads, drug dealers, Fidel Castro's cryogenically frozen brain, ExxonMobil, and other parties hell-bent on the destruction of the United States of America. Instead of talking of "obliterating" our enemies (what's next...vaporizing?), we should be inviting them to the negotiating table to discuss ways to compromise on key issues. Our new president should be briefed in state-of-the-art negotiation strategies (waterboarding), but not afraid to fall back on time-tested tactics for breaking a stalemate. In particular, I'm referring to "Rock, Paper, Scissors", which anyone above the age of seven knows can be a powerful tool for conflict resolution. America is ready for a shift from cowboy diplomacy to "playground diplomacy"; we need a president who will stand up to bullies, and prevent them from raining down suicide wedgies on innocent American citizens at home and abroad.

5. We need a president who appeals to all sectors of the population, not just a few narrow constituencies. Our next president should be able to unite diverse groups within the American population, from middle-class factory workers of Caucasoid origin to the Association of Arugula-eating African Americans (AAAA). It's no secret that small-town Americans are bitter, and when they get bitter they cling to guns and religion, and when they cling to guns and religion, well...let's just say they start kicking some ass in the name of God.

I could go on, but these five characteristics will suffice for the time being. Now it's time for you, the reader and potential voter, to append your own suggestions for our next president. Together we can assure America's future...

Say "no" to newts!

Bush loses road map; refuses to ask for directions

2008-04-25T20:37:00.011-04:00

Remember the road map? Not the Rand McNally under your driver's seat with the sun-bleached cover and tattered pages; I'm talking about the 2003 plan by the quartet (Russia - bass, U.S - baritone., E.U. - tenor I, U.N. - tenor II) that was supposed to tame that languishing, 50-year-old beast known as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Despite the Bush Administration's last-ditch attempt to claim some kind of progress in negotiations, the reality is that both sides, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, have fallen short of their promised obligations. Israel continues to build new settlements, and the Palestinian leadership is unable to stop terrorism. Both sides need to be held accountable, and the way to make that happen is to impose either incentives or consequences on both parties. Right now, Israel basically does whatever it wants, arguing for the right to defend itself in the face of rocket attacks by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. But Israel's actions, both by continuing settlement expansion and constant "collective punishment" meted out to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank also play a part in prolonging the conflict. Israel, much like the Bush Administration on Iran, refuses to negotiate with Hamas if stated preconditions are not met, in this case the end of all terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and a recognition of Israel's right to exist. While I personally think that Israel does have the right to exist, the only way to get Hamas to change its position is through engagement and negotiation, in order to achieve something like Egypt's recognition of Israel as part of their 1979 peace treaty. Instead of negotiating, Israel cuts off food and fuel supplies to Gaza, which only makes Palestinians more determined to strike back.

I want a president who is willing not just to placate both sides like Bush, but to openly criticize Israel and Palestine when they fall short of commitments. We need incentives and consequences in place for both sides; U.S. foreign aid is a good place to start. Israel has long been the largest beneficiary of U.S. foreign aid; it currently receives over $2.5 billion a year in primarily military aid, which is now scheduled to gradually increase to $3 billion per year within a decade. This dwarfs all other foreign contributions (except Iraq), but aid to the West Bank-Gaza didn't even make the top 15 (it did in 1995). The Administration requested $77 million for the Palestinian Territories for fiscal year 2008, about 3% of the Israeli figure (which consists mostly of military aid anyway). We've learned in Iraq that throwing money at people can make them switch sides fairly quickly; why not invest in Palestine and build some political capital?

No more bending over to AIPAC. No more fear of being "soft" on Israel. I want a president who is willing to challenge the status quo and not back down when either side falls short of its commitment. I am desperately pro-Israel; that is, I want to ensure the survival of the State of Israel. The only way to guarantee that is through peace.

The Posthumous Genocide

2007-10-13T21:58:00.001-04:00

"...history has a way of intruding upon the present..."

- Dee Brown, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

Ninety-year-old ghosts made a haunt of American foreign policy last week, when the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution to label as genocide the Ottoman Empire's systematic murder and deportation of Armenians between the years of 1915 and 1923. Suddenly the slaughter of the Armenians -- already considered by many (like Samantha Power, author of "A Problem from Hell": American and the Age of Genocide) to be the first genocide of the 20th century -- became a hot button political issue, with the President warning that the bill's passage in the House "would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror." Tom Lantos, head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in the U.S. House, also noted the levity of the situation, stating, "We have to weigh the desire to express our solidarity with the Armenian people...against the risk that it could cause young men and women in the uniform of the United States armed services to pay an even heavier price than they are currently paying." Indeed, Turkey's president Abdullah Gul called the genocide vote invalid and unacceptable, and withdrew the Turkish ambassador from Washington. The row further complicates an already tense moment between the two countries, as the Turkish government threatens incursions into northern Iraq to hunt down members of the PKK, a Kurdish separatist group.

(In what might come as no surprise, the president of Armenia welcomed the House committee's decision.)

Although the Ottoman Empire's campaign against the Armenians predates the term "genocide" by nearly thirty years, it meets the fundamental condition laid out in the 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention; i.e., it was prosecuted with "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group." The Convention in addition outlines the following acts, any of which can constitute genocide if committed with intent to wipe out the target group:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

In "A Problem from Hell", Samantha Power notes what she calls the "numbers problem;" that there is not, nor can there ever be, a consensus on how many deaths or forced migrations amount to genocide. But Raphael Lemkin, the jurist who coined the term and lobbied ceaselessly for an international ban on genocide, and the other authors of the Genocide Convention sought to deter this criticism, establishing instead the imperative of intent. "By focusing on the perpetrators' intentions and whether they were attempting to destroy a collective," she writes, "the law's drafters thought they might ensure that diagnosis of and action against genocide would not come too late."

The fact that the U.N. Genocide convention was not ratified by the United States until 1988 (and even then with significant reservations) reveals the underlying fear that submitting to international law could weaken America's sovereignty. Some worried its broad language could be used to prosecute Americans for their treatment of blacks under Jim Crow, or perhaps its eradication of Native Americans during the 19th century.

It is the latter issue that Ward Churchill takes up in his 1997 book A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to Present. Churchill argues that the destruction of Native American peoples and their culture constitutes genocide, and the lack of admission on the part of the U.S. government and its people constitutes denial. According to a 1999 review, Churchill (himself a Native American activist) goes on to suggest amending the U.N. Convention to include non-lethal acts that weaken the target group's viability, a definition which goes back to Lemkin's initial elaboration of genocide.

While I haven't read Churchill's 531-page tome on the subject, I just finished Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which got me wondering why the systematic destruction and confinement of American Indians is never referred to as genocide. Brown focuses his narrative on the period between 1860 and 1890, culminating in a massacre at Wounded Knee Creek, where the U.S. Cavalry killed between 153 and 300 Sioux, that heralded the end of major resistance by prominent Sioux chiefs. Bury My Heart is a tragic (and, at times, boring) book because it tells practically the same story in every one of its nineteen chapters, though place and time vary: Indian chiefs who grudgingly make treaties with the U.S. government to preserve their tribal lands are eventually betrayed or forced to "re-negotiate" due to the proliferation of white settlement and mining. The options then left to the Indians are to fight an ultimately futile resistance, flee to Mexico or Canada, or capitulate to life on a reservation, where the government's promises of arable land, food, and supplies usually fall short.

Does this miserable refrain add up to genocide? Did the U.S. government ultimately wield the intent to destroy the Native American population -- "in whole or in part" -- that is a precondition for genocide under the 1948 Convention (which, by the way, is not retroactive)? Though Bury My Heart is filled with characters who, like General Philip Henry Sheridan, believed that the only good Indians were dead ones, it was not the policy of the U.S. government to systematically exterminate Native Americans. The unifying tenet of Indian policy during this period instead seems to fall under section (c) of Article 2 of the Genocide Convention: "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." The government moved Indians to the least desirable land and, in the process, destroyed their way of life. They were forced to become farmers on land too barren for farming, and thus condemned to partial extinction; the survivors, to perpetual marginalization.

The recent controversy about the Armenian genocide illustrates the impact changing historical perception can have on the present. Genocide carries with it huge moral baggage; neither Turkey nor the United States would like to bear that burden. And while referring to an event or events as genocide certainly empowers the victims of that atrocity with appropriate recognition and perhaps an opportunity to seek compensation, those who stand to benefit most are the members of the majority group. Americans shouldn't have to read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee to recognize the campaign against our country's native peoples as one of systematic destruction and repression; it should be taught explicitly in schools and openly compared to twentieth-century genocides. The current generation of twenty- and thirty-somethings is largely untainted by the Hollywood imagery of the savage Indian, which so permeated the culture of our parents' generation. Yet nothing we learned in school accurately represented the true nature of the Native American genocide or the pitiable state in which many Indians still live.

Calling it a genocide has the potential to change that. It might make us uncomfortable, but it's time to let history intrude.

S-Chip on the Shoulder

2007-10-05T22:22:00.001-04:00

Yes, it's true: George Bush hates America's children. As if the president wasn't unpopular already (his "disapproval rating" is hovering around 66%), Bush decides to veto a bill that would expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, started in 1997 to fund health care for low-income children who fall above the poverty line and are thus not eligible for Medicaid. The new bill, which passed with bipartisan support in the House and Senate, calls for an increase in funding of $35 billion over five years for the program.

It's time to wake up: the war in Iraq is costing $1.8 billion a week, which makes the SCHIP funding a meager 5 months' worth. Unlike that war money -- which comes not out of the budget but emergency funding measures -- the SCHIP funding would actually be paid for by raising taxes, the cigarette tax, that is. Fund health care for those who need it, and decrease costs to the health care system by discouraging smoking -- almost sounds like a no brainer, huh?

Sure, the above treatment of the SCHIP debate boils it down into black and white. So let's consider Bush's argument, laid out in a speech to the Lancaster, Pa. Chamber of Commerce:

"The policies of the government ought to be, help poor children and to focus on poor children. And the policies of the government ought to be, help people find private insurance, not federal coverage. And that's where the philosophical divide comes in. I happen to believe that what you're seeing when you expand eligibility for federal programs is the desire by some in Washington, D.C. to federalize health care. I don't think that's good for the country. I believe in private medicine. I believe in helping poor people -- which was the intent of S-CHIP, now being expanded beyond its initial intent. I also believe that the federal government should make it easier for people to afford private insurance. I don't want the federal government making decisions for doctors and customers. (Applause.)"

Bush basically has two points, which are essentially the same thing: 1) SCHIP was started to fund health care for poor children, and expanding its mandate will go beyond covering the poor; it will draw in people who can already afford private insurance, and 2) expanding SCHIP is a step toward socialized medicine.

The first thing that Bush obscures is that America already has a program to fund health care for people below the poverty line; it's called Medicaid. Those kids are covered no matter what. SCHIP was started because health care costs became so high that even people who made twice as much as the federal poverty level (FPL is $20,650 a year) were unable or unwilling to insure their children. You've got to look at the phenomenal increase in health care costs in the past 7 seven years. Back in 2000, yearly family premiums on health insurance cost on average $6,450, which represented about 19% of the income of a family of four living at twice the 2000 federal poverty line. Now, with health care rates gone up 78% to $11,480, a family of four who is living at three times the poverty line ends up having to fork over that same share of their income: 19%. It was these families, who spend nearly a fifth of their yearly income on health care, that SCHIP was originally targeting, so raising the ceiling for coverage wouldn't necessarily mean expanding it "beyond its original intent." Even so, a recent study by the Urban Institute referenced on fact-check.org estimates that under the new SCHIP proposal, 70% of the children covered will still come from families that make under 200% of the federal poverty line.

As for Bush claiming that the program will cover families who make up to $83,000, it was a bit of a stretch. Because the SCHIP legislation is unspecific as to what constitutes "low-income children," states are allowed to set their own cut-offs for coverage, which range from 140% (ND) to 350% (NJ). New York State recently made a request to expand coverage up to families making $82,600 a year, which would be exactly 400% of the FPL. As within its power defined by law, the Bush Administration denied NY's request to increase the ceiling, so Bush's real concern is that future administrations might allow such expansions in SCHIP coverage.

The President's second objection, though essentially the same as his first is, as he puts it, "philosophical"; he is opposed to the government providing public health care to its citizens. Although I suspect he is really more concerned about the enormous amount of money to be made by private insurers (or to be lost in a socialized system), I'd like to take on the philosophical argument for a moment. I'm assuming that for him the philosophy behind his view is preserving "freedom of choice" and keeping the government out of our lives; to me it has to do with whether you consider health care a human right or something to make money off. When you look at our health care system today -- the skyrocketing premiums, the small businesses unable to keep up pace with increasing costs -- you've got to wonder why it is so intensely important that not only do we provide health care, but that we be able to make money off it. If anything, a socialized system (unlike the tax breaks and health savings accounts that Bush and other Republicans propose) would allow people to spend their money on other goods and services, which would still help grow other sectors of the economy.

Which brings me to my final tirade, which I assure you has nothing to do with SCHIP. The Dept. of Labor today released its latest report on job growth; the economy added 200,000 new jobs in the past two months, which gave the financial world some hope that we might not be hitting a recession after all. The detail that caught my eye, hidden behind all the statistics and measured optimism, was that the majority of these job gains were seen in health care and education. This is just a theory, but what if the root cause of all those new jobs was actually immigration? After all, a higher population demands more teachers and more health care professionals to serve it. If a connection actually exists (studies could try to show a regional correlation between immigration and job creation in education and health care), it could be crucial the immigration issue. We already know that immigrants (especially illegal ones) help the economy by bringing down the prices of goods (they also bring down the price of labor, which is good or bad depending on who you ask), but what if immigrants actually helped create jobs rather than "stealing them from working Americans"?

I wonder if that would change anyone's "philosophy."

Divest This‽

2007-08-10T17:27:00.000-04:00

Here's the dilemma: Darfur is in Sudan, which is in Africa, which is in the Eastern Hemisphere and I'm all the way over here in the United States. It is far geographically and seems further mentally; like many Americans, I have many things to think about on a daily basis before I get to Darfur. Even if I do think about the genocide once every few days, I still often feel powerless as to how I can effect change.

I've given money to the Save Darfur Alliance, bought green Save Darfur bracelets, and tried to stimulate conversation on the topic when friends ask about the bracelet (trying to avoid sounding preachy). Yet still I feel hypocritical for not doing enough.

The two major obstacles that prevent Darfur (and other humanitarian issues) from reaching the forefront of public debate are distance and complexity. The first, distance, encompasses both the geographical and cultural separation Americans feel with Africa. Put simply, it's hard to empathize with people with whom we have so little in common. Differences include, but are not limited to, language, culture, religion, geographical surroundings, physical trauma, and living conditions (i.e. we have homes and they don't).

It should be the job of the media to try to break down these barriers, either through responsible reporting or documentary work (see God Grew Tired of Us or Lost Boys of Sudan, which though not specifically about Darfur seek to humanize war-torn Sudanese refugees). Instead, we're forced to suffer through endless reports on Lindsay Lohan's DUIs (with this notable exception) and the minute details of pre-primary politics. Another under-employed tactic for drumming up empathy for Darfur is to connect this current genocide with the Holocaust, the most well-known and culturally-embedded genocide. Viewed through the lens of the past, what's happening in Darfur can be more easily understood, and can even compel specific groups (Jews, for instance, of which I'll say more below) to take action.

In addition to breaking down public apathy for the Darfur issue, activist leaders must also be able to distill its complexity into an easily-digestible package. Only a small group of people will be willing to go out of their way to research the conflict or read a book on the genocide (like Not On Our Watch whose authors, Don Cheadle and John Prendergast, acknowledge that most of their readers are already activists or aspiring ones). Even if a person decides he or she wants to support the cause it can still be difficult to see how one person can make a difference (apart from donating money and buying green bracelets).

Enter divestment. The strategy is this: if enough investors sell stock in companies which do business with the Sudanese government (which supports the Janjaweed militias that wreak havoc in Darfur), they can make a large political statement even if the financial impact is slight. Divestment is less about paralyzing corporations that do business in Sudan than sending a message of solidarity with the Darfurian people. If enough people raise their voices against the Sudanese government, and back them up by divesting their dollars, international opinion will hopefully turn against Sudan the way it turned against Apartheid-era South Africa. The strength of the divestment strategy is that it empowers ordinary Americans, who might otherwise feel helpless, with a way to combat genocide.

Just when I thought I might never see the fruits of my donations to the Save Darfur Coalition, I received a letter updating me on their divestment campaign. The letter and accompanying advertisement unabashedly revealed their newest foe: not the Janjaweed militias or the Sudanese government, but an American company: Fidelity Investments. The genius of this campaign is that it brings the issue of genocide home, and makes activism manageable. Who, after all, wants their money going to support a regime with which American companies are forbidden to conduct business?

Of course, it's not as simple as that. Fidelity Investments does not directly do business with the Sudanese government (that would be illegal under Executive Order 13067, passed under President Clinton and expanded by President Bush), but invests in PetroChina, whose parent company CNPC is 100% owned by the Chinese government and has operations and fixed assets in Sudan. Got it?

The Save Darfur Coalition started its campaign against Fidelity in the fall of 2006, when it sent a letter to Fidelity executives asking for divestment from PetroChina. Fidelity responded with brief letter, in which it explained that "Fidelity portfolio managers make their investment decision based on business and financial considerations, and take into account other issues only if they materially impact these considerations or conflict with applicable local standards." The Save Darfur Coalition responded brilliantly by creating an ad campaign that featured a female refugee brandishing the Fidelity letter as a cruel commentary on the removed, sanitized nature of corporate-speak (view the video version here). But most major media outlets did not cover the story; conversely, many of them refused to publish the ads taken out by the Save Darfur Coalition, ostensibly because they singled out one corporation for the actions of many. Only the Boston Globe, whose parent company The New York Times Co. refused to run the ad in both the Globe and the Times, featured an editorial arguing against the decision and in favor of divestment.

In May 2007, Fidelity sold most of its U.S. shares (traded on NYSE) in PetroChina, although it claims the sale was not related to the Save Darfur campaign. Still, the company owns $834 million worth of shares on the Hong Kong exchange, along with a remaining $55 million worth on the NYSE. On the bright side, the divestment campaign has already spawned legislation in Congress that would make it easier for investment managers to withdraw money from companies that do business in Sudan and Iran. The bills, which passed nearly unanimously in the House on the last day of July, would prevent lawsuits from investors who felt divestment skimped them of promised returns. A little-known senator from Illinois who tries to keep out of the spotlight, Sen. Barack Obama, introduced a similar bill in the Senate that only covers divestment from Iran. The Bush Administration is opposed to such legislation.

One of the saddest moments for me in examining the debate on divestment was to see that two of the Fidelity executives targeted by the Save Darfur Alliance were named Mr. Cohen and Mr. Rosenfeld (you can see their names displayed conspicuously on the online ad). All Jewish people share a historical and cultural identity punctuated by oppression and strife, and most recently by genocide (regardless of whether they have a familial link to the Holocaust). Shouldn't that confer upon us a special responsibility to speak out against genocide, and honor the promise of "Never Again"? There are plenty of Jewish organizations (and ones like the National Holocaust Museum) that have plunged into the genocide in Darfur with fervency, but there needs to be more education and action on the community/synagogue level.

When I left for vacation in June, I had just finished Not On Our Watch, and I felt upbeat about how I could contribute to the campaign against genocide in Darfur. Since then, my resolve has only strengthened, given the Fidelity divestment campaign and the potential for working within the Jewish community. If activists can find ways to break down the complex issue of genocide, and remove some of the perceived distance, we can rally ordinary Americans to the cause. Together, we can show the international community and the Sudanese government that we will no longer tolerate genocide taking place right under our noses.

With a new U.N peace-keeping force authorized, and the government of Sudan agreeing to comply with the resolution, we are on our way.

---------------------------------------

Sources:

http://www.wbur.org/news/2007/69046_20070726.asp
http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/sudan.pdf
http://fidelityoutofsudan.googlepages.com/fidelity%27sroleinsudan
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070731/pl_nm/iran_congress_dc_3
http://www.house.gov/frank/divestment073107.html
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/05/10/divestment_dilemma/
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article23093

Body Over Mind

2007-08-02T16:49:00.000-04:00

The first time I went running for exercise was in the summer of 2004. I had just moved into a new house at 601 Watts St., and the hot water had not yet been turned on. I needed to take a shower, and reasoned the best way to do so would be to first get myself so incredibly hot that cold water would seem like a blessing. So I dragged myself into the sweltering North Carolina heat, and after what seemed like the longest loop around Duke Campus (in reality about 7 minutes) I stumbled back to Watts St., my lungs, muscles, and practically my entire body burning with pain and exhaustion.

Since then I've gone through phases, sometimes running as often as three times a week, but usually closer to once every two weeks. I do not enjoy it. Like many who run or swim or practice some other form of exercise, the benefit for me is primarily emotional, i.e. increasing energy level, improving self-esteem, and combating depression. I am not a natural athlete, nor do I extract any joy from pushing my body to its limit, or challenging myself to run faster, farther, longer.

In a semantic sense, the exercise that I have been doing (while better than nothing) can hardly even be called running. I am slow, possibly under 6 miles per hour, which a trainer interviewed by the BBC identifies as the boundary between running and jogging. If you are slower than 6 miles per hour, the argument goes, you would be better off walking. Coupled with the speed dilemma is my endurance level. Most of the runs I have taken during my intermittent training have clocked in at under 20 minutes, which falls either below or on the edge of the recommended length for cardiovascular exercise, depending on who you ask (most experts say 30-60 minutes three or four times a week). All of which left me wondering: am I simply not cut out for running or is there something about this sport that I am failing to grasp?

One recent night in the midst of old friends, the conversation turned toward running. A friend who recently substituted his addiction to cigarettes with an addiction to running felt it gave him the same release and calmness that smoking used to provide.

"If I miss a day, I feel awful," he explained. "Right now, it's like I can't wait till tomorrow when I can go running." I stared at him incredulously. He explained to me that running for him was not a social act -- he could never do it while chatting with a friend alongside-- rather, it was something more equivalent to a meditation, his body eventually falling into a steady rhythm, leaving his mind detached and able to relax.

"Well, I've never felt like that," I told him. For me it's always a constant struggle to make the next step, and by the end I feel like I'm about to melt. Another friend, a former cross-country runner, explained to me that I needed to go past all that, to run until I felt like I couldn't run anymore and then floor it over the hump -- from that point on (a point which he pegged at around 20 minutes) I wouldn't feel a difference between running for ten more minutes or thirty more, and the ex-smoker agreed. Only if I pushed myself passed what I felt to be my physiological limit would I begin to get some mental peace and enjoyment out of this sport.

Okay. All I have to do to achieve a moderate sense of enlightenment (and perhaps I was already over-romanticizing the whole situation) is run for longer than I ever have before. It's not about what your body can take, I told myself, so there's no need to work gradually up to a longer distance -- better just to settle on a time limit and hope my mind would be powerful enough to ignore my body when it begged for mercy.

I settled on forty minutes, figuring the twenty minute mark would be an ideal halfway point, in addition to being numerically significant, since it was nearly double anything I had ever attempted. Starting off at exactly 10 am, stopwatch running, I felt the morning air being baked to its oven-roasting afternoonness; I tried to run exclusively through the shady spots, which still maintained the cool air like a memory of dawn. This proved to be impossible, but I labored ahead, checking my watch once every few minutes and then calculating what percentage of the run I had completed (usually close to one sixth or one fifth). I was running up a small hill when it hit me, how incredibly hot, just hot, I was and I how my tongue pursed for lack of water (I had neither eaten nor drunk in preparation for this grand victory of mind over body). At twenty minutes I doubled back. Each stride now brought me closer to home, I reasoned; shouldn't that motivate me enough to break through the fatigue currently weighing on me like a sack of bricks? Every time I saw a shady spot on the grass shoulder, I imagined plopping down to rest, to let my limbs touch the ground so that gravity couldn't pull on them anymore.

Finally, as I passed one of the last university buildings I would see on the course, I felt my stomach drop. In a split second I resigned myself, I gave in, I collapsed in a pile on the shaded grass, knowing that water and an air-conditioned refuge were within reach.

In a word, I failed. Perhaps I was too naive to think that enlightenment would be that easy to achieve. Yet there is a sadness, and ultimately a seeping loneliness in feeling you can't reach something that other people seem to get on a daily basis. It reminded me of the Meryl Streep character in "Adaptation," so intent on finding an easy path to passion and belonging.

What mistake had I made? Had it been too hot? Had I set out too late in the day? Had I not drunk enough water? These questions raced through my mind on the walk back, mingling with thoughts of desperation and inadequacy. Eventually I began to consider my options: a) stop running altogether, b) continue running in my customary manner and never push beyond the point of exhaustion, or c) try again, perhaps gradually this time, to extend the length of my run, to try reach that point at which the suffering of the body dwindles or remains constant and the mind settles into a semi-meditative state. I know that state might be different for every person, or maybe even non-existent, but why not try when you have nothing to lose.

El epíleg grandiós

2007-07-21T15:00:00.003-04:00

The epilogue to my Spanish adventure takes place in Barcelona at the peak of tourist season; hundreds of sweaty young bodies looking for a party and, afterward, a place to crash. I'd come to Barcelona to visit an old friend—who was herself a houseguest and couldn't offer me a place to stay—and it was she who suggested I scour the Internet for a hostel. While browsing rooms on hostelworld.com, I quickly realized that failure to plan ahead can hit a traveler squarely in the wallet. The cheapest rate was 35 EUR a night (just over $50) more expensive than anything I'd paid thus far on my entire trip.

Left with no other recourse, I booked a four-night stay at an establishment called ABBA Youth Hostel. The place was a dive—dusty living quarters, grimy bathrooms and the stench of B.O. forever lingering in the air. The staff was unhelpful to the point of being rude. On my first night there, I did meet some nice English folks and we got a drink together, but overall I found the clientele a bit too seedy for my tastes. After a night on the town in one of Europe's premier party cities, people would lay in their bunks until the late afternoon, their hands hanging over the side of the bed like the place was a military hospital.

So when my friend reversed her initial reluctance to put me up, I jumped at the chance to get out of ABBA. There was just one problem: the irate hostel owner, a scruffy Arab, would prove a significant obstacle. Together, my friend and I concocted a surefire plan to get me out of my 5-day reservation, which I'd stupidly prepaid upon arrival. I'd tell the Arab there had been a death in the family that required me to return immediately to the States. It seemed a reasonable enough excuse, but relied heavily on empathy, which I soon found out was severely lacking in this specimen.

I returned to the hostel and informed him of my situation; he prompty refused to refund my money for the remaining three days I had planned to stay. I fought hard: when he told me reservations were non-refundable and that he couldn't find anyone to fill my spot, I told him there were people on the street dying for a place to sleep and that I'd gladly find someone to fill my space. He didn't back off one bit, and, faced with the choice of a prolonged battle over $150 or moving on with the trip, I chose the latter. So I picked up my bag, turned my back on the guy and walked out the door.

I stayed in Barcelona three more days. I tried hard to enjoy the city—its architectural wonders, culinary delights and seething nightlife—but found it largely overrated. I was also consumed with rage for my Arab hostelier. After returning to the US, I finally figured out a way to get back at him: by writing a scathing review on hostelworld.com. Here's what I wrote:

"Unless you're left with no other option, I urge you to avoid this hostel. First off, it was too pricey for what you get: run-down bunks and slovenly bathrooms. The staff was downright nasty. The manager is a control freak who speaks to all guests as if they were sworn enemies. I had an emergency and had to leave town early; he was unwilling to compromise on any sort of refund, even given the circumstances. I hope you who are reading this will seek out another location in Barcelona. Stay away from ABBA!"

To my surprise, I received an email six days later with the following message, with which I conclude my Spanish adventure:

"You had a reservation and a terms and condition for your reservation so between you and me have condition that I reserve a bed for whole stay in my hostel and you promise that spend your stay in my Hostel but if for any reason you leave the hostel I can’t refund anything because one of the condition can’t be broken .So the business is far of special treat between the friends and must be obey, as you obey with Bank contact and employee contract and every logic things in this world,

For illogic things look at the world so many wars for example Iraq war or in general Middle orient countries are crying for respect terms and condition of human beings you can find some politic name enemy there, but I am not sworn enemy form no one only I run a business that have terms and condition. And I am friendly with all that respect the contracts, so your problem or desire of your Interests for stay in another place can’t damage to my hostel. Because you ask impossible, so next time you choose *****Hotel."

Lucky Pilgrim

2007-07-19T21:10:00.000-04:00

Sometimes when you're traveling alone you get on what seems to be an improbable lucky streak; mine began the moment I stepped off the plane in Asturias. In the span of 36 hours, I had found a roommate and a room in Gijon, arrived at Semana Negra in time to see the miner's chorus, and headed off on a whirlwind tour of Cadavedo, led by the homely but homey Roxana (with whom I did not have sexual relations).

My next stop was the Picos de Europa, a range of green, rock-studded peaks only twenty kilometers inland from the Cantabrian Sea. Hoping my luck would continue, I caught the bus in Gijon and headed toward Cangas de Onís, the main Asturian corridor into the national park (which is shared between the provinces of Asturias, Cantabria, and Castilla y León). I tried to sleep during the bus ride, but the oversized glass window made a lousy pillow.

By afternoon I arrived in Cangas de Onís, a sleepy, tourist town whose main attraction is a stately bridge known as the Puente Romano, which marks an important battle between the Asturian kings and the invading Moors. Most of the inns and pensions were out of my price range, so I decided to try my luck in Covadonga, twelve kilometers up the road at the entrance to the national park. With typical Asturian hospitality, the tourist agent let me leave my cumbersome pack in the office until the next bus left for Covadonga. Starving, I hunkered down at a park bench and devoured three-quarters of a baguette, a tin of octopus tentacles, and some Valladolid cheese, which I purchased at the supermarket across the plaza. Then I called and made a reservation at the only inn in Covadanga, which miraculously had a room available for a 25.25 € per night. Nailing down a place to stay is one of the most gratifying moments of traveling alone on a flexible itinerary; not only does it provide relief from that paralyzing uncertainty of not knowing where you'll be spending the night, it brings with it a certain sense of accomplishment -- a boost to the traveler's aspirant ego.

The bus driver dropped me and two Brits off at the Hospedería del Peregrino (Pilgrim's Inn), where we were greeted promptly by the innkeeper, a helpful middle-aged man who maintained the elegance of an English butler. He escorted me to my room, which sported a double bed (mysteriously too short), an armchair, half a desk, and a sink (the shared bathroom was down the hall). Despite the meager accommodations, the place felt like an oasis, and the open windows over the bed added a feeling of closeness to nature. I laid down and rested a bit, and then set out to explore Covadonga, which turned out to be less of a town and more of a sanctuary.

Straddling the fault-lines of religion, history, and nature, Covadonga is the spiritual heart of Asturias. Here King Pelayo and his troops held off the attacking Moors in what is generally considered to be the first victory of the 800 year Reconquista. Conveniently for the cause, a Virgin appeared to the embattled troops in a nearby cave, which rallied their spirits and led them to victory. Today Covadonga is a destination for pilgrims to this holy site, the "Santa Cueva," (among them the late Pope Juan Paul II), which houses a rugged, outdoor chapel and the remains of good king Pelayo. I entered the cave and sat down in the pews, pondering the idol of the Virgin and Baby Jesus in their elaborate gold crowns. The doll struck me as an odd thing to be holy, so resembling a young girl's plaything, yet comprehensible in its historical context of convincing an illiterate population to believe.

Below the cave a mountain spring pours into a reflective pool, which serves as the headwater of the Rio Covadonga and promises to grant wishes to those who drink from it. Further downriver, I found an old peseta, thrown in years ago by some lonely supplicant. I debated whether removing this peseta would somehow cast an ominous shadow on the life of that innocent soul, but in the end decided to ignore my spiritual qualms. With a tinge of guilt I stuffed it in the front pocket of my bag with all those pennies, dimes, pence, and euro cents.

Just a stone's throw from the Santa Cueva, a haughty red-stone basilica reaches toward the Picos, floating like a bold attempt to reach the heavens. Here is where the next morning I caught the bus to go up to the national park and begin my pilgrimage to nature. The British couple from the inn joined me at the bus stop; we chatted while waiting for the bus, which came an hour later than scheduled.

The main attraction of the Asturian Picos consists of two breathtaking mountain lakes, Enol and Ercina, where in peak season bus loads of Spanish tourists go to enjoy the crisp air and gawk at the docile, brown cows that make Asturias famous. Disembarking at the top, I shuffled past a group and headed to the main park office to learn more about the trails for day hiking. Oddly, the park service does not give out detailed maps of the area surrounding the lakes, yet they recommend you don't leave without one. Ready to hit the trail and still basking in the glow of my lucky streak, I decided to forgo the map and set off for a place called Vega de Ario (Aryan Valley, it turns out).

The trail hugged one of the mountain lakes at first, then climbed a gradual hill to reveal high, jagged peaks in the distance. These were surrounded on all sides by rolling green pastures, themselves dotted with gray rocklets. Along the trail, the rocks were marble-smooth, worn down by generations of hikers and livestock, but everywhere else they seem to stick up like stone spears. The park rangers had warned me about the desvios, places where the cows had broken off the main trail and blazed their own paths, which can lead hikers astray. I concentrated on following the trail markers, and avoiding the cows, whose bells chimed together in a one clanging symphony.

At around 3 pm I arrived at a large flat area, which overlooked the gorge and central massif of the Picos. In the distance was a small, stone hut -- the Refugio -- and as I approached, I saw it was surrounded by a crowd of about fifty Spanish teens sprawled on their sleeping pads, shielding their faces from the intense sunlight. I asked the hut staff how to get to Vega de Ario and they told me I was standing right on it, but suggested I climb one of the two surrounding peaks for a panoramic view.

I headed toward the summit and on the way ran into my British friends resting near the ruins of an old shepherd's house. We talked a bit more, pored over each other's guidebooks, and took photos of each other. Finally I took my leave, and scurried up the side of the mountain in search of the ideal vista. I struggled to find a viable path, but soon realized that with all the cows roaming around, the Spanish didn't seemed particularly concerned with staying on the trail. I made my way across a string of tiny peaks, and at the third summit found the view for which I'd been searching. Finally, I could see the central gorge, the Garganta del Cares, and could make out the faint outline of a road or trail on the opposite side. Using the summit cairn as a tripod, I took some magnificent pictures and then headed back to the lakes, hoping to catch the last bus down to Covadonga.

On the way back to the parking lot, I again encountered my British friends, and I greeted them, arms flailing, by shouting: "You guys waited for me!" They both laughed, and later, in Covadonga, I invited them to join me for drinks at the Merendero Covadonga, a snack shack where the previous night I had made a friend in the owner, a rotund, white-haired gent named Mariano. I had promised Mariano I would return with friends, and around 8:15 that night I fulfilled my promise, the three of us set on sharing some Asturian hard cider.

When I approached the counter and greeted Mariano, he jokingly commented, "Te cambiaste de color," referring to my reddened face. I told him I had forgotten to wear sunscreen, and looked sheepishly at myself in the mirror behind the bar -- my face, neck, and arms were thoroughly burned. We got Mariano to pour the first round of cider, and then retired to a table where we discussed the merits of vegetarianism and traveling alone.

I told them how different my experience had been since I'd left my brother behind in Málaga, and how lucky I had been so far. When you travel on your own, I explained, your victories are sweeter and your defeats/failures less bitter, since in the latter case there's no one else to blame you. We all had a turn pouring the cider, only a small part of which actually landed in the glasses, and shared some appetizers before Simon and Hannah headed off to dine at the Peregrino.

I migrated to the bar, chatting with Mariano and his wife, a bubbly woman with crooked teeth, who joined him tonight at the snack shack. I told them that so far, Asturians were the most hospitable people I had met in Spain; they wished me well on my trip to Santander the following morning. To send me on my way, the Señora made me a sandwich of my choice, and refused to accept any payment in return.

"To remember this place," she said. I walked home smiling, soaking in my last, lucky night in Asturias.

Asturian Hospitality, Pt. 2

2007-07-18T02:19:00.000-04:00

The following entry is a work of fiction.

I wish I could tell the events that unfolded next as a humorous, coming-of-age adventure, yet despite elements of awkwardness, passion, and sex, the story I am about to reveal is essentially a devastating fugue on loneliness.

I never boarded the FEVE train at the Cadavedo station. I can't remember if it was Franco or Mussolini who supposedly made the trains run on time, but somehow modern democracy was incapable of achieving such a feat. So I wait for nearly fifty minutes on the platform, envisioning a number of improbable derailments, like one in which the sleek, modern beast of a train careens into one of those old stables and spooks an entire herd of noble Asturian cows into producing sour milk. Eventually I get bored of writing these whimsical scenarios in my journal and decide to see what advice Roxana can offer.

As I walk across the tracks she is poking her head out of the ticket window. She sticks enough of her squat torso over the counter to give me this universal shrug, and I nearly turn back in desperation. But I figure there's no point in waiting alone, so I walk right up there and lean my arms on the counter, like I'm ordering a drink at a bar.

It's ridiculous, I say, and she tells me that sometimes these things happen. I believe her; she has somewhat of a soothing, motherly effect on me and I think maybe I'd like to curl up and bury my face in her enormous breasts.

"If you want to, I can find you a hotel in Cadavedo. There's lots of tourists right now but I have a cousin who works in tourism, she might know of a place." I tell Roxana that she's been too kind already, and at this point what I really want is to get back to Gijón, since all my stuff is there in a hostel with my Australian roommate, who I've known for less than twenty-four hours. Like my earlier attempts to shrug off her hospitality, this one is met with resistance; she stares at me stone-faced, intimating her unwillingness to budge.

This woman is an enigma to me; I don't understand how someone can be so outwardly unfriendly, yet so willing to go to great lengths to entertain a complete stranger. I am even more shocked when on the ride back into town she takes a sharp left off the main road and pulls under her apartment building, the bottom floor of which is a small parking area. The building is made of white stucco, and cuts precariously into a hill, so that the second floor entrance on the side opposite us is actually the front door.

We go inside like it's nothing, but I am starting to feel a burning nervousness in my stomach, and all my muscles are tightly clenched. The walls of the apartment are blank except for one framed picture, a tacky sunset with reds and oranges that seems so foreign to Cadavedo's blue and green color scheme.

"I'm going to call my cousin now," says Roxana, the first words exchanged since we entered this place. She leaves me sitting awkwardly on the couch, my back erect in an attempt to boost my character through good posture (is that what I was taught?). I hear Roxana babbling on the phone in the kitchen, but it's difficult to understand since she's talking so fast, and because I always have trouble listening from the outside on a conversation between two native speakers. She hangs up, re-enters the living room, and says, "We're meeting her in two hours by the port, she found you a nice place, only 25 €."

"Two hours?" I ask. She sits down next to me and I get a good look at the tattoo on her right bicep, a flame alongside a tractor trailer.

"That's for my husband, the truck driver." She takes my hand and puts it on the tattoo. "Did it hurt?" I wonder out loud. She takes my hand again and moves it to her breast, and I lean forward to lay my cheek against her. Roxana squeezes me close to her chest, in a single motion unwrapping the tension building within me; she consoles away that awkward feeling. Under her shirt is folded-over, bulging skin, which somehow excites me, so she tows me to her bedroom and to her bed.

We spend nearly 20 minutes there together, and after, she asks me if I'll do something else. Naked, she throws off the bed sheet and goes to the dresser, pulling out a pair of weathered jeans and a plain, orange t-shirt.

"Will you put these on?" she asks timidly, her self-confidence finally fading away.

"Do what?" I cry, creeped-out, angry, and confused at the same time. No, I do not want to wear your husband's clothes.

"Before, at the station, you asked if there was something you could give. Well, now there's this." Despite her apparent moment of weakness, Roxana reveals nothing. I think she may be about to cry, but she successfully holds it in, like she's been practicing.

"What you're asking me to do...I don't understand," I say, trying to be soothing, but now feeling as distant from her as when I first stepped into her car this afternoon. She shakes her head, goes back to the drawer and digs for a while, finally coming up with a small, newspaper clipping, which she hands over to me. I feel how cold her fingers are compared to mine, and then unfold that square of newsprint.

Her husband, Álvaro, is dead, of course, and these, the clothes of a dead man. I tell her I'm sorry, that she should have told me before, but that I still can't do it.

"It doesn't change anything," she says to me, but I can tell she doesn't believe that. Her temporary job at the train station, her stone-faced hospitality, and this sad, empty apartment; it all weighs on me as I try to understand her all over again. In the face of her staggering loss, I am paralyzed; I know not how to act. What could I possibly say to this woman? Just say nothing and put on the damn clothes, I think to myself.

I get up from the bed, slip on my boxers, and walk over to where Roxana is standing. I shake my head. Her eyes are red now from holding back tears, and I can feel mine begin to water sympathetically. She murmurs something in Spanish, which I can't catch, and then tells me plainly to get out. I plead with her, not because I want to stay, but because I can't stand being forced to stare at death and welcome it and wear it.

"Just get out," she says again, so I honor that, gathering up my clothes and bag and heading for the door. Outside I put my clothes on and set off running until I find a taxi that agrees to drive me the half-hour back to Gijón. I don't say anything the whole ride back, despite the taxista's unrelenting hospitality.

Asturian Hospitality, Pt. 1

2007-07-16T17:22:00.001-04:00

After seven days of stifling Andalusian heat, I was ready to see another side of Spain. Luckily, cheap flights in Spain (and Europe as a whole) have made getting around quite a bit easier. Bargain carriers with names like Spanair, Vueling, and the not-so-subtle Clickair offer flights starting at 10 € ($14), but after taxes and fees, prices usually hover in the 30 € - 50 € range for a one-way ticket. Flying makes the most sense on long-haul trips, like the one I was undertaking between Malaga and the principality of Asturias nearly 500 miles to the north.

I picked Asturias out of my guidebook largely for the Picos de Europa, a mountain range about 20 km inland, and for its landscape of green pastures dotted with stone cottages and herds of livestock. I learned upon my arrival at my first Spanish supermarket (El Corte Inglés) that Asturias is also considered the dairy capital of Spain; "leche asturiana" carries the same sort of reputation as Wisconsin cheese does in the U.S. Fortunately for a weary traveler such as myself, Asturias also proved to be remarkable among the places I traveled in Spain for the overwhelming hospitality of its people.

As my plane approached the landing strip, the change from scrubby Andalusian desert to the verdant hills of Asturias was anything but subtle. Low-lying clouds grayed the sky and made the greens and blues deeper; the entire northern coast (from Galicia to the French border) is appropriately called "Green Spain." Later, I hopped on a bus to nearby Gijon, and marveled from behind the glass at severe cliffs dropping suddenly into the sea, and imposing factories that spewed smoke into the overcast skies.

My first encounter with Asturian hospitality, at the Semana Negra festival in Gijon, did not actually involve me interacting with another human being. I wandered through the fairgrounds, passing tent after tent of cheap merchandise and rowdy dance clubs, until I finally stumbled upon the main concert stage, illumined with bright lights and splashed with dry ice. A man with a large, white beard stood in front of the microphone, surrounded by a chorus of miners -- yes, miners -- dressed in white jumpsuits with black handkerchiefs on their collars, hard hats and headlamps to boot. This bearded man was belting out what I could immediately tell were hearty folk songs in the deepest sense of the word; they were the songs of the people. He sang of struggle and tragedy in the mines, dead comrades and martyrs and injustice. A few of those in the crowd raised their fists in defiance as they belted out the deeply-ingrained lyrics. In a magnificent display of unity and shared history, middle-aged couples, punk teens, old men, and even children all stood transfixed. These were the songs of Asturias, rooted in the deep-coal mining tradition, and no matter who you were or what you did, you instinctively knew the words. I couldn't sing along, but I shared in the intensity that permeated the crowd, a shiver in my spine, and I felt part of something.

I decided to stay in Gijon another night, inspired by the city's unequivocal Spanish-ness. Asturias prides itself on being the birthplace of the Spanish nation; it was the only territory never to fall to the Moors and thus the geographical starting point of the Reconquista. The next morning I resolved to take in some rural countryside, something with breathtaking cliffs leading to rolling green pastures, and I set my sights on a small fishing village called Cadavedo. Caught in the romance of it all, I decided the train would make the ideal conveyance, though my failure to master the 24 hour clock caused a hiccup in my departure (I showed up at 2:30 for the 3:30 train). Once outside of Gijon, the train appeared to stop at every conglomeration of two or more stone barns, and at the occasional lone, decrepit stockhouse. It traveled most of the way through recessed ditches or tunnels on the way to places with fantastic names like Aviles, Pravia, Vegarrozadas, and Zanzabornin. The ride was scenic, although longer than promised in the guidebook. Arriving at Cadavedo an hour and forty-five minutes after leaving Gijon, I expected to walk out of the station and into a quaint, colorful town; instead, the station agent, a medium-sized woman named Roxana with blond hair and large, protruding breasts, informs me it's about a 1.5 km down the road. She offers to give me a ride as soon as the train leaves, and I say okay, figuring she'll just drop me off and I'll get a taxi on the way back.

The friendly lift turns into something completely unexpected and exciting; an improvised tour of Cadavedo and it's vicinity. First, we stop at the grocery store, where I follow Roxana's lead: I buy a piece of "empanada gallega," crusty bread baked around marinated ground beef, which I devour in the car as we descend steeply toward the sea.

We don't make small talk, although Roxana points out her house along the way. When we make it to the port, she says, "I could leave you here and come pick you up later if you like," to which I express mild discontent. "Well, what do you want to see?" she asks, and I say I want to see the entire town, from up on high -- that breathtaking vista for which I've been searching. She tells me there's a hill not too far from here, the best view in the whole area, where the young people of Cadavedo go to enact some sort of modern-day Bacchanalia.

"You have to wear your worst clothes because the others pour wine all over you. More gets on your clothes than in your mouth. Still, by the time you make it up the steep part, you don't know which way is down and which way is up."

She is right. From the top of the mountain, we can see the gorge where Cadavedo should be, the train station facing us on a high plain, and to the east a half-moon beach, which turns out to be our next stop. We head down the mountain, and share a cigarette, Roxana opening up a bit during her descriptions of the Bacchanalia. Though unattractive, she exudes self-confidence, and it irks me that she lacks any curiosity whatsoever as to who I am or where I came from.

The beach is incredible, sheltered in a wide cove with cliffs rising on either side; instead of sand it is filled with smooth, flattened rocks approximating the size of a human kneecap. "Take off your shoes and walk around," she says in a maternal sort of voice. "You want to bathe, go ahead. Go ahead and bathe."

So I do. She takes a few pictures of me out in the water, as if we are old friends or relations. When I'm done I come back and sit beside her in awkward silence. The water is nice -- muy agradable -- I say over and over for lack of a better thing.

After the beach we hit one more look-out and then it's time to return to the train station, where we sit outside and eat peaches we bought at the grocery. Finally she explains to me that her husband is a truck driver and that she often goes with him on long hauls -- she's traveled all over Spain -- but not this time. At this point I realize I might not be the only one getting something out of this uncanny relationship we have concocted; me a tour of seaside Asturias, her a reprieve from loneliness and boredom. But she refuses to accept the money I offered for gas, and she doesn't have an email address to which I can send the one photo I've taken of her. She offers me her postal address, but I decline, saying I won't print the pictures. I express my frustration at having nothing to offer her in gratitude.

"No, there's nothing you can give," she replies in her matter-of-fact way that disguises her warmth. After an awkward one-cheek kiss that turns into a two-cheek kiss, I say goodbye and head to the other side of the platform to wait. My train has not yet arrived, and I am informed it's running twenty minutes late. Roxana peeks her head out the station window, and I think, that's twenty more minutes I get to spend in Cadavedo.

The Way Home; or, Don't Go to Alhaurín el Grande

2007-07-12T17:24:00.000-04:00

As our week in Spain drew to a close, my brother and I felt quite accomplished on the cultural level. We'd examined the intricate designs of the Alhambra in Granada, wandered the winding streets of Mijas, explored the world's largest cathedral in Sevilla, and tasted tajine in Morocco. Notably missing from our accomplishments, however, was a tribute to Andalucía's natural beauty. For our final adventure, we decided to devote an entire day to exploring a little, known landmark mentioned briefly in our guidebook, a gorge called La Garganta del Chorro.

Over the course of the week, however, our concept of "an entire day" had deteriorated from a 9 am departure to something a little closer to four or five in the afternoon, given the sun's tendency to keep late hours (setting at 10 pm). In hindsight, we were pushing the envelope a bit, but we left the Costa del Cemento with only six hours of daylight to discover and explore the gorge, which boasted, according to the guidebook, one of the most spectacular walks in Spain.

We drove for nearly an hour and a half until we at last saw signs for El Chorro, which urged us to abandon the highway and follow a curvy, one-lane road to our left. Diligently we complied and soon found ourselves cramped into the small village of Álora, whose inhabitants had clearly placed those "El Chorro" signs to lure in unsuspecting tourists like ourselves (there was, we discovered later, a quicker route via the highway). We puttered through Álora's main street, and then quit town on an unmarked one-lane road, which curved back upon itself like snake on its own tail. This forty-five minute detour, if anything, cemented David's contempt for narrow, winding roads and quaint villages that stood like roadblocks between us and our destination.

Eventually the road descended into a river valley, and further ahead revealed an oblong reservoir, with a huge, hydroelectric dam that emitted a constant, unnerving whir. We stopped at a campground in El Chorro for information, and leaving the car behind, followed an unmarked trail to an overlook where we could see the gorge up close. Strangely, the river had cut a narrow passageway (desfiladero) through the towering, rock wall and three-quarters of the way up the gap crossed an old, wooden footbridge. Even more impossibly, we could see the Caminito del Rey, a path suspended halfway up the canyon wall, which appeared in all its rickety-ness like a something out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. "Intransitible" (impassable) warned a sign on the edge of the cliff, in glorious understatement; a huge chunk of the trail's cement underpinning was completely gone. This was the "spectacular canyon walk" that my guidebook had promised; of course, being a 2000 edition it failed to note that the Caminito del Rey was closed that same year after four tourists died traversing it. After hiking down, we set out to see what was on the other side of the gorge. There, in the middle of the arid, Andalucían desert, was a giant lake; the perfect swimming hole.

David was overjoyed at our discovery, albeit at 8:45 pm with the sun hanging low in the sky. We joked about starting a Spanish version of swimmingholes.info, with this hidden jewel as our flagship location. We felt proud of our discovery -- no one, not even the reputable Lonely Planet, had intimated its existence -- and we celebrated by taking a dip. In the distance, we saw some "Cliffs of Insanity," but (mom's advice ringing in our ears) figured it was best not to chance a potentially-hazardous cliff jump. Still, we enjoyed our sunset swim and, with dusk now upon us, fired up the indomitable Opel Corsa for our return trip via Mijas (where we planned to have a late dinner).

At this point, the way home became the subject of heated debate -- we opted, at my insistence, to take a short cut directly toward Mijas, instead of the circuitous highway route via Málaga. First we had to pass through Cártama, during which David's smoldering contempt for intermediary towns resurfaced more intensely than ever, now that they stood between him and his dinner. Still, everything proceeded according to plan until we hit a neighboring town called Alhaurín el Grande, and immediately lost ourselves in the labyrinthine streets of its old city. When we emptied on to a one-way street heading in the wrong direction, we knew it was time to ask for directions.

On one of the narrow, cobblestone streets, we pulled up beside two middle-aged Spaniards loitering in front of an empty general store. In classic literary style (and I'm not making this up), the two men complemented each other exactly; one was skinny and balding, while the other was rotund with a full head of hair. In Spanish, I asked them which way to Mijas; this would turn out to be quite a bone of contention. Just as the skinny one started to run off a laundry-list of directions, the fat one interrupted and urged his friend to route us instead via the highway to Málaga; the mountain pass to Mijas would be too dangerous at night. The skinny man told him to shut up, and their bickering escalated until the fat man angrily conceded defeat by yelling "¡Coño!" (literally, "Cunt!") and walking away. I guess that's one way to end an argument.

Taking the skinny man's advice, we headed left, left again, then right, and another left, winding down a curvy street much better suited for pedestrians than Opels. Finally we saw a sign for Mijas, and collectively breathed a sigh of relief. We passed a deserted restaurant, where we contemplated stopping for dinner, but instead decided to stick it out to Mijas.

My AAA map shows Alhaurín el Grande and Mijas side-by-side; in fact, they are separated by an impassable no-man's-land of mountain peaks. Unknowingly, we had chosen a treacherous route that took us right over the sierra, and now we were completely in the dark. David sat with his hands glued to the steering wheel, and his eyes fixed on the road, saying nothing except "This is crazy, this is crazy," repeating those words like a mantra. It was the windiest, narrowest, and closest-to-the-edge road we had seen the entire trip; nighttime transformed the appearance of another car into an event which could inspire terror in our hearts. Traveling at minimal speed, David concentrated all his energies on conducting the complex orchestra of shifting gears, turning the wheel, and flicking the brights on and off.

At last we climbed up to a development called Alta Vista, which, I assured David, had to be the highest point on the road. From there we descended into the dark, and on our left I caught a glimpse of a path we had hiked up during our previous visit to Mijas. We were safe again in familiar territory; Mijas covered us like a warm, white blanket in the night.

After parking the car, we decided to play it safe at an Italian restaurant. We meditated on the day's adventures as we waited for our food to come, with David constantly reminding me that what we had just done was absolutely crazy. "Exhilarating, though, wasn't it?" I smiled.

"Yeah," he responded, still visibly shaken. "Maybe you should drive home."

That Country Across the Sea

2007-07-08T18:23:00.000-04:00

There is a certain vanity that comes with being well-traveled. What experienced traveler hasn't, at one time or another, felt the urge to enumerate the countries he or she has visited, boast a passport full of visa stamps, or to ask that always-simmering question, "Did you go to the __________ while you were in __________?" (e.g. Louvre; Paris). At the heart of this vanity lies a search for validation, the hope that someone outside of ourselves might recognize how worldly we have become through our travels, although a full passport is more often an indicator of socio-economic class than it is a badge of honor.

A friend of mine takes pride in the fact that she has now visited six of the seven continents, and I see no reason to deflate her feeling of accomplishment, especially since I can picture myself doing the same (I've hit only five). It was in this spirit, travel for the sake of travel one might call it, that my brother David and I set our sights across the Straits of Gibraltar and fixed them resolutely on Morocco.

Instead of booking a tour through a travel agent -- fifty-four euros ($73) would have got us ground transportation, ferry passage, a tour guide, and lunch -- we decided to go it alone, in spite of the expert advice we had received to the contrary (our source being a 1977 edition of Frommer's Spain and Morocco in Under $10 a Day). We headed west in our trusty Opel Corsa (I know, I'm obsessed) toward Tarifa, a coastal town well-known for its nightlife and "niñas lindas" (pretty girls); as host of the World Championship of Windsurfing, it's also a destination for windsurfers from across the globe. No wonder; as we followed the meandering highway up to the top of a narrow, mountain ridge, wind farms revealed themselves on every promontory. These modern windmills -- unimaginable, I think, to Cervantes -- stretched like a forest of tiny boomerangs into the horizon.

Upon entering Tarifa we noted its lazy, hidden-jewel allure, but didn't have the time to explore; our ferry was scheduled to leave in 20 minutes. We parked the car on a windy side street, bounded our way down the hill to the port, and frantically purchased two round-trip tickets to Tangiers. At around 1:06 pm we finally boarded the ship via the car deck and, upon entering, caught glimpse of a large Volkswagen van packed so tightly that its cargo blocked all the rear windows, overflowing on to a large rectangular roof rack. The driver was a leathery Arab with a long gray beard and typical head covering; in between the bucket seats poked the heads of two or three young children, as if the contents of the van were gradually squeezing them out of the backseat. This family of migrants, likely Moroccans living and working in France, were headed home for the summer holiday, in what I could only imagine must be one hell of a road trip. Later, seated on the upper-deck, surrounded by blue sky and bluer ocean, I imagined the joy of their homecoming as the ill-defined rocky coastline of Morocco came gradually into focus.

With the Hispanic world behind us, we stepped off the ship and into the Middle East, our ears abuzz with Arabic and French, and to a lesser extent English, Spanish, and Japanese. We were clueless in the truest sense: in a country where we understood neither the language nor the culture, we had no map, no guide, no book, and essentially no plan as to how to survive until it was time to return; in fact, we didn't even know what time the last ferry was scheduled to leave. One of the men crowding the gangplank offered, in English, his services as a tour guide, brandishing what he claimed was a license from the Moroccan tourist board. In what was perhaps not one of my brightest moments, I replied, "We're not ready yet!" which David found to be quite humorous. Instead, we checked out the tourist information booth, where a friendly girl in a headscarf handed us a city map, and, sensing our cluelessness, summoned her friend who she claimed was a tour guide.

And so Mohammed barged into our lives, babbling half-intelligibly in English about the return ferry and "Morocco time," which we learned was two hours behind Spain. Of medium-sized height and stocky build, Mohammed was frenetic in his movements, and, we later learned, unable to sit still. Although he provided no credentials, and couldn't sufficiently answer my question of how long he'd been a tour guide (to this he replied only that he was born in Tangiers), David and I accepted his assistance after bargaining him down to 30 €, about $40.

We set off from the port and entered the Medina, the old city, with narrow streets like we had seen before in Granada, but this time teeming with life -- a mix of sights, sounds, and smells, the latter of which seemed especially pungent. Children, which David observed appeared to love it in Morocco, ran in and out of tight corridors and bounded down the stairs; one girl playfully taunted an unsuspecting vendor with a fake plastic snake.

Our first stop was "Casbah Restaurant," named after Tangiers' main tourist attraction. We ate a typical Moroccan meal, which consisted of soup, cous-cous, and something called tajin (we never did find out exactly what it was). Mohammed sat down with us initially but soon wandered off to talk to some people outside. Feeling a little jilted, and perhaps noticing how other guides were sitting with their tour groups, David went out to fetch Mohammed, whom we peppered with questions until he wandered off again. After lunch we headed off to see the great Casbah, still having no clue as to what it actually was, but ready to rock it nonetheless. It turned out to be the ruins of the old Muslim citadel ("Casbah" being the French transliteration of the Arabic "Qasbah," or "قصب" if that makes it any easier for you; the Spanish version is "Alcazaba"), but more decrepit that anything we had seen in Spain, the good view being just about the only positive.

The next part of our tour consisted of visiting a number of shops which belonged, coincidentally, to Mohammed's cronies, who at every step tried to guilt us into buying something. We eventually passed on the rugs, even when brought upstairs for special treatment, but were unable to weasel our way out of the herbal pharmacy, run by a French-educated Moroccan who claimed a PhD. in American Literature. Partly impressed by his story, and sympathetic to a man so obviously well-educated but unable to find befitting work in his native country, we purchased a small bottle of oil which, made from a tree found only in Morocco, boasted innumerable beneficial properties, none of which presently come to mind.

As we passed a slew of bloody goat heads in the Medina's main market, David and I started to realize that we might actually prefer to take an earlier ferry back to Tarifa, and thus have time to spend there before heading back to the Costa del Cemento for the night. Mohammed needed little convincing on this point; in fact, he urged us to get back to the port as soon as possible, since, according to him, ferries had been known to leave as much as an hour ahead of schedule if they filled up (I doubted his motives here). We descended to the port, stopping on the way to enjoy some local pastries. These, it turned out, would be crucial in helping us to pay our guide Mohammed for his minimal yet sufficient services. We had only 20 €, and beyond that could offer only an American twenty-dollar bill; since this would add up to roughly 35 €, and we didn't want to overpay, Mohammed bought us two more pastries and we called it a deal.

At the port we had time to relax and collect our thoughts; I drank cafe con leche and wondered if it wasn't ludicrous to attempt to absorb an entire country in one afternoon. It turned out to be less than an afternoon -- a mere three hours -- though looking back it seems even shorter. What stands out the most to me are those intense contrasts: between first- and third-world, European and Middle Eastern culture, and, especially, between the memory of a land once ruled by Arabs, and today's Arab lands. Spain's past is Morocco's present; an empty Medina where tourists search for five-star restaurants stands in stark opposition to one filled with souks and bazaars, beggars and children, stench and goat heads.

Now that I think about it, I didn't feel particularly comfortable in either, but at least I got my passport stamped.

Fuengirola, Redneck Riviera de España

2007-07-07T00:43:00.000-04:00

My brother and I left for Spain with dreams of terraced Mediterranean villas, clear blue water, and briny but delicious Spanish cuisine; what we found instead was a swath of concrete coastline called Fuengirola. This sprawling town, nestled in what is regrettably known as the Costa del Sol, would be our home base for the next week, as we stumbled our way through Andalucía in search of good food and cultural fulfillment.

Before I enter into what will hopefully be a long and scathing description of this tourist trap, I'd like to note the borderline unappealing nature of the name "Fuengirola" itself, which stems either from a gratuitous number of vowels, or merely the fact that it rhymes with crap-ola. With this inelegant word still burning on my tongue, I piloted our rented 2007 Opel Corsa (a charming car) from the Málaga airport down a jam-packed coastal road until we reached Fuengirola's city limits, where a conspicuously-placed billboard proclaimed it to be "a sun of a city."

Ogling the beachside town through the windows of our tiny hatchback, it wasn't long before we committed that cardinal but ultimately excusable sin of which all travelers are at some point guilty. We searched our minds for a way to interpret Fuengirola in the context of our previously-lived experience, to force some kind of connection or comparison with a place that we knew well. Then it hit us with the severity of a stray golf ball -- we had arrived at the heart of the Redneck Riviera of Spain, Andalucía's very own version of Myrtle Beach.

Why Myrtle Beach? Start out with Fuengirola's main coastal drag, the Paseo Maritímo, a narrow two-way street flanked by high-rises on one side and the Mediterranean on the other. Add to that a main street running further inland (a la King's Highway), a highway bypass gloriously dubbed "Autopista del Mediterráneo," and beyond that a bypass of the bypass cut into the arid mountain range spanning the coast (you'll need Telepeaje for that one, Spain's equivalent of EZ-Pass). A maze of perpendicular streets connect these parallel routes to the coast -- almost. Roughly half of them are dead ends, which did much to exaggerate the feeling that we were trapped in the evil clutches of a town that didn't want us to leave.

Fuengirola and Myrtle Beach share a bond that goes beyond highway geography into what I like to call the Redneck Factor. In the summer, we found out, Fuengirola is inundated by what my brother and I came to realize were British rednecks (the term does not exist as such England) in whom we noted traits eerily-similar to those of their Southern-bred, Scotch-Irish-descended counterparts who frequent Myrtle Beach. First off, these primarily working-class people are either bright-white or beet-red (depending, of course, on how exactly how long they've been on "holiday"), usually plump and/or saggy, with moderate to poor teeth and green-inked tattoos on their arms; all in all, not much different from a typical night's gathering at Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede. To match, the Paseo Maritímo is lined with restaurants and pubs that cater exclusively to this crowd, sporting such names as "The Wessex Grill", "Smuggler's Cove", and "Fools and Horses" (named after a British sitcom). At one of these establishments, for instance, it is not uncommon to see a burly middle-aged British couple downing twin pints of Guinness while chatting with their British waitress -- at ten o'clock in the morning.

The last, and ultimately most gratifying, parallel is the endless offering of family (i.e, children's) entertainment that Fuengirola has to offer. If you're longing for the bygone days of the Myrtle Beach Pavilion (which closed in 2006) why not try "Parquelandia" located conveniently on the beach side of the Paseo Maritímo, or, if you're feeling more ambitious, the Parque Acuático de Mijas? You could also hit the "renowned" Fuengirola zoo, the Gran Circo Chino, or even -- dare I say something cultural -- a bullfight in the local bullring (which by the way promises to be an enjoyable and traumatic experience for you and your young children). Last but not least, treat yourself to a relaxing game of mini-golf after a long day of sunburn, shopping, and eating. Fuengirola certainly lags behind Myrtle Beach in this arena (we were only able to find one functioning miniature golf course), which convinced us we could easily curb the market if we opened up our own Spanish-themed mini-golf course using transplanted Myrtle Beach technology (Piratas del Mediterráneo, anyone?).

In a certain sense, Fuengirola's similarity to Myrtle Beach was mildly comforting, since (as in Myrtle) we could joke constantly about the blatant tourism in our midst (i.e., the poolside Japanese restaurant at our apartment building). On the other hand, we felt we were clearly missing out on the trappings of Spanish culture -- after all, we were here to experience Spain, not Sussex. Still, as David commented so lucidly, "When in Fuengirola, do as the British do," which we did by sampling the local cuisine: an English Breakfast consisting of two fried eggs, sausage, bacon, canned tomatoes, mushrooms, and baked beans. It doesn't get much more British than that.

The first night we searched 20 minutes for something echoing Spanish cuisine, passing British, Indian, and Persian restaurants along the way. Finally we settled on a near-empty establishment directly across the street from our building called "Flor y Mar," the name lettered blandly in white on a quaint, blue awning covering the terrace. I insisted, of course, on ordering paella to celebrate our arrival in Spain, which seemed especially momentous since I was trying it for the first time. It wasn't the most delicious paella on the Iberian Peninsula, but we made quick work of it seeing as we hadn't eaten a real meal since we left the States fifteen hours before. The food in Fuengirola should generally be avoided with extreme prejudice (it is pricey and subpar); we soon found ourselves taking advantage of every opportunity to leave this tourist trap and explore other parts of Andalucía.

It was during one of these excursions, to the small city of Ronda, that a friendly gay Spaniard gave us the vocabulary we'd been searching for to describe the commercial sprawl into which we'd been plunged. When we told him we were staying in Fuengirola, he merely laughed and said, "That's right in the middle of it. Enjoy the Costa del Cemento!"

The best way to do that, we learned, was to get as far away from it as possible.

Hollywood Gets Pregnant

2007-06-24T13:11:00.000-04:00

In a scene near the end of "Knocked Up," the new film from writer/director Judd Apatow, an E! network executive comments to one of the main characters that "pregnant is in." The same could be said for Hollywood these days, with two feature-length comedies revolving around pregnancy -- "Knocked Up" and Adrienne Shelly's "Waitress" -- released within a week of each other in early June.

[Spoilers to follow]

Both movies explore the comedic possibilities of [unwanted] pregnancy: the not-so-subtle arrival of morning sickness, those uncomfortable encounters with gynecologists (or gynechiatrists if you prefer the lingo of Knocked Up's stoner posse), and, of course, the moment of birth itself, which can at the same time be scary, revealing, funny, empowering, and disgusting. Apatow and Shelly both conceived their films in the wake of becoming parents -- in fact, it's hard to imagine a bachelor such as Seth Rogen, star of "Knocked Up" and himself a screenwriter, dreaming up a movie populated with gynecologists, ultra-sounds and baby books. But even as this personal thread binds the two movies together, it also explains their divergent endings. While Allison and Ben of "Knocked Up" reconcile and ultimately "rear" their child together in unmarried bliss, Shelly's heroine and waitress of the title, Jenna (played elegantly by Felicity's Keri Russell) rejects both her abusive husband and her gynecologist-turned-suitor in order to raise her daughter alone. This crucial difference is reflected in the final frames of each movie -- Apatow ends with a montage of Allison, Ben, family, and friends celebrating their daughter's birthday, Shelly with the image of Jenna and her daughter walking together down a road until they disappear into the horizon.

Is this difference indicative of some fundamental divide in the way men and women view relationships, or is it merely a function of plot differences and artistic decisions? I'd wager a little of both, since the decisions a writer makes about plot direction ultimately boil down to the statement he or she is trying to transmit. Through this lens, "Knocked Up" is mostly a comedy about an immature man's struggle to grow up (despite its significant commentary on marriage), similar to Apatow's "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." As in "Virgin," the main character can only achieve happiness when he realizes that his relationship with a woman (and his need for such a relationship) outweigh his own selfish pursuits; he is forced to make sacrifices to find what is truly important in life, as if this were the only option. While much of the humor and candor of "Knocked Up" is cutting-edge and exciting, its conformity to the three-act structure of romantic comedy (boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl) leaves something to be desired.

"Waitress," on the other hand, presents a more feminist and less formulaic take on the romantic comedy. In this film, Jenna is the undisputed heroine -- a smart, talented, and compassionate woman striving to be independent and creative despite her marriage to Earl, the abusive and jealous husband whose overprotectiveness stems from a profound lack of self-esteem. Her strength comes not from the men in her life, but from her love of life and creative spark -- she funnels her emotions into the myriad of pies she invents, with names like "Pregnant Miserable Self Pitying Loser Pie" and "Earl Murders Me Because I'm Having An Affair Pie." When Jenna admits to Earl that she's going to have a baby, his immediate response is fear at the prospect she might grow to love the baby more than him (apparently he's oblivious to the fact that Jenna already hates him). In the end, Jenna rejects both Earl and her doctor-suitor in effort to live with fewer complications. The message is clear: the love between Jenna and her daughter is enough to sustain them without the added presence of a male figure.

One commonality in these two films is that neither seriously considers abortion as an appropriate option for terminating unwanted pregnancy. That's not to say that abortion doesn't come up; both women are presented with the choice, but in both cases abortion is stigmatized either through the commentary of supporting characters (like Allison's mom) or in the protagonists' own mind (Jenna). Granted, neither of these movies is about abortion (which would quickly lead the plot to a dead-end); still Sandra Kobrin, a commentator on Women's Enews.org may be on to something when she comments that Apatow managed to turn "abortion into the "A" word, in league with the "N" word and other epithets so taboo as to be bracketed off from regular speech." At best, the stigma both films attach to abortion reflects conservative values, which the creators may or may not have intended.

Even though "Knocked Up" failed to break with convention in the same way as "Waitress", it should be noted that these films were primarily designed to entertain, and in this area both succeed admirably. Each is a laugh-out-loud comedy that creates a community among theater-goers, producing as the credits roll a moment of anticipation bordering on applause. Births are moments of happiness, and ending a movie with one is upbeat regardless of who ends up raising the child.

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Adrienne Shelly, who wrote, directed, and acted in "Waitress" was tragically murdered on November 1, 2006, even as her film was being accepted to compete in the Sundance Film Festival. The Adrienne Shelly Foundation, founded by her husband Andy Ostroy, seeks to help young female filmmakers fulfill their dreams by providing them with some of the opportunities Shelly was lucky enough to have. For more information, or to make a contribution, click here.

High-Altitude Antics

2007-06-12T22:35:00.000-04:00

The things that inspire me to write: books, movies, news, events in my daily life, opinions, connections. Often these ideas need time and space to become fully-formed, and some never make it to a finished product. Rarely does an event compel me to the point where I have to sit down and punch it out at the expense of everything else.

Such an opportunity has finally presented itself, namely these just-released pictures of Bolivian president Evo Morales playing soccer on the frosty plain of Mt. Sajama, Bolivia's highest peak. Why, you might ask, is the leader of South America's poorest nation playing football at 19,700 feet?

Here's your answer. Last month FIFA, the international governing body of "association football" (i.e. "soccer") , decided to ban the playing of international matches above 2,500 meters (8,200 ft). While Argentines and Brazilians may have been breathing a sea-level sigh of relief, the Andean nations cried foul. The new regulations prohibit cities such as Quito, La Paz, and Cusco from hosting Copa America games or World Cup qualifying rounds. Morales, incensed, told a BBC reporter, "This is not only a ban on Bolivia, it's a ban on the universality of sports."

Or perhaps its an honest attempt by FIFA to level the playing field. The two critical issues that weigh into FIFA's decision are fairness and health risk. With respect to the former, BBC Sports columnist Tim Vickery observed that the major Bolivian clubs boasted a combined 25 wins in 40 matches at home, while their record away from the altiplano consisted of a singular win in 38 tries.

For those unaccustomed to high altitude, health effects can be severe. Earlier this year several Brazilian players needed oxygen while playing a match in Potosi (13,120 feet), and that Brazilian club has henceforth sworn off high altitude games. According to a Rice University website, "symptoms of headache, malaise, and decreased appetite are fairly common amongst individuals traveling to altitudes greater than 8,000 ft -- although this can occur at lower altitudes." Intensity of altitude sickness can vary amongst individuals, but there is no denying that less oxygen forces the body to work even harder. I am reminded of Ismael, the trip leader of my study abroad program in Bolivia, who, despite being a native Bolivian and a former resident of La Paz, suffered severe altitude sickness and subsequently had to be hospitalized during a visit to that city.

In response to FIFA's decision Evo set out to prove that high-altitude football is safe and fun, commissioning several high-profile matches between himself and his most trusted ministers at alpine pitches. Morales and his cabinet arrived by helicopter and used mountaineering huts as locker rooms, all in an attempt to prove that if he can do it, anyone can. Congratulations, Mr. Morales. You have finally proven to FIFA and the rest of the world that Bolivians who are accustomed to living at high altitudes can also play sports at high altitudes!

Maybe you should focus more time on running the country instead of populist pandering. I understand that football is an issue of national and cultural pride to Bolivians and citizens of other Andean nations, but maybe we could strike some kind of deal with FIFA -- perhaps raise the limit to 10,000 feet and establish some kind of guidelines for high-altitude play (a mandatory acclimatization period, for instance)?

Certainly the best line to come out of this whole scandal was this quote from Evo: "Football makes us forget our problems, economic, social and political." Which just goes to show that Bolivia has only two real contingency plans: blame everything on a lack of maritime access or just go play football.

No Iraqi Left Behind

2007-05-16T23:49:00.000-04:00

Nearly a year ago, an article in this fine publication suggested that teachers would be uniquely qualified to mediate the conflict between the U.S. and Iran. Although State department officials in the end failed to consider such an approach, parallels between education and foreign policy continue to crop up, and I, for one, plan to illuminate them.

Take, for instance, the word “benchmark,” which has lately resurfaced as central to both Democrat and Republican plans to hasten the end of the Iraq War. The Democrats want so-called benchmarks to track Iraqi progress, and the President agrees (in an October 2006 press conference, he said the word 13 times). The sticking point, however, is whether to penalize Iraqis if they fail to meet the established benchmarks.

Sound familiar, school children of America? No Child Left Behind and state legislation seeks to hold students and teachers accountable via end-of-the-year standardized tests, which are supposed to measure student achievement on the learning objectives outlined in each grade’s course of study. In Durham Public Schools, “benchmark testing” refers to the quarterly standardized tests developed by the district to prepare students for the big one, the North Carolina End-of-Grade Test (EOG).

If you think the link between Iraq and standardized testing is just another analogy stretched to the breaking point, read what Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had to say about the connection:

“While holding America’s school children accountable with consequences, the president refuses to hold the Iraqis’ government responsible with consequences, while our young people in Iraq are dying.”

Pelosi is partly right; No Child Left Behind does impose consequences on failing schools, but the brunt of those penalties fall not upon students but teachers and school administrators. Nevertheless, her comment lays naked the president’s inconsistency: if he believes accountability to be essential for progress in education policy, why not in foreign policy as well? How successful would No Child Left Behind be if it threatened to close failing schools, but never followed through with action?

The word benchmark itself originates from surveying; it literally describes the mark surveyors would cut into a rock to use as a reference in determining altitudes (let’s just say it involves something called an angle-iron and a leveling-staff and leave it at that). In modern lexicon “benchmark” denotes a more general reference point (in my attempts to translate it into Spanish, the best I could find was “punto de referencia”), which can be used to evaluate progress in a specific endeavor.

In this sense, the benchmark tests that we give students reflect the word’s original meaning; they are used to establish a baseline for student performance and then track progress. Results from each benchmark test allow us to see how well students are grasping the concepts we are teaching, and indicate the areas in which students need to improve. These benchmarks are diagnostic – if students are not “on the right path,” we attempt to provide them with the extra support and instruction they need to achieve success on the EOG.

The Iraq benchmarks, however, do not appear to be designed to engender success. Take, for instance, those currently under discussion: ordering the Iraqi government to fulfill promises on allocating oil resources, amending its constitution and expanding democratic participation. These so-called benchmarks are merely goals the United States would like to see the Iraqi government achieve. According to Vali Nasr, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, little is being done on the ground to help the Iraqi government move toward them. “…The United States is looking for a way to extricate itself from Iraq, and also to put pressure on the Iraqi government to achieve the desired goals without actually helping the Iraqi government with a negotiations process, with a regional engagement that would facilitate it,” Nasr explained in a May 15 interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep . Since neither the Republican nor the Democrats appear interested in providing Iraqi politicians with the tools they need to solve the country’s problems, benchmarks in this case add up to a cheap rationalization for withdrawal. In Nasr’s opinion, they are designed to provide a domestic political solution for America rather than a basis for meaningful success in Iraq. To look at it from Bush’s perspective, imposing penalties when the Iraqi government fails to meet these goals would be tantamount to denying a failing student the access to the materials he or she needs to improve.

Politicians, Democrat and Republican alike, should avoid equating accountability with benchmarks; while the former aims to penalize the party most responsible for failure, the latter should be a measure of weaknesses that need to be addressed by all concerned parties. Does this mean I think Iraqis shouldn’t be accountable for getting their country together? Certainly not. But perhaps they might be more convinced of the urgency of the matter if American politicians would stop hiding behind their leveling-staffs, set a date for U.S. troop withdrawal, and put all possible resources into helping the Iraqi government meet these goals by that date.

After all, school children must face that fact that EOG week is only 4 days away.

Arrival

2007-04-07T08:22:00.000-04:00

We made it safely last night into Lima at around 10:30 pm local time, which is one hour behind daylight savings time. As we walked out of the customs, we were met by a wall of Peruvians and travel agents awaiting their loved ones/clients - I´d never before seen so many people waiting at an airport. Lisa Kaplan met us at our posh hotel, since she accidentally arrived 2 days early! However, it allowed her some time to get acquainted with Lima, which we will barely have time to see.

Quick turnaround this morning as we head out the the eastern part of the country - the rainforest. We are catching a flight this morning to Puerto Maldonado, at which we will secure our belongings, repack, and head upriver in a boat to the Tambopata National Reserve.

In other news, my guidebook confirmed the urban legend. There does exist a parasite in the Amazon that can crawl up your urethra if you choose to pee in the river...the only option for cure is surgical removal.

Needless to say, we have all resolved to keep our pants on and our urethras closed.

12 Seconds of Darkness, Pt. 2

2007-03-16T17:08:00.000-04:00

Adam, Jorge, y Matt

Enough said.

12 Seconds of Darkness

2007-02-24T17:22:00.000-05:00

Friend: I thought this CD might be up your alley.
Me: If by that you mean Jewish Uruguayan singers, then, yes.

Spain is enamored of Jorge Drexler, an intense but soft-spoken singer-songwriter from Uruguay, whose most recent album “12 Segundos De Oscuridad” has garnered both popular and critical success since its release. Take, for instance, the slew of YouTube videos in which Spanish twenty-somethings pound out crude versions of his most popular songs on their guitars. Drexler’s songs have struck a chord with a generation of educated Spanish and Latin American youths searching for meaning in a disconnected yet increasingly globalized world. His compositions run the gamut from simple, quiet love songs (“Sanar”) to commentaries on how technology invades our personal lives (“La Infidelidad en la Era Informática”) and musings on the power of doubt in an increasingly polarized age (“Hermana Duda”). Most of these themes go untouched in modern pop music, which in both English and Spanish seems obsessed only with conveying a graphic depiction of sexual acts and a sappy, idealized version of love.

Drexler is best “known” in the U.S. for winning the 2006 Academy Award for Best Song for his composition “Al Otro Lado Del Río,” from The Motorcycle Diaries. The song was unmercifully butchered on Oscar night by Antonio Banderas, who, as anyone who has seen the movie version of Evita can attest, is vocally challenged. Drexler tried to regain some of the beauty and ambiance of the original version by singing a few measures during his acceptance speech, since his English at that point was somewhat limited. Still, Drexler’s talent and earnestness was either lost on or soon forgotten by American audiences (both Spanish and non-Spanish-speaking).

But 12 Segundos De Oscuridad, which Drexler describes as his most painful and emotional album to write, may be more successful at breaking into the American music scene. 12 Segundos is Drexler’s first album to be released domestically (albeit nearly four and half months after its release in Spain and Latin America), and the domestic release includes an insert with an English translation of all the lyrics. The album is available at nearly any Barnes & Noble or Borders, or on iTunes, which has also just released a compilation of Drexler’s earlier work, previously unavailable domestically. Most visibly, however, is that on 12 Segundos Drexler has chosen to cover Radiohead’s “High and Dry,” in a meandering, melancholic vein similar to Iron & Wine’s version of The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights.” Will Jorge be able to capture the American Indie-turned-OC-pop scene?

Not likely. While the foremost barrier to success in the U.S. for any foreign artist is language, Drexler also has to confront the fact that his subject matter may be too difficult for Americans, even Hispanic Americans, to swallow. Drexler has won fans in countries where globalization, interdependence, and integration are daily facts of life (Drexler himself was part of an exodus of young Latin Americans seeking greater opportunities in Spain). Musicians in Latin America (and other countries) have long struggled to carve their nation’s place in the world cultural milieu, meanwhile batting an onslaught from Western U.S.-dominated cultural mores. Take, for instance the song “Latinoamérica Es Un Pueblo Al Sur del EEUU” by Chilean rock group “Los Prisioneros,” which satires Latin America’s unimportance on the world stage (“Nobody in the rest of the planet takes seriously this immense group of people filled with sadness”). Drexler’s songs, whether they question the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or his own disorientation at transatlantic flights, concern themselves with not so much with the question of national or regional identity, but of personal identity in a rapidly changing and highly interconnected world. Perhaps the song off of the new album that best represents this dilemma is “Disneylandia,” which, although a cover of a song by the Brazilian band Titãs, reveals Drexler’s true fascination with globalization:

Hijo de inmigrantes rusos casado en Argentina con una pintura judía. Se casa
Por segunda vez con una princesa africana en Méjico…
Imágenes de un volcán en Filipinas salen en la red de televisión de Mozambique…
Niños iraquíes huídos de la Guerra no obtienen visa en el consulado americano
De Egipto para entrar en Disneylandia.

Child of Russian immigrants who got married in Argentina
To a Jewish painter, married for the second time
To an African princess in Mexico…
Images of a volcano in the Philippines are
Shown on a television network in Mozambique…
Iraqi children fleeing the war can’t get a visa
At the American consulate in Egypt
To get into Disneyland.

The vast majority of Americans are perhaps better insulated from this type of globalization than our counterparts in other countries, and even those who aren't tend to question it less. Like other artists such as Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo Arriaga (the duo who brought you Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel), Drexler uses his talent, earnestness, and ingenuity to question that which most of us take for granted in our daily lives. As his personal battles and insecurities become our own, will we turn the lens on ourselves?

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www.jorgedrexler.com

My Fifteen Minutes

2007-02-10T22:07:00.000-05:00

For those of you who have never been on the cover of a newspaper, let me tell you how it feels to be catapulted into celebrity. One day you’re living a quiet life in your medium-sized post-industrial town, and the next minute your picture is plastered everywhere, phones ringing off the hook, paparazzi in pursuit, women of all shapes and sizes offering to bear your children (“You work so well with kids!”).

(These things may not be completely true.)

What I can tell you I gained from the experience – besides sharing a broadside with Mike Nifong – is that some people view an appearance on the front of the local newspaper as the height of one’s ambition in life. One friend wrote to me:

I am so proud of you--I know the reporter could not believe her eyes as she watched those kids. You have really found your calling.

Although this is someone who I deeply respect, she is clearly out of touch with my personal ambitions. Granted, I have not seen or communicated with this person in nearly 6 months, but still, I would hope any friend would know me well enough to realize that my ultimate dreams lie outside of the teaching profession.

That phrase “You have really found your calling” for me conjures up an image of a priest receiving heavenly directives from God. Surely this is where the phrase is rooted, although in secular society “finding your calling” is more closely linked to finding and following your chosen career path. For me, it means an outward expression of that inward passion that drives us. My goal is to achieve a sort of equilibrium between the personal interests that I pursue in my free time (reading, writing, politics, history, Latin America, race relations) and my job, folding them into each other and blurring the boundaries between the two. Only then will I feel like a truly productive and fulfilled member of society.

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News 14 Carolina
http://rdu.news14.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=100674

Durham Herald-Sun
without photo:
http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-811827.cfm
with photo:
http://www.duke.edu/~mas29/docs/pics/immersion1%20large.jpg
http://www.duke.edu/~mas29/docs/pics/immersion2%20large.jpg

A Racing Giant Takes a Fall, Pt. 2

2007-01-29T21:23:00.000-05:00

Barbaro is euthanized:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7068898

Sara, you could be next...

A Tale of Two Presidents

2007-01-22T16:55:00.000-05:00

When President Bush addressed the nation on Wednesday, January 10, a few news commentators hoped he would more apologetic about his failed war policies than in previous speeches. Take, for instance, Anna Quindlen, who entitled her recent Newsweek column “Contrition as Leadership.” Quindlen’s columns are stereotypically motherly, aimed unflinchingly at the nation’s soccer moms, and this one lives up to her reputation.

…[N]o one suggested that George W. Bush would utter the words polls indicate that so many Americans believe he should: “I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”

Quindlen’s key point is that Bush’s unwillingness to apologize (His exact words, in fact, were “Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.”) reveals how “deeply ingrained resistance to admitting mistakes is in the American male.”

And, as much as I hate to admit it (ahem!), I think Quindlen and her band of sociolinguists may be correct. Take, for instance, the statement of another venerated president, Richard Broadhead of Duke University. In a letter to the Duke Community dated January 8, 2007 (coincidence?), Broadhead stated:

In the confusion of this situation, the University's response was guided by two principles: that if true, the conduct that had been alleged was grave and should be taken very seriously, and that our students had to be presumed innocent until proven guilty through the legal process.

You don’t have to live in Durham to know that this statement stretches the truth. The atmosphere that enveloped Duke and Durham in late March and April 2006 was one of indignation. Granted, much of the fire was fanned by District Attorney Mike Nifong, who seemed ready to pronounce the players guilty even before DNA tests were carried out (and, apparently, even after they came back negative). But the way the university handled the situation – suspending the players, canceling the lacrosse season, asking for the resignation of a top-tier lacrosse coach, and banding together to condemn the violence and racism that at that time was mere speculation – seems to indicate an error in judgment on the part of the university and its president. On April 5, 2006 Broadhead wrote:

We can’t be surprised at the outpouring of outrage. Rape is the substitution of raw power for love, brutality for tenderness, and dehumanization for intimacy. It is also the crudest assertion of inequality, a way to show that the strong are superior to the weak and can rightfully use them as the objects of their pleasure. When reports of racial abuse are added to the mix, the evil is compounded, reviving memories of the systematic racial oppression we had hoped to have left behind us.

If the allegations are verified, what happened would be a deep violation of fundamental ethical principles and among the most serious crimes known to the legal system…

While he does qualify his condemnation by alluding to the unverified nature of the allegations, Broadhead shrouds his doubts in rhetoric of outrage at the abuse of the weak by the powerful.

I don’t mean to sound too scathing about Broadhead’s reaction to the scandal last spring. In fact, I felt just about as convinced of the lacrosse players’ guilt as I’m sure he did. What I’m trying to point out is simply that hindsight gives us the opportunity to re-evaluate our actions, and I think our leaders should recognize when they have made a wrong decision. As Deborah Tannen, a sociolinguist at Georgetown, put it to Quindlen, “They fear it suggests weakness to acknowledge error when in fact it suggests strength, self-confidence, and the ability to learn and grow.”

In Bush’s case, however, there may be a simpler explanation at hand: it only makes sense to “acknowledge error” when you think you’ve actually made one. This may explain why Bush’s speeches continue to leave us high and dry.

Enough is Enough

2007-01-10T08:56:00.000-05:00

I’m putting my foot down. If I hear one more cheap pun in reference to the Iraq war, I may give up on you “liberal media” types altogether. This isn’t the 1920s vaudeville stage; how many times do I need to hear a news commentator say “between Iraq and a hard place,” muffling a snicker and a secret desire to be the first person to turn the phrase?

Still, it gives me something to gripe about after all these weeks of tenuous silence.

Yes! Let it be known! THE FIRST DAZE OF SCHOOL is back, bringing you nothing but unadulterated originality – no regurgitation of blogospheric babble or mediocre meditations on today’s menial mass media!

Speaking of which, how about that insurgency! In a word, Sadr-ific!

Never to fear, Bush is back on the bandwagon ready to announce his latest genius strategy, which apparently is the result of intense deliberations with everyone in Washington except the Iraq Study Group.

I will now attempt to outline the president’s complex plan in the most simple language possible:

SURGE!!! SURGE!!! SURGE!!!

Actually that’s all we know about it since, for some reason, a president should never reveal his true intentions until after all holiday gift cards have been spent. Maybe he just didn’t want to put a damper on Christmas for the families of those servicemen and women who will be called to step into the line of fire-bombs and IEDs, returning to Iraq earlier than expected for their 3^rd tour of duty?

Who’s behind the wheel of this disaster train, anyway? It doesn’t take a Yale graduate to realize that boosting the number of troops in Iraq when public opinion of the war is at an all-time low is serious political misstep.

The mission in Iraq is a complete failure; America needs to recognize this, and find a way to get out. Bush and his cronies have had nearly four years to prosecute this war – and now they want us to believe that if we give them one more chance, one more blank check – if we can send a few more troops (I’m sorry, accelerate troop deployment), we’ll be able to put the pieces back together. Maybe they just want to prolong the war until a Democrat takes over the presidency so they can blame ultimate failure on him/her!

Enough is enough. I’m taking a stand against President Bush: NO MORE CHANCES. Admit failure and begin a phased withdrawal that puts responsibility in the hands of the Iraqis, and gives American families a timetable of when their sons and daughters will come home.

A Cult Following

2006-10-29T01:02:00.000-04:00

In retrospect, I'm glad I wasn't alive during the seventies. Disco and Watergate aside, I have to say they were pretty fucked up.

Take, for example, what are surely two of the most bizarre events of the past 50 years -- the kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army (1974-5) and the Jonestown massacre (1978). These two incidents share more than a high rating on the weirdness index-- on the surface both seem to be rooted in an utopian, (predominantly) Californian struggle for racial equality simmering in the denouement of the civil rights movement.

Both are also subjects of recent documentaries: Robert Stone's "Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst" (2005) and "Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple" (2006) directed by Stanley Nelson, which both claim to reveal new details and "never-before-seen footage" about these short, bizarre chapters in American history. What is it about these events that continue to fascinate us, to keep us glued to our seats in search of lurid details 30 years after the fact?

I've meditated on this problem for a day or so now, and I think I've reached some preliminary conclusions (with the help of some outside sources, which I will not neglect to cite). So read on and feel free to comment if you agree or disagree...

1) Extremism. Average Joes admire extremists not because of the actions they take but because of the passion that inspires them to action. Extremists are people who believe in something so strongly and unequivocally that they are willing to give up their lives for that cause. Modern society is bathed in ambiguity; we're unsure whether we're in love, whether we believe in God, whether trickle-down economics actually works...it's the curse of modernity. We all long to be part of something that supercedes all that, to bring a new level of certainty in our lives. Here's how "Guerrilla" director Robert Stone puts it:

"I think people long for a way to see the world in black and white, good and evil. Most people abhor ambiguity because you have to really inform yourself and struggle to make sense of things from a variety of perspectives. Political extremism, however you want to define it, is seductive because its prerequisite is the absence of doubt."

We all wish we could commit ourselves to some cause and banish every trace of doubt...just look at all the born-again Christians. They're just regular people searching for stability and certainty in their everyday lives. No matter how liberal or secular or apolitical you are, you've got to admire people who can achieve that. Even terrorists.

2. Free will. Both Jonestown and the case of Patty Hearst are linked by accusations of brainwashing. In both instances, however, it's hard to draw the line between brainwashing and persuasion. Did Patty Hearst and the members of the People Temple act under their own free will or were they merely being controlled by the leaders of their respective groups?

3. Racial Utopianism. By the time the seventies rolled around, the Civil Rights movement had already reached its peak. Now the groups that had fought so hard to achieve equality for blacks faded into the background, in a large part due to infighting over increased radicalism and the use of violence.

While many Americans viewed the problem as solved, racial and socio-economic inequality continued to simmer in major American cities. This reached a head point in San Francisco, which had a history of liberalism and social action. Poor blacks found acceptance and equality in Jim Jones's People's Temple -- whites and blacks worked side by side, the traditional socio-economic divisions erased.

Even though the SLA counted among its ranks only one black member (escaped ex-convict Donald DeFreeze), the organization saw itself as the leader of the Black Revolution. While their chosen method was violence, they put forth their own solution to the race problem, i.e. transferring wealth and power from the the rich, white elites to the poor, black underclass.

4. Mortality. Both episodes ended in death for the majority of the group members, either by mass suicide or violent resistance. We puzzle over how adherents of these movements ended up as corpses: were there a few critical moments that led down the path to destruction? Could we ourselves, having been there at that place and time, have gotten caught up in the force that impelled these people to their deaths?

In their deaths, we see our own. Maybe I only speak for myself, but I am transfixed.

McFreedom Arrives in the Middle East

2006-09-04T20:50:00.000-04:00

Baghdad
September 1, 2007

Throngs of people filled the streets of Baghdad’s Green Zone this morning, pushing their way to the front of the line for an opportunity to sample Baghdad’s newest culinary delight: the Big Mac. The queue, which consisted of nearly 250 Iraqis, formed in the early hours of the morning outside the three concentric blast walls which surround Iraq’s first McDonalds.

Officials from the 6^th Iraqi Provisional Government and the Ministry of American Culture lauded the opening of McDonalds as a step toward Iraq’s re-integration into the world economy. President George W. Bush echoed this sentiment yesterday, commenting, “People who suffered in tyranny for so long will become full members of the free world.” After hearing about Baghdad’s new McDonalds, former President Bill Clinton announced he would conduct a diplomatic tour of Iraq.

The opening of the Baghdad McDonald’s means more to the people of Iraq than heat-lamp irradiated falafel served with McHummus; it provides opportunity for Iraqis seeking the same kind of upward mobility that McDonalds has offered to teenagers and poor people the world over. Fareed Al-Zwahiri, an employee at the new McDonalds, said that if it weren’t for McDonalds he might still be at home watching Arabic music videos on satellite television, at least during the 4 hours a day his apartment gets electricity. Al-Zwahiri, who lost his hand in a roadside bombing last year, beamed as he dropped a basket of frozen french fries into 450 degree frying oil. “You see, I can do this job one-handed,” he said, his speech slurred by the shrapnel lodged in his cheek.

The Shia-owned McDonalds has had its fair share of controversy, which culminated when a powerful Sunni cleric announced last month that he would open 3 KFC/Taco Bell restaurants at each corner of the Sunni Triangle. “That makes for a total of 6 restaurants,” explained KFC/Taco Bell spokesman Col. Pedro Sanders, “and hundreds of menu choices.”

On hand for the McDonalds grand opening ceremony was celebrated New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, whose Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention claims that no two countries with a McDonalds franchise have ever gone to war. “This is a historic moment for the Middle East,” Friedman commented. “And while saying this may put me out of a job, I believe that the United States’ work here in Iraq is finally done.” Friedman’s speech was interrupted by the sound of gunfire, which apparently resulted from a dispute between two insurgents over who had dibs on the last Chicken Nugget.

Home Stretch

2006-08-16T00:27:00.000-04:00

While I found many of Paul Theroux's observations in "The Old Patagonian Express" to be dismal, his thoughts on airplane travel are right on:

"...The airplane passenger is a time traveler. He crawls into a carpeted tube reeking of disinfectant; he is strapped in to go home, or away. Time is truncated or, in any case, warped; he leaves in one time zone and emerges in another. And from the moment he steps into the tube and braces his knees on the seat in front, uncomfortably upright --from the moment he departs, his mind is focused on arrival. That is, if he has any sense at all. If he looked out the window he would see nothing but the tundra of the cloud layer, and above it empty space. Time is brilliantly blinded: there is nothing to see....Although it has become the way of the world, we still ought to lament the fact that airplanes have made us insensitive to space; we are encumbered, like lovers in suits of armor."

Okay, so maybe not the lovers part, but what's true about air travel is the way space and time are distorted. In an airplane, a day can last more than 24 hours, and a few steps can radically change our position on the globe.

"What interests me is the waking in the morning, the progress from the familiar to the slightly odd, to the rather strange, to the totally strange, and finally to the outlandish."

Rather than experiencing this natural progression, we're stuck jumping between opposite ends of the spectrum. Instead of linking origin and destination with meaning, the intervening time spent traveling is completely surreal and meaningless.

I left Guadalajara at 7:30 am on Friday and arrived home at 9:30 the next day. The intervening 25 hours (with time difference) is mostly a blur; the journey was discontinuous, spent mostly waiting in padded seats in various locations in air and on land. What I remember most are a few especially surreal moments, which I had the foresight to scrawl down on the back of a Borders receipt.

1. While waiting in the tiny commuter jet terminal in Guadalajara, I spotted a family with a small boy, probably about 5 or 6. He had just discovered a bug crawling around on the terminal floor, and apparently mom thought it would be a good distraction while they waited. She plucked a paper cup from a small self-serve coffee bar and filled it with sugar. Then she placed the bug in it and handed the cup back to her son. He fiddled with his new toy, torturing the bug, but with a certain respect. I snuck a glance at the mom and she smiled back at me.

2. In Phoenix, I sat down at a row of chairs that was completely empty. Three minutes later the seats were occupied by a dad his two loud, spoiled sons who kept playing with their backpacks. I slumped in my seat, trying to finish the Theroux book, and soon the family was gone, replaced by a middle-aged couple. Then a man, some kind of airline employee, came and started staring at the woman. She started to get uncomfortable until he said, "Sorry, I'm just counting the seats." The couple and I looked at each other in bewilderment. This man's job was apparently to count how many seats in the airport were currently occupied. He was nice about it, though, and seemed confident that his job was important in the grand scheme of things.

3. Back in RDU, I boarded the Triangle Transit Authority bus which (I hoped) would take me the rest of the way home. I had never taken the bus before, but it made a climactic end for my 6-week sojourn. I got on the bus and asked the driver if this was the right bus to go to Durham. He said yes, but that we would have to travel out of the way before we got to the station where I would have to transfer to another bus. At Terminal C a man got on, dark-skinned, but either Carribean or African. From then on, at each successive stop, where nobody got on or off, the bus driver pulled to a stop, released the microphone from its holder, and announced the name of the stop, repeating it once for clarity. "Briar Creek, Briak Creek," he mumbled in that way that only public transportation employees can. The funny thing was, with only two of us in the bus, his announcements were purely symbolic, but he clung to them either out of rigor or routine. I laughed to myself that things here in the U.S. were perhaps just as strange and inexplicable as they seemed in Mexico.

4. When I finally debarked from the (second) Triangle bus, I still was about a mile and a half from my house. I shouldered my giant backpack and buckled the waistbelt for support. This was the first time in the whole trip I had really had to do some serious backpacking. I draped my messenger back around my neck, and in one free hand carried the bag of children's books I had purchased on Wednesday. I crossed under the Durham Freeway and made it to Club Blvd., which left pretty much a straight shot to my house.

As I walked, I surveyed the countryside in awe. Things were clean, there were no potholes in the road, and none of the houses were surrounded by walls, certainly not ones with broken glass sticking up from the top. Everything was green...here people put trash in its place, and toilet paper in the toilet. They drink out of the faucet, and don't put a plastic bag over a plate before they serve your food. All these small differences left me more paralyzed than anything. I was unable to judge whether things were better or worse here; they were just...too surreal.

I reached Oval Park where a few months before Joel, Michael, and I played pick-up basketball with a group of black guys. Today, however, there was a circle of about seven older people doing some kind of yoga or tai chi on the black top. They had their arms outstreched, with their hands erect perpendicular. Their knees partially-bent, they swayed in unison, somehow moving as one entity, or trying at least. I shook my head. This was getting really weird.

I rounded the corner on to my street, Englewood Avenue, and, with only a block left, I contemplated the last leg of my journey. I had traveled in a taxi, four planes, two buses, and now finally on foot. I could see my house and my car after a dip in the road, and thought it strange that I was actually about to walk on to my own porch. I was sweating and the red from the plastic bag was bleeding onto my hand. I switched it to the other hand but that same thing happened.

Finally I stood before the house, unsure of my next move. I looked around at my strange surroundings --how completely surreal to have finally made a complete circle. I took off my backpack and fished out the house key, which for so long had been hanging completely meaninglessly from the key chain. It fit perfectly in the lock, and as I turned it, the key regained its meaning.

Waterfalls and Altered States

2006-08-08T00:19:00.000-04:00

I knew that I needed an adventure my last Sunday in Guadalajara, so I set out to commandeer the office vehicle for the weekend. This would have been easier had the car not been currently undergoing repairs for a broken fan. Without revealing my underlying motives, I asked TH (the boss) whether I could go pick it up and he agreed. So BH and I trudged over to the mechanic's, where we found out that the fan was indeed broken, but it was only one of two. The mechanic assured us that, like a man with one kidney or one testicle, the Tsuru could still operate, although I would have to take it easy (no long distances, keep it below 80 km/h, 48 mph). We called TH and he agreed to cede the car to me for the weekend, even when BH revealed my true intentions-- as she put it, "to find the KQ waterfalls."

KQ is an expat who writes for the paper and every week reports on some hidden natural wonder that's nearly impossible to get without a GPS (he likes to include the geographic coordinates in every report). Two weeks ago he revealed the location of the “x Waterfalls of xxxxxx,” which, apart from their natural beauty, provide an ideal location for cliff jumping. How could I resist?

Since going it alone seemed exponentially less fun, I invited GT, my photographer and loyal sidekick from the beauty pageant adventure, to come along. We set out around 2 pm, and about 40 minutes (and multiple stops for asking directions) later, we arrived at a dirt road that deteriorated into cow pasture, just as Pint described.

What KQ did not reveal, however, was that this same pasture which ultimately led to the breathtaking waterfalls was also a prime location to search for champis – hallucinogenic mushrooms. Within minutes, we were approached by two boisterous shroom hunters, teenagers from Guadalajara who had plenty to show for their hard work. Both wore multiple facial piercings and a smile from ear-to-ear, as they talked in hyper-emotional spurts:

“We got sooooo many. Check it out!”
“Right around the cow shit is the best place to find them.”
“But stay away from the horse dung!”
“Look for the ones with the falditas!” (“little skirts” around the stem of the mushroom)

They offered us shrooms to try, but we both rejected them out of courtesy. Personally, I was a little curious, but I deferred to GT, not wanting to create an awkward situation. The two blabbed on about the shrooms and where to find them, and I tried to bring the conversation back to the waterfalls. One of the teenagers nodded in understanding:

“Just be careful after you eat a few mushrooms, because they’re some kick-ass waterfalls down there, and you could fall in.” He lifted up his shirt and revealed his back, which sported long crease-like scars. I was hardly convinced.

By this point, GT had apparently decided that these kids were trustworthy enough to tell hallucinogenic mushrooms from poisonous ones, and so he accepted the offer to try one. One of the kids fished out a long-stemmed mushroom from a dark, brine-filled container. “It’s best to eat them with honey,” he said, revealing another container with a dark-spotted substance.

So it was that GT and I ate two mushrooms each, bid farewell to our tripping friends, and continued on to find the waterfall. Soon we were trudging down a steep, muddy creek bed, accompanied every now and then by runoff from the morning rainshower. This detail made me optimistic: certainly the waterfall would be in full form as it was being fed from all directions with a steady flow of water. The day was certainly not ideal – the sky was covered with a gray mat of clouds – but the rain hadn’t yet resumed, and I hoped it could be staved off long enough to allow us a good swim.

I was walking a good distance in front of GT, and the trail’s switchbacks hid him from my view. In front of me I could see the creek leveling out and as I got closer, the first waterfall revealed itself, emptying in to a medium-sized pool below nearly 40-50 feet below. A group of teenagers huddled near the pool’s edge, apparently deciding who would be the first to enter the water.

“How do you get down there?” I yelled and they indicated a path to my left that inclined upwards. I waited for GT and together we descended down to the pool, and I wasted no time in getting changed into my bathing suit. I jumped in from ground level and tested the water, examining its depth and the viability for cliff jumping. Then one of the teenagers then from a low shelf along the rock wall and his friends cheered; I jumped from the same location and expected something like a macho arms-race to successively higher points on the cliff. I kept increasing the height of my jump, but none of the other boys in the group budged; I guess tapatios aren’t accustomed to jumping from heights. After three jumps, I climbed up to the highest point, and saw GT as a tiny figure below me, shaking his head in disapproval. But I had tested the depth of the pool and I knew it was between 12 and 15 feet. So I figured what the hell and in burst of adrenaline I jumped away from the cliff wall, wondering what these kids (especially the girls, I admit) would make of this daring gringo in their midst. They cheered, of course, and I let out a screech of accomplishment and relief.

Later I went off to explore the further reaches of the creek, since according to the teenagers the waterfalls got even more spectacular. I traversed the rocky creek barefooted, and felt surrounded by an intense jungle greenery. Of course the climate wasn’t hot or humid, but nevertheless I imagined myself deep in the jungle, winding through the Mosquito Coast or the isolated island from Lord of the Flies (which I just read the week before). The mood was perfect for what I found, a waterfall more than twice as large as the first one with a giant pool below. One of the rocks surrounding the pool was painted with a cross, which gave me a shudder. I leaned on a tree at the edge of the falls and marveled at the distance the water was dropping. I felt myself relax for a brief moment, then hurried back to tell GT what I discovered.

When I arrived at the first pool, I noticed that he had hardly moved; he was staring at the water, his eyes glued to undulating ripples. “I’ve been watching the water,” he said in a slow, nonchalant manner. “The cliff, too. I’ve been looking for faces in the rock.” I laughed and then he laughed, too. “I definitely feel a little weird, I think those mushrooms affected me,” he continued. “What about you?”

“I feel a little strange, too” I replied, “but it could be the adrenaline. I mean I did just jump off a cliff." I paused. "Anyway, you’ve got to come and check out these other falls; they’re incredible.”

“I can’t stand up,” he said.

We laughed again, and then decided to wait until we were ready to leave to go check out the next falls. Sitting there semi-dazed, we discussed GT’s current financial situation. As it turns out, he is currently in the process of becoming independent from his mom, who is still helping to pay the rent and occasionally dropping hints that he should look for something more stable than photography.

“She wants me to be a teacher,” he said. I advised him to look for something part-time instead, if he really wants to continue with photography. I told him I had enjoyed the photos he had taken for the paper and that I thought he had real talent. As I soon found out, he certainly was comitted to taking pictures. When we reached the ultimate waterfall he whipped out his camera, and refused to put it away until nearly 200 pictures later (including one he made me take of him hanging on the mouth of the falls).

It was getting late, nearly 7 pm, so I forced him to put the camera away and we headed back towards the car. We stopped to collect champis on the way, pausing at each find to inspect for the tell-tale faldita. With or without, neither of us could summon up the courage to eat one.

Wetback Wannabes Sneak Across Virtual Border

2006-08-04T16:40:00.000-04:00

For the first time ever, crossing the border has become a tourist attraction. Nearly 600 miles from the Rio Grande, tourists can now re-live the “mojado” experience complete with border patrol agents who shout in English, screeching sirens and the occasional gunshot.

The place is Parque EcoAlberto, an eco-tourism park located in the state of Hidalgo about an hour and a half outside of Mexico City. For the last two years, members of the Ñañu indigenous community, which runs the park, have led groups of 20 tourists on the so-called “night walk.” With over 90 percent of their community living in the U.S., the Ñañu have an idea of what it’s like to cross the border. Many of the tour guides who impersonate “la Migra” have personal experience on the U.S.-Mexico border, albeit in the opposite role. “Everything that they have lived, they show for those who come,” says Purificacion Alvarez, a 21-year-old park official. “Everything is made to seem so real that sometimes people start to cry either from desperation or just the feeling.”

According to the park’s web site, the night walk is a “tribute to immigrants, with the purpose of making others aware of what they go through to achieve the American dream….” Nevertheless, some media outlets have distorted the issue, says Alvarez. “We understand that some reports have come out claiming that we prepare people to cross the other side. That’s completely false, because here we don’t train people, we make them aware,” she explains. Alavarez hopes that visitors will leave with a better understanding of the gravity of crossing the border and the dangers migrants face along the way.

The night walk has been a financial boon for the struggling Ñañu community. Most visitors who come for the tour stay for the food, the local handicrafts and to enjoy the park’s other activities, which include hot springs, rappelling, boat rides, and archery. And that allows the community to benefit without disintegrating completely. “In other words, having a theater of the border is an alternative to having to cross the border,” explains Dr. Michael Kearney, an anthropologist at the University of California at Riverside who specializes in transnational migration. He sees the tour as a sign of how migration has become integral to the lives of so many Mexicans. “It really indicates how important this is to the people who go to the trouble to produce something like this, it implies the significance in their lives.”

In a little over two years, more than 1,200 people have taken part in the night walk, the majority of them tourists from Mexico City. Angel Lopez Flores, a 21-year-old systems analyst from Guadalajara, says he would definitely participate if he had the opportunity. “It would be exciting, the adrenaline rush, [and a chance] to see what happens to our countrymen, what they suffer through.” At 100 pesos per person, the border-crossing tour is most reasonable for middle-class Mexicans, the group least likely to immigrate in the first place. Maria de la Luz Garcia Perez, a tourism coordinator in downtown Guadalajara, sees another important draw: “Much better that you get to see it through the eyes of other people and don’t have to live through it yourself.”

So far the park has yet to receive any gringo tourists, but if you find the irony of a Mexican “border guard” yelling at you in English too much to resist, you can make your reservation (20 person minimum) at www.parqueecoalberto.com.mx.

High Anxiety

2006-08-02T01:37:00.000-04:00

"This kind of thing happens all the time in journalism," according to NN.

I hightailed it out of Guadalajara on Friday morning, completely unaware of the conflict brewing back at the office. Apparently, when my co-workers read the finished newspaper on Friday morning, they discovered that the version that went press was full of errors. Although we spent copious hours copy-editing and correcting every single page on Thursday night, somehow the updated pages were lost in the shuffle, and the rough pages were the ones sent to the printer. Naturally this caused a bit of uproar and disappointment, but the reality of it was that TH (ultimately responsible for the mistake) didn't do it intentionally and probably felt worse about what had happened than anyone else. Still, EB the intense Canadian took this mistake as a personal affront. Without thinking it through he scribbled out a brief letter to TH, which decried the paper's amateurism and called TH a "motherfucker."

The issue sat for the weekend until TH came in on Monday and found the letter, and, enraged, promised to fire EB as soon as he appeared at the office that morning. We didn't have to wait long. EB breezed in at 11:30 and TH started to yell, eventually telling him that was it --clear your things out, and you can come pick up your check on Friday.

I was pretty frozen in shock the rest of the day. I wasn't afraid that TH's anger would spread unprovoked, it was more just that weird feeling of knowing that something awful has just happened, not knowing what's going to happen next, and as a result being stuck in the moment. To add to the anxiety, I was having a hard time coming up with story ideas, and having skipped work on Friday, I was already behind.

Unable to crank out anything, and having conducted only one interview the whole day, I sulked out of the office and went home for a nap.

Later that night, I went downtown for a walk and still ended up feeling lousy. So I waited at a street corner ready to catch the bus back home, and soon there was a whole line of us there waiting and waiting. As the bus pulled up, a disabled man with a walker dragged himself up toward the the front of the line. He wasn't old, and he had scraggly facial hair coming in around a goatee a few days old. The line of people moved back in sympathy and in pity, and just then the man vomited a mouthful of liquid on to his shirt, and it then fell to the ground. The people in line, all men, recoiled in horror, but one grabbed the walker and another helped the man up into the bus. I was powerless to move, thinking about how lousy my day had been and how this was the culmination, something so disturbing and pathetic as to trump it all. I felt revulsion not in my stomach but in my mind, and not aimed at the disabled man per se, but more nebulously at Mexico in general. I decided I couldn't get on that bus, and started to walk back home, trying to reassure myself that the day would soon be over.

"The Junkiest Place in the Whole World"

2006-08-02T01:24:00.000-04:00

Those aren't exactly the words I would use to describe Guanajuato, a small city four and a half hours from Guadalajara, but they are the ones that stick with me the most. I was half-asleep in the hotel room, taking a mid-day siesta, when I heard this preposterous complaint from an obnoxious kid I could only assume was American, probably Texan if I had to put my money on it. He and his obnoxious family roamed the halls of our hotel, shouting loudly at each other in English as I drifted in and out of sleep.

Needless to say, Guanajuato was not junky. It was in fact precious - so precious it's clear why it was packed with tourists, both Mexican and foreign alike. Guanajuato is not the type of place you expect to find in Mexico, and --I say this with as much credibility as I can muster-- it bears more resemblance to parts of Europe, especially Spain (or so I'm told). The major feature of this strange city is that it's built on top of mountains, in between them, and in some places under them.

Let me backtrack for a minute. Having consulted with my friend BI who planned the trip, I boarded the bus in Guadalajara with five girls, myself being the only boy. Now, that might seem idyllic --it seemed that way to me at first, too-- but I soon found out that although each of the girls was friendly and curious and also a Spanish teacher, they all turned out to have boyfriends back home. (Except of course for the one I was actually attracted to -- she was a lesbian.) My first time on a long distance Mexican bus was relatively easy, and it proved what those who had gone before had told me: Mexicans buses always play the strangest movies. This time it was "The Station Agent" (en espanol "Buscando la Amistad"), an enjoyable but thoughtful art-flick about a midget named Finn who finds friendship even when trying to avoid it at all costs.

After getting off the bus and paying our obligatory 3 pesos (30 cents) to use the facilities, we hopped into a couple of taxis toward the center of town. We seemed to be approaching something, but it seemed more like a mountain than a city, and soon we were engulfed in darkness. As it turns out, the only real road in the historic center of Guanajuato is a tunnel, which cuts under the city and occasionally provides narrow off-ramps which allow motorists to exit. The strange thing was, the tunnel seemed to be as old as the city itself, built up with gray- colored bricks that predated the automobile by at least a century. It was narrow and dark with an arched ceiling, and when our taxi driver judged we were far enough into the belly of the beast, he exited and soon we were on ground level again. We chugged up a 30 degree angle road to our hotel, where we checked in and readied ourselves for a day of eating and sightseeing.

After eating our obligatory lunch, we soon learned that the other "roads" in Guanajuato were not roads at all, but alleyways (callejones). I use the term alleyways only in deference to the Spanish translation; they were actually cobblestone stairways which cut up different sides of the surrounding mountain (occasionally steep ramps for cars were jammed in between stairways on either side) . On our way to Diego Rivera's boyhood home, we got caught in a torrential downpour (these happen every day in Mexico), and then got lost, which made getting caught in a torrential downpour all the more annoying. The one beautiful thing about the rain in Guanajuato is that it turns the steep alley staircases into gushing streams. You can see the water cascading down each step as if every one was decorative fountain. Mezmerized, I stopped to take a picture and inadvertently blocked an old woman from climbing up the street. I was oblivious until she asked me if she could pass, and I let her by with goofy apology.

Eventually the rain stopped and, upon exiting the Diego Rivera museum, we climbed down the winding streets until we reached downtown. The town center was surrounded on nearly all sides by steep mountain walls, like a crater left by some ancient meteor. We wandered around the alleyways until we found what we were looking for, a path to the Pipila, a statue which overlooks the city from above. Down in the crater, you could see the Pipila, a giant cast of a man insanely clutching a torch (he later burned down the Spanish grain stash) as if to wave it over the entire city, and hordes of people crowded up around the viewpoint. You could also see the incline railway, a red boxy thing that carried up those who were disabled or unwilling to walk.

The six of us found our way up, on the way passing a woman lugging groceries in one hand and clutching her baby with another. Somebody said, "Can you imagine doing this hike every day, just to get home?" Nobody answered, and we continued up the cobblestone street in a gringo conga line.

In about 8 minutes we reached the top. Now we could see the Guanajuato that we came here for, picturesque, colorful, full of tiny people winding between massive colonial buildings. Someone had chosen a pastel palette for the city; the primitive square houses were alternating in pink, sky blue, lime green, and some other flourescent colors which were so striking I cannot remember them at this time. Despite the touristy-ness of the place, being above it all allowed for some comtemplative distance. My instinct was to look up further, to a ridge of higher mountains, which no doubt would provide an even more spectacular view. I asked some locals if there was any way to get to the top of these mountains, but they didn't seem to know, almost as if no one had ever pondered the question. One middle-age lady with short hair commented that one of the mountains which lay behind us would be the site of a pilgrimage the following Monday if I wanted to stay and wait for that. Unfortunately, I couldn't.

Tu or usted? When to be informal in Spanish

2006-07-29T18:22:00.000-04:00

When it comes to questions of language, sometimes the hardest answer to hear is, “It depends.” Unfortunately, that’s what you’re most likely to get if you ask a Mexican whether you should use the formal usted or the informal tu when speaking to another person. “It’s impossible for me to say, here it’s correct to use the usted form, and here it’s correct to use tu,” explains Professor Patricia Cordova Abundis, who studies linguistics at the University of Guadalajara. “What we can do is inform people, and give them advice.”

While the word “tu” comes directly from the Latin, the use of “usted,” often abbreviated and capitalized as “Ud.”, goes back only as far as the Middle Ages. It evolved as an agglomeration of the phrase vuestra merced, meaning “your mercy,” which was used in medieval Spanish as a way to address a person of certain prestige or power. In the current lexicon, usted serves two purposes, to demonstrate respect and/or to put distance between the speaker and the person he or she is addressing. “Age has a lot to do with it,” says Jorge Dibildox Villalobos, the 33-year-old proprietor of a tiny internet cafe in Colonia Moderna. “With older people I prefer to speak with usted, but it doesn’t bother me to speak with tu. If someone starts to address me with tu, it’s not a problem,” says Dibildox.

Many Mexicans claim to be flexible when it comes to switching between tu or usted. Beatriz Sanchez, who helps orient tourists in downtown Guadalajara’s Plaza Liberacion, says it’s usually foreigners who sweat it the most. “With Mexicans, they don’t really notice the difference, it’s more foreigners who worry about it,” she says.

Still, flexibility can vary between social classes. For 44-year-old Genaro Ramirez Estrada, who shines shoes on one of downtown’s pedestrian walkways, respect comes first: he would only use the tu form with a good friend, and expects the same treatment in return. “You don’t want to address me with tu, because to do that is quite serious,” he emphasizes. “There has to be a big friendship.”

According to Cordova, the linguistics professor, the formality surrounding the use of usted is closely associated with traditional values. Although in general, Mexican values have evolved since the counter-culture movement of the 60s, the granting of women the right to vote in 1963, and the advent of mass media, it’s still possible in rural pueblos to find families where children address their parents using the formal usted. “The more people are immersed in modern society, the more educated, the more they share democratic values, the less they will use the usted...amongst themselves and with other people,” Cordova explains.

One place where the transition to the informal tu is most striking is in the advertising industry. Francisco Zepeda is the creative director at KP Alazraki, one of Mexico’s top ad agencies, which serves clients as diverse as Xerox, Sanborn’s, and a slew of tequila labels.

“I would say the majority of our clients use the tu form to reach their customers,” says Zepeda. “It’s a way of communication that’s closer, of greater confidence, and more friendly.” As an example, Zepeda describes an ad campaign his firm created for financial giant Lloyd’s, which serves many older clients and retirees. Despite the age of the target audience, the agency ultimately went with the slogan Lloyd’s: tu dinero crece contigo (your money grows with you), which utilizes the informal tu. “What would happen if we said Lloyd´s: su dinero crece con usted? Really it sounds a little strange, and also a little cold, not as close,” Zepeda explains. “…It seems like I don’t have anything to do with it….as if I’m talking about something that’s going on God knows where, and being handled by God knows who.” One notable exception is for products or services aimed at a corporate or high-level financial audience, which use the usted form in order to retain a more respectful and serious tone.

The rules for using tu and usted are hardly set in stone, and they tend to vary from country to country (some South American countries like Argentina use a completely different form, known as the voseo). Still, in Mexico a few general guidelines can keep second-language speakers out of that rare awkward situation. First and foremost, use the usted form when meeting people older than yourself for the first time. If you have more in common with a person, especially with respect to age and socio-economic status, it’s usually better to start with tu, since usted implies a certain distance. If you’re not sure, it’s completely acceptable to start out using usted and stop midway through the conversation to ask Te puedo hablar de tu? (Can I address you with the tu?). More often than not, they’ll say yes, although according to who you ask, “It depends.”

Tequila Center Hosts Beauty Pageant to Get Exposure

2006-07-23T18:14:00.000-04:00

It’s not Tequila, but Arandas, a small town in Los Altos of Jalisco, a two-hour drive east of Guadalajara, wants a piece of the action. Known regionally for its abundance of tequila and beautiful women, the town played host on Saturday, June 22 to Nuestra Belleza Jalisco 2006, a statewide beauty competition, in hopes that increased exposure will boost tourism and economic development in the area.

Though not part of Jalisco’s Agave Landscape, which was recently declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, Arandas has its own attractions: the breath-taking cathedral of San Jose Obrador Parish, an enormous bell residents claim is the seventh largest in the world and the Parque Hidalgo, the town’s central plaza which provided the location for last Saturday’s competition. The event was produced and broadcast by Televisa Guadalajara, which animated the town’s cathedral with fireworks, moving lights and pyrotechnics despite a light drizzle which threatened to postpone the competition.

The real host of the night, however, was Tequila Espolon, the Arandas-based tequila label that paid to bring the event to the town’s main square. Espolon provided dinner and a fresh bottle of tequila to those who could shell out 5,000 pesos for a table under the main tent. These mostly consisted of family and friends of the twelve contestants, along with some local leaders and officials. The general public, on the other hand, was invited to watch the show from chairs set up in front of four large projection screens. “We’re not going to see anything,” complained Maria del Rosario, a laundry worker from Arandas who sat in one of the furthest rows, which began to clear out once the rain started. “They covered the whole inside, so what can we actually see?”

Vicente Guerrero, an 80-year-old farmer and machinist sitting nearby, also expressed dissatisfaction with event. “There’s no benefit for the people, it’s a step backwards,” he said. “Even worse, they hired people from outside instead of from this town. What jobs does that open up for people of this town…people dying of hunger?” Arandas is primarily an agricultural town that suffered as a result of last year’s drought. Yet despite the current economic situation, many citizens saw the beauty competition as a positive way to get the town’s name out into the tourist market. “Televisa is a big network, on an international level as well as here in Mexico,” commented Manuel Ayala, a 42-year-old sale manager from Arandas. “That people are seeing Arandas will make us more national and international.”

Other residents seemed to agree. “I think that there will be various benefits,” said Daniel Gutierrez, a 17-year-old radio host from Arandas covering the event for a local station. “Most importantly, tourism, and next for the businesses that revolve around tourism.” Arandas has much more to offer than tequila, explained Fabiola Conseca Escoto, a 38-year-old resident of the town. “[This event will] give a chance for others in the state to find out about our city, our customs, our buildings,” she said. “The tequila is what made us famous, but also the hospitality of the people…attracts many visitors.”

More than 2,000 people attended the event on Saturday, July 22 and thousands more should tune in to watch the broadcast the following Friday. The winner was 18-year-old Gladys Castellanos Jimenez of Guadalajara, who in addition to becoming the official face of Tequila Espolon will compete in the national competition on September 2 in Tampico, Tamaulipas. “We’re very proud of Gladys, who in addition to having a physical beauty that everyone saw, also has an internal beauty which equals what’s on the outside,” said her aunt, Leticia Jimenez of Guadalajara, moments after the coronation. Residents of Arandas hope that, in the eyes of tourists, the same will hold true for their town.

Trial By Water

2006-07-21T18:46:00.000-04:00

This weekend my assignment is to attend the state beauty pageant, entitled Nuestra Belleza Jalisco 2006 (Jalisco is the name of the state). Obviously this has its benefits. Although most of the contestants will probably be flanked by their entire families and of course, their boyfriends, it hopefully will live up to its namesake, i.e. the girls should be pretty hot. I will be accompanied on this daring mission by my itinerant sidekick, GT, photographer for the paper, and native of the Mexican state of Nayarit.

The pageant is being held in a town called Arandas, about an hour and a half outside of Guadalajara, which means we will have to drive. In order to facilitate this, my bosses have lent me the company car for the weekend.

I know, it sounded scary to me at first, too.

On Thursday, after we put the finishing touches on the this week's paper at about 10 pm, the four of us (myself, BH, EB, and TH) went out for Uruguayan food in one of Guadalajara's outer neighborhoods. On the way there, I rode in TH's pickup (this time in the front seat), while BH and EB drove in the company car, a boxy Nissan that judging by sheer numbers appears to be one of Mexico's best selling models. After dinner, the three of us (TH had to get back to the office) piled into the Nissan and EB drove us to his house, where we dropped him off.

Then it was my turn to get behind the wheel. It was going to be okay, I told myself, at least for a little while BH would be here in the front seat telling me where to go. We needed to turn around, and only as I attempted a clumsy three-point turn did I realize that the car had no power steering (most cars in Mexico don't). It was quite a workout, but finally we made it on to the main roads, where luckily we saw few other cars. I would say the rest of the ride went smoothly, but only in figurative sense, since the roads in Guadalajara leave much to be desired. At one point during the ride I forgot BH's constant warning to watch out for pesky speed bumps; I pounded over one that was conveniently placed three-quarters of the way down a massive hill.

After a quite pleasant ride we finally reached BH's apartment, and she gave me quick directions on how to get home. Then she shuffled out of the front seat and ran to the gate in front of her house, trying to shield her head from the light drizzle that had just broken through the clouds. I took a deep breath and started the car, trying to convince myself that driving in Mexico wasn't really that different than driving back home. That turned out to be not completely true.

Moments after pulling out of BH's street, the drizzle exploded into a torrential downpour. The severity of the storm wasn't what scared me --we have these every 2 or 3 days in Guadalajara-- it was the fact of being in a car where the windshield wipers could barely scrape off the sheet of water before the next one hit. On my first solo car trip I was trying to concentrate so hard on making it safely to my destination, and this was just another distraction (as was the persistent lightning and thunder). I was so distracted that I took a right too early and soon realized I had to go in the other direction on the avenue I had just turned on to. Luckily there was a glorieta ahead, the Guadalajaran equivalent of a rotary/traffic circle, so I bore to the right in hopes of swinging around 360 degrees. Just as I reached 270 degrees, time stopped. All the streetlights and stoplights and signs suddenly went black; the power had gone out and the city was dead for about 3 seconds until the lights came back on.

The blackout was only the beginning of what soon became a surreal experience. As I lumbered down Avendia Mexico in my Nissan box, all of the storm's lightning and thunder seemed to come from behind me, and this gave me the feeling that I was being followed or even chased. When I finally got to a street name that I recognized, Avenida Enrique Diaz de Leon, I took a right and noticed that on this road, a major thoroughfare, the drainage was, well, non-existent. The road was covered with about 2-3 inches of water, and the cars slowly sloshed through it like we were in the middle of a natural disaster. When I finally got to my street and started to take a left, I am completely certain I saw a wave cresting outside the driver's side window.

Now I turned on to the street parallel to mine (all the streets are one way), which headed downhill and thus felt like coasting down a creekbed, with the surrounding water traveling faster than the car. When I finally reached my apartment and managed to put on my impermeable (raincoat), I stepped out of the car and into the rapids. The water parted around my tennis shoes as I took quick but cautious steps, wetting my shoes and socks and once trying to engulf my entire foot.

I unlocked the door to my apartment and hoped one of my roommates would be home and awake so I could tell the turbulent tale of my trial by water.

Mexico reluctantly turns a page

2006-07-21T18:45:00.000-04:00

Maybe it's just a coincidence, but it seems fitting that Alberto Cervantes Garcia, proprietor of Libreria Cervantes in downtown Guadalajara, shares a name with one of history's most famous novelists. Cervantes, who has worked in the book business for twenty years, reads an average of three to four books a month, and estimates his yearly total at about fifty. For most Mexicans, that number is significantly lower, somewhere around 1.2 books a year, according to a 2003 study by Mexico's National Chamber of Publishers (CANIM). "I think it's a result of family culture," says Cervantes. "It hasn't been fomented in the schools either, the habit of reading."

Mexicans tend to agree their country puts a low value on recreational reading, although the statistics are not so cut and dry. "It's not so easy to say nobody reads in Mexico," says Dr. Maria Alicia Peredo Merlo, a professor of education at the University of Guadalajara who studies reading habits from a socio-cognitive perspective. Peredo cautions against asking people outright how many books they read a year, since it puts the respondent in a vulnerable position, which can skew results. Nubia Macias, General Director of Guadalajara's annual Feria Internacional del Libro (FIL), also backs away from citing numbers, claiming the CANIM has not yet released the results of its latest national reading index. "It seems to me a very delicate issue to talk about reading in Mexico when no one knows for certain how much people are reading," she explains. "We know effectively that people don't read a lot."

This may seem obvious to the average Mexican, and perhaps to those foreigners who have discovered the Mexican idea of a relaxing day at the beach doesn't usually include a book. The reasons behind the low rates of recreational reading, however, are more complex. Carlos Varela, a 27 year-old hostel manager from Guadalajara, received his degree in Hispanic literature from the University of Guadalajara and taught the same subject in the preparatorio, Mexico's high school equivalent. Varela faced frustration in trying to motivate his students to read; he attributes their lack of interest to the constant distractions they face.

"They're not convinced that reading can be a habit, a pleasure, an activity that can be beneficial for them," argues Varela. "They look for more immediate pleasure, like sports, video games, Internet, ways to spend their time when they could also be reading." Carina Ribera, a 31-year-old psychologist, agrees. "Most young people would rather spend 300 pesos on a ticket to go somewhere and dance for one night than to go buy a book," Ribera says. In Varela’s experience, reading is sometimes stigmatized as a passive activity in Mexico’s machista culture, which discourages young males from taking time out to read. "For boys, it’s more masculine for them to be playing sports or doing a more substantial activity than to be sitting there reading," he explains. "Of the ten students [in the class] that were reading, 7 or 8 were female."

Mexicans also put the blame on the government and its public schools. One argument goes that by obligating students to read, schools are actually discouraging students from reading for enjoyment. "I think reading is a recreational activity, a private one, an emotional one, full of pleasure," says FIL Director Macias. "Schools need to give student leisure time for books, to make it actually an enjoyable activity or a reward."

According to Peredo, that's partly what the Secretariat of Education has tried to do. Through programs entitled Reading Corners and Classroom Libraries, the Mexican government has distributed carefully selected collections of reading material to secondary schools across the Republic, but the effects of such programs have yet to be studied. "It’s been a good policy, but as far as what has been its impact, we don’t have information," says Peredo. In 2001, Mexico’s National Council for Arts and Culture (Conaculta) also initiated a program entitled "Towards a Country of Readers," which focused on augmenting the quality and quantity of books at libraries, reading rooms, book fairs, and bookstores. Although the program was supposed to continue until this year, no updated information was available.

While people living in metropolitan areas like Guadalajara have access to books through institutions like the Octavio Paz Ibero-American Library, it’s a different story for those who live in rural pueblos. Lois Cugini, a resident of San Antonio Tlaycapan, has been involved with library projects since five years ago, when she helped establish a primary-level library in San Antonio’s Niños Project social services building. "Kids have their books from school," Cugini says. "Otherwise there are not a lot of books in the house." Cugini and other volunteers are currently working on the Library in a Box project, to bring book collections to other rural communities such as Mezcala, San Juan, and the mission in San Pablo. "It’s to whet their appetite, to entice them so they keep coming back," she explains. "And it seems to work."

The Guadalajara metropolitan area, of course, is home to the Feria Internacional del Libro, the largest Spanish language book fair in the world. The FIL, which takes place the final week of November, expects to draw over 500,000 participants from the general public in addition to over 15,000 editorial professionals from around the globe. "Our entire program is designed to create readers, and bring them closer to books," says General Director Macias. "Not just during the week of the fair, but all year round we do activities in Jalisco." For Mexicans who balk at the high prices of new books, Alberto Cervantes says his store provides a cheaper alternative. His used books sell for about one-fourth of the original price, and in downtown Guadalajara alone there are more than 8 stores like his own. "If you have the desire to read, it’s just a question of looking," he says. Libreria Cervantes, located downtown on Avenida Juarez near the ex-Convento de Carmen, isn’t a bad place to start.

4 de julio

2006-07-13T02:04:00.000-04:00

There's nothing better to bring together the American expatriate community than a good old fashioned Fourth of July get together. Even better when it's run by veterans, I thought hailing a taxi to American Legion Post 3 (where are posts 1 and 2 I wonder?) on the outskirts of Guadalajara. This Sunday also happened to be one of the most important days for sports fans around the world, as Italy squared off against France in the World Cup championship game. This fact was not lost on my taxi driver, who made up for the fact he had to work on championship day by installing a television in the passenger side sun visor. His eyes focused more on the screen than on the road, he lumbered his way through traffic, occasionally driving at breakneak speed only to slam on the brakes when we hit the next clump of traffic. After asking some clueless fruit vendors, we finally found the American Legion on a cobblestone street past a church where services were just letting out.

At first I was surprised to see so many Mexicans at the event; later I learned that for a measly 100 pesos a year (10 dollars) anyone can become a socio (partner, i.e. non-voting social member) of the Legion, which entitles them to cheap beer and entrance to Legion events. This fact readily explained the two gaudily made-up Mexican barflies, whose only intention at this event was to find a nice white-haired vet to make their sugar daddy. I stole a long glance at one of these women --made up like a cross between a circus clown and Elvira-- but one that was more out of fascination with the weird than any kind of infatutation. In response, she tossed her hair and gave me a red hot stare that continued until I moved to the opposite end of the picnic ground.

Most of the Mexican women in attendance, however, were already happily married to their own heroic and, more importantly American, legionnaire (as in a member of the American Legion, not the disease). These were the type of veterans one would expect to see at any patriotic event in the U.S. --good old boys with salt-and-pepper or balding heads, white hairy arms, a few liver spots, and button-down Hawaiian shirts. In the U.S. such men would usually be flanked by a quiet, yet dignified white-haired old lady reminiscent of Ma Kent. But here, their spouses (or girlfriends in some cases) were quiet, yet dignified Mexican women, beaming with the pride of being so American. Even before I talked to a skin-sagging old man who told me he left the U.S. because of "domestic problems," I gathered that a lot of these women were second wives.

At first the pomp and circumstance of the ceremony bored me, but gradually I began to notice how satisfied the Americans appeared while listening to the National Anthem, big smiles plastered on their faces. For these expatriates, the annual Fourth of July celebration was one of the few ways left to connect with their country. This was not the kind of your-with-us-or-against-us patriotism so common today in the U.S.; it was more primal than that, an urge to celebrate a country and way of life which had given these people so much.

When the ceremony was over, I hitched a ride with my boss, the paper´s co-publisher TH, in the back of his pickup. In the front seat next to him was his mother, in the late stages of Alzheimer´s; in the back (of course) TH´s Mexican girlfriend and her two young children. From time to time, the little boy in the backseat would make a face at me, and I responded, although I think I scared him a little bit. It felt good to be out in the open, bracing myself against the wheelchair as the wind pummelled my face. As we moved further into the city, we passed through a number of tunnels and finally came to a stop in front of a decrepit-looking old folk´s home. As TH helped his mother up the stairs, I felt sorry for him; he now seemed more real to me than the overweight laugh machine which he had previously been. Without being asked, I brought the wheelchair up to the landing, and watched as he unquestioningly brought it inside.

To the Wire

2006-07-07T00:01:00.000-04:00

Tonight (Thursday) the paper goes to press, so that means the staff are feverishly proofreading, working on layout, and worrying about how we are going to get another 200 words to fill up that remaining space. Me, I'm trying to do what I can --proofreading when I get the chance, hauling newspapers into the pack of a pickup truck, drinking the beer that TH, our paper's other publisher, so graciously bought for us and "allowed" me to serve. TH is an American expat and it shows - he is about 300 pounds, likes to drink beer and eat potato chips, and cackles out loud when one of us says something mildly funny.

I'm not sure how long we'll have to stay here tonight, but I'm mostly sticking around because there's a rumour of free food after the paper is finished. I wrote five things for the paper this week, four of which were basically lifted from local Spanish newspapers, although I got to translate and add my own style. The fifth thing was a story about an underground market that they´re building in downtown Guadalajara, the thing I investigated with the help of BH (who by the way, has never made any conversation with me that wasn't related to work). I got to write it up myself, and even though NG the editor cut it down in size, it turned out pretty well.

The last few pages to proofread are coming out now. After all the writers are done checking the pages and the changes are made, we can finally leave the office after 12 hours! Which makes me wonder... I can't imagine working at a daily paper.

The Guadalajara Rxxxxxxx I Am

2006-07-03T22:31:00.000-04:00

Today I met my Lois Lane, a strikingly beautiful Bulgarian-Canadian transplant named BH, who is one of three full time reporters at my paper -yes I`m claiming (partial) ownership after one day. She greeted me with a re-assuring "You must be the new intern!", although I soon found out that this fact had escaped the paper`s fearless editor NG. He arrived an hour later, the personification of the flighty Englishman, stuttering haphazardly to introduce himself. A few minutes later we set out for Starbucks in el Centro Magno, a mall of magnificent proportions, where the "fresas" (literally strawberries, but in this case upwardly-mobile yuppies) and the "juniors"(sons of GDL`s elite) congregate. Monday morning, as BH explained, consists of perusing the local press for story ideas ("It`s not stealing since everyone does it"), and we got to talking about the election, my background, and world politics. Soon we were joined by the two remaining staff, a scraggly but intensely smart Canadian named EB and a hippie graduate of Columbia J-School named NN.

They discussed what stories to pursue for the paper this coming week, and I tried to add what I could, knowing little about the election and even less of local news. By the end it was decided that I would go with BH to investigate the opening of an underground market in GDL center, and also to interview people about the inconclusive election results. I was issued my lined reporter`s notebook, and we set out on our mission, though I insisted that we stop at the hostel so i could change clothes (as usual I was embarrasingly overdressed for my first day of work, in a bright blue longsleeve shirt and blindingly white pants a perfect impression of a Panista --the political party of the business elite-- according to BH).

We discussed the issue of the new underground market as we walked, and with each successive interview we gained a new, more complicated perspective on the situation. Then we split up to question different vendors, both below the plaza and above, until finally we exhausted our energy. On the walk back to the hostel, my mind swimming with numbers, facts, and doubts that I could ever make it as a reporter, BH reminded me to re-type my notes within the next 48 hours, and to remember to conduct the interviews about the election results sometime before coming into the office tomorrow. After a bizarre handshake-turned-hug-and-kiss-on-the-cheek (instigated by me) we said goodbye until tomorrow; she just had to make it to the gym.

Now, a few hours later, I sit here pondering whether the pages of copious notes that I took will amount to any serviceable information, and writing so much in this damn blog that I feel too exhausted to revisit them right now. Besides, it`ll be dark soon and I`ve earned a break.

The Only Bar in Guadalajara (GDL)

2006-07-03T21:04:00.000-04:00

After a hard day of traveling, the least I expected of Guadalajara was to be able to kick back, relax, and have a drink with some of my hostel-mates. That dream was abruptly shattered when I heard of the ¨Ley Seca¨, which forbids the sale of alcohol on election weekend.
No Corona, no margarita, no tequila --not even in Tequila, the town outside Guadalajara which gave the liquor its name. Why o why?

It`s no secret that Mexicans like to drink, so the government decided it would be a good idea to ban the sale of alcohol during election weekend. My guess is either they were afraid loyal voters would sink into a Sunday haze of drunkeness, or it`s part of the campaign to promote "clarity of mind" before the election, which also included a ban on campaign advertisement three days prior to the election.

All I know is, for the wayward traveler arriving in Guadalajara on July 1st, one`s options are certainly limited. After chatting with the hostel receptionist (who by the way offered to make me his roommate), I set out with 4 chicas --two Britons, one Aussie, and one American-- to find a place to eat and some action. Despite having been in GDL longer than me, they were completely clueless, and we blindly directed a taxi around town in search of an open restaurant. Fifty pesos (10 dollars) later, we settled on a place around the corner from the hostel and enjoyed an authentic Mexican meal.

Back at the hostel, we met up with their Mexican friend Jorge, who they for obvious reasons refer to as "Che." With penetrating, quizzical eyes, ripped jeans, and hair at his shoulders, Jorge makes perhaps a better Che than Gael García Bernal (also from GDL). Later, when I asked him whether he voted in the election, Jorge said of course not, that it was all a farce, and that the only real way to exert change, he insisted, was to adopt a lifestyle like his own --to eat, to sleep, to make love (this as he stroked the elbow of his newest American prize), but most importantly to travel around the country learning from "the people" and sharing with them all he`s learned. `Nuff said.

Along with Jorge were some exchange students whose length of exchange had long since expired. Now English teachers, bums, and frequenters of the Guadalajara valley`s hallucinogenic mushrooms, their accents mimiced too well those of Mexican street youths, chanting expletives in the stereotypical sing-song accent. Together with this group, which included an Italian boy and a German girl who couldn`t keep from molesting each other in the street, we set out in search of that elusive beer. After negotiating the price with a plump doorwoman, we entered an establishment called ACNE --yes, like the facial condition. Jorge treated us to some beers, which left me wondering the source of his steady flow of pesos. The beer was smooth, and we drank in a partially covered plaza, with a Spanish version of "These Boots Were Made for Walking" floating somewhere in the background.

Before I even had a chance to invite my compañeros to another round, we were on the move. After picking up some vintage 2006 Baja California wine with a twist-off top, we settled at the house of the had-been exchange students. As the night grew cooler the alcohol warmed us, and people began to drop like flies (the time now being close to 3 am). The first to go was the horny European couple, then the crazy Frenchman, and soon I was trying to keep my eyes open while we all watched two of them play a hopelessly boring game of chess. By 5 o`clock it became clear to me that the two girls who I had tagged along with had no intention of returning to the hostel that night (one was too busy nuzzling with Jorge, and the other dared not leave her side). So I stumbled out into the street, with no understanding at all of my current location, diligently repeating the address of the hostel in my head.

After getting change at my neighborhood 7-Eleven (why did I forget nobody has change in Latin America!), I boarded the taxi which would take me back to my dwelling place. I felt bad buzzing Carlos the hostel host at 5:30 am, and I apologized when he opened the door, though I`m not sure he heard me. In my bed minutes later, I wondered what tomorrow --election day-- would bring and whether I would be able to get up early enough to witness the opening of the polls at 8 am.

I didn`t.

To Be or Not To Be a Hypocrite

2006-06-15T00:39:00.000-04:00

My school is losing a good number of teachers this year, the most common reason being,

"I'm moving to Wake County."

If you're unfamiliar with North Carolina geography, that's the county next to Durham, which includes Raleigh and its high-class neighbor Cary (the tenth safest city in America, where Martha Stewart is piloting her new neighborhood of branded homes). Although Raleigh is the bigger city, Durham has a reputation as being poorer, dirtier, and more dangerous (i.e., the Dirty D). True there are some parts of Durham I wouldn't go to at night, but that can be said for any city. Still, the overwhelming perception of Durham is that of a racially divided, post-industrial town with a bunch of young, upper-middle class transplants who come only temporarily to study at Duke.

Behind this seemingly innocuous statement --"I'm moving to Wake County"-- lies the implicit reason for leaving; most of these teachers have school-age (or soon-to-be-school-age) children.
The public schools in Durham are certainly not without their problems --re-segregation, gang violence, and teacher retention among them. Still, isn't leaving the school district you teach in for one with "better schools" hypocritical?

I understand that parents have to make important decisions about their child's education, and that often these choices supersede their own idealistic values. The teachers who I am addressing are overwhelmingly young, white, and female; like all teachers, they believe that with high-quality instruction any group of students can succeed --regardless of socio-economic status and home environment. These women have chosen to work in Durham because they believe that here they can make a difference. They typically throw all their energy into teaching and end up being some of the most successful teachers at my school.

Then their children come of age, and they are faced with a choice. Leave Durham and the school system into which you have put your faith and hard work, or stay and force your child to face the consequences. This is certainly an agonizing dilemma, but choosing the latter amounts to a vote of no-confidence in Durham Public Schools and its teachers. How could someone who believes so strongly that Durham's underprivileged youth deserve a quality education imply that that same education is not good enough for their own child? Even if there is a gap between the education children in Durham are actually getting and the one they should be getting, the situation will only improve when people like these teachers --people who believe it is possible to provide a free and fair education to all children--are willing to stand behind their beliefs.

Parents are ultimately responsible for their child's education. In the end, it's not going to matter what school your child goes to or who is his/her teacher, it's whether you as a parent can instill motivation and a love of learning in your own child. Teachers, more than anyone else, should be able to realize this, and make a decision that better reflects their ideals.

The Remotest Island

2006-06-04T16:18:00.000-04:00

It's not hard to discover an island in the 21st century. Just zoom in on this tiny speck in the South Atlantic, roughly halfway in between Montevideo and Cape Town. That little pimple is the isolated British dependency known as Tristan da Cunha, which lays claim to the title of the remotest human settlement on the planet (the inhabitants of Easter Island would beg to differ). This tiny, volcanic island --nearly a perfect circle, with snow-capped Queen Mary's Peak rising 6,760 feet from sea level-- is home to about 300 people, descended from a handful of original settlers and shipwrecked sailors.

For reasons which I will shortly attempt to unravel, this island has become for me nothing short of an obsession. The past week I have scoured the Internet for information on Tristan --its geography, its people, and, above all, its inaccessibility. Tristan da Cunha has no airport or landing field; the only way to get there is by ship from Cape Town, and even then only about eight times a year (although the occasional cruise liner comes to call). But a ticket to Tristan da Cunha doesn't guarantee door to door service --sometimes the rough Atlantic waters and the island's shallow harbor prevent the landing of passengers and supplies altogether.

Undoubtedly part of my obsession with Tristan stems from the fact that it is so difficult to reach. For those of us who aspire to travel to exotic parts of the globe, Tristan is the holy grail. You can fly almost everywhere these days --Antarctica, Tahiti, even Svalbard-- but how many places are only accessible by ship 8 times a year?

Human nature draws us to the unknown. Like the explorers of the 15th century (Tristao da Cunha, discoverer of the island among them), we seek to discover something new and exotic, something that we can call our own. Is it the banality of our own lives that sends us out in search for new horizons --to seek out adventure or newfound riches-- like those illiterate Extremadurans who set out to conquer the New World? Or rather, the feeling that there must be something else out there, like radio astronomers scouring the skies for intelligent life?

While I'm not sure of the answer to this question, I think my attraction to Tristan da Cunha is multi-faceted. Take the sweeping beauty of the place: a lush, green mountain peak, it's summit obscured by wisps of white, rising abruptly from the depths of the Atlantic. Like the tip of an iceberg, Tristan da Cunha is merely the top of a giant underwater mountain the rises up from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (the second largest peak behind Pico in the Azores). Driven by the (to me) mysterious processes of plate tectonics and underwater subduction, this peak has emerged over thousands of years from the deep, the lone sentinel of a vast underwater mountain range. The contrast between what lies above the water, and what lies below, is at the same time beautiful and unfathomable.

More alluring even than Tristan's geology is its genealogy. Although the first attempt at settlement of the island failed in 1813, the British Navy set up a garrison on Tristan da Cunha three years later, mainly to discourage a rescue of Napoleon from St. Helena (a "close" island 1200 miles to the northeast). After the Navy left, William Glass petitioned the admiral to stay on the island, and thus began the strange history of the island's settlement. By 1826 there were five bachelors on Tristan; a persuasive ship captain managed to convince five mulatto women from St. Helena to come to the island and marry them. In the subsequent years the settlement, called Edinburgh of the Seven Seas after a visit from the Duke of Edinburgh in 1867, also absorbed a number of shipwrecked sailors, some of whom decided to settle permanently on the island.

As of today there are only eight surnames on the island, and the small gene pool has led to a high incidence of asthma among the islanders. Their isolation and diverse origins (settlers came from Scotland, Holland, the United States, and Italy) has also led to the development of a unique accent, which sounds like a mixture of a Scottish brogue and Australian English (listen here). Tristanians are united not only by these genetic and linguistic peculiarities, but by their determination and perseverance in an unforgiving environment. In 1961, a volcanic eruption forced the islanders to abandon Tristan, but they voted to return to the island two years later rather than stay in England. Not even awaiting an official decision by the British government, the group returned en masse to repair their settlement and their lives.

Today Tristan da Cunha straddles the line between remote outpost of humanity and integration into the 21st century. Although access to the island is limited by the sporadic shipping schedule, Tristanians are not as disconnected as one might think. My initial impression of the island as a retro-utopian commune, uncorrupted by modern technologies, was largely erroneous. Although once frowned upon, currency was introduced during World War II; the island now sports a pub where Tristanians can spend their meager salaries on cheap South African beer and mammoth lobsters, which are abundant in the island's surrounding waters. As a recent visitor recounted, homes on the island have modern amenities like refrigerators and televisions (although the only channel they get, a military channel from the Falkland Islands, plays incessant reruns of the British soap "EastEnders"). The Island Administrator has access to the only telephone and internet connection on Tristan, which makes communication with the outside world prohibitively expensive. Nevertheless, the island did finally receive a postcode (TDCU 1ZZ) from the British Royal Mail in 2005 in order to expedite the delivery of packages (the first item shipped from Amazon.com was a book about Tristan's history).

If Tristan da Cunha is not as technologically isolated as I initially envisioned, what continues to make it so alluring? Its remote geography and physical beauty certainly contribute to my obsession, but perhaps underpinning this whole pursuit is a desire for a deeper sense of belonging. To be an islander on Tristan da Cunha is to be part of an elite group of 300 people who all share a common history, dialect, bloodline, and physical space with those around them. Stranded in the middle of an unmerciful ocean, Tristanians rely on each other for almost everything (except, of course, the beer). Perhaps this sense of belonging is what keeps them on Tristan, despite the cultural pressures they face from the outside world.

Like other inspired travelers, I'll continue to hold a space in my passport for a Tristan stamp. Its doubtful I'll make it; perhaps my vision of what I might find there is too romantic for it not to be a disappointment. Still, there's something mystical about this tiny island that rises like a pyramid from the dark blue sea, and its 300 persevering inhabitants.

Let's just hope they don't build an airport.

-------------

Pictures of Tristan da Cunha:
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/journeys/photo_feature/tristan_da_cunha/
http://www.sthelena.se/tristan/index.htm
http://www.tristandc.com/tour.php

Tristan Times:
http://www.tristantimes.com/

Sources:
http://www.tristandc.com/historyhome.php
http://www.btinternet.com/~sa_sa/tristan_da_cunha/tristan_history_2.html

Carrots and Sticks

2006-05-31T23:07:00.000-04:00

Now that the U.S. has warmed up to the idea of multilateral talks with Iran over its disputed nuclear program, American diplomats should focus on finding the right person to face the Iranians at the negotiating table. Common sense would dictate choosing one of the following to take on such a daunting task: a top-level State Department official, an experienced international peace-maker, or perhaps an expert in U.S.-Iran relations. But why not turn to someone who truly understands how to influence human behavior, who battles with incentives and deterrents every day?

A teacher.

Teachers (who coincidentally would be available for negotiations during the next few months) are experts in getting people to do things they don't want to do, what educational psychologists euphemistically refer to as "behavior modification." This is the same principle that underlies the current crisis with Iran: we want them to stop their nuclear program, they would like to continue it.

Let's translate this to an educational situation:

Teacher: Mahmoud, please stop stockpiling those building blocks.
Mahmoud: I'm just putting them all together so I can improve my city.
Teacher: I know you say that, but you're really planning to throw them at Ariel as soon as I turn my back on you.
Mahmoud: It's not fair! You let Ariel stockpile all the blocks that he wants!
Ariel: I neither confirm nor deny the existence of building blocks in my cubby.

In such a situation, a teacher might turn to the same "carrot and stick" strategy (not to be confused with the carrot-on-a-stick) that is being touted by the U.S. and Europeans to deal with the Iranian crisis. Teachers can present the carrot either through positive reinforcement, by adding something positive like a reward or praise, or negative reinforcement, by taking away something negative. The main carrot currently being offered to Tehran is an assured supply of nuclear fuel, which would allow them to continue their program, albeit dependent on Russia or another uranium-enriching country.

The stick, or deterrent, is what educational psychologists refer to as "punishment". Punishment, according to perennial bestseller Teaching Special Students in the General Education Classroom is the "presentation of an aversive event following a behavior" (119). Examples of punishments used in the classroom include the loss of earned rewards or privileges (such as recess), or "time-out," in which the student is removed from an activity that is reinforcing the negative behavior. Most educators agree that punishment is most effective when combined with positive reinforcement. Although I certainly wouldn't be opposed to turning Ahmadinejad's chair to face the wall indefinitely, the main deterrents threatened by the EU and the UN are economic sanctions on Iran, which don't seem to garner a lot of support from China and Russia (The U.S. already has economic sanctions in place). Of course, there's also the threat of military action, which Bush is reluctant to take off the bargaining table, even though any such action would be highly unlikely, considering the current U.S. military commitment and success rate in the Middle East.

At this point you may be asking yourself, how long does he plan to string along this hard-won analogy? What can U.S. negotiators learn from teachers? Why am I still reading this???

Good teachers use the carrot-and-stick strategy, but that alone is not what makes them successful. There are at least two other ingredients necessary for success: 1) an underlying respect for the person whose behavior is being "modified", and 2) a deeper understanding of human psychology that comes through experience. First year teachers who manage their classrooms by the book often find their students quite difficult to control; I am convinced that it takes several years of experience to create a teacher who can deal successfully with most behaviors (even then, there are always new challenges).

My hypothesis is that in international relations as well as teaching, what matters more than whether or not you have presented adequate incentives and deterrents is whether you understand the psychology of your negotiating partner. This can indeed be difficult for countries like the U.S. and Iran, who have not maintained diplomatic ties in 30 years. Nevertheless, the U.S. needs to make an effort to understand what drives Iran and its fundamentalist president, in order for negotiations to yield anything besides a heightened sense of belligerence.

At a certain level, this analogy --like all others-- breaks down. Treating Iran as paternalistically as a teacher would treat a student will only fuel Ahmadinejad's fire. In a response to the EU carrot-and-stick plan, he made the following statement, quoted in Newsweek:

"Do you think you are dealing with a 4-year-old child to whom you can give some walnuts and chocolate and get gold from him?"

Walls

2006-05-26T01:12:00.000-04:00

If I were more well-read or perhaps an English major, I might have made the allusion myself. The commonplace "Good friends make good neighbors" has been repeated in Congress, mostly by this guy, to justify the proposed border security wall between the U.S. and Mexico. The Senate today passed a bill that calls for 370 miles of fence; the House wants 700 miles (I suppose they could average it for the compromise - 370+700 / 2 = 535 - that was easy!). But one NPR commentator traced the phrase back to "Mending Wall," a poem in which Robert Frost laments his neighbor's mysterious allegiance to it. Why mend the wall, Frost asks, if what's on one side (the apple trees) will never infiltrate the pines?

The world which Frost imagines, where words, people, and actions do not have to be walled in or out, is not quite the same as the one in which we live. Face it: humans are wired to identify with small family, ethnic, or clan-based groupings. Not only is it the best way to increase chances of survival if you're a caveman, it's also the most efficient. If I'm in a situation where I have to choose between a black-skinned, brown-skinned, or white-skinned person to do a job for me, and I have no other information to go on, I'll most likely choose the person who is most like me because that's at least something I can go on (white-skinned, in case you were wondering).

In modern society, we beat back this innate response with rationalism, and because of ration we can identify with people who aren't in those exclusive groups - we feel a connection with people who share the same interests, live in the same state or country, or who speak the same language. But that central prejudice is and will always be there no matter how much we try to suppress it.

Which brings me back to what I was going to talk about in the first place: walls. Hearing all this talk about the "border security fence" with Mexico reminded me of the "border security fence" being built in Israel/Palestine, ostensibly to keep terrorists out of the predominately Jewish Israeli terriritory. This fence, intentional or not, is turning out to be an outline of the land Israel wants to include in a future permanent border settlement.

The difference between Israel and America is that Israel is (and wants to continue to be) a mono-ethnic state. Whether you call it elitism or racism, it's just a magnification of that innate response to revert to tribal allegiances when other group identities start to crumble (like in Iraq or Rwanda). The Jewish state was created out of fear that Jews can never be integrated into other societies. And who can blame Herzl and all those other Zionists for believing that after 2000 years of persecution?

But America has certainly distinguished itself in its ability to integrate Jews and immigrants of all kinds into society. That is because, essentially, America is a land of immigrants. People might say that the German Jews of the 1920s felt just as German as today's American Jews feel American, but Germany was hardly a melting pot - in fact, its growth was marked by an underlying sentiment of nationalism and militarism.

Despite our underlying allegiances to our own ethnic groups and even to our nation, Americans overwhelmingly identify with illegal immigrants. Our rational minds allow us to superimpose our own experience on to theirs, and this creates an overwhelming empathy. Do you think Israelis are doing the same with suicide bombers?

While I do sympathize with illegal immigrants who have come to this country to better their lot, I also recognize the unsustainability of the current situation. Immigrants cannot continue to pour into the country undocumented - it creates too many challenges for all parties involved: workers, families, employers, schools, government, etc. I am in favor of limiting would-be illegal immigrants' access to our country. But the way to do this is not by building a wall; that does nothing to solve the problem. In order for them to stop coming, would-be immigrants need to be convinced that either 1) they have just as good of a chance of achieving prosperity if they stay in their home country, 2) there are no jobs in the U.S. for workers who are undocumented. Since number one is pretty unlikely in the near future (as much as Vicente Fox wishes), number two is the most sensible and the one which our federal government has the most potential to affect.

Therefore, I agree with the first two parts of the Senate plan: giving some immigrants (those who have been here more than 5 years) a chance at citizenship after paying the necessary breaking-the-law fines, and 2) creating a guest worker program that allows foreign workers to fill "jobs Americans don't want to do" (I love this phrase). But in my opinion, enforcement has to be on the local, employer level - i.e. if you don't have papers you can't get a job. Once that point becomes clear to would-be immigrants, it will stop them from crossing the border.

That is, if the National Guard doesn't get them first.

A Racing Giant Takes a Fall

2006-05-24T02:16:00.000-04:00

It's a hot Saturday morning in mid-May, and all eyes are fixed upon the starting line. Although helmets obscure the athletes' chiseled faces, each rider exudes the fierce determination that has already brought him this far. Here to compete for one of the sport's most coveted titles, these champions from across the country dig in and eagerly await the starting pistol.

Suddenly, the delayed crackle of the gun and a lofting pillar of smoke is all that is left of the pack 40 riders strong. Colors streak across the track as each athlete pushes himself to the limit --and then-- catastrophe strikes!

In a group behind the pack, a rider goes down, and someone in the crowd hears a distinct cracking, like a potato chip crushed underfoot. Which can only mean one thing...

...a broken clavicle?

No, you're not reading another article about Kentucky Derby winner and Preakness favorite Barbaro, who suffered a devastating ankle injury at last Saturday's race. Alas, another great victory has been thwarted...as Sara's cycling season came to an early end Saturday the 13th in Lawrence, Kansas.

Mere coincidence or a carefully planned conspiracy? Consider the following:

A. Both Sara and Barbaro were heavy favorites to win their respective races.
B. Both Sara and Barbaro underwent surgery at a University of Pennsylvania hospital (Barbaro at the New Bolton Center for Large Animals at the University of Pennsylvania).
C. Both Sara and Barbaro were fitted with metal implants to stabilize their broken bones.
D. When asked about the severity of the injuries, both Sara's and Barbaro's doctors replied, "You do not see this severe injury frequently because the fact is most horses [cyclists] that suffer this typically are put down on the race track." (see Wikipedia)

As far as I can tell, there's only one major difference:

The indomitable Sara finished her race. ¡Qué bárbaro!

Boston to Patagonia

2006-05-21T04:15:00.000-04:00

It's an alluring title, isn't it? I finally got my hands on a copy of The Old Patagonian Express, a travelogue by Paul Theroux (author of my recent favorite obsession The Mosquito Coast), who starting on a Boston subway, takes a succession of trains South all the way to Patagonia. Talk about my life's dream...well...? I only read the first chapter, but his writing is just as enticing as it was in Mosquito, filled with engrossing descriptions and metaphors that keep you glued to the page but by the end of the sentence become too abstract to apply to a sane man's reality.

Anyway, I read the first chapter, "The Lake Shore Limited", which covers Boston to Chicago, during which he meets a few interesting characters. The best part, however, is how he describes leaving the familiar, how every detail is that much more impressionable when you know you are going away for a long trip:

I knew the names of these suburbs, I had been here many times, but because I was headed so far away I saw every point we passed as important. It was as if I was leaving home for the first time, and for good (7).

This gives a certain levity to the story he tells, even though up to this point it's only a domestic train trip, sprinkled with a dousing of snow, a few delays, and a number of loud, outspoken passengers. It is more inviting a book than Sophie's Choice; every page beckons a new adventure, and the prose is easy, fast reading --devoid of the overtly literary musings of the other.

Today Mom suggested I do some investigative reporting on a Hispanic community in Charleston. That got me thinking on the possibilities of freelance work here in Durham (why go elsewhere when I have here a place to stay and contacts within the Latino community?). Anyway, I immediately thought back to last Thursday, when my friend the volunteer coordinator Fanny asked me if we could record some interviews with recent immigrants, mainly to document how the Spanish literacy program has benefited them and their families (she is so strategic!).

This got me thinking about last Thursday when I walked in the church where I volunteer, and a lady was spilling her life story to Fanny --bawling-- explaining how her illiteracy caused her to be fired from a job; I couldn't hear much else over her sobs. But by the end of the class, two hours later, Fanny had her laughing and cavorting with a fellow pupil, as the three played a version of memory with the letters of the alphabet.

The hardest students to tutor are the ones for whom Spanish is a second language; and these students make up a large part of the "Circulo de Estudios." Many of these are Otomi people, whose native language is exclusively oral --thus, they have little experience with the written word. When they come to Fanny for the first time, they can usually write their names, but to them it's just scribbles and meaningless symbols.

According to Ethnologue.com, Otomi is a language spoken by approximately 100,000 people in Mexico (1990 census), including 100 in North Carolina. So for some reason, NC has become the locale of choice for the Otomi community. Having observed the difficulties that these people face in learning to read (for instance have their native language ridiculed in front of them, which I have seen), I am betting that there is a more robust story as to how this minority within a minority community functions in NC. As I continue to think about his issue, I will add to this list of rough research questions, which will guide any sort of investigation or article, should I choose to pursue it:

* How is your experience different from that of native-Spanish speaking immigrants?
* How did you come to live in NC?
* How close-knit is the Otomi community in NC?
* How are you perceived/treated by the majority of Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico and Central America?
* How do your children perform at school --do they become trilingual?
* What contact, if any, do you have with your home village, and family there?
* Would you be more discouraged from learning English since your native language, Otomi, is exclusively oral?
* How do Americans (employers or acquaintances) treat you? Like other native Spanish-speaking immigrants or different?
* What traditions specific to Otomi culture do you retain in the U.S.?

These are a few of the questions brewing in my mind, supposing I decide to pursue this story. If nothing else comes through this summer (which looks probable at this point), I may have to do just that.

Self-Doubt, Language, and Darfur

2006-05-19T02:53:00.000-04:00

When I was a senior in college I organized a rally to remember the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. We read names of the victims, and read some harrowing first-person accounts gleaned from the Internet -- all from the steps of the Duke Chapel. At the time, April 2004, we proclaimed "Never Again" they same way they did before the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Yet even then, we were aware of the conflict in Darfur, although I have to admit that personally I knew little about it, except that some right-wing activists had called for divestment from Sudan, mainly as a counterpoint to the Israel divestment campaign.

Darfur continued to be a low-attention news story for a while, then reached its peak of publicity when the Secretary of State Colin Powell officially described it as a genocide. That was September 9, 2004; he resigned nearly a month later. Was that a last-ditch effort to do some rhetorical good before leaving an administration condemned for being too hawkish?

What it reminds me of is seeing all those documentaries about Rwanda, which revealed the linguistic hoops the Dept. of State jumped through specifically to avoid labeling what was happening in Rwanda as a genocide. Then Sec. of State Warren Christopher and spokesperson Christine Shelly relied heavily on the phrase "acts of genocide," and when pressed to clarify, it became clear that the State Dept. was reluctant to use the word "genocide" since its legal definition would require international intervention under the UN Genocide Convention. Article I of the document states:

The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and punish. (UN Genocide Convention)

Anyway, all this makes me wonder how this debate fell completely under the radar in 2004 (exactly 10 years later) and how this issue of language has not been used to make a further case for international intervention in Sudan. These thoughts were inspired by today's NPR piece on Darfur of which I caught the tail end. Why has this issue which once seemed important to me --and to our nation-- faded into obscurity? Perhaps the best explanation was put forth by one of the guests on the show: because when faced with a tough, uncertain decision which cannot guarantee a successful outcome, people would just prefer to do nothing. So that is largely what I have done and what the U.S. has done (although they did help broker the recent peace deal, which one of the experts said has little chance of succeeding).

Do we really believe it when we say "never again"? No, of course not. I guess we mean never again will we let it happen to ourselves, or at least to a people whose lives we value significantly.

The Issues

2006-05-18T01:06:00.000-04:00

Now that I have a blog, I can spend the entire day speculating about what to write that evening. And when you miss a day, as I did last night (asleep) even more issues pile-up. Since I'm not going to write about my personal life, here are the [other] things I've been thinking about lately:

1) Duke Lacrosse Case (this should get some random readers; I was actually thinking about titling this post "duke rape duke rape duke rape")
2) Immigration reform (clearly, these are not in order of importance)
3) Tuesday's field trip
4) School frustration
5) Sophie's Choice, the book I'm reading

Let me address these one by one, I promise (for my own sake) they will be brief.

1) So they recently indicted a third lacrosse player, team captain and now-graduate David Evans. At first, I prematurely condemned the lacrosse players, thinking that it was reasonable to believe they had committed a crime. At that time, before the first and second DNA tests were conducted, things were unclear. No one had spoken out, except the alleged victim, which left hidden the true details of what happened that night.

Back then, news about the Duke lacrosse story was relegated to blurbs in major news outlets. The backlash was so strong --people were so indignant-- that it almost seemed like something must have happened, since people were now so upset and outraged.

Then came the incessant news reports set to an unchanging backdrop --the lonely white house on Buchanan Blvd., the Newsweek cover story featuring photos of the accused, the uneventful election which Nifong won (in which I abstained from voting), and the second DNA test, which suggested that the accuser did indeed have sexual intercourse that night, just not with any of the Duke players. During this chain of events, my opinion changed from initially shocked and mildly accusatory, to angry about the way the news outlets were "selling" the story. I also began to feel an increasing empathy for the accused, and a rising discontent with the justice system.

A letter to the editor of Newsweek said it well; why does a magazine that claims to take the high road in not publishing the name of a rape victim publish the photographs of two men who have merely been accused of a crime? Theoretically they are still innocent until the moment they are proven guilty, and it looks increasingly like that moment will never arrive.

There is now too much reasonable doubt associated with this case: the lack of DNA matches, the alibis, the other DNA, the other alleged rape involving the accuser, the fact that all the people in the lineup were Duke lacrosse players, a negative polygraph test in the case of Evans...more and more keeps coming to light. In my opinion this makes the decision of the jury (assuming the case goes to trial) a little easier: If hearsay is it, you must acquit.

2) President speaking on primetime (still haven't seen it), activists "storming" the Congress, national guard troops at the border -- the battle for the heart of America rages. Now I sound like a news correspondent. So obviously the President is trying to mollify his base (and the House) by sending the National Guard to the border, while pushing for more "comprehensive" (the buzzword of the week) reforms including a guest-worker program and another of the week's buzz phrases: "a path to citizenship." So we seem to be making progress...when else has Ted Kennedy agreed with the President? Bush is smarter than some of the Republican congress members in realizing that this problem cannot be solved simply by beefing up border security. As much as some politicians and everyday people may hate to admit it, many of the industries that drive economic growth --i.e. construction and manufacturing-- are driven themselves by a horde of underclass illegal immigrant workers.

Perhaps the most telling sound byte from the day may have come from Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff who defended the President's plan against opponents who call it amnesty. In what will I'm sure become an oft-repeated argument, Chertoff reiterated that any illegal immigrants who choose to become citizens will have to pay some sort of fine. This, he claimed, is no more "amnesty" than when someone commits a minor crime, such as a speeding ticket or a noise violation (my examples, I'm sure there are better ones) and is ordered to pay a fine. In the future, this argument can be made to sway those people who realize something bigger than beefing up the border has to be done, but are afraid to "reward" a group of people who have broken the law.

3) Fun yet exhausting. Like some students and even a few teachers, I struggled to keep my eyes open on the bus ride back. Last night I fell asleep during Jeopardy (~7:50 pm) and woke up only twice; once to go to my bed, and the other time to remove my contacts. Eating relatively little and not exercising made me lethargic and belligerent today, a fact that I'm sure my 3rd grade students could attest to. Which brings me to...

4) Facing utter frustration during the school day, mostly dealing with behavior but occasionally with achievement. As a teacher and a person, I normally have a well of patience for dealing with children...more than most people I would imagine. But when I hit that day where I am tired, and I just want to go home, I lose it a lot quicker. In the classroom, I sometimes lash out at the kids, sometimes not even the ones who are the culprits. Then, later, I blame myself for these outbursts and convince myself that I am not a good enough teacher to get through to these kids. Especially when I have to compare myself to my peers.

5) Famous book. Amateurish title. Sophie's Choice? It sounds like an afterschool special:

Sophie is a straight-A student and the girl nextdoor until she meets Nathan, the motorcycle-riding, rebellious bad boy of Flatbush. Nathan takes her to the movies, to the park, tells her she's the most beautiful creature he's ever laid eyes on --but what is he really after? In a moment of passion at Coney Island, the two lovers consummate their love --but at what cost? When Sophie finds out she is pregnant, Nathan disappears into the grizzly streets of Manhattan, leaving her with a devastating choice. Find Nathan or find Planned Parenthood. What will she choose?

Not to rag on the book. I like it so far...but what is it with writers of Styron's generation and their insatiable libidos? Stingo, Styron, Portnoy, Roth; maybe it was an excess of Freudian psychology at a young age.

And let me just say that it is definitely pretentious to write a book where the main character is a poorly fictionalized version of you. Congrats again to Styron and Roth. I wonder if they are friends...

The Biggest Perpetrator

2006-05-16T01:29:00.000-04:00

I hate to broach this subject again, and I really have little to say about it...nevertheless, Chavez was at it again today in London. This time it was when he was asked whether his "with us or against us" attitude wasn't reminiscent of Bush's. Here is his response from the BBCNews article:

"It is the first time I have been offended this way in public - to be compared to the biggest perpetrator of genocide the world has known. To be compared to an assassin, someone who has committed genocide, an immoral man who should be put in jail by an international court. What exactly are these attitudes? Have we invaded any country?"

First of all, I find this statement to be insulting. It's insulting to the intelligence of people around the world, and it's insulting to those who have actually suffered genocide, in Europe during the Holocaust, in Turkey, in Rwanda, in Sudan, in Iraq (Kurds, mind you).

Second, it's indicative of the ignorance and poorly-played out charade (thats cha-rahde) of Chavez himself. I'm not exactly sure what the word "populist" means, but I'm pretty sure this is at least it...if not pandering or demagoguery.

Well, enough about that. I wanted to write here about Bush's immigration plan, but I missed the television broadcast and don't have time to watch it on cspan.com tonight. The thing I'm wondering is how the president will reconcile his plan with the stalled House and Senate versions...?

Tomorrow we go on a field trip to the Greensboro Natural Science Center. The best part (besides getting to insert all these fun links in my blog) is that I have 5 chaperones who will be in charge of 4-5 kids each. Which --you do the math-- leaves me with 0 students to babysit:-)

Where did Hugo Wrong?

2006-05-15T02:10:00.000-04:00

Okay so this is an excuse to use that title, which has been bouncing around my head ever since Chavez spoke out about the evils of Halloween. Here is the latest drivel, brought to you by the folks at the BBC who didn't want to give me an internship (bloody bastards!). Anyway, apparently this trip to the UK is continuing Chavez's strategy of "populist diplomacy" that he started last September in the US, which consists of meeting with supporters and union leaders in a given country but not conducting formal diplomacy with world leaders. Is that any different than Bush stacking a rally with his supporters? I love how Chavez is threatening the U.S. as if Venezuela were the world's next superpower. He wants to create a "socialist new world order," which apparently is based on the idea that oil/gas producing nations can control larger countries by keeping prices high.

But seriously, I think he's met his soulmate in Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They should definitely get together and have a Bush-hating celebrity hot tub party, except the hot tub could be filled with oil and ashes of American flags. Boh men are equally nuts, but the fact that Iran is closer to having nuclear weapons makes Ahmadinejad a little more menacing...that, and his claim to sense the presence of God.

So now I have a constructive way to waste my time - a place where I can (and will) post ALL useless facts I learn on Wikipedia, discuss books I am reading, music I listen to, and news that matters to me. I suppose I will also rant (does that word imply negative connotations?) about my job (only 4 weeks of school left, hence the blog's name), my students, my friends, and -- of course -- myself.

Ahh, but who will read this blog, the hypothetical reader asks? Me. Since the main purpose of this whole thing is to improve my writing...no one has to know.

It'll be our little secret :-X

The First Day of School

2006-05-14T04:16:00.000-04:00

...well not really. But this is the first day of my blog. I am starting it on the advice of a friend, who said that in order to get better, you must write everyday. We'll see about that.