The Dream Antilles

Stalking The Specter Of The Eternal Fund Drive

2012-02-12T10:58:00.000-05:00

WAMC began its winter fund drive early this past Monday morning, February 6. Today is Sunday, February 12, and the fund drive continues on day 7. The goal is $1 million; today almost $600,000 has been raised. That means that the drive will in all likelihood stretch out into the middle of the coming week. And that, in turn, means that the main on-air activity is the fund drive (the “Fun Drive” if you insist) and that regular programming is extremely limited. Fine. I’ve contributed. I’m a member. But today as I check in and hear that the drive is continuing, I’m worried. I’m worried by the specter that at some time in the future —it will not happen on this drive— the station will find itself locked into an eternal, fruitless fund drive. The fund drive will be all there is, and it will never end. And the station will eventually run out of funds and go off the air.

How can that happen? I am concerned that WAMC may be yet another dinosaur on its way to the boneyard. I’m worried that community supported, over-the-air public radio is an idea of the past, and that the Internet and personal devices are slowly going to render it irrelevant. And replace it. I expect that as soon as personal devices interface with sound systems in a majority of cars on the road, FM radio slowly will be abandoned by its listeners. This abandonment will mirror what happened decades ago to AM radio; maybe somebody will find another use for FM.

How, I wonder, can FM not end? Isn’t the end of over-the-air media where we’re inevitably headed? I’m not saying that the present fund drive will never end. No.It may seem like that in the dark times, but it’s not the case. That will not happen this fund drive. It won’t. But how many more of these fund drives can there possibly be before the number of listeners to over-the-air radio shrinks to a level where continued support at this multi-million dollar level is no longer possible, and the fund drive, once started, continues eternally, becoming the sole programming, gobbling up everything else?

Northeast Public Radio is now no small operation. It covers a huge geographical area. It has a large engineering infrastructure and many transmitters and repeaters (23 stations heard in 7 states). It has grown enormously and in predictable response to listener demands. And desires. And changing tastes. It began as the dying radio station of the Albany Medical College some three decades ago. That station was saved by the group that would evolve into the present WAMC staff and Board. And over time the station has grown in quality and in scope. And its staff has grown. It transformed from a tiny, local Albany, New York station to a large, regional one. It has followed the FM radio trend from music to talk. It has moved from local news to regional news. It has expanded its listener base. It has preserved the Saturday Opera. It continues to report on New York State Government. And it’s the source of NPR news for this area. In other words, this is a very, very good Public Radio Station. It may be the best of Public Radio in the US. Somehow, though, that doesn’t matter.

It’s nobody’s fault that it takes several $1 million fund drives per year to keep the station on the air. The fund drive is something to endure because right now it’s worth it to have WAMC and to keep the station running.

But at the same time, mobile media are now growing rapidly. And that growth may signal the end of WAMC as it presently exists. WAMC’s function is primarily over-the-air radio. Yes, it’s streaming online as well. But when all those personal Internet devices replace the FM radios in cars, all of the infrastructure for over-the-air transmission will no longer be required. It won’t be necessary to broadcast signals with transmitters from towers. There won’t be a need or a desire for FM radio any more. The Internet will render FM radio extinct, and WAMC, as we currently know it, with it. WAMC may endure in some other form, but it won’t be what it is now, an FM (or HD) public radio station.

I do hope listeners will carry WAMC through its present fund drive. I’m sad it’s taking so long to end it. As it goes on and on and on, I fear that this drive foreshadows the end, the loss of a good and constant companion. To be completely honest, when I listen to the fund drive, with all the usual shtick and the rewards and the thank yous and the repeated stories and the begging and pleading and the traditional yodeling and banjo music, I think I hear the beginning of a death rattle. I didn’t hear it last fund drive. But this time, I hear it. I wish it were otherwise. Really I do. But it's just not true that this drive has the same vitality as the previous ones.

The Witness

2012-02-11T21:17:00.000-05:00

Juan Jose Saer (1937-2005)

Juan Jose Saer's novella, El entenado (The Witness)(note: "entenado" should literally be translated as "stepson") is disturbing. It's short, but it's not easy. And it raises important questions, which it doesn't really resolve. Strangely, that is not a shortcoming.

The story's origins may be in the ill fated 1516 voyage of Juan Dias de Solis up the Parana River, in which Solis and some of his crew were killed and perhaps eaten by Charrua Indians. The cabin boy, so the story goes, was spared. But Saer has taken the event to another level: the narrator, the cabin boy on the expedition, ends up spending a decade with the Indians before finally being sent away. He observes, but does not participate in their annual rite of cannibalism, intoxication and a sex orgy worthy of Hieronymus Bosch. This event seems to kill a lot of Indians and leave others in a stupor for months. The Indians, however, keep the narrator safe. The Indians' kindness for this decade of safekeeping is ultimately repaid by their being killed by the Spaniards to whom the narrator is released. Underlying the entire story is genocide. There will be no further spoiler here.

Yes, the story is "fictional anthropology." Yes, it's also a "fictitious memoir." And yes, the narrator is reliably unreliable. But there are other things going on here that shouldn't be so facilely categorized. I comment only on one disturbing aspect of the story.

The narrator is kept safe by the Indians because he has an important function the Indians want him to carry out. His ultimate purpose is telling about the Indians and remembering them as individuals after he is released. It's as if their entire existence as a people and as individuals is preserved only by their being remembered and specifically told about to people outside their tribe. When the Indians capture other people-- the capture is another part of the annual cannibalism, intoxication and sex orgy-- they don't hold them for very long: they are released after a few months, and these captives seem to understand from the outset that they are to pay attention while they are with the tribe, and that upon their release, they are to narrate what they've seen, and remember to tell about the particular individuals in some particular ways. For example, to take one of the narrator's descriptions, "He was the man who smiled at me and joked about eating me." But the Narrator here doesn't realize he is to fulfill this memorial function until far, far later, even after he has learned the Indians' language and forgotten his own. The book, written by the narrator some 60 years after these events, only partially and even then, ambiguously fulfills the task. Ten years of captivity and observation are somehow shrunk in scope and detail, as if an entire forest were turned into a single, frail bonsai. Don't these Indians deserve a more detailed telling? A more complete recollection? How frustrating and disturbing that the story is never really completed, and that it then wanders on to the narrator's life after his release with the same obscurations.

Others have written that the novel reminds of Conrad's Heart of Darkness or Melville's Typee. But that's not really so. The book is far too full of metaphysical ambiguity to resemble them. It is an elegant, sophisticated treatment of memory, identity, and ultimately, of just not fitting in.

This Week In The Dream Antilles

2012-02-10T14:07:00.000-05:00

First, Salvador Dali. Then, Willard. It’s the anagrams that keep on giving. And oh what strange things, what strange associations the mind makes.

Your Bloguero is informed that the surrealist leader André Breton coined the anagram "Avida Dollars" for Salvador Dalí, to tarnish his reputation by the implication of commercialism. Very clever. And intentional. But when your last name is Romney, and the letters that spell “money” are obvious and comprise 5/6ths of your family name, you have a big problem. Especially when the US economy is in the gutter, and you’re running for president in 2012, and you want to claim that you can end the depression. And it escapes no one that you have tons and tons of money.

As if that weren’t enough, the problem is exacerbated by the design geniuses who created Willard’s logo. Look at these awful examples:

They made the “R” essentially unreadable by turning it into a flag-thing, leaving you, dear reader, with a 5-letter scramble that can only spell one thing, “money.” Just look at it. Just think about it. Look at this terrible logo. Ask yourself, “What’s the word that comes to mind.” You don’t think, “Oh, he’s the guy to fix the economy.” Nope. You think, “Money. He has tons of money. He’s really, really, really rich.”

This isn’t rocket science. When you think about Romney, because you see his name somewhere, it’s unavoidable. The mind is in control. You have to associate his name and logo with the word “money,” of which Willard has far more than anyone else.

This inevitably feeds the meme that he’s a very, very rich guy and that he’s, therefore, totally protected and completely isolated and thoroughly out of touch with the middle class, the poor, and probably even a lot of people who think of themselves as rich, just not as rich as he is.

How can he ameliorate this? Certainly not by making speeches about the glories of capitalism. Or talking about his success in plundering companies. No. Goodness. The reminder of all of these unfortunate associations dominates his name. Look. Look at his name. You see it. It’s not his fault. He didn’t make up the name. It’s not a nom de guerre. Would that it was. No. It’s right there in his birth name. He has it. His father has it. His kids have it. R+money.

And unfortunately, once you focus on these letters, just one time, dear reader, you cannot miss it. Again. You cannot forget it. You cannot look at his name and not think, “Oh, money. There’s his money again. It's R+money.” Whenever you see his logo, you automatically think, “Oh, money. R+money.” And that involuntarily and automatically associates with the thought "out of touch." With privilege. With not being like your Bloguero and you. With being rich and having the world handed to him on a sterling silver platter by a liveried butler. With Richie Rich.

His handlers and Faux News try to shield him from the devastating anagram by referring to him solely as “Mitt,” a monicker (like Kimberly and Muffy) that reeks of the upper class, prep schools in Connecticut, being a legacy (and not the sharpest tool in the shed) in the Ivy League, and the kind of privilege and seashore homes and yachts and snootiness that you can imagine. He's part of the people that Jay Gatsby aspired but was unable to become because of the source of his funds. You can fill out the entire picture.

But look, it gets worse. “Mitt” isn’t really his first name. His first name is really “Willard”, and that name, which your Bloguero and Al Sharpton prefer, reminds of just one thing, rats.

Yes, your Bloguero can hear you complaining. “Come on, Bloguero. This ‘analysis’ if that’s what it is, is too far fetched for us. We don’t believe in this kind of semiotics.” Hah. Don’t be skeptical. And don't be silly. This is a problem as old as Shakespeare:

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
  Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
  What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
  Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part 
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
  What's in a name? that which we call a rose
  By any other name would smell as sweet; 
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
  Retain that dear perfection which he owes 
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
  And for that name which is no part of thee
  Take all myself.

Oh, be some other name indeed. Don't like the Bard as a source? Fine. How about Marshall McLuhan instead, "Diaper backward spells repaid. Think about it."

Before its too late, and it may already be just that, Willard needs a logo that manages to obscure this name problem. Something simple that makes all the letters the same size and font. But look. Willard’s been running for president for an eternity, and, if you didn't understand this already, he just doesn’t get it.

Haiku

2012-02-08T08:00:00.004-05:00

The Full Snow Moon’s passed,
But there is no snow this year.
Dog snores near the fire.

2/8/12

Full Moon Haiku

2012-02-06T18:08:00.000-05:00

This moon's provoking
all those howling coyotes.
They won't get tired.

Our Lady Of The Assassins

2012-02-06T13:43:00.000-05:00

Fernando Vallejo

Medellin, Colombia has to win the award for being a very persistent dystopia. It makes other dangerous places seem, well, almost peaceful. Here are some facts. Cold, but nevertheless scary:

There were 33% more murders in 2008 than 2007, with an increase from 654 to 871 violent deaths.This increased further by over 200% in 2009 to 2,899 violent deaths, or about 110 deaths per 100,000 people, 2.5 times the average homicide rate in Colombia and 20 times the average homicide rate in the United States for that same year. An average of 9 people were killed every day in 2009. There is a significant disparity in crime rates by neighborhoods, with virtually no homicides in El Poblado to areas with open gunfights in the outskirts. Generally, crime rates increase the further the neighborhood is from the center.

“Open gunfights in the outskirts.” Wait. We’re not talking about movies here. This isn't the wild west or the OK Corral. No. We’re talking about life in the city. In other words, we’re not talking about anything comprehendible. The outskirts are communas, slums. They began with squatters.They are dense. And overpopulated. And lack rudimentary services. And they are dangerous. And hopeless. They cover the sides of the hills that are the northern edge of the Andes.

Enter Fernando Vallejo and his frightening 1994 novella, La Virgen de los Sicarios (Our Lady of the Assassins). It's set in Medellin. Murders abound. Fifteen year-old hitmen kill for any or no reason. For pay or for free. People look away when the shooting starts, because being a witness to a murder is a recipe for being murdered on the spot. Cab drivers get shot for not turning down the radio. A man gets shot for cursing. The reasons for the murders seems disappear. They seem too vague. Or too trivial. A mother and her infant kids get shot because the kids are noisy. A 10-year old gets shot for arguing with a cop. Three policemen get shot. On and on.

What? The reader asks. Just like that? How can this be? Boom. You’re dead. Shot in the head. Blam. Shot in the stomach. Bang. Shot so the killer can look in your eyes. Boom. Are you kidding me? Pow. Where are the cops? Where indeed. The cops, the government, now President Uribe, all are totally corrupt. They’re busy shaking down the country and secondarily the people. In other words, they're elsewhere. And otherwise occupied. Meanwhile, teenagers covet new sneakers and mini-Uzis, so they can fire even more rounds, so they can indiscriminately kill even more people. The Angel of Death resides in Medellin, and its young people indiscriminately carry out the task of depopulating the city. There is, as in all such places, a contest between the murder rate and the birth rate. Here, though, the focus is on death.

Vallejo is brilliant. And funny. And horrified. The novella is brief. And to the point. Says Mario Vargas Llosa about it,

“Vallejo makes good use of this atrocious raw material about the adolescent contract killers in the pay of Colombian violence to construct fiction full of bite, color and confidence that at the same time is rooted in heartbreaking experience and cracking with humor, insolence and diatribes.”

Highly recommended for a brief and completely frightening immersion in American dystopia.

Take The Stoopid Out Of The Super Bowl. Please.

2012-02-05T16:49:00.000-05:00

Yes, this is too short to be a real post. Yes, you probably don't need me to say this because you already know it. And maybe I don't have to say it. But how much can it hurt?

Please do not drink and drive today. Please make arrangements in advance so that you won't drink and drive. Why in advance?

If you go to the party without having made safe plans in advance, like staying home, walking home, public transportation, taxi, designated driver, not using intoxicants AT ALL, the person who decides how you will get home (you) may be intoxicated. And intoxicated people do not make good decisions. Put another way, you don't want to find yourself asking yourself or somebody else who has been drinking, "Am I ok to drive?" That is a foolproof road to a disaster. If you ask that, it's already too late.

I spare you the parade of horrors of what can happen. Let's just say in passing that I'm professionally well acquainted with all of them. And I know I'm going to hear more of them on Monday.

So I ask only this. It's still early. The parties probably haven't started. Please. Please take just a minute and figure out how you are going to get home safe and sound without driving. Then you can relax and responsibly have a good time.

--
cross-posted at dailyKos as a public service

Gimme Shelter

2012-02-04T20:56:00.002-05:00

This really rocks. Turn it up. Enjoy.

This Must Not Be 1Q84

2012-02-04T09:54:00.000-05:00

After all. One moon. No greenish second moon. So it's empirically not Haruki Murikama's world (spoiler alert). But note: in this 2012 Internet world, if you don't believe your eyes the first (or second) time you see something, the thing you do is go to Google. And you find things like this:

Empirical proof that a second moon is not riding around the planet. This makes it a lot harder to write into a story a plausible, iconic, literary signifier (a world with two suns, a world with two moons, a world with a nearby visible orange planet) of a fantastic or magical realist earth set in the 21st Century. But if the story is set in a 1984, voila!

This Week In The Dream Antilles

2012-02-02T21:28:00.000-05:00

A new window has opened for your Bloguero on the meaning of “insignificance.” Your Bloguero is delighted to be able to tell you about it and to allow you to infer, if you wish to, how he and you may now be the zenith of insignificance (Note: or the nadir of significance, if you prefer).

On Ground Hog Day the “celebrity businessman” who calls himself “The Donald” endorsed Willard for president. (Note and digression: your Bloguero does not refer to this person as “Mitt”. He will never refer to him by that name. “Mitt” is a preppy, friendly, brotherly, harmless sort of name. “Willard,” the candidate’s real moniker, reminds of rats and is, therefore, preferable). It wasn’t much of a surprise. It was an ersatz "surprise." A manufactured event. So, of course, there were front page stories, and videos, and the kind of breathless oohing and ahhhing reserved for contrived, fabricated, apparently meaningless events. (Note and digression: Your Bloguero notes that such oohing and ahhing isn’t required and never accompanies really breathtaking, really surprising events. The Egyptian Soccer Riots for example. Those are accompanied by eye popping incredulity. By gasps. By screams. They don’t need a ~~laugh~~ oohing and ahhing track). But your Bloguero digresses.

And in the midst of the simulacrum of excitement, CNN reported deep in its story:

It was unclear whether Trump's decision will have any impact on the Republican race. A Pew survey last month found that 64% of definite and likely GOP voters said an endorsement from the reality television star would make no difference to them.

In the survey, 13% said it would make them more likely to back a candidate, while 20% said it would actually make them less likely.

May your Bloguero translate this paragraph? 84% of “definite and likely GOP voters,” almost 6 in 7, said The Donald’s endorsement didn’t matter or would make them less likely to vote for whoever the Donald chose to endorse. Your Bloguero wonders who “definite and likely GOP voters” might be and whether, having scrutinized the potential nominees, admitting to be a “definite or likely GOP voter” might be tantamount to admitting that one had a diagnosed thought disorder or suffered from delusions (Note: Even if the assertion that these people are mentally ill is problematic, your Bloguero does not retreat from it. If the reader is more comfortable with the venerable assertion that they are “fools,” the reader may so edit the previous sentence). But your Bloguero digresses. A further translation: even among the zealots nobody gives a hoot about The Donald’s endorsement, or they just don’t like it.

Your Bloguero was talking about “insignificance.” If an endorsement actually hurts the candidate, why would the candidate show up to accept it amidst all the oohing and ahhing reserved for such obviously fake events? Wouldn’t the candidate be better served by actually campaigning in Nevada or Maine or making speeches to likely primary voters, the people whose votes he needs to receive to win a primary? Put another way, what kind of loon seeks out and accepts an endorsement in New York City, which is not having a primary this weekend, that will hurt him with voters in states having primaries he is running in? Why would Willard show up to kiss The Donald’s [expletive deleted]? Thereby, as the Bard said, hangs the tale.

How naïve even to ask such a thing. As if this had to do with voters. As if this had to do with directly seeking votes. Tsk. Tsk. No. As everybody by now knows, the candidate is always better served by fellating a ginormous donator like The Donald than by doing the actual campaigning, the shaking hands, the eating corn dogs, the VFW halls, inspiring his GOTV workers. (Note: the adjective "ginormous" refers to The Donald's money, and not to any part of his anatomy). The old school, get out the vote stuff. The old routine of getting votes directly. This, herman@s, is not about The Donald’s appeal to voters. It’s not about old school politicking. That, as your Bloguero and CNN have pointed out, is the definition of “insignificance.” Of no importance. Without importance. Without meaning. With no significance. Meaninglessness. The Donald’s appeal to voters is the very definition of “insignificance.”

No, this is about something else. You know what it is already. Admit it. Ok. If you insist, your Bloguero will tell you. It’s about money. Dinero. Moolah. Cash. Greenbacks. What used to be called “bread.” Surprise! It’s about Citizens United and the spigot of funds The Donald claims to possess and to be willing to turn on in the service of Willard, and the supposed message from The Donald’s explicit endorsement to other fat cats to pony up. To pay up. To buy the votes. To buy the TV attack ads. That's why The Donald is significant, and we, compadres, aren't. We're insignificant. We cannot fund a campaign that is about meeting our desires. Nope. All we can do is vote for whatever candidates others have bought for us. We are that insignificant.

The opposite of “insignificance,” the precise antonym is what Willard expects from The Donald. And what he showed up on Ground Hog’s Day to attain. How many zeroes are in the number?

Angelo Dundee, RIP

2012-02-02T14:19:00.002-05:00

The man who trained Muhammad Ali and was at his side from the beginning through the Thrilla in Manila and the Rumble in the Jungle, has passed away.

Angelo Dundee was 90.

Ground Hog Day 2012: Revise That Equation

2012-02-02T08:51:00.000-05:00

I have the distinct impression that I've written this post before. Several times. You may feel that you've read it before. Over and over again. It's only 8 am ET here, but already (thank you Internet) the results and prognostications are in:

Date Prediction Groundhog Location
2012 Early spring[ Wiarton Willie Wiarton, Ontario
2012 Early spring[23] General Beauregard Lee Lilburn, Georgia
2012 6 more weeks of winter[24] Malverne Mel Malverne, New York
2012 Early spring[25] Holtsville Hal Holtsville, New York
2012 Early spring[26] Buckeye Chuck Marion, Ohio
2012 Early spring[27] Staten Island Chuck Staten Island (New York City)
2012 Early spring[28] Shubenacadie Sam Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia
2012 6 more weeks of winter Punxsutawney Phil Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania

I knew the "rule": if the GH sees its shadow, there are 6 weeks more of winter. I thought incorrectly that if the GH didn't see its shadow, there are 6 more weeks of winter anyway. But I have now been disabused of this idea: if the GH does NOT see its shadow, the equation tells us "Spring will be early". How early? Nobody says. So the current, traditional theorem is this:

f(GH) = sees shadow = 6 more weeks of Winter
f(GH) =does not see shadow = early Spring

The Wiki tells us about these predictions:

Groundhog Day proponents state that the rodents' forecasts are accurate 75% to 90% of the time. A Canadian study for 13 cities in the past 30 to 40 years puts the success rate level at 37%. Also, the National Climatic Data Center reportedly has stated that the overall prediction accuracy rate is around 39%.

Did you see that? According to the Canadian Study and the National Climatic Data Center, we've got it exactly backwards. Completely backwards. Taking a contrarian view of the current theorem,

f(GH) = t, where t = duration of winter

,

nets you an astonishing 63% or 61% accuracy. Way better than a coin toss. More powerful than a speeding locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound. And over time almost (almost is a relative term) accurate 2 out of 3 years.

The question, given all of this, is why we persist in the current formula. The current equation is clearly incorrect. And so a simple proposal from here into the future. Can we change the equation to this:

f(GH) = -t

I'm not expecting a vast cultural uprising about this, I'm not even expecting anyone to notice. We just keep doing it over and over again.

Happy GH day!

Far Side Of The Moon

2012-02-02T08:14:00.000-05:00

This is an incredible video. It has me watching it over and over again, full screen in hd:

h/t Rachel Maddow.

Language Help Wanted (Updated!!)

2012-01-29T17:30:00.002-05:00

This is a peace pole. This particular one is in my field in Spencertown, Columbia County, New York. It says, "May peace prevail on earth," in four languages: English, Hebrew, Tibetan, and Algonquin. Those languages seem appropriate to who I am and where the pole is.

According to the World Peace Prayer Society:

The Peace Pole Project is the official Project of The World Peace Prayer Society. It started in Japan in 1955 by Masahisa Goi, who decided to dedicate his life to spreading the message, “May Peace Prevail on Earth” in response to the bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Peace Poles are handcrafted monuments erected the world over as international symbols of Peace. Their purpose is to spread the message “May Peace Prevail on Earth” in the languages of the world.

Mr. Goi believed that Peace begins in the heart and mind of each individual. As war begins with thoughts of war, Peace begins with thoughts of Peace. The Peace Pole reminds us to keep Peace ever-present in our thoughts. As we learn to honor one another, our environment, plants, animals and all creation on Earth, the vision of global Peace will gradually become a natural way of life, a true culture of Peace.

That is precisely the idea. It makes sense to me. I got the idea a few months ago that I needed an additional peace pole to plant in Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico. The problem, this is the one I need your help on, is languages. English and Spanish make sense to me. That's a no brainer. But I think the other two languages on this particular pole should be Yucatecan Mayan and Nahuatl. I want two of the panels to be indigenous languages that are connected directly to Tulum. Mayan because Tulum is a Mayan part of Mexico. Nahuatl because that language descends from the language used by the Aztecs when they were the masters of most of Mexico.

I didn't think it would be hard to get the phrase "May peace prevail on earth" translated into Yucatecan Mayan and Nahuatl so I could put it on a peace pole, but I was wrong. My efforts to communicate with people who speak these languages have failed. My efforts to solicit help from people who teach these languages have failed. I've wondered about why this is being so challenging. Maybe that's because I'm not sitting in Tulum as I write this or beating the bushes there for a good translation. Maybe it's because the people I've contacted don't really want to help me. Or don't care about the project. Maybe it's because this pole isn't a good idea on some energetic or spiritual level. I have no idea what is causing the problem. I just know that it's being a problem to get the words "May peace prevail on earth" in both Yucatecan Mayan and Nahuatl.

Even when I've made progress, it didn't solve the problem. During my search I received a translation of the phrase into Mayan, "TE YUKSILE YOK KABIL." I was told that this was not literal. OK, fine. But I want to know what it means before I put it on a pole. And I haven't been able to confirm that this phrase is actually an acceptably accurate transmission of the idea. I have nothing in Nahuatl. Except emails to various people that haven't produced results.

Which brings me to this request for help. Dear Readers, I would like your help with this. If you have anyone who can help me with this, please leave a comment or email me. I want to be able to plant the pole in either March or June. But right now, I'm stuck.

Updated (1/30/12), 8:40 am ET: With the help of Stewart at worldpeace.org I have language in Mayan and Nahuatl. In Mayan: JAT K'A RI KIKOTEMAL, K'O CHE NJE' CHUCH QATE' RUWACH'ULEW and
in Nahuatl: Ueye Pakillistie Ipan Tlalitpaktle. So far so good. Now all I need is confirmation that these are accurate AND that the Mayan dialect is correct (Stewart says it's Maya kaqchikel). So now I am well on my way. A special thanks to Stewart. This is just a great beginning.

Oxidation

2012-01-28T14:27:00.000-05:00

This old dump truck has been sitting in the woods near my home for a long time. I first saw it about 26 years ago. Back then, I assumed its owner would pick it up and drive it away. Or haul it away if it wouldn’t run and repair it. It was worth something, I thought. But that hasn’t happened. It remains in the very same spot. Unmoved. In repose. Slowly rusting and rotting and deteriorating. Its registration expired in 1980.

When all of us are long gone, this truck may still be sitting in the woods waiting for the archeologists or historians to find it. They will make up elaborate stories about why it’s still there. And how it got there. But the race between oxidation and storytelling, between destruction and preservation is already underway. How long will it be before this truck is wearing a rich, brown coat of flaky rust, and its once shiny red color is just a conjecture? And how long will it be before its tires have disappeared leaving it sitting on its muddy axels? And how long will it be before its interior – its windows have been open for decades – is a smelly pile of rotting debris slowly corroding its already rotting floorboards from the top?

Impermanence, we are taught is a fact. A Gatha: "From interdependent causes, all things arise and fade away, so teaches the perfectly enlightened one." In my mind, it all happens relatively quickly. Lives are too short. Relationships are too short. Things that we love are all too quick to fade and break and end. But this truck reminds me that it also happens slowly. Sometimes excruciatingly slowly. Plastic takes 10,000 years to break down in sea water. How long will it take to reduce this dump truck to its lowest common denominator, to unrecognizable particles?

This Week In The Dream Antilles: Mud Season Edition

2012-01-27T10:35:00.000-05:00

Last year there was a fierce Winter. Huge, frequent snowfalls. Extraordinary, aching, persistent cold. And this year, as if finding mercy, Winter has so far been quite mild. A deep snow at the end of October melted quickly. There has been no extended, sub zero cold. And there has been little snow. Yesterday’s foul weather warning was unjustified: the feared storm turned into copious rain. Streams and ponds and lakes are not fully frozen. In short, mud season has arrived early and it may persist.

Mud season turns the world monochromatic. The sun is weak. The sky is overcast and gray. There is no snow cover. Fields and forests and dirt roads are all brown. And so we wait. We make it a practice not to complain. Not to jinx whatever clemency we’ve received. We wonder. Is the future a plunge into growling arctic blizzards, or is it a slow but muddy slog toward the Equinox?

Robert Frost:

Looking For a Sunset Bird in Winter

The west was getting out of gold,
The breath of air had died of cold,
When shoeing home across the white,
I thought I saw a bird alight.

In summer when I passed the place
I had to stop and lift my face;
A bird with an angelic gift
Was singing in it sweet and swift.

No bird was singing in it now.
A single leaf was on a bough,
And that was all there was to see
In going twice around the tree.

From my advantage on a hill
I judged that such a crystal chill
Was only adding frost to snow
As gilt to gold that wouldn't show.

A brush had left a crooked stroke
Of what was either cloud or smoke
From north to south across the blue;
A piercing little star was through.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Usually, it appears on Friday. Sometimes, like now and for several of the past weeks, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted at The Dream Antilles. For the essays you have to visit The Dream Antilles

Raven Haiku

2012-01-26T15:58:00.000-05:00

When there is no moon,
ravens huddle together.
I must be dreaming.

1/26/12

Loose Skin

2012-01-24T16:38:00.000-05:00

“Man, I know what you need, sitting out there in that shack in that cotton field.”

I thought he was going to start talking about looking for women. Or liquor. But I was wrong about that. “You need a dog," he said. "That’s what you need, man. A dog. A hound. A man’s best friend.”

“I like dogs, but do you think it’s a good idea? I mean, with all of this going on. Some people are really crazy, upset, and they’re making threats. Talking ugly.”

He shrugged. He looked at the sky. He thought about it. “Come out to the house and have a look. I’ll give you one. I’ve got two pups that are ready to go; three already been taken.”

I went. I am such a sucker. The puppy smells were delicious. And I liked how this one looked, all spotted and brown and white and black and gangly. And feisty. And, of course, the price was right. So I ended up with “Lester,” and I took him home with me.

"Lester" could have been named for Lester Young, because of his melodious bark, but no, he was named for Lester Maddox, a huge segregationist, because he was a dog. Just like his namesake.

A few weeks later, the landlord, Mr. Tony, showed up with his stogie clenched in his mouth to collect the month’s rent, $30.00. No, the decimal point is not misplaced here. That's how it was. “So you got a new dog, hunh?” he said. He immediately bent over and unceremoniously picked Lester up by the scruff of his neck. The pup squealed sharply. Mr. Tony put him down. “This dog isn’t worth nothing,” he announced. “Not going to amount to nothing. Skin’s not loose enough. Got to be able to lift a coon dog by the neck. Good dog don’t mind that. Not at all... And there’s no need to look at me like that. It didn’t hurt.”

Derek Walcott

2012-01-23T09:26:00.000-05:00

Today is Derek Walcott's birthday. He was born in Castries, Saint Lucia in 1930.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1992, he said:

For every poet it is always morning in the world. History a forgotten, insomniac night; History and elemental awe are always our early beginning, because the fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world, in spite of History.

Falling in love with the world in spite of history. A wonderful thought to carry into this week.

Why Town Court Should Be Abolished In New York (Parts 1 and 2)

2012-01-21T11:56:00.000-05:00

I could post a long argument with footnotes about why Town Court should be abolished in New York. These courts, formerly called "Justice Courts," are a vestige of 18th and 19th century rural America, and they just don't measure up to what most people now think is just. Their judges don't have to be lawyers (more than 70% aren't) and there is no education requirement for the job. The training non-lawyer judges receive is grotesquely inadequate to make important decisions. And the rulings these judges make can have enormous significance to the people who appear before them. Just take a look at these brief videos:

Why Town Court In New York Should Be Abolished
by: davidseth

Why Town Court Should Be Abolished In New York, Part 2
by: davidseth

I'm just a beginner with this technology. I've now made two short videos. I think they make the point: Town Court should be abolished in New York. I'm just pointing out the reasons.

This Week In The Dream Antilles

2012-01-20T15:27:00.003-05:00

Joe was enthusiastic. He bought a .32 and a box of bullets at a pawn shop and was headed across the fields to shoot some beer bottles. Target practice. “Man,” he smiled at me, “Man, you need one of these, too. For protection. You can never tell what will happen around here. You have no idea how crazy these people are.” He got there before me. He, too, was from New Jersey. Maybe he knew what he was talking about. But we weren’t supposed to have guns. We were supposed to be non-violent. But maybe I did need protection. There were a lot of people around who were not thrilled at our arrival. There were rumors. And, of course, threats.

The police headquarters was on the dusty, main street of the town. On the white side of the tracks, down the block from the gin, across the street from the drug store. I walked in in the middle of the afternoon. The old police car was parked out front. The street was quiet, it was hot, and there was a single officer inside. He woke himself up, pulled himself out of the wooden armchair he was leaning against the bars. I put the brown paper bag (he would have called it a “sack”) on the counter, and quietly informed him, “There’s a gun in there. It’s mine. I want you to look at it and write down the serial number, and I want you to take my name and address, so that if I have to shoot somebody, you’ll know it was me who did it.”

He didn’t seem at all startled by the request. He already knew who I was. And why I was there. He knew all about the rumors. And the threats.

In the bag was a heavy, black, snub nosed .38. A police special. It wasn’t at all for shooting targets. Neither beer bottles, nor small animals. If you wanted to hit something, or more likely someone you’d have to be standing right next to it or him. But this gun had one enormous virtue. When you fired it in the dark, it was very loud. Like a cannon. And it made a bright yellow flash. In other words, it was perfect for me. One squeeze of the trigger would scare anybody to death. Including me. You’d think of just going home. Or back to wherever you were before. You wouldn’t think about much more than that. You’d want to leave.

After my visit downtown I put the loaded gun under my pillow. And life went on more or less as before. Community organizing. Playing with the dog. Going to meetings. Visits to the store to buy single cigarettes. Trips down the highway to buy cheap, hot beer. Answering questions from distant supervisors about what was going on. The constant talking of organizing. Eating barbecue. Putting coins in the jukebox. Talking some more. Visiting the neighbors. Talking some more. After a while, it wasn’t a big deal any more that there was a bump under the pillow. I took it for granted. I continued to watch my back. And my step. But the ugly rumors continued that they would get me.

One Fall Saturday night it was cold and raining. I was alone at home watching television. Home at the time was a run down, rotting shack in the edge of a small cotton field near the railroad tracks. The dog was sleeping on the floor. A leak in the roof near the entrance was dripping into a coffee can. I heard two or three cars pull up, heard their doors slam, and heard the occupants yelling and bumping into things. They were calling me all kinds of unkind names, telling me how they were going to beat my posterior, telling me immediately to bring my buttocks out of the house. When I looked out the window, it looked like they might be carrying shotguns or rifles. I couldn’t recognize any of them. I turned the lights off. I went to the bed and reached under the pillow. They continued to yell epithets and threaten and describe the things they were planning on doing to me. They said they were going to inflict various kinds of physical injury on me, burn my house down to the ground, and kill the dog who they thought only barked at white people. It was true about who the dog barked at, so he started to growl and bark at them. I quietly opened the window at the side of the house, pointed the gun toward the sky, and fired a single shot. Boom. The boom echoed around the town. As I was afraid it would, it scared me nearly to death.

“Oh hell,” one of them shouted. “I told you he’d shoot. Let’s get the hell out of here.” They jumped back in their cars and drove off into the rain.

My heart was pounding. I was shaking. I picked up the phone to call Joe. “Listen,” I told him. “Something just happened. You know that gun I got?”

“Did you just shoot somebody?”

“Nobody got hurt. But I’m shaking. I need you to come and get me and let me stay at your house tonight. Just for tonight. I don’t want to be here if they come back tonight. It’s too scary.”

He came and got me. To my unending gratitude, they didn’t come back.

Instead, one afternoon about two weeks later one of them drove off the road in his pick up truck. He intentionally ran over my dog and killed him.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Usually, it appears on Friday. Sometimes, like now and for several of the past weeks, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted at The Dream Antilles. For the essays you have to visit The Dream Antilles

Etta James, RIP

2012-01-20T14:20:00.000-05:00

The New York Times:

Etta James, whose powerful, versatile and emotionally direct voice could enliven the raunchiest blues as well as the subtlest love songs, most indelibly in her signature hit, “At Last,” died Friday morning in Riverside, Calif. She was 73....

Ms. James was not easy to pigeonhole. She is most often referred to as a rhythm and blues singer, and that is how she made her name in the 1950s with records like “Good Rockin’ Daddy.” She is in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame.

She was also comfortable, and convincing, singing pop standards, as she did in 1961 with “At Last,” which was written in 1941 and originally recorded by Glenn Miller’s orchestra. And among her four Grammy Awards (including a lifetime-achievement honor in 2003) was one for best jazz vocal performance, which she won in 1995 for the album “Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday.”

Regardless of how she was categorized, she was admired. Expressing a common sentiment, Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote in 1990 that she had “one of the great voices in American popular music, with a huge range, a multiplicity of tones and vast reserves of volume.”

She will be missed.

Edgar Allen Poe's Birthday

2012-01-19T09:28:00.000-05:00

Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)

Today is Edgar Allen Poe's birthday. The Writer's Almanac gives us this macabre story of the end of his life:

Poe died two years later, after he was found delirious in a Baltimore gutter.

Poe's cause of death was never determined, but most people have assumed it had to do with his alcoholism, or his drug addiction. But many of the assumptions people have long held about Poe can be traced back to one of his rivals, anthologist Rufus Wilmot Griswold. The two men had had an ongoing feud since 1842, when Poe was critical of Griswold's choice of poets for an anthology. Griswold, under the name "Ludwig," wrote a lengthy obituary for The New York Tribune, which began: "Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. The announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it."

Here Comes The Sun!

2012-01-18T20:15:00.000-05:00

Wow! Quite a blackout that one was! Very intense. And now, everything seems so much brighter. Here comes the sun!

Welcome (back) to The Dream Antilles! We're happy you're visiting. Feel free to wander around. Make yourself at home. Mi casa es tu casa.

Blacking Out To Oppose SOPA/PIPA

2012-01-18T08:24:00.002-05:00

Not one keystroke today.

Muhammad Ali's 70th Birthday

2012-01-17T14:36:00.000-05:00

I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.

Happy Birthday, Champ!

A Book Offer You Can't Refuse

2012-01-16T12:25:00.000-05:00

For a very limited time. In other words, until noon on January 20, 2012 Eastern Time, I have a great deal for you! It's one you can't refuse. Here it is:

You buy a copy of Tulum, either soft cover or eBook, and write and post a review of it at the Amazon and Barnes & Noble web sites. I will reimburse you the cost of the book or eBook. There it is. Simple. You buy the book by writing and posting the review.

The ubiquitous fine print: you need to have purchased the book before January 20, 2012 at noon ET and have proof of purchase. And you need to post the review of the book on or before February 20, 2012. The "cost of the book" includes only standard shipping. You do not need to buy the book online. A receipt from a local bookseller is excellent.

I heard that. You said, "But that's not fair. What if I already have a copy of Tulum and I don't have a receipt, what then?" Simple. Post a review of the book by February 20, 2012, explain to me why you don't have a receipt, and I'll give you the deal. I'm a reasonable person.

But remember. This is a deal you cannot refuse. If you don't buy the book by Friday, the deal is off. Finito. Terminado. Let's not think too much about what that might mean.

Dr. Martin Luther King

2012-01-15T20:19:00.000-05:00

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968)

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

More than fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King recognized the importance and validity of direct action as a tactic in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail:

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue so that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

In honor of Dr. King, I think it's time for us to recall the role that direct action can play in restoring America to its most Democratic, humane, and decent principles. It's also worth recalling that Dr. King wasn't talking about political parties. He was talking about movements. I think he would have been delighted by the Occupy Movement.

Creating of constructive, nonviolent tension even in the face of threats of extremist violence is Dr. King's true legacy. My hope is that in honor of his birth we will find the courage and foresight once again to do as he would have. That we will become nonviolent gadflies. Recommitment to nonviolence and direct action might be an antidote to America's present inequality worth considering. And enacting.

Ice Station Zebra, New York

2012-01-15T07:57:00.000-05:00

We awoke to minus 4 degrees F. And a wind chill in the minus double digits. Today's high will be in the teens, and tonight will again be negative. Winter waited in Eastern New York and Western New England until mid-January to arrive. And now it's here. Unfortunately, the bitter cold evoked thoughts of Ice Station Zebra. What a terrible movie.

Why did this come up? Is this Winter now somehow like the isolation of floating around the Arctic on an iceberg? No, not yet. We should inquire about this again in about 60 days, when cabin fever has had a chance to incubate and the isolation has set in in earnest. Is this somehow like Ice Station Zebra, a movie Roger Ebert said was "so flat and conventional that its three moments of interest are an embarrassment"? No. We have to give wintry boredom a chance to fester and grow. Give it time. Get into the stretch of winter after the Stupid Bowl. The stretch of winter that's like a two lane highway across the Arctic. Maybe the thought is just a reason to check out episode 11 of season 3 of Breaking Bad, in which a check from Ice Station Zebra Associates makes a brief cameo. I don't know. I do know that this is clearly Winter thinking. Inconclusive. Speculative. Slow. Untethered.

One thing remains clear. Winter grows introspection. Silence. Wonder. Curiosity. Creativity. There really is time. Every minute seems to have its full compliment of seconds. The weather has truly slowed everything down. Or slowed everything up. We'd like to grow some blubber. We'd like to hibernate. We'd like to get closer to the fire. For all of this I am grateful. And I am thankful for warm, secure shelter.

Kitchen Disaster

2012-01-14T11:33:00.000-05:00

It began simply enough. It was a weekly, late night, vegetarian cooking show. It was aimed primarily at men. Most of the studio audience were men. He joked that if they were watching him cook at home or in the studio, they weren’t getting any. If it mattered, he said, he hoped they’d have better luck in the future. And they should try cooking like him and eating this food, because that would definitely help in this regard.

First the loud theme music. Was it Talkin’ Heads? He’d come on to wild applause in his totally black clothing, smiling. He’d describe with his Gringo accent what he was making. And he’d demonstrate to the overhead camera. The food was nutritious and simple and clean, and he touted how healthy and virile and lovable it made him. Just look at me, he said with a smile. You can see how this kind of food has made me irresistible, deliciously macho, delectable. Brother, I do very well with this food. You will do well with it, too. Of course, it helped grow his audience that his smiling young assistants were beautiful, barely clothed and frequently revealed cleavage to the overhead camera. The show was a complete success of sorts. It was growing a loyal audience.

In the middle of its first season, he was going to make some Nutella flavored crème brulee. He said a desert like this was an aphrodesiac. He would test it on the staff after the show and report back. The tall, blonde assistant with the green eyes brought him an already lit blowtorch. And then something unexpected happened. There was an explosion and a fire broke out. Apparently, the blowtorch ignited gas that was silently leaking from the stove. There was a bright flash and a loud boom, and ingredients flew all over the room. The cameras shook but kept on shooting. Miguel, that was the host’s name, got cream and Nutella and eggs and ashes all over him. Plates sailed across the room; pots crashed from the sky. The brunette assistant’s blouse fell open and she screamed. Fire began to engulf the set. The producers and camera operators and technicians all rushed to put out the fire. The cameras continued to roll. The show came to an end in chaos.

The next day the crème brulee, the explosion, the assistant’s breasts, Miguel, the entire calamity were all over the news. He was going at last to receive his 15 minutes. He had apparently arrived. “Well,” he told one of the many interviewers, “The show will continue. Of course, it will. And I’m sure we’ll have more surprises this week. Be sure to join us, tune in.” He looked in the camera, winked and smiled.

More surprises indeed. It was obvious. The show had been transformed. Its title remained the same. But everyone began to call it “Kitchen Disaster.” And its audience mushroomed. Every show began as before, Miguel with his Gringo accent, the beautiful assistants smiling and handing him things, a healthy recipe that would render the cook irresistible, a magnet for love. Irresistible like Miguel. And then in every show a different surprise, a different disaster, an unanticipated, new calamity. Fires, explosions, floods. Loss of power and darkness. Sprinklers turning on without warning. Smoke alarms. Leaking pipes. The police. Burning food. Flaming frying pans. The fire department. Alcohol fires. Grease splattering. The seven plagues. Clothing falling off. Screaming assistants. Every show with the same, iconic ending, the cameras rolling, the staff trying to quell the emergency. And Miguel’s laughter.

The show had a long, successful run. The number of possible disasters was enormous, and the staff was inspired in creating new ones. But then one Saturday evening in summer, Miguel just didn’t show up. Nobody knew where he was. And the show had to be canceled. They showed a Julia Child rerun in its place. But nobody could find Miguel. How could the show continue tonight or next week without its star? The station put out a statement that Miguel was gone and the show would not return. Again, the show was in the news. Some people said it was another publicity stunt and that, of course, Miguel would reappear to benefit from the free publicity. But he never returned. And he was never found. Eventually the show and Miguel passed into obscurity.

n/t to Ian for the prompt

This Week In The Dream Antilles

2012-01-13T19:48:00.000-05:00

[Note: Your Bloguero has rendered the following dialogue into common English. Originally, it was in the local, mumbled dialect of Limestone County, Alabama.]

“Look, the first thing we do is drink this moonshine. See how clear it is? This whole mason jar. It’s a quart. Wonderfully clear. Nothing in the bottom. No twigs. I got it from Mr. Toney. And it’s good. We drink it first. And then we get the lights out and we let the dogs go. The dogs know where to go. They know what they’re supposed to do. They look for the coons and they tell us where they are. Then they chase them. When they have the scent, they call. And they will chase them up a tree. And they call when they’re up the tree. It’s a special barking. We just run after them, see? With the guns. And the lights. It’s very dark out there already.

“Now the most important thing about this hunt – I know you never did this before, right? – the most important thing is when the dogs get the coon treed, we have to get there. In a hurry. To that tree. Because very soon, that coon is not going to stay up in that tree with the dogs barking at it. Nope. He’s coming down, and he’s going to be mad, and when he does come down, he’s going to fuck these dogs up. You understand what I’m telling you? We don’t want that to happen. Look at Old Lester over there. See that he has no left ear? See that he’s got a scar across the top of his head? He’s a great coon hound. That’s what we’re talking about. We don’t want that to happen to these dogs. So when the dogs are barking the special bark, telling us that the coon is up in the tree, there’s no time for fooling around. Got to run and get there in a big hurry before the coon changes his mind about staying up in the tree. And then you have to shoot him out of the tree. That’s what the lights are for. You shine them up in the tree so you can see the coon. That and making sure you don’t trip and break your head while you’re running.”

“But,” says your Bloguero. “It’s really dark now. There’s no moon yet. And the paths in these woods aren’t clear. And if we drink all of this shine, how the hell are we going to get to some tree that’s far away in time to shoot the coon before he comes down from the tree? I mean, it sounds like we could be stumbling around drunk in the woods and tripping on things and getting all scratched up. And we could easily shoot ourselves while we’re running. And not get to the tree so fast. In other words, this could be a disaster.”

“Oh you a city boy, aren’t you? I know you never did this before. That’s not bad. Look. We’re going to show you how to do it. We’ll get there. We might get a little scratched up by the bush, and we might trip on some roots, and we might take a while to run to the tree. We might get pretty drunk. But don’t you worry. We will get there. These dogs need us to get there, and we will. Matter of fact, we almost always do. I’ve been doing this since I was 10, and I’m 70 now. And Obie over there, he’s 72 now. We’ve been hunting together for 60 years or so. So we know how to do this.”

“But what about Lester’s ear? And how the hell can 70 year old men who are completely drunk and carrying loaded guns run through the woods without getting hurt? Are you sure this is safe?”

“Look, I told you before, we’re not perfect. Sometimes we fuck up. We try not to, but sometimes it can’t be helped. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t try to do this any more, right? We are not retiring from this. I mean: this is all that can happen when you go coon hunting. There can be problems. Of course. Like anything else. And we try to make sure they don’t happen. But we’re not stopping until we can’t do it any more. Right now, thank God, we can still do it. So we do.”

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Usually, it appears on Friday. It's a digest of essays posted at The Dream Antilles in the previous week. Sometimes, of course, like right now, it jumps the rails and doesn't tell you anything about the past week. Sometimes it gets all distracted and goes completely astray. To know what's on the Dream Antilles you have to visit it.

Wintry Mix

2012-01-12T09:29:00.000-05:00

Here he goes again. “Listen here, boy. When I was little, it used to get cold around here. How cold? Don’t give me that look, boy. I’ll tell you how cold. It was so cold you would split logs using just a hammer. It was that cold. You’d hit the log once with the hammer, and it would go 'pop' and jump into pieces. It’d splinter. That’s cold, all right. I’d run out there and break up a bunch of wood with just a hammer. That was my job. And I didn’t even have gloves back then. You know how cold that was? Gimme that bottle.

"And I'm not even gonna tell you about my old man, and what he was like. No. No, sir. Not gonna talk about him at all."

It was the second or third month of cabin fever season. Him sitting unshaven on the couch in a frayed t-shirt with a captive audience. Me. The bottle nearby. The ashtrays overflowing. The stove pumping out its dry heat. The console TV flickering with nobody watching. And a view through the small, frosty windows of large, unpleasant things falling from the sky into fields already covered with deep snow: some ball bearings, sleet, ice cubes, plaid Barcaloungers, pointy scrap metal, old weather satellites. At first having school called off was OK. I hated school. After a month, it wasn’t so great. There was nowhere to go. Everywhere there was waist deep snow with a thick turquoise Formica crust. Furniture and space debris and hardware falling from the sky. Roads like an unfenced luge course. Winds screaming and shaking the house. The dimmest of yellow light in the early afternoon. And him.

There are now 67 days until Spring. And today there is wintry mix.

A Distant Tree And An eBook Solution

2012-01-09T12:44:00.000-05:00

Of sorts.

When somebody buys my magical novella, Tulum, in soft cover, I am always thrilled to sign the title page and to write a dedication on it. To the reader, or to anyone else they choose. That makes the book more personal. And it marks my physical connection with the reader. That’s what is typically done at readings. Maybe it even helps sell books. Maybe the books are more prized if they're signed.

But if you buy my book or read it on Kindle or Nook or on your iPad or some other device as an eBook, you’re not going to get it signed. And you’re not going to be able to have it dedicated. Why? Because it’s not a physical book, and there’s nothing for me to scrawl on. Maybe there should be such an app (developers, are you reading this and thinking about it?) but as far as I know, there isn’t. Yet. So if you buy my book as an eBook, you potentially get shorted. I can't sign it for you. I cannot scrawl a quote from Shakespeare in the book and sign my name. I’m unhappy about that. And I know other writers are also.

So I have a solution. Of sorts. I can have some postcards made up, and if you want a dedication or a signed copy and you bought Tulum as an eBook, I can send you a postcard. Not by email. Nope. That doesn’t solve a thing. No, I will send you an actual, analog postcard via the US Postal Service. With a real postage stamp on it. And best of all, with the horrible handwriting I developed ~~because of~~ in spite of the feared Mrs. Reynolds, my first grade teacher at Hillside Avenue School in New Jersey. Maybe the postcard should be of the cover of the book. Maybe of some other scene from Tulum. I will consider the options.

Meanwhile, speaking of Hillside Avenue School. It’s now called, believe it or not, Walter Krumbiegel School in memory of the tall, deep voiced, mustached principal who was there long ago. Anyway, I was thinking today (I don’t know what may have prompted the thought) about climbing a tree on the front lawn of the school near the entrance. When I was small, when I was an 8-year old, it was so very easy to climb. It was, in fact, the easiest tree in the neighborhood. I imagined that by now, more than 50 years later, it would be gigantic. Majestic. It would be as tall as the school. No, taller. It would have a round, thick base. It would have tremendous, long branches. By now, no 8-year old could easily pull himself into its wide branches. A worry: maybe it had to be taken down because it grew so very large and was so close to the school building. Wrong. Completely wrong. It’s still there. The joke's on me. It appears that it was a dwarf or miniature flowering tree of some kind. Crabapple? Maybe.

How do I know it's still standing there with open limbs inviting children to climb it? You can see it standing where it always was, still flowering on the school’s lawn, just to the right of the stairs, up close to the building.

Winter Haikus

2012-01-08T20:13:00.000-05:00

1.

Last winter's haikus
were hiding in my notebook.
That was not much fun.

12/7/11

2.

4 am awake.
Darkest night, winter's silence.
Dreams tip toe away.

1/5/12

3.

Three squabbling crows fly.
What's the argument about?
No one remembers.

1/8/12

This Week In The Dream Antilles

2012-01-06T16:32:00.000-05:00

Your Bloguero hints you should buy his new novella

As you can see, your Bloguero has returned. He enjoyed his time away from the incessant yadda yadda and habla bla bla of the Blogosfera. He enjoyed his vacation away from his faithful keyboard. And from the odious task of promoting his latest book. He is now wearing conspicuous relaxation across his forehead. And he is so restored, believe this or don’t, that he’s not even going to complain, not even a little bit, that his return was not met by jazz bands, a parade, people throwing candy and beads and flowers. And pouring him drinks. He returned without any of that hoopla. Well, ok. He’s prepared to wait for that until February 21:

Actually, your Bloguero first returned on January 1, 2012, as originally scheduled. His first posting tried to focus on general gullibility. To your Bloguero, it seemed a trifle too easy, too comfortable to climb back into blogging. Oh well.

Then he wrote about nests that he found abiding in the fields, quoted two wonderful poems, and served up a Haiku. If the weather in Eastern New York and Western New England were not unseasonably warm, your Bloguero would never have wandered the fields and would have had to climb through deep drifts of snow to find these abandoned nests.

And your Bloguero got down to Three Kings, also called Epiphany, and the story of the Tres Reyes Magos. Today, January 6th, is Epiphany. Your Bloguero wishes you Feliz dia de Reyes Magos!

The last post of the week was sad, the death of the author of the Bass Saxophone, Josef Skvorecky.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually, like this post, a weekly digest. Usually, it appears on Friday. It’s a digest of essays posted at The Dream Antilles in the previous week. Sometimes, of course, it jumps the rails and doesn’t tell you anything about the past week. Sometimes it gets all distracted and goes completely astray. Not toay. Your Bloguero is thankful that didn’t happen this week.

Josef Skvorecky, RIP

2012-01-05T15:24:00.000-05:00

The New York Times:

Josef Skvorecky, a renowned Czech author who drew on his experiences under the Nazis and the Communists to write fiction that captured the corruptions and humiliations of the 20th century, died on Tuesday in Toronto. He was 87 and had lived and continued to write in Canada for many years....

Mr. Skvorecky was in the front rank of a generation of Czech writers who achieved international attention for dissident literature produced in the face of Communist censorship. Among his peers, and friends, were Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Jaroslav Seifert and Vaclav Havel, the playwright and former Czech president who died two weeks earlier.

Mr. Skvorecky’s most enduring creation was an alter ego, Danny Smiricky, a jazz-loving, northern Bohemian admirer of Mark Twain. Danny, who appears in about half of Mr. Skvorecky’s dozen or more novels, struggles — not always heroically — to maintain decency amid the terrors and indignities of totalitarian society. In descriptions of forced labor in a Nazi factory, Communist censors, Soviet tanks, political purges, false accusations, stool pigeons and women who allure and tease, Mr. Skvorecky offered glimpses of his life....

In all, Mr. Skvorecky (pronounced shik-VOHR-et-skee) wrote more than 30 books, including essays, literary criticism, detective mysteries and collections of short stories. He also wrote for film and television and translated American classics into Czech, having been drawn to American literature from an early age, particularly to Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Twain.

Mechior, Gaspar And Balthazar

2012-01-04T12:25:00.000-05:00

January 6 is Three Kings Day (Tres Reyes Magos or Epiphany). It commemorates the day the Three Kings from the East, Melchior, Gaspar and Balthazar, representing Europe, Arabia and Africa, after following the star for twelve days, arrived on horse, camel and elephant, in Bethlehem to find the child in the manger and to give their symbolic gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Three Kings Day is the day on which gifts are traditionally given throughout Central and South America.

Only relatively recently has globalization and commercialization brought Santa Claus and Christmas trees and gift giving on Christmas Day. Only recently has the gringo, capitalist commercial extravaganza taken hold. Before that, the Three Kings came with the gifts only on January 6, twelve days after Christmas, on the Twelfth Day of Christmas.

In Spain, Argentina, and Uruguay, children and many adults polish and leave their shoes ready for the Kings' presents before they go to bed on the 5th of January. Sweet wine, nibbles, fruit and milk are left for the Kings and their camels. In Mexico, it is traditional for children to leave their shoes on the eve of January 6 by the family nativity scene or by their beds. Also a letter with toy requests is left and sometimes the shoes are filled with hay for the camels. In Puerto Rico, it is traditional for children to fill a box with grass or hay and put it underneath their bed. In some parts of northern Mexico the shoes are left under the Christmas tree (an import from El Norte) with a letter to the Three Kings. This is analogous to children leaving mince pies or cookies and milk out for Santa Claus or Father Christmas.

If you consider the Three Kings Story from a mythic, rather than a religious perspective, it's a very important allegory about faith and instinct. The wise, eastern Kings' faithfully follow their instinct and knowledge across the desert to the place it leads them. Do they know where they were going? Are they following the signs correctly? Are they supposed to follow the star? When they reach the destination, they give their gifts to the one they find, the ones who should receive them. Is this the right person? Are these the right gifts? How do I know whether I’m doing this correctly?

I really like the story. I like to think about the kind of courage and understanding and conviction and trust one would need to play the role of one of the kings (the wise men) in the story. Would I know to follow my star? Would I understand that it was time for the journey? Would I leave immediately? Would I persist for 12 days? Would frustration, despair, fear or doubt stop my journey? Would I become distracted? Would I press on? Would I keep my focus? Would I realize when I had arrived? Would I know what gifts to give and to whom? How would I know all of these things? What an epic journey it is.

Feliz Dia de Reyes!

Winter's Nests

2012-01-02T12:39:00.002-05:00

First, Emily Dickinson's Poem 143:

For every Bird a Nest --
Wherefore in timid quest
Some little Wren goes seeking round --

Wherefore when boughs are free --
Households in every tree --
Pilgrim be found?

Perhaps a home too high --
Ah Aristocracy!
The little Wren desires --

Perhaps of twig so fine --
Of twine e'en superfine,
Her pride aspires --

The Lark is not ashamed
To build upon the ground
Her modest house --

Yet who of all the throng
Dancing around the sun
Does so rejoice?

Then Robert Frost's poem "The Exposed Nest":

You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
I the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
I went to show you how to make it stay,
If that was your idea, against the breeze,
And, if you asked me, even help pretend
To make it root again and grow afresh.
But 'twas no make-believe with you today,
Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clovers.
'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasking flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their sight
And too much world at once--could means be found.
The way the nest-full every time we stirred
Stood up to us as to a mother-bird
Whose coming home has been too long deferred,
Made me ask would the mother-bird return
And care for them in such a change of scene
And might out meddling make her more afraid.
That was a thing we could not wait to learn.
We saw the risk we took in doing good,
But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it; so built the screen
You had begun, and gave them back their shade.
All this to prove we cared. Why is there then
No more to tell? We turned to other things.
I haven't any memory--have you?--
Of ever coming to the place again
To see if the birds lived the first night through,
And so at last to learn to use their wings.

Then today's wintry haiku:

This nest is perfect.
How can it be so naked?
Now it's so exposed.

1/2/12

He's Baaaack!

2012-01-01T14:53:00.000-05:00

He’s baaack.

Yes, he is. Your Bloguero has returned. He’s back. Apparently, the phrase has something to do with Poltergeist II. Evidently, it’s really “They’re back!" ("Han vuelto") At least that’s what it says on the jacket of the book derived from the movie. Or the DVD cover released in Mexico that mimics the US cover. But never mind all the attribution and repeated Google-izing, it’s close enough. Close enough to spur a brief, New Year’s Day inquiry into general gullibility.

Your Bloguero bets that you don't remember the 1986 film. You've probably forgotten this part:

One night, Steven lets his guard down and gets drunk, swallowing a Mezcal worm that is possessed by Kane, a demon disguised as a preacher, who temporarily possesses him. He attacks and tries to rape Diane, who cries out that she loves him. Steven then vomits up the worm possessed by Kane, which grows into a huge, tentacled monstrosity.

Your Bloguero, who is now back from his brief hiatus and wearing his relaxation in the middle of his face, wonders how this Mezcal worm nonsense passes an “Are You F*cking Kidding Me?” (AYFKM) Plot Salience Test. Maybe it's aimed at Gringos. After all, most Mezcal, your Bloguero notes, doesn’t have a “worm” in it, thank Mayahuel, and when it does, it’s not really a worm. No, senores, it’s a weevil larva. An insect, not a worm. So passing AYFKM relies on the particular viewer’s ignorance. Passing AYFKM requires a viewer who is already up to the eyeballs in false agave legends. Stories from the Border States. Jalisco Apocrypha. Dis-information (see, Paco Taibo II, Four Hands). Untrue stories about Oligochaeta. Perhaps in naked gullibility.

And, and this is a big and important and, when this yarn passes AYFKM, the viewer will of course have been taken in by something that is, wait for it, demonstrably false. My goodness. That’s nothing. I heard you say that. I agree. This is hardly surprising. This is an everyday event. An event that happens repeatedly. It's like WMD. Or yellow cake. Or the "debt crisis". And a million others. You can insert your favorite ones right here. Your Bloguero is, of course, amused at finding this in Poltergeist II. At the very least, he thinks, thank goodness, this particular falsehood didn’t cause any injury to anyone. Unless, of course, mind numbing credulity and stupidity promoted by gullibility are injuries. Maybe these are self inflicted (cue Ron Paul or Rick Goodhair). Anyway, it’s nothing new: it’s de rigueur. Hell, it's expected. You expect it. So does your Bloguero.

Your Bloguero originally speculated that the instantaneous transformation of the puked larva (believed to be a worm) into a “huge, tentacled monstrosity” was the place AYFKM Fail would be harshly activated and the plot would be reduced to his and other viewers' guffaws. Wrong. Your Bloguero notes without citation that if the viewer willingly and uncritically accepts the

(possessed worm=larva) < Mezcal

formula, the film’s startling, spontaneous generation of a giant monster from a Pukevalanche including a dead insect is hardly problematic. It’s entirely credible. It follows almost logically, if you're of that mind.

Your Bloguero loves to generalize from such thoughts. And to terrorize himself with them. But he cannot top H.L. Mencken, who said “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” Your Bloguero knows how scary that is. It makes Poltergeist II seem bland.

Have a wonderfilled, joyful, Happy New Year! Your Bloguero is delighted to be back.

Happy New Year/Prospero Ano Nuevo!

2011-12-30T22:23:00.000-05:00

Felices Fiestas! Queremos tomar esta tiempo para ofrecerle nuestros mejores deseos a usted y sus seres queridos. Esperamos que su hogar este lleno de gozo, cordialidad y buena voluntad durante esta temporada de fiestas. Que usted y su familia gozen de paz, felicidad y buena salud durante el nuevo ano.

Seasons Greetings! We'd like to take this time to extend our very best wishes to you and your loved ones. We hope your home will be filled with joy, warmth and goodwill during this holiday season. May you and your family enjoy peace, happiness, and good health throughout the coming year.

An Extremely Brief Hiatus

2011-12-17T10:17:00.001-05:00

Punta Bahia Soliman, Tulum

Today's local paper reports about Sonny Rollins, one of my favorite musicians, and his recent presidential honor at Kennedy Center. The important part of Rollins's story to this post is that from 1959 to 1961, he took a famous "sabbatical," a hiatus from performing and recording, and he worked on his music by himself. Privately. And he didn't play for listeners. It's told that he practiced in this period on the Williamsburg Bridge. And it's told that he was "frustrated with what he perceived as his own musical limitations."

Asked about this hiatus by the local paper some fifty years later, Rollins said:

“I took a break because I felt I wasn’t playing as well as I could. I had a lot of people praising me and I felt I wasn’t able to live up to it. I have pride in what I do. You have to have strength with your convictions. When I came back from hiatus, people said I didn’t sound any different. That did not matter to me because I did learn something whether or not they heard it. I listened to my inner voice and that was the main thing,” said Rollins.

Put another way, Rollins took some time-- for him it was about 3 years-- to recharge, reorient, resuscitate, restore his edge.

Which brings this post to me, your humble Bloguero. My present judgment, that I'm not writing as well as I can, that my writing is getting stale, formulaic, tired, seems to have been coming out lately in my projections, specifically, that not enough people are reading me, that not enough comments are made, that not enough clicks are received. Habla bla bla bla. This feels like whining. Or whinging (thank you, Xanthe) as one astute reader recently pointed out. The most recent example is here (a special thanks to Diane). The problem, of course, as usual with projection is that it's not the readers' problems. Not at all. Never is. It's not you. It's not outside of me. It's me. So I have decided to ask myself, "You talkin to me? You talking to me?" Well, yeah.

There are two parts of this. First, after a five year slog, Tulum has finally been published. I can write post after post after attempted cleaver post asking people to buy it online at Barnes and Noble, Amazon and iUniverse. I can tell you what a great gift and stocking stuffer it is. But let's face it, I don't like being stuck on that topic for long and using my keyboard as a blunt instrument of book marketing. No fun. Stale. Second, and maybe this is part of the first thing, the space that launching the book into the world might have created in my inner world, space to think about new things, space to dream up new ideas, space that is empty, space that is fresh, seems to be cluttered. With commerce. And work. And fatigue. And cobwebs. Again, no fun. Not for me, and definitely not for you.

And so, I've decided to take some time, a very little time, just from here to the end of the year, benignly to neglect this blog. To assume blog silence for a couple of weeks. To travel into the darkest, shortest day of the year in silence. To be quiet. To be still. To rest. To see, whether with some silence and soon the lengthening of the days, my edge is burnished. And my fatigue is banished. And there is more light and heat and creativity. So I can come back in 2012 restored, rested, renewed.

That makes this, as I walk away, a great time to post this blog's annual greeting:

Felices Fiestas! Queremos tomar esta tiempo para ofrecerle nuestros mejores deseos a usted y sus seres queridos. Esperamos que su hogar este lleno de gozo, cordialidad y buena voluntad durante esta temporada de fiestas. Que usted y su familia gozen de paz, felicidad y buena salud durante el nuevo ano.

Seasons Greetings! We'd like to take this time to extend our very best wishes to you and your loved ones. We hope your home will be filled with joy, warmth and goodwill during this holiday season. May you and your family enjoy peace, happiness, and good health throughout the coming year.

Hasta pronto.

This Week In The Dream Antilles: The Polar Express

2011-12-16T18:12:00.000-05:00

A gray December afternoon. 4:30 pm. Your Bloguero sits near the fire, and his eyes slowly close. The galaxy of bright dreams just under his eyelids begins to shimmer. He can hear his breathing deepen, his chest is rising and falling. Soon there will be bright lights, magical thinking. There will be dreams. Maybe it will be the Polar Express. But something’s wrong. He wonders what it could be. Something is not right. “Oh,” he thinks, “It’s Friday. You forgot the weekly digest, the one you’ve been writing for all these many months. This must be the one you don’t write.” This wakes your Bloguero up with a start. The dream journey is aborted. The Polar Express isn't coming for him. Your Bloguero begins to ponder.

There ensues a debate. “Nobody reads it anyway, nobody cares, you see, virtually no one comments or recommends. It won’t even be missed. Let the dreams begin. Forget that post.” This negative, critical, disparaging thought is of course opposed. Your Bloguero is adept at having contentious debates with himself. Especially if the choices are dreams or writing, his own sloth or productivity. “It’s not so hard, and it’s good to have a weeky practice, and who knows what you’ll write, it’ll be fun. And if you do it before Friday is over, you will have completed this task and will be able to pick it up again next week, when, hopefully you’ll feel more like writing.” This chatter seesaws back and forth for a while. Yadda yadda yadda. Habla bla bla bla bla. It disrupts the incipient nap. Your Bloguero finds himself at the keyboard instead of the dreamy pullman. He just wants to check in, insert a place mark on Friday, December 16, 2011.

Chanukah is next week; Christmas, the week after. Solstice is next week; Kwanzaa, the week after. And Festivus is next week. ‘Tis the season. Your Bloguero dispenses with his usual remarks about the pernicious Festival of Capitalism and wishes each of you and your families and friends a very happy Holiday. May it be a day of comfort and joy. May you be happy and find delight.

Your Bloguero would be remiss if he didn’t repeat, given the season and its expected shopping behavior, that his new novella, Tulum, is now available, and you ~~can~~ should buy it at Barnes and Noble, Amazon and iUniverse. This would make a perfect stocking or Kindle stuffer. It would make a lovely gift. Your Bloguero thinks you would like to read it. No stocking should be without one. And lest he not admit it, it will profit your Bloguero.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Usually, it appears on Friday. Sometimes, like now and for several of the past weeks, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted at The Dream Antilles. For the essays you have to visit The Dream Antilles

OccupyFriday!

2011-12-16T16:16:00.000-05:00

h/t Robert Horn, Mark Horn

Selling Tulum (the Novella) in Tulum (the Pueblo), How to

2011-12-15T07:08:00.000-05:00

The question for today: There is no bookstore in Tulum (the Pueblo), so how can I sell Tulum (the Novella) in Tulum (the Pueblo) where it takes place? I need ideas, suggestions.

I really want to sell this novella in Tulum (the Pueblo) in Mexico. I think people who love Tulum (the Pueblo) will love this book. And also, without giving a spoiler here, since Tulum (the Novella) in a sense begins with selling a story about Tulum (the Pueblo) in Tulum (the Pueblo), it would be really cool if this book could be sold there. And maybe I can even figure out how to sell the novella in the same place the story in the book was sold. I'm thinking about that too. I just love those kinds of repetitions.

So I'm soliciting your ideas.

Now I'm Ready To Be Santa Or A Salesperson

2011-12-14T15:48:00.000-05:00

Oh happy Day!! Our friends from UPS just arrived in the muddy driveway, and they brought some boxes with them. I was hoping for the sled with reindeer, but alas. And the boxes weren't wrapped with gorgeous paper and luscious ribbons. No such luck. The boxes were brown cardboard and they had white labels on them. There were four of them. And this is the good part: in the boxes were fresh, clean, new copies of my novella, Tulum. So at long last, finally I have copies of my book in my own hands. Let me say this. This is a good deal different from having them be a click away or having photographs of them. This book seems to me to be real and to exist in the material world.

What will I do with these lovely, new books I find so exciting? First, I will spend some time admiring them, holding them, feeling them and all of their wonderfulness. Smelling them, letting the pages slap each other. Riffling the pages musically. Reading from them at random. And I will also play the two dramatic, archetypical roles in the title of this post.

I will play Santa Clause, and I will write dedications in some of the books and give them as gifts. I will get some of them ready to be stuffed into stockings (forget you read this if you are one of those people). And I may wrap others in gaudy paper. How wonderful is that? I am neither fat nor jolly enough to fulfill this role perfectly, but do not fear. I will make a wonderful, jovial attempt at it.

And I will also play the role of salesperson. No, not Willie Loman. Nothing so full of angst. Not like Mr. Whipple. No. No grouchiness. This role is far simpler. It goes like this:

If you're near Chatham, or in Columbia County, New York and you want a soft cover copy of Tulum, you don't have to go online and click on things and make the postal service bring it to you. You are, of course, welcome to do that, and I love it when you do, but there's now a more personal alternative. You can email or telephone me, or most unusual, talk to me when you see me, and I will arrange to deliver to you from my ungloved hand directly into yours, gloved or not, copies of the book. I will even write in them or not, or dedicate them or not as you may wish. To do this and foster spontaneity, I will put some of these books in my car. That way I will have a few of them with me when you see me live and in person and the many doing mundane and often meaningless things that people do.

I will also reach out in the next few days to some booksellers in the area and see whether they are interested in taking a few copies of the book. That should happen this weekend. So that will be yet another way you can get this book before the Holidays.

Stocking Stuffer

2011-12-12T21:57:00.000-05:00

How wonderful it is to launch a complete crapvalanche of commercial crassness!

As my dear friend, Strongbad, would put it, "Stuff alla those stockings with a crapvalanche of zawesome li-ter-a-ture! And buy this here book right now, reader-atis!" Or is that too millennial a reference? Prefer staid public radio to wild Internet animations? You may consider this shameless commerce.

Either way, here's the thing. Apart from pron, the Internet is really a good way to buy things. Everybody knows that. You don't have to go out. You don't have to touch money. You just look it up and type it in and presto chango! our friends at UPS and FedEx deliver it to your doorstep. Pronto! You've been doing this with books, and shoes, and appliances, and everything else for years now. Great. This may be destroying small stores across the nation and turning downtowns in wastelands, but nevermind that for a second. My just released novella Tulum can be handled exactly the same way. Just click and fill in the blanks on the forms and Whomp! There it is. Just like that. Or is that too '90's a reference?

It's like this. The Holidays are rapidly approaching. Every Holiday needs a stocking. And every stocking needs to be stuffed. I think stockings are best stuffed with Tulum, one beautiful soft cover copy per stocking. Don't have stockings? No problem. One beautiful soft cover copy per person.

And I want to make this as easy as I can. Here are the links to get Tulum in soft cover as a stocking stuffer or for any other reason.

Do it now while you can still receive it before the Holidays begin in earnest!

Barnes & Noble

Amazon(where they still don't have a cover foto)

iUniverse(where you can get the eBook in all formats)

And if, like me, you're horrified about the consequences of Internet commerce on retail stores and small towns and villages, and you're lucky enough to have an independent bookstore near you, please by all means go immediately to that bookstore and order Tulum. All of the book distributors can get Tulum for your bookstore. And if your bookstore is really, really special, it can order 5 or 6 copies and put it in the window. Just like that. If you're going the bookstore, just do it soon: this is a process that needs a little lead time.

One final thing. If you buy the book, and you want it autographed or dedicated and signed, I'm happy to do that. All we have to do it figure out the logistics.

Writers' Block, How To Escape From

2011-12-11T15:39:00.000-05:00

by Claudia Ricci

Writing is just such a wonderful and amazing and fulfilling thing -- until one morning you wake up and can't find an ounce of motivation. You look at what you've written and suddenly it feels as dead as the heel of your right shoe.

That blank screen stares back at you, sticks out its tongue and makes funny faces. You freeze up and soon find yourself shrinking smaller than your pencil.

Then what do you do? You think about tossing your computer. Or worse, you contemplate the idea of tossing back a six-pack or a few cosmopolitans.

No. This is NOT the time to start drinking. This is not the time to start thinking dark and stormy thoughts!

There is hope. Lots of it. In fact, if you look at it the write, oops, excuse me, the right way, writer's block can be an opportunity to rethink your entire approach to writing. Writer's block can be a kind of door through which you pass through, becoming a kind of writer's revolutionary. Not only can you find new inspiration, but also, you can make some fascinating and exciting discoveries about who you are as a writer and a person and what you want to write.

If you're intrigued by these ideas, and if you want to spend a weekend by a cozy fire in a gorgeous Berkshire County inn, learning about writing from two well-seasoned fiction writers who are also both experienced college-writing teachers, then you're in for a big treat:

Please join me and my long-time writing buddy and college teaching colleague Peg Woods --otherwise known as Dr. P.M. Woods -- to get recharged. We are teaching a fabulous workshop that we're calling Writer's Bloc, a weekend-retreat February 24-26, 2012 at the very quaint Richmond Inn in Richmond, MA.

Peg and I have been college teachers of writing for almost 14 years. We've also taught a community writing workshop called "Write Your Heart Out." In both the university and community settings, we've helped many, many, many students to get started writing fiction. And we've also showed students how to get re-started and recharged, redefining what it means to have a writer's block.

You see, it's only a block if you let it stop you. We'll show you how to melt that writer's block, transforming it into an opportunity for rediscovery.

As Assistant Director of the Nationally-Recognized Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Peg teaches composition and experimental creative writing classes. She is the author of numerous short stories, as well as the extraordinary novel, Spinning Will.

My own writing background includes many published short stories as well as the novels Dreaming Maples (nominated for a Pushcart Prize) and the new novel, Seeing Red, which was serialized in part when it appeared in January, 2011. I have been teaching English, creative writing and journalism at the University at Albany, SUNY, since 1998. More recently, I've started to paint, and to incorporate painting with words onto big and little canvases (thus all these funny-looking collages.)

It turns out that I'm not the only writer who thinks and works visually. In a great piece in The Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago, about writers and their methods of writing, author Edwidge Danticat says that before she writes a novel she puts images up on a kind of "storyboard," just the way a screenwriter might.

The writer's retreat will include exercises that involve "art" -- but no, you do NOT need to be an artist! We will also take you on an outing Saturday afternoon to the wonderful Normal Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA, where we'll discuss the way art and visual images can help spark your imagination and give you more inspiration for writing.

This is going to be a lot of fun! Hey, what could be bad? You get to spend a weekend writing and meeting other writers, at a gorgeous inn in the middle of the amazing Berkshires (where by the way a slew of famous writers have lived and worked -- how about Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edith Wharton?)

The February "Writer's Bloc" workshop is limited to a small number of writers, so do get in touch soon. To register, contact Retreat Coordinator Jo Ann Losinger at jolosinger@aol.com. Or phone 413.445.5874. We hope to see you there. It will be a wonderfully energizing and productive retreat, we promise you!

--------------------
cross-posted from My Story Lives.

Tulum, the Pueblo, not the Novella

2011-12-11T11:41:00.002-05:00

(Click on this screen shot to make it big).

An amazing discovery. Want to see what my beloved Tulum looked like 2 or 3 years ago? Every single storefront on the Main Ginza? And some of the side streets behind the Main Street? To my surprise, if you go to GoogleMaps and plug in "Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico," you will come upon a map of the Pueblo. And if you then use "street view" -- the icon of the yellow person-- you can stroll up and down the streets simply by dragging the icon to the yellow street you want to views. So simple. What you will see is Tulum as it was about 3 years ago. Stores that are no longer there are in the pictures; the old Fruteria is there with it's pineapples (it is now a vacant lot).

You'll also be surprised by how many of the side streets you can wander with "street view." Incredible.

I know it's freezing winter outside in many Gringo places, including the one where I am at this moment, but you can leave that briefly behind and stroll the older Tulum on your computer. It's a sentimental walk through a town on the brink of huge global change. Do check it out.

The Belle of Amherst

2011-12-10T13:10:00.000-05:00

Today is Emily Dickinson's birthday. She was born in 1830. I'm particularly struck by these two paragraphs in today's Writers' Almanac:

Over the years, scholars have done a lot of speculating about Dickinson, coming up with all sorts of theories. Last year, a biographer named Lyndall Gordon suggested that Dickinson was epileptic, and that her epilepsy explained her seclusion, the rhythm and content of her poetry, and even her famous white dress, which according to Gordon was white for sanitary reasons. Various critics have tried to prove that her seclusion was the result of a broken heart, and have offered up any number of men in her life as the possible heartbreaker. A few years ago, a scholar named Carol Damon Andrews published an article claiming that Dickinson was engaged to her brother's friend George Gould, but that her father broke it up because Gould was too poor, and that Dickinson's love poems are written to Gould. There is also the popular theory that she was a closeted lesbian, possibly in love with her sister-in-law, Susan. Other scholars have diagnosed Dickinson with SAD, seasonal affective disorder.

Many people think that there is no one answer for Dickinson's seclusion — but that above all, she was driven by a fierce desire to write poetry, and she chose to sacrifice everything else for that. Allen Tate said: "All pity for Miss Dickinson's 'starved life' is misdirected. Her life was one of the richest and deepest ever lived on this continent."

One of the richest and deepest ever lived on this continent. How about that as something to aspire to?

This Week In The Dream Antilles

2011-12-08T21:54:00.000-05:00

Your Bloguero And The Book

You probably didn’t know that your faithful Bloguero was interested in commerce. Actually, to tell the truth, he really isn’t. But he can’t lie. Even though he has neither real skill for commerce nor any interest in it, even though in general he could care less about it, he finds himself now personally involved in it. Namely, selling his book, Tulum. Your Bloguero can hear his faithful but somewhat intellectually snobbish readers (and his many wise-ass critics) saying, “Selling? Ewwww. How could you?” Your Bloguero agrees that selling is often crass, sometimes beyond distasteful, and frequently involves prevarication if not outright fraud. But this, your Bloguero assures himself and you, is a different matter. This is something else entirely.

After all, your Bloguero is not going door to soon-to-be-slammed door trying to sell encyclopedias or Bibles. He’s selling fiction. Magical realist fiction. He’s selling a book he wrote. What, you might ask, is so hard about selling fiction? Isn’t most political speech in the US just selling fiction? Isn’t most advertising just selling fiction? My goodness, your Bloguero hears you saying, in this season, the season of vast capitalistic excess and unnecessary expenditures, isn’t the main activity selling fiction of various sorts? All right. You’ve got a point there, but your Bloguero will not be diverted by it. Your Bloguero is selling only his new novel, Tulum. And he’s not at all that committed to doing that in the tradition, shameless, well worn way.

There are obvious problems with your Bloguero’s selling this book. Your Bloguero thinks of himself as a writer (he hopes that is not offensive to you for him to say it). And he thinks he is a terrible salesman. He doesn’t like selling. At all. He has little or no positive experience with it. And to make matters worse, your Bloguero’s psyche screams vociferous objections to tooting his own schnozz. In other words, your Bloguero doesn’t want to pimp his book. Or himself. Or his "abilities." That seems unseemly. And as if that weren’t enough, there’s your Bloguero’s fabled and oft practiced sloth and indolence. These subvert selling and all other commercial activities. Put it this way to keep it simple: Your Bloguero thinks that if his book is any good at all, it should simply sell itself while your Bloguero returns to daydreaming and making up his third book. Your Bloguero shouldn’t have to occupy himself with the physical activity and mental exertions involved in selling his creation. Look. Your Bloguero writes magical realism. So if this book is going to sell, it’s logical, isn’t it, that it should only be sold magically.

Do you hear your Bloguero whining? Making excuses? Walking back the expectations? Your Bloguero is more worried that he sounds a lot like Ignatius Reilly. But no matter. Your Bloguero would like to sell many thousands of copies of his book through the magical reality of the Internet and through the magic of word of mouth. That is the sum and substance of your Bloguero’s sales business planning. Magic. When one writes magical realism, one doesn’t complete the book and then suddenly act like one just spent 5 years writing financial non-fiction. No. There has to be some consistency between what’s in the book and how it exists in the world, doesn’t there? So if the book is magical realism and fiction, it has to be sold magically. There. Your Bloguero said it. Your Bloguero doesn’t want to hear anyone criticize or analyze his motivations in making this assertion.

Anyway, that’s where you come in. This is really simple, and a solution beautifully fitting your Bloguero’s laziness and magical thinking. It is not a linear solution. It is not logical. But, alas, it’s your Bloguero’s magical solution. And his magical solution is his only one.

Here it is: your Bloguero wants you to buy a copy of the book (or more if you feel called to do so), read it, and write a short review at Barnes and Noble, or Amazon, or iUniverse, or on the Blogs or Facebook or wherever, and, whether you liked it or not, though the thought of the latter possibility disturbs your Bloguero’s feelings, tell your friends and family about it. And soon it will be, as Arlo once sang, a movement. And then, after a very short while,Tulum will magically be ubiquitous. Think of this: Your Bloguero will be lying on the floor with his faithful dog and staring at the ceiling and dreaming up something new, and as he does this, the book, this very book, will be selling effortlessly. Magically. Thousands and thousands of magical sales. An avalanche of books. And you dear reader will have made this possible.

One last thought. Your Bloguero would also like you to realize that no Christmas or Channukah or Solstice stocking is complete without a copy of this book in it. Yes, yes, your Bloguero knows that there are no Channukah stockings. Not yet. But he thinks there should be.

Finally, Tulum, The Novella, Is For Sale!!

2011-12-07T20:54:00.000-05:00

Today I was pacing the floor and staring at the ceiling (a small leak) because Tulum had not arrived in soft cover form for me to give a final approval, and the process of waiting for it by UPS or FedEx or carrier pigeon was becoming tedious. And I was getting impatient. And obsessing about whether it might be lost somewhere at UPS or Fed Ex or in the mail. But this evening things are much better. It is not because I had a glass of wine. No. A friend discovered that, lo and behold! and to my utter surprise, Tulum was now for sale at Barnes and Noble and that you could get copies to stuff into some hanging stockings delivered to you before Christmas. Hooray! Joy to the world!

Here's the link to Barnes and Noble. Buy as many of these things as you can possibly. Buy so many that the shipping is free. Buy them for everyone on your many lists! Hey, this is America! And Christmas. And this is a great book to give as a gift.

The eBook is not quite yet ready. It should be ready by next week, and will be sold at the killer cheap price of $3.99. But not to worry. Barnes and Noble is selling this thing at cost at the moment. It's not $13.99, it's $7.90. I have no idea how they do that, but if that's what they want to do, who am I to complain? You benefit because that is way, way below retail cost.

I wish this were a Monster Truck Ad with all that reverb. It's not, so you have to imagine it is. Or you could imagine it was a Corona beer ad from Tulum for Tulum. Whatever works.

About Those Small Courts

2011-12-07T12:25:00.000-05:00

So here are reasons #7282 and #7283 why town courts in New York State should be immediately abolished.

Reason 7282: I received notices to show up in town court (I am not disclosing which one, you could imagine that it might be any of a thousand) at 9 am this morning on two cases. I was early. The judge hasn't gotten on the bench yet. It is now 9:30 am. There are about two dozen people waiting for him. This does not count the four or five state troopers who are now lounging in the clerk's office since before 9 am. Or the prosecutor, who was here early. Oh. And the clock in the courtroom now reads 12:45. Nice, disorienting touch. The people who are waiting used to be strangers, now they're discussing legal issues with each other. Can anyone argue that this is an efficient use of time and resources? Oh. I finally got taken care of at 1:05.

Reason 7283: For the past three months I have been trying to get this very court to provide paperwork for an old case from 2001 or 2002. I spare you a precis of the fruitless correspondence between me and the court and my characterizing the court's responses. So today I asked the clerk who was there about all this. She says that only the other clerk can deal with it, and that clerk is here two days a week for three hours on each date. I have to deal with that clerk, who won't be in the court until tonight. Great. Is there something this clerk can do to help my client and help me get the needed paperwork? No, there isn't. You have to deal with the other clerk. She alone can do this. Well, I've been doing that for almost three months, and my client was doing that before I got involved, who knows for how long, is there somebody who can help me? No, there isn't. She'll be in tonight. Frowns all around.

Sure, I could complain to somebody about all of this. Right. And then I'd really have done it: next time I show up here I will be sure to receive royal treatment. It's a choice between being treated like an anonymous object or being truly reviled.

Neymar Is A Wizard

2011-12-06T17:19:00.000-05:00

And a special h/t to John who says, "I am agog at his footwork for this beauty..."

Michel Piessel, RIP

2011-12-04T19:03:00.000-05:00

Today brought sad news that Michel Piessel, explorer, world traveler, and author of many books including The Lost World of Quintana Roo had passed away in October. He was 74. A long obituary can be found in The Telegraph. And there's one that doesn't mention Quintana Roo in the New York Times.

I find this particularly sad. I have written here often about his book. Here, here, and in my soon to be released novel, Tulum. He made that deep an impression on me. I have often walked in his footsteps on the beach from Bahia Soliman toward Tulum and thought about his trek. And I talked with my friend, Andy, about inviting Piessel to Bahia Soliman to see what had happened to the coast of Quintana Roo and Tulum in the half century since he walked our beach. I couldn't find a decent email address to make the invitation; I got distracted by other things. Andy reminded me to reach out; I still didn't find an address. And now this. Too late for his visit.

I've thought many times that the road in Bahia Soliman that runs behind the houses and parallel to the beach should be renamed for him. That seems to me to be a fitting tribute.

Socrates, RIP

2011-12-04T10:58:00.000-05:00

The BBC reports:

With an unwavering fondness for cigarettes and alcohol, the lifestyle of Brazilian football legend Socrates would probably be met with a disapproving eye from many managers in the modern game.

But then again they just might cut a little slack to the larger-than-life midfield maestro, who died aged 57 on Sunday.

For Socrates, with his almost-telepathic vision and ability to unlock a defence with either foot, is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time.

Throw in his stylish Bjorn Borg-style headband and beard combos, the man born as Socrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira became the symbol of cool for a whole generation of football supporters.

But then Socrates was never a stereotypical footballer.

With philosophical views as strong as his famous Classical Greek namesake, he was never unduly worried about expressing his opinion and became almost as well-known for his political opinions and activism as for his football.

The two passions famously came together as part of the Corinthians Democracy movement in the mid-1980s, when towards the end of Brazil's military dictatorship, the Sao Paulo club became the only one in the world run on a democratic basis, as a symbol of rejection of the military regime.

Most Brazilian footballers of his age were likely to have named predecessors such as Pele or Garrincha as their idols. Not so Socrates.

His heroes included Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, the men who led the Cuban revolution of the 1950s, and ex-Beatle and anti-war protestor John Lennon.

He will be missed.

Santana, Willie Nelson, Taibo, and Me: They All Went To Mexico

2011-12-03T20:24:00.000-05:00

First, the song. Willie Nelson with Santana:

Then, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, who writes in Four Hands (Cuatro manos)(1990):

There is a song by G. Brown on Havana Moon, a Santana record, that repeats the phrase in a country rhythm, "And they all went to Mexico," their friends went, their pals went, even their dogs went. I suppose that is part of the conjunction of two of the healthiest North American traditions: taking to the road (thank you, Woody Guthrie, Kerouac, Wyatt Earp, Bob Dylan, John Dos Passos, Calamity Jane, Spiderman, John Garfield, Ernest Hemingway) and crossing the boarder in search of the South (thank you, John Reed, Indiana Jones, James Taylor, Clint Eastwood, John Huston, Babe Ruth, Carleton Beals, Mike Gold, Burt Lancaster).

I suppose I'd gone south one time or another over the last few years, driven by those two national motivations. But it wasn't easy to go south. Every piece of knowledge brings a dose of guilt, equal in weight and importance to whoever acquires it. To be a U.S.-citizen-born-gringo in Latin America is a pastime for the unconscious, economic gangsters, commercial missionaries, radicals on the verge of jubilation, freaks, dreamers or crusaders. They all furnish the continent south of the border with their own demons. They travel with their ghosts. Then there are the others, us dreamers, those who believe there are no borders or countries, just landscapes and songs sometimes sung in unknown languages. Of all the monsters who travel south, we are the most dangerous because we believe we don't have the original sin that has to be forgiven; because we rationally think that we are not excessively different, that we can coexist with the natives on fair terms: You give to me, I give to you, you smile at me, I smile at you, even though at night we have nightmares in which half-naked, starving children, the live Latin American ghosts, point their fingers at us.

Going south is, as Malcolm Lowry and Joseph Conrad and Ambrose Bierce knew, a descent into hell itself. Leaving the deceptive North American Paradise, the true hell, the demons attack, they attempt to escape from the skin and gush forth. One knows it when traveling south, one knows the Martians who play Ping-Pong inside our heads. And in the end, one is grateful that it is so and not any other way. Anyone who doesn't have hells will be content to die kneeling in front of a television in a place as ludicrous as Indianapolis.

And then, there's me. I went to Mexico. My book Tulum, set in Mexico, is poised on a printers launch pad as I write this. I continue to be one of those dreamers who frequently crosses the border. Maybe that's why the song and PIT II's writing speak so directly and deeply to me. I know it's an essential step for me to go to Mexico. I suspect it's essential for others as well. I only wish everyone understood it as well as Taibo and Santana. And Willie Nelson. And I wish we could all work hard on learning that there are no borders or countries, just landscapes and songs sung in other languages. And that we would all do our part to assist the merging and blending of nations, peoples, languages, songs, and dreams.

Occupy Friday Night!

2011-12-02T19:58:00.002-05:00

This Week In The Dream Antilles: Lester Maddox Edition

2011-12-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

Oh please forgive your Bloguero his excesses and tantrums.

Yesterday your Bloguero was vexed and found himself exploding when Noot Gingrich proposed yet again that poor children (read: poor, urban children of color) work as assistant janitors and that they mop floors and clean bathrooms. These children, Noot told us, don’t have good work habits, and neither do their parents. They need to learn them, he opined, and that dollars must be earned solely by the sweat of their brows and not from engaging in the illegal activities that are so very pervasive in their neighborhoods. Your Bloguero imagines that this “idea” will eventually emerge in Congress as the “Poor, Urban Children’s Mandatory Work Act of 2012,” and that it will void child labor laws and make degrading manual work a pre-requisite to receipt of school nutrition programs if not elementary school attendance itself.

When your Bloguero was a child in Newark, his school didn’t have a course in brooming so that he could be channeled into a life of required, permanent manual work, showing up on Monday mornings for inadequate pay, and submissive obedience to the straw boss. Your Bloguero wasn’t asked to trade his pens and pencils and crayons for brooms and mops. No. Back then, it was a world of upward mobility. For everyone. And it was fervently asserted, everybody could become President, and the elementary school was everybody’s first station on the trip toward a good life. The good life, your Bloguero was always told, was built on merit. And education. And hard work. And desire. Your Bloguero notes that there could have been far worse things to tell him, including that he should start sweeping now because that was his station in life.

Noot is an experienced politician. He is far from congenitally tone deaf. And he knows how to whistle for the dogs. Let’s recall that he’s from Georgia. And let’s also recall that it wasn’t that long ago that Governor Lester Maddox was passing out ax handles in Atlanta. And so, dear reader, this ain't no dog whistle. It's blatant racism. Just look at Noot’s characterization of the neighborhoods in which poor children are raised. This isn’t code; it’s Noot mashing the black keys on the electoral piano with his elbow.

These neighborhoods and their residents, Noot would have us believe, are dominated by shiftlessness, by drug dealing, by welfare queens, by benefits fraud, by crime, by illegal activities of all descriptions. Your Bloguero spares you a repetition of the litany of historic grievances against the urban poor encapsulated in Noot's remarks. So Noot’s resurrecting the pre-integration Georgia of 1953. And he’s saying that the children who are raised in these ghetto neighborhoods need to be put in their place because their families won’t do it. And the rest of the populace shouldn’t have to pay for it. And the place where these children belong, less you forget it, is as assistant janitors while they are in elementary school. Who are they to aspire to be president?

Your Bloguero is enraged. He notes in passing that this isn’t the first, nor will it be the last time that a presidential candidate plays the race card before November, 2012. Your Bloguero just wonders why there is a storm about Herman Cain’s affair and his serial sex harassments, but so far blatant racism seems to be getting a hall pass.

The Pre-Game Show

2011-11-30T17:52:00.000-05:00

Your Bloguero welcomes you to the pre-game show. Let him ask you directly: Was there ever an event, sporting, technological or otherwise, that didn’t deserve some breathless, anticipatory hype? Or that didn’t benefit from some nicely packaged, photogenic slickness? Or that couldn’t be disguised and serve as an infomercial? The answer? No. Of course not. Just as every real job needs a “straw boss,” every real event needs a real pre-game show.

And what, you might inquire, is The Event requiring this anticipation? What exactly is the Event that seems to have summoned this post? Ah, thereby hangs a tale.

Tulum, the book, not the eponymous Mayan city in Mexico, is about to become available for your reading pleasure in both soft cover (retail is $13.95) and as an eBook ($3.99). There is one technical prerequisite that must be met, namely, that your Bloguero receive the first, physical book via the US Postal Service, and that he examine and approve it. Can you believe that a conveyance of such enormous importance to your Bloguero has been entrusted to the somewhat erratic, ever so capricious US Postal Service? Your Bloguero is being charitable with those adjectives. And no, he cannot believe it. But nevermind. The parcel is expected to appear in your Bloguero’s post office box soon. When, you ask, is soon? Tomorrow? The next day? The day after? Manana? Next week? Well, yes. Soon. Soon is subjective. And then, assuming, as your Bloguero truly believes it will be, that all is utterly wonderful and perfect, your Bloguero only has to hit the "send" button and voila! Presto chango! Tulum will be available to you, dear reader.

That availability will at first be at a secret location, which your Bloguero will disclose here once the Postal Service has completed its appointed rounds. And at first it will be only in soft cover format. But soon after that, the book will become ubiquitous. And it will be available as an eBook. And it will be slathered across the world as if it were cream cheese and the Internet were a nicely toasted bagel. It will make a sustained appearance, hopefully in the windows, of discerning, independent bookstores (you know who this refers to, don’t you? But your Bloguero digresses).

And once the book is available everywhere, the Event will begin. And that Event will be nothing less than the Festival of Literary Capitalism, in which your Bloguero attempts to sell as many copies of Tulum as he can. Your Bloguero shudders. He is reluctant. He has difficulty getting the words “Capitalism” and “Literature” into the same paragraph, let alone the same sentence. Your Bloguero aspires to deserve to be recognized “a writer,” not as “a salesperson.” Or as a huckster. Or as one who relentlessly toots his own schnozz. But, as he said before, nevermind.

Your Bloguero wants as many people as possible to read and enjoy Tulum. And so it is with some trepidation that your Bloguero will shortly put his big toe in to test the murky waters of Literary Capitalism. And that big toe will be the first part of the Event and of your Bloguero's anatomy to get involved. Your Bloguero truly hopes that the Event does not destroy him. Or this blog. Or anything else that is fragile. Or can be saved. And he hopes, indeed dreams that the book will end up selling thousands and thousands of copies. And most of all, that it will be enjoyed by all who read it. That selling it will reward its readers.

So, like all other pre-game shows, this post’s sole purpose is to promote the upcoming Event. The Event is coming soon to a computer or bookstore near you.

Jonathan Swift

2011-11-30T09:06:00.000-05:00

Today is Jonathan Swift's birthday. He was born in 1667 in Dublin. The Writers' Alamanac remembers the best part:

Swift was also a wicked satirist; his most famous — or infamous — example is "A Modest Proposal." Its full title is "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick." Published in 1729, the essay proposes a solution to the problem of Irish poverty: Encourage the Irish poor to sell their children to the English nobility for culinary purposes. The essay begins: "I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout."

A ragout indeed.

Speaking Of Great Ideas...

2011-11-29T22:17:00.000-05:00

You stay classy, San Diego.

Maybe Plaza Italia

2011-11-28T21:43:00.000-05:00

There is a wrought iron gate across the entrance. And it has a thick chain fastening its two sides together. A shiny brass lock as big as an open hand hangs heavily from the chain. Is all of this to keep me out? Or to keep me in? I have no idea. There’s nobody around to ask. So I search for a hole in the fence. Or a tunnel. Or an easy way to climb over the top. Or a tree or bush that can help me scale the wall. Or a hidden or dropped key. I’m patient. I know I will find my way in. Or is it out? I stand there searching for it. I’m content. I am trying to get to the other side.

When I wake up, interrupting the dream, I know that the gate and the fence will reappear, and the search will resume as soon as I fall asleep again. So I ask myself in a clueless, sleepy voice, “Well, what’s on the other side anyway? What are you looking for?” Of course, there’s no answer. How could there be? But the question delights me. What am I looking for? I have no idea. What’s on the other side? I don’t know. It’s a puzzle. As I fall asleep again I yawn happily, “Well, I hope I find out.” This always brings a smile. I like the idea of smiling in my sleep at my persistent search for something unknown.

I should add, though I’m not sure that it really matters, that I am wearing a brown raincoat and a hat with a narrow brim and that I am standing in a late Fall, afternoon rain. My glasses are foggy. And the hat is dripping. Maybe I am in Palermo. Maybe the street is Las Heras. I don't know. I have the impression that people are nearby, sitting in cafes drinking coffee and watching the rainfall on the streets. And others are nearby riding buses and subways home. I am sure that my adventure, if that is what this is, is not in their thoughts. This is exactly how it should be.

Occupado

2011-11-27T21:20:00.002-05:00

Remembering J.B. Lenoir

2011-11-26T17:25:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure why I remembered this song today. J.B. Lenoir just jumped into my mind. And this recording, I think, was his most powerful. I haven't listened to it for decades. But here it is again. If you've never heard him, or this song, you've been missing something important.

Tom Wicker, RIP

2011-11-25T17:28:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reports:

Tom Wicker, one of postwar America’s most distinguished journalists, who covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy for The New York Times and became the paper’s Washington bureau chief and an iconoclastic political columnist for 25 years, died on Friday at his home near Rochester, Vt. He was 85 and also the author of 20 books. ...

His most notable involvement took place during the uprising by 1,300 inmates who seized 38 guards and workers at the Attica Correctional Facility in Upstate New York in September 1971. Having written a sympathetic column on the death of the black militant George Jackson at San Quentin, Mr. Wicker was asked by Attica’s rebels to join a group of outsiders to inspect prison conditions and monitor negotiations between inmates and officials. The radical lawyer William M. Kunstler and Bobby Seale, chairman of the Black Panther Party, also went in, and the observers took on the role of mediators.

Mr. Wicker, in a column, described a night in the yard with the rebels: flickering oil-drum fires, bull-necked convicts armed with bats and iron pipes, faceless men in hoods or football helmets huddled on mattresses behind wooden barricades. He wrote: “This is another world — terrifying to the outsider, yet imposing in its strangeness — behind those massive walls, in this murmurous darkness, within the temporary but real power of desperate men.”

Talks broke down over inmate demands for amnesty and the ouster of Russell G. Oswald, the State Corrections Commissioner. Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller rejected appeals by the observers to go to Attica, and after a four-day standoff, troopers and guards stormed the prison. Ten hostages and 29 inmates were killed by the authorities’ gunfire in what witnesses called a turkey shoot; three inmates were killed by other convicts, who also beat a guard to death. Afterward, many prisoners were beaten and abused in reprisals.

Mr. Wicker wrote a book about the uprising, “A Time to Die” (1975). Most critics hailed it as his best book, although some chided him for sympathizing with the inmates. “Attica,” a television movie starring Morgan Freeman as a jailhouse lawyer and George Grizzard as Mr. Wicker, was made by ABC in 1980.

This Week In The Dream Antilles

2011-11-25T11:29:00.000-05:00

A Friday that feels like Sunday. Unless you’re engaged in the widely hyped capitalist feeding frenzy called “Black Friday.” Or some of the many other activitie your Bloguero disdains. Today your Bloguero’s world is divided into only two parts, day and night, the 1% and the 99%, those who think today might be Sunday and those who think it’s for filling up the credit cards, those who are hung over from tryptophan and wine and those who are not. This way of experiencing the world, sharp, high contrast dualism, is disturbing to your Bloguero. But what can you expect when the first meal of the day is left over turkey and chocolate cake?

A day to make the crooked straight and the rough places plane. And for this:

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now and for several of the past weeks, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted at The Dream Antilles. For that you have to visit The Dream Antilles.

On Gratitude

2011-11-22T07:27:00.000-05:00

An annual re-post and by now a Dream Antilles Thanksgiving tradition:

At our house, when we have Thanksgiving dinner, we like to stop eating and talking to go around the table clockwise so that each person present can say what s/he is thankful for. When we first decided to do this, some of our guests felt this was awkward, perhaps embarrassing. But we don't start with the guests, so they can get an impression of what expressing gratitude and hearing others express it feels like. Those in our immediate family understood this and were comfortable enough with it. After all, at birthdays, we like to go around the table to tell the person celebrating the birthday our many appreciations of him/her. So on Thanksgiving, it's a natural enough question, "What are you thankful for this year?" The answers aren't always surprising. We're thankful for being here another year, for our health however it might then be, for family and friends, for the lives of those now departed, for whatever abundance we may have received, for creativity, for our pets, for our relationships, for our businesses, for our politics, for our dreams and aspirations and hopes, and so on. We're thankful for all kinds of things. You get it, you can probably feel it even reading about doing this. It's a Thanksgiving ritual we love. Feel free to try it out.

I always loved Thanksgiving because, however it was intended or begun, it seemed to be about gratitude. For years I've had a practice I've done. Sometimes I do it every day. Sometimes I do it once a month. Sometimes I don't do it for a very long time. It depends. What do I do? I make a list of the things I am thankful for. I number them as I write them down, and I feel my gratitude for each item as I write it before going on to the next. So, I write, "1. my good health, 2. the life of Dr. King, 3. compassion for my seeming enemies, 4. the novels of Cesar Aira." And so on. Until I reach 50. I do this, writing and feeling, until I have a list of 50 items or more that I have enjoyed and felt my thanks for. When I am feeling pinched, stressed, exhausted, depressed, or any other "negative" emotion, it seems to take me a very long time to find items, to write them down and really to feel them. When I am feeling expansive, relaxed, rested, optimistic, or any other "positive" emotion, it takes me virtually no time to write and enjoy the list. Why do this exercise? Because it's almost magical. And it lights me up. Feel free to try it out.

Was it Meister Eckhart who wrote, "If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'thank you,' that would suffice?" I agree.

May all of you have a happy Thanksgiving.

Green Turtle Swimming

2011-11-21T17:55:00.000-05:00

I just love this. Fantastic. Enjoy it.

Coatis In The Rain

2011-11-19T09:56:00.000-05:00

The Mayan Riviera's favorite animal act. Enjoy. But do NOT feed.

This Week In The Dream Antilles

2011-11-18T13:20:00.000-05:00

The Old Fruteria, Tulum

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays this courier from the swift completion of his appointed rounds.

Right. But when it comes to the Weekly Digest and your Bloguero, things happen. Clumsy, annoying things. Things that could easily derail this essay. Things like somehow deleting every shred of the final draft of this post before it was saved. Stupid, aggravating things. Things that make this a painful, unnecessary re-write from scratch. Things that make your Bloguero wonder whether the All Knowing Universe is trying to tell him in a special secret code not to post this essay. But even that paranoid wondering will not stop your Bloguero. No. Not now. Nor will it stop him from doing his crazy, eccentric, aerobic Happy Dance. Nothing can stop that. Not today. Not now.

What’s the dance all about? Thank you for asking.

Your Bloguero received via email about an hour ago the proofs for his new novella, Tulum. The cover. The inside of the book. The whole thing. All of it. That started the Happy Dance. Why? Why indeed. Because that means that the very last, the final step in evicting this book from its large, dusty, cluttered corner office in your Bloguero’s mind and sending it to live elsewhere, in your Kindle or bookcase, is finally at hand. After a long five years. Let your Bloguero repeat that for emphasis. Your Bloguero has arrived at the very last, the final step in the production of this novella. And very soon, to your Bloguero’s utter relief and delight, it will be out of his head and living elsewhere.

This weekend in a hyper-caffeinated, vigilant, extremely focused, narrow, tunnel vision way your Bloguero will read every single letter of the 197-page document with a blue pencil in his hand, ferreting out the problems, finding them all (he truly hopes) and fixing each of them. Some problems, particularly the written evidence of your Bloguero’s infelicities and shortcomings as a writer, will, of course, have to remain. Your Bloguero’s limitations come with the territory. He’s the last one who can recognize or fix them. But the orthographic and typographical issues? Those are much more visible to your Bloguero. Your Bloguero will root these out and mercilessly extirpate them. He hopes. Bring on the French Roast. Bring on the chamber music. Take the phone off the hook. Bring on the withering gaze and stare.

Maybe Tulum will be available before Christmas. Your Bloguero doesn’t know. He does know that the task at hand will be completed by the end of the weekend. No matter what. No excuses.

That having been said, is your Bloguero now going to turn today’s weekly digest into a crass, commercial plea filled with hype, distortions, and outright lies stating that you simply must buy this book? Or else? Hardly. Your Bloguero isn’t like that. Well, at least he’s not like that today. He’ll be satisfied today if you go to “Tulum: The Novella’s” Facebook page and click “like” so that you’ll be informed of when this book is finally available through the usual commercial channels. He’s not demanding your money today. Not today.

Yes, your Bloguero would love to sell thousands of copies of this novella, and yes, he’d like your help in making that happen. When it’s out and available there will be plenty of time for his sales spiel.It will likely come masquerading as a weekly digest. He can't help that.

In the meanwhile, please join your Bloguero in the Happy Dance. Cue the loud music. Roll up that rug.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now and for several of the past weeks, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted at The Dream Antilles. For that you have to visit The Dream Antilles

Coming Soon: Tulum, the Novel

2011-11-16T15:54:00.000-05:00

I'm overjoyed. The novel, Tulum, is finally "in production" at the printer. It's going to be out soon as a physical book and as an eBook in all formats. It's the culmination of more than five years' work.

For details on the release and other news about this book, please "like" the "Tulum: The Novella" page on Facebook, and please visit it for news about the release, sales, and photos.

The People's Library Needs Your Help

2011-11-16T09:13:00.000-05:00

Some sadness.

One of the very best parts of Occupy Wall Street at Z park was the People’s Library. It had about 5,500 volumes, and it accepted books from whoever wished to donate them. It didn’t approve books before including them in the collection, it just accepted them. In other words, the library incorporated the same, basic, participatory democracy precepts as the Occupy Movement itself. And the collecting was democratic and from the ground up.

On November 15, 2011, when Occupy was evicted from Z park in what I still think, despite the Court’s ruling, was a grotesque, repressive misstep by the Government, the library was removed. Was it, as told by Keith Olbermann and others, thrown into dumpsters and hauled off to the dump by police as if this were 1933 in Germany? Or was it, as claimed by Mayor Bloomberg, removed and stored at a far away building at 12th Avenue and 57th Street. Bloomberg, of course, dutifully released a photo claiming to show that the books were in safekeeping. Those at OWS disputed the claim and wanted to know where the rest of the books had gone. That is a story still to be sorted out.

This is a photo from this morning. This is now the People’s Library.

And this is sad. This is sadder than being told that tents and sleeping bags and tarps are not permitted. It is sadder than being told that drumming is not permitted. It is sadder by far than yesterday’s questionable First Amendment ruling. This strikes at the heart of Occupy in a way the reminds of Fahrenheit 451 and evokes pyres of burning books. And that simply cannot be permitted to continue. The library must be returned. And if cannot be returned it must be rebuilt. Immediately. The movement requires it. If the library cannot be continued at Z Park, it needs a safe space nearby. There must be a People’s Library. All of us need it.

Please join me in rebuilding the People’s Library. Please join me in sending books to the Occupy Wall Street library. Here’s where to send them:

The UPS Store
Re: Occupy Wall Street 
Attn: The People's Library
118A Fulton St. #205 
New York, NY 10038

As I write this Occupy is trying to retrieve the books that were allegedly taken Uptown. If you have a car or truck, you could help with that.

Tortuga en Hawaii

2011-11-15T19:35:00.001-05:00

Expand to full screen. Swim along. Enjoy.

Note: It's Hawaii, not Mexico, so there is no coral and no sea grass. No matter.

And then there's this release in Italy:

Completion

2011-11-14T15:38:00.000-05:00

The journey began in earnest in Ireland at Sliabh na Caillí, or Loughcrew in Co. Meath, Ireland. Yes, before I went there I was "working" on the book. But it was a sporadic effort: sometimes writing, sometimes letting the manuscript sit in a drawer gathering dust. Truth be told, much more of the latter. But in April, 2009, the situation changed. As I wrote at the time:

Sliabh na Caillí... is a sacred site with cairns dedicated to or occupied by the Crone, or the Hag, or Garavogue. It is far more than 4000 years old. There are, of course, many details. But the important part is the personal, the intuitive, the spiritual.

When I visited Sliabh na Caillí with an international band of Shamanic friends... I made an offering to the Crone in her cairn, and I asked her whether she had anything to tell me. And she did. I am to finish the draft of my novel in process before the end of the coming September. No excuses. No extensions of time. No dogs eating my homework. I take this seriously. I do not wish to run afoul of the Crone's wishes. I do not wish to incite her to anger. I do not wish to taste her wrath.

To make sure I wouldn't let the time slip by, to make sure that my vow to follow this message and to complete the task would be kept, I told my friends what the Crone had to say. They are my witnesses. And today, a couple weeks later, I am writing it down. Forgetfulness, unconsciousness, being busy, lack of mindfulness, other seeming necessities, all forms of practiced sloth, are not to deter me. Nor rain, nor gloom, nor dread of night, stops this courier from the prompt completion of his appointed rounds. And you, dear readers, are witnesses also.

The working title of my book is "Tulum," which is a Mayan town in Quintana Roo, Mexico. I won't tell you about the book, except to say that it is about the friendship of a US expat with a shady background and a Mayan curandero. There are 30,000 +/- words on my key drive as I write this.

And so, I have a task, a quest, an imramma, a journey to perform. I am honored to carry this out.

That was 2009. That was more than a year and 50,000 words ago.

I finished a very rough draft in that September. And after many revisions and changes and editing and rewriting and far too much staring at the ceiling and making excuses and worrying about it, on February 13, 2011, I uploaded the manuscript to the publisher. And today I uploaded the other required materials. And now I am finished. The rest of the task is merely mechanical. Or proofreading.

Well, not really. It's not that simple. There remains something else. Something else that's extremely important. Something that I don't want to leave out. It's the real conclusion of the imramma.

Even when the book is in your hands or on your Kindle, even then, even when you've read it, even when you've passed it on to others, or maybe even forgotten it, my task won't be completed. I realize that. There is something else that has to be done. My journey won't really be completed until I have taken this book in digital form, placed it on a key drive, and personally delivered the drive to the Crone by placing it discreetly in the rocks in her cairn. Only then will all of the assigned tasks have been completed. Only when one returns after the quest to the very beginning is the journey completed.

When one accepts a challenge or inspiration or advice and chooses to embark on a quest, and then carries out one's assigned tasks, there remains one more, final step. It remains important afterwards to return to the very beginning, to the very person who inspired or commissioned the effort and to stand before him or her. And upon returning, it's important to say aloud to that person, "I have done it, I have completed it, and I have returned to tell you this." It is then important to offer one's gratitude for a journey so remarkable it qualifies to be called a quest. It seems to me that it's this mythic return and the expression of gratitude that really completes the journey.

I will now look for airfare for April, 2011. It's been two years, and I am at last ready to return.

Coming Soon To A Kindle or iPad Near You

2011-11-12T18:51:00.001-05:00

I'm tired. And I'm paying the cost of being a pre-computer typist. And my shoulders hurt. I am completely fried.

Today I spent about 6 hours getting the manuscript for the above book ready. That's the cover. Beautiful, right?

Guess what? When I took typing in the 7th grade (some prescience by mi padres, who somehow anticipated the keyboard age), I was told that after a period, after a question mark, after an exclamation, you always hit the space bar. Not once, but twice. Always. So it's reflex now, a habit. A habit of decades' reinforcement. Something I cannot stop doing.

So what, you say? So what? Hardly. It is not a "so what" kind of thing. This idiotic habit, this non-information age fetish, this throw back to the era of manual typewriting of the two space bar hits, cost me 6 hours today. Why? Because I had to remove all of the extra spaces after the periods, question marks, and exclamations. All of them. So the manuscript could be published.

The manuscript is about 81,000 words. Have you got any idea how many sentences that entails? Well,I do. 6,855 sentences. So, if I were consistent (I was in this because I cannot break the habit), I had to remove at least 6,855 spaces. Manually. Using a delete key. And this labor of love (what else on earth could it possibly be?) took 6 hours. And now as I write to tell you about today's thrilling but quite mind numbing activities, I find that after each period, I still hit the space bar twice. And then I have to go back and delete one of the spaces because that space is utterly unnecessary. That space is the typewriter atavism, the sign that I am of the past century, that word processing came after my typing, that I am wasteful of pixels.

Can I shed this horrible habit? In this post, no. I've failed in every sentence so far, and don't expect to be able to save myself right now.

There is good news, though. Having completed this exercise in deletion, the manuscript is about finished. I even cut three paragraphs that have grown out of favor. So sometime this coming week, away it goes. And soon, Tulum, the novella, will be in paperback and a Kindle or an iPad or other electronic reader near you. After all of this, I pray that every human being who can read will buy a copy of it.

Meanwhile, I have been in the hot tub three times today because of soreness in my shoulders. And as I write to tell you this, I am conscious that after I hit the period key, there is still an overwhelming, overpowering, assertive, undeniable urge to hit the spacebar. Twice.

There are some other minor tasks that need doing before Tulum is gone, but I see no reason why those cannot be completed in the next three days.

It's about time. This is a project that's been about six years in the making.

11/11/11 at 11:11:11 am?

2011-11-11T09:18:00.000-05:00

Talk about inscrutable:

(11 / 11) / 11 = 0.0909090909

This Week In The Dream Antilles

2011-11-10T19:47:00.000-05:00

Well, well, well. And tut, tut, tut. Your Bloguero feels ever so sweetly but wrongly chastened by a Maddow Blog article by Kent Jones on November 9. A taste of this article about referring to one’s self in the third person, if you really insist on it:

That word is illeism. The act of referring to oneself (often habitually) in the third person.

According to Wikipedia, illeism has a variety of uses including self-promotion, to give the speaker lofty airs, to illustrate the feeling of being outside one's body and watching things happen, as a form of sarcasm or as a way to show dim wittedness, such as when the Mongo in Blazing Saddles declares: "Mongo only pawn in game of life." So why does someone become an illeist? According to Yahoo answers:

Because when you do that it makes you feel like you're not so alone. It's a psychological way of making yourself feel like there's someone with you, even if it is only yourself. He was probably picked on as a child, that usually being the cause for this behavior. On the other hand if he's doing this in a joking fashion, its just that, a joke.

Aha! it could be a joke. That backs up Rachel's Herman Cain is a Performance Artist theory.

Wait a second. Wait one forking second. On this pop psychologizing and its implicit fault finding of your Bloguero and negative judgments about him, your Bloguero, who almost always refers to himself in the third person in these Friday posts, calls, to adopt one of Maddow’s pet phrases, “Bull pucky.” That’s right. Bull. Forking. Pucky. Bull Pucky, you hear? Bull pucky. Bull pucky. Bull pucky.

Let’s look at the facts.

Is your Bloguero trying self promotion in this post? Right, like your Bloguero is the Deion Saunders of the small blogs, on some of which his Friday posts get, oh wait for it, two, count them readers, count them, two reccs. Or giving himself lofty airs? Right, like your Bloguero is some kind of authority on something or claims to be? Seriously. The only thing your Bloguero is an authority on or has even claimed authority about are his own multifaceted idiosyncrasies. And those, to his sincere regret, are many, but he knows them intimately. Or, did you check this out? Your Bloguero is outside his body? As if he were Emanuel or some other channeled, discorporate being? Not so. Totally untrue. Your Bloguero is living in his body as he types this out. His fingers are cold. One does not have cold fingers unless one has a body. QED. And is your Bloguero sarcastic? OK, ok, ok, ok. Well, all right. Sometimes he’s sarcastic even when he uses the first person. If you grew up in Newark like your Bloguero and spent some of your waking hours at the local courthouses observing what passes for justice in America, you’d be sarcastic, too. You might even be more than sarcastic. You might be postal. Not your Bloguero. Your Bloguero is a pacifist of sorts.

Look, you don’t have to write in the third person to be disillusioned and to lash out in sarcasm or rolling eyes or making faces. C’mon, admit it. And is your Bloguero, heaven forefend, dimwitted? One, even if that one is solely your Bloguero, hopes not. What an insult.

And then there’s the hardest question. How can you even ask it? Is referring to one’s self some kind of joke? Is this a joke? Is your Bloguero making a joke? Your Bloguero takes umbrage at the suggestion. And also a double martini. With two olives. It’s not a joke. No joke. It’s life itself. If life’s a joke, it’s not your Bloguero’s fault.

No. Why does your Bloguero have to explain himself to smart people like Rachel Maddow and Kent Jones? Look. Writing in the third person at its very worst is a pose taken by the eccentric (there’s that word again), offbeat narrator of these Friday post. That’s who shows up every Friday. The Bloguero. That’s who’s been showing up every single Friday since February with this digest. If you were Deepak Chopra you’d note this bizarre, quantum equivalence:

weekly digest = the Bloguero

.

Anybody who thinks this is wrong, or a problem, or weak physics, or has some other wisecracks or criticism about it, just raise your hand. Go right ahead. Raise you hand. Right now. Your Bloguero will now ignore all that snickering and the waving hand too. Nobody, including especially your Bloguero, has to put up with these indiscreet, prying inquiries. The idea of asking for an explanation. Humpf.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now and for several of the past weeks, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted at The Dream Antilles. For that you have to visit The Dream Antilles.

Joe Paterno: Please Quit Now (Updated)

2011-11-09T22:17:00.001-05:00

At noon Saturday, 19th ranked Nebraska will pay 12th ranked Penn State in football at Beaver Stadium. Beaver Stadium at Penn State has an official seating capacity of 106,572, making it the second largest stadium in the Western Hemisphere and the fourth largest in the world. There is every reason to expect that every single seat will be occupied for this game. And there is every reason to believe that when the Penn State team takes the field, every single person will cheer that team. And, if he’s permitted to stall his “retirement” past noon on Saturday when the game begins, its record holding, long term coach, Joe Paterno, will also be loudly cheered. I do not expect him to be booed, as he so richly deserves. I do not expect the crowd to greet him with icy silence and fingers pointed in accusation. Already hundreds of students have demonstrated their unconditional support for JoePa, no matter what he may have failed to do to protect young boys from sex abuse.

What we now know about the allegations in the Sandusky child sex abuse case makes it clear that Paterno must go. He needs to quit. In short: at least one rape occurred in the Penn State locker room shower. Paterno only reported the incident to his boss. Paterno was told about the rape by someone who was apparently an eyewitness to it. Paterno then let the matter drop when to no one’s surprise, those above him didn’t call the police or report the incident or pursue the rapist. In other words, Paterno’s response was utterly inadequate to protect the victim of that rape, and it did nothing to prevent the abuse of others in the future by the same man.

One has to wonder how the stadium’s cheers and accolades for the 84-year old coach will be heard by the alleged victims of Sandusky’s abuse. Not to mention the many other children who have been abused by others. Will the cheers say that football is more important than young children’s personal safety? And one can only wonder what the unfortunate spectacle of Paterno’s standing on the sidelines says about our commitment as a society to protecting all children from sex abuse.

Joe Paterno needs to quit. And he needs to do it now, before Saturday. If he doesn’t quit, he needs to be fired. If there’s no consensus to fire him, which would a shameful development, he needs to be suspended until the end of the season. Penn State cannot permit him to take the field for this game and receive the adoring cheers of the fans. That would send entirely the wrong message about Paterno’s nonfeasance, that University's priorities, and role that sport plays in this society.

Indeed, Paterno himself today recognized his utter failure to act responsibly when he wrote,

“This is a tragedy. It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”

I wish he had done more,too. And I bet that the victim of the abuse reported to Paterno wishes he had done more. And I bet the victims of abuse that occurred because there was no outcry wish he had done more. It's that simple. And now he needs to be gone.

Update: 10:30 pm. The University just fired its president and Joe Paterno. So for now, the matter is concluded. I still think Paterno should have quit, but if he had to be fired, so be it.

Heavy D, RIP

2011-11-08T20:13:00.000-05:00

Old school. 1986. He will be missed.

Today's Commercial

2011-11-08T08:45:00.000-05:00

Excellent.

Haiku

2011-11-08T07:54:00.000-05:00

The ten million stars
just poets and madmen see,
I want to see them.

For Today, Sunday: America

2011-11-06T10:00:00.000-05:00

The beloved Tigres del Norte with a rap from Calle 13. Perfect to get it shaking today. Rock out!

La Santa Cecilia Rocks!

2011-11-05T22:40:00.000-04:00

This is from LA. Hard to believe? Well, it's got everything. Accordion. Cumbia. Salsa. Jazz. Scat. Insane percussion. This rocks. I give it a 9 for the beat. And, guess what, in the opinion of your most humble Bloguero, this should win a Latin Grammy. You heard it here first. Your Bloguero loves this band. He cannot wait for them to play NYC or Boston or someplace where your Bloguero can bask in this.

This Week In The Dream Antilles

2011-11-03T22:33:00.000-04:00

Your Bloguero is embarrassed. He was going to tell you that the dog ate his homework, so there was no “This Week” this week. He even discussed it with the dog. Would she be willing to take the blame for this week’s soon to be nonexistent post? No, she would not. Speaking as a 10-year old, experienced Golden Retriever owned by someone who claims to be a writer, the dog says only this: “Give cookies. And, by the way, suck it up, hot shot. You’re the one who’s supposed to be the writer. Not me. Stop complaining. Just hammer it out.” That is cold. Very cold. But good advice. And to think that your Bloguero thought the dog was going to help. And provide an excuse. Alack. What a disappointment. Your Bloguero also thought there was some drug he could ingest that would get him to write the post, but alack and alack, he confesses he can’t find it.

Your Bloguero’s desperation runneth over. Every Friday. Without fail, your Bloguero has committed to post on four group blogs and his own blog. Like clock work. No matter what. How, your Bloguero wonders, can he explain that this week there just is no “This Week.” It’s just not there. It wasn’t written. It wasn’t posted. Poof. It’s gone. Probably, he can’t. Probably, you, dear reader, don’t want to hear the whining, excuses, lies, and assorted, inventive short fiction about your Bloguero’s lack of output and the claimed, creative “reasons” for it. Know what? Your Bloguero is not exactly captivated by inventing excuses either.

So perhaps a confession will suffice. This week your Bloguero was obsessed with something. And he didn’t do much writing because he was totally obsessed with this and he doesn’t write when he’s obsessing.

A bit of probably unnecessary background: your Bloguero has now reached a certain age. It’s the age at which the Government is supposed to provide Medicare. But. And this is a very big but, your Bloguero is so far from retiring that that “R” word is not a regular part of his regular internal discourse. No. So he’s not getting a gold watch. And he’s not moving to Arizona. Or Florida. And he’s not departing on his Spiritual Journey to Benares. Or even Benares on the Atlantic (Palm Beach). Or buying an RV. Or a boat. Or a vineyard. Or a trophy wife. Or a set of golf clubs. Nope. Nada. None of the above. Not one of them. Your Bloguero has other concerns, concerns that are more important to him. Specifically, your Bloguero wants to know what he has to do so that he will be referred to by others as “Don David” or “Don davidseth” or “Don Bloguero.”

Maybe that’s not a big deal to you, especially if you live in one of the many Gringo parts of the world where honorifics and polite address are utterly irrelevant and where disrespect is the order of the day. But let your Bloguero assure you, this is a big deal to your Bloguero. A very big deal. One he has relentlessly been obsessing about for a week. One that has become a consummate distraction to him.

Look. Being called “Don [insert first name]” is a very big deal to your Bloguero:

Although originally a title reserved for royalty, select nobles, and church hierarchs, it is now often used as a mark of esteem for a person of personal, social or official distinction, such as a community leader of long standing, a person of significant wealth, or a noble, but may also be used ironically. As a style, rather than a title or rank, it is used with, and not instead of, a person's name….

Today in Mexican-American communities, the Don or Doña is used in honorific form when addressing a senior citizen.

source

Right. It’s an honorific. For people of esteem. For senior citizens. Your Bloguero consulted with his usual, expert cultural consultants about this, and they each told him uniformly that he was old enough, yes, that he didn’t need to have many grandchildren to merit the title, yes, and because he was a nice guy and held in esteem generally, he could properly be called “Don Bloguero.” Right. Good enough.

But why then, your Bloguero wants to understand, is he NOT called “Don” anything? Ever. It has never ever happened. Surely, it is not your Bloguero’s obligation to tell other people that he has now assumed the rank of Don by virtue of his age and being an esteemed and great person, so, therefore they should now begin to address him as such. No. It is not your Bloguero’s function to demand this title. Instead, what is required, your Bloguero thinks, is for the larger community spontaneously, without prompting, without coaching or wheedling or paying of mordidas, to confer the title, to begin to call him Don. All on its own. Spontaneously. Without hinting or demands from your Bloguero.

You can, your Bloguero is sure, anticipate the problem here. That is what your Bloguero has been obsessing about. Can’t your Bloguero pick up this title? And if he can’t, what exactly has your Bloguero done so that he does not merit being called “Don Bloguero?” And what, pray tell, does your Bloguero have to do to be referred to by his important honorific. It is important to your Bloguero to be referred to by this title. Maybe it's his vanity. Maybe he's finally bugged out completely. Maybe. But he wants to be known as "Don Bloguero", and he won't tell anyone that's what he wants.

If you know the answer to this quandry, please write it on a $500 peso bill and mail it to your Bloguero immediately.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now and for several of the past weeks, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted in the past week at The Dream Antilles. For that you have to visit The Dream Antilles.

Tuesday's Election In Columbia County

2011-11-03T15:00:00.000-04:00

Disclaimer: The author has not endorsed and will not endorse any candidate for any position in the November, 2011 election. This essay is directed entirely at steps voters may wish to take to cast intelligent, responsible votes in November's DA and judicial contests. This essay is updated from an April, 2011 essay on the same topic.

"Every nation that has ended in tyranny has come to that end by way of good order. It certainly does not follow from this that peoples should scorn public peace, but neither should they be satisfied with that and nothing more. A nation that asks nothing of government but the maintenance of order is already a slave in the depths of its heart; it is a slave of its well-being, ready for the man who will put it in chains."
— Alexis de Tocqueville

Good order. Which brings me ever so briefly to Tuesday's election in Columbia County, New York. This is an off-off year election. There are no national or statewide races. There are only four county-wide races. There are no coat tails. And, to nobody’s surprise, there may be very little voter interest. The two most important countywide races are for County Judge and for District Attorney. The others are for coroner and treasurer. In other words, the race, if it’s about anything other than personality and party political power, which is doubtful, is about good order. It remains to be seen whether it is about more than that.

Let’s face it, the electorate doesn’t really know much about either job. If the voter’s house hasn’t been burglarized, or s/he hasn’t been arrested for DWI, or her kids aren’t hauled in for smoking pot, the voter has no direct experience of what the District Attorney does and does not do. And since most people want nothing at all to do with being victims of crimes, somebody who is aggressively against crime— isn’t everybody?— seems to be a good enough candidate to maintain good order. There’s more, but if the campaigns have illuminated these additional points I may have missed it.

The County Court job is far more opaque. There are very few people who know what goes on in Columbia County’s County Court. Most of them are participants. Virtually nobody shows up at the County Courthouse just to watch and find out what is going on, to observe the process, and how it is carried out. The stories in the newspaper don’t help educate about this. They discuss the outcomes of criminal cases, which are a relatively small part of the Court’s business, and they don’t talk about Family Court. Ever. That’s odd, because the overwhelming majority of the County Court’s business is Family Court. An unscientific estimate: 2/3’s or more of the Court’s business is Family Court.

The odds are that most voters know absolutely nothing about Family Court. The odds are that they have never been there, know no one who has been there, have no friends who have been there, and might not even know what is supposed to go on there. That’s because although Family Court is the county’s busiest Court, most of the litigants there are not “frequent voters.”

Who are the litigants in Family Court? They are almost entirely the County’s poorest residents on one side and the Department of Social Services on the other. Or there are cases between the poorest residents on both sides. It is extremely unusual for wealthy and middle class litigants to end up in Family Court. Why is that? Because they and their lawyers do everything humanly possible to avoid it. At all cost. And because “good order” means different things in different places, the Department of Social Services tends to ignore the questionable parenting of Columbia County’s most comfortable citizens.

If you’re solidly middle class and you are having a bad day and you had too much to drink before dinner and you throw a plate of spaghetti on the floor and curse and yell and scream and have a meltdown with your children present, the chances that you will ever be charged by DSS with neglect or abuse in Family Court are extremely remote. Nobody will call the cops or Child Protective Services. More likely, you’ll do a mandatory 8-count in a neutral corner, walk around the block, apologize profusely, and try again the next day to do better. In other words, nothing will happen to you. Commit this same conduct when you are poor, and it is far more likely that the event will be reported to some agency: 911, the cops, DSS, Social Services. The report of the event will be your engraved invitation to a Family Court experience that may last years.

In Family Court it is likely that your every facet will be investigated. These investigations are legion. You will eventually be told to participate in “services.” Parenting classes, anger management, mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment. The list is as extensive as its results are undocumented. And you may end up under the supervision of DSS and the Family Court for years, if not for all eternity, and you may end up losing your children to Foster Care or have your parental rights terminated if you don’t comply. In other words, this is serious business for you and your family. If you are poor, all of this is about good order, though it is more often couched in terms of protecting children from bad parenting.

Tuesday's election is about many things, but chief among them is who will be the Family Court judge who will impose good order on the County’s poorest families. And how, one wonders, do political leaders who themselves have never been to Family Court and don’t know the first thing about it, decide whether someone is or is not a good candidate for this important and powerful position? Short answer: they have no real clue about the job, so they decide this the same way they decide other questions. They ask the circular question: who will be a good candidate, meaning who can get votes. Nothing else really matters to them.

This means that the voter cannot really rely on the wisdom of the nominations. They might be good; they might not. Nor can the voter rely on the campaigns. Judicial campaigns have rules that prevent the most basic confrontations between candidates on issues. The campaigns are designed to promote clichés about efficiency and justice and fairness and respect.

There is a better idea for voters. An idea better than blindly accepting a candidate because he or she is on your favorite political party's line. It’s about education. Before casting a ballot for County Court Judge in November, the voter would be well advised to take just a couple of hours off, sit in the gallery and watch Family Court churn out its cases some afternoon. Observe the judges (none are running for re-election in November), observe the litigants, listen to the lawyers. See for yourself what’s at stake in these horrendous cases. Talk to litigants in the hall about their experiences. Talk to the lawyers too. Once you’ve seen this you’ll be far more equipped to decide which candidate is best suited to the position.

Is it too late for that now? Probably. The next best idea: talk to people who are engaged in the process: lawyers, social workers, litigants, those who provide services. Ask them about their experiences.

Without that most minimal investigation, your vote is just buying a pig in a poke. And as deTocqueville argued, shouldn’t voters really be asking for more than just good order? Shouldn’t voters be asking for understanding, wisdom, compassion, restraint, and intelligence? In fact, shouldn’t voters be asking that the candidates have human qualities that bend toward justice? And as important, shouldn't voters conduct their own investigations so that they are trying actually to determine which candidate best fulfills the requirements of this very difficult job?

Well, Yes

2011-11-02T08:36:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately, your Bloguero has other obligations that cannot be shifted to another day. But that doesn't mean we're not in solidarity. Yes, let's occupy everything.

A Graveyard Smash. Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T16:23:00.000-04:00

Piri Thomas,RIP

2011-10-30T19:48:00.000-04:00

The New York Times on October 19, 2011, had the sad news:

Piri Thomas, the writer and poet whose 1967 memoir, “Down These Mean Streets,” chronicled his tough childhood in Spanish Harlem and the outlaw years that followed and became a classic portrait of ghetto life, died on Monday at his home in El Cerrito, Calif. He was 83...

The memoir, a best seller and eventually a staple on high school and college reading lists, appeared as Americans seemed to be awakening to the rough cultures that poverty and racism were breeding in cities. A new literary genre had cropped up to explore those conditions, in books like “Manchild in the Promised Land,” by Claude Brown, and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.”

“Down These Mean Streets” joined that list. The memoir, Mr. Thomas wrote on his Web site, had “exploded out of my guts in an outpouring of long suppressed hurts and angers that had boiled over into an ice-cold rage.”

The novelist Daniel Stern, reviewing the book in The New York Times, called it “another stanza in the passionate poem of color and color-hatred being written today.”

Denise Oliver Velez has written a lovely remembrance of him.

He will be sorely missed.

This Week In The Dream Antilles

2011-10-28T15:50:00.002-04:00

Ebbets Field, Brooklyn

These days your Bloguero isn’t much of a baseball fan. His current team of choice, the Mets, flamed out early in the season. They were so bad that your Bloguero pronounced their season over on April 21, 2011. After that, your Bloguero treated the Mets with the revulsion he usually reserves for serious hangovers and the less benign forms of dentistry. Something to be given a very wide berth. Something to be avoided at all cost. But tonight is the climactic Seventh Game of the World Series. And last night’s Sixth Game, so the Trad Media inform, was a wonderful game. So maybe tonight’s game might be worth watching. Right.

It’s never that simple. There’s always the past to consider. And matters of the heart. When your Bloguero was small boy, he was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. He loved the Dodgers. He loved “dem Bums.” He particularly loved Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson, Carl Furillo, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges and Duke Snyder. And others. All the other baseball cards were meaningless; only the Dodgers counted. The Giants and Yankees were obviously teams of spoiled patricians; the Dodgers were the people’s choice. Hell, the Giants and Yankees were probably Republicans. Or worse. They certainly weren’t the lovable underdogs. How could any self respecting kid like teams that always won? Or pretended they did?

Yes, the Dodgers lost almost all of the important, big games back then. To the Yankees. To the Giants. It was a tradition. But that didn’t matter. The Dodgers were great players, and they were a great team. And there was always next year. Your Bloguero loved that they might lose, but that they tried hard not to. And he knew they were trying hard. What else was there, other than to show up and try hard? Your Bloguero liked the innocence and simplicity of that.

One morning your Bloguero awoke and learned that his beloved Dodgers had decided to abandon him. They announced they were pulling up roots in Brooklyn and heading to Los Angeles for the next season. Just like that. Poof. Here at Ebbets Field today, gone to LA tomorrow. Loved today, leaving behind your Bloguero, heart broken and abandoned tomorrow. And why? There was no reason your Bloguero’s 10-year old brain could understand. Ten year olds in love with a team don’t care about finances. Or revenues. Or anything else. They care about the game. They care about balls and strikes. Your Bloguero was stunned. And hurt. And perplexed. Asked your Broguero to any who would listen, to any who might be able to explain it to him, “You mean that the team I love is leaving me and going to the West Coast, to California for reasons I don’t understand?” Your Bloguero could not forgive that Sandy Koufax, the greatest pitcher ever, your Bloguero’s favorite pitcher, would not be throwing in Brooklyn but in LA. And that the home games would begin because of time zones at 10 pm in New York, past his bed time. He'd never see his first love again. There was no justice in that. At all.

So it’s the Seventh Game of the World Series tonight. And it might be interesting baseball to watch. But it’s also irritating the small, old scar your Bloguero has on his heart, the one that marks where the Dodgers were yanked away from him half a century ago. And your Bloguero wonders whether like him, all of the men of a certain age who used to be Brooklyn Dodger fans when they were kids, have the same small scar that marks the very first betrayal of their most avid love. And whether the World Series makes it ache.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted in the past week at The Dream Antilles. For that you have to visit The Dream Antilles.

So, por favor, go away already, ok?

2011-10-27T20:02:00.000-04:00

Rina is outstaying her reservation here. Our friends at NOAA give us this map:

What it says is that TS Rina is hitting the coast of Quintana Roo now, and that when it gets done with this excruciating inundation of rain and wind, it's going to circle around, clockwise, and head back to Belize. It's not going to the US. It's not going out to sea. It's hanging around. Are you kidding me? Can't this thing just go somewhere else? Somewhere else far away? Out to the Atlantic?

I guess not. Latest report from Bahia Soliman: crappy weather, not much happening. Storm surge not too high. Winds not to crazy. Little or no damage (cross fingers). Maybe the storm will be gone enough by tomorrow mid day that there's just stirred up Bay, cloudy ski, and dripping. One can hope.

Well, It Could Be A Lot Worse

2011-10-26T21:32:00.000-04:00

The latest from Weather Uunderground isn't great. It's not even good. But it is a whole lot better than the prognostico that Rina would arrive in Tulum as a Category 3 storm moving very slowly (3 mph).

I find myself saying things like, "Well, we've weatherred tropical storms before, many of them, so this is a little more wind than that, but this shouldn't be a really big problem." Then I shudder. I touch wood, I say "jinx," I say, "Kinahurrah." If I knew the Mayan expression to avert the evil I (I don't), I'd say it too.

By this time tomrrow the storm should be past Bahia Soliman and Nah Yaxche. Let's hope that everyone in the Mayan Riviera is safe and secure, that the storm is gentle, and that all are well in its wake.

Again, A Storm

2011-10-25T09:23:00.000-04:00

Here's a picture that is worth a few thousand words.

I left Nah Yaxche in Bahia Soliman on Monday for the usual anchovy inspired flight, first to Chicago, and then to Albany. It took all day. I couldn't buy the upgrade where they treat you like a human and not a fish in a can. No problem. I'm used to it.

While I was in the air, what I thought would be a minor Tropical Storm got upgraded to Hurricane Rina, and it looks like it's aiming for Bahia Soliman and the rest of the Mayan Riviera. Cozumel, Playa del Carmen, Tulum, Puerto Morelos. It is predicted to arrive Thursday or so.

This is what happens in the Caribe. Frequently. It is nothing new. Out of nowhere, a big storm. A massive storm surge. Lots of sand in the front door. It will rain a great deal. And gail winds will blow. Hard. Then, after a while, depending on how fast it is moving, it will move on. After it's left, the sky will be beautifully blue, the sun will shine, and the sea will again become calm. It will be as if nothing happened.

Of course, everyone should lock everything up and tie everything down, and then leave the Bay and go inland. Why? Because during and after the storm, the access road will no doubt (again) be under water. And there will be no electricity or phone or cell service. And it will be hard to find something to eat. Especially if it needed to be refrigerated. And nobody wants to be around if the trees break and fall.

This is also a serious test of architecture and design. Will Nah Yaxche weather the storm well? Will newer the houses with their height and their glass doors and windows? I hope they all do. I suspect that the low houses without the glass are a better choice. We will see.

This Week In The Dream Antilles

2011-10-21T09:07:00.000-04:00

This morning's sunrise in Bahia Soliman, Tulum, Mexico

Your Bloguero was awakened shortly before dawn this morning by the persistent dinging of his Blackberry. About 24 dings in rapid succession indicating the receipt of emails. Your Bloguero imagined that he had somehow, despite his best efforts to the contrary, achieved minor celebrity status. He was not sure how that could be, or what he could have done, but what else could have him receive 24 emails one after the other? Today, after all, is Friday. Friday is auspicious, your Bloguero thought. It’s a great day to open the floodgates of fame and adulation. Why not? No such luck. Opening one eye, your Bloguero discovered to his annoyance that the 24 messages were emails from his automated friends at Yahoo telling your Bloguero that he had sent email to a bad address, and that the email had been rejected by the recipient’s ISP. Your Bloguero opened his other eye. There was obviously a problem. Your Bloguero had not sent any emails to anybody on that account. So, your Bloguero’s razor sharp wit figured, somebody else had sent them. How very disappointing. It wasn’t fame that was dinging so insistently. It wasn’t adulation, praise, recognition. It wasn’t anything good. No. It was hackage. Plain and simple.

And who, your Bloguero wondered, might have decided to hack this account? This was the account associated with your Bloguero’s postings on various group blogs. Had your Bloguero so enraged someone with something he had recently written that he provoked such a hack? Your Bloguero could only hope. Was this pay back of some kind? Your Bloguero should be so lucky. Who would have done that? What followed were the kind of pre-coffee conspiracy theories reserved for such abrupt, early wakings. In two words, incipient paranoia. But alas. Even this was too puffed up, too egocentric, too self important. Your Bloguero wasn’t being treated to well deserved, well earned attack. No. Nothing that good. Nothing that heroic. The email had a link in it. It was commercial spam from Romania for erection enhancement. If you will pardon the pun, how very deflating. How contracting. What a lame way to start Friday: changing the password so it won’t happen again.

The next thing will doubtless be responding to the numerous emails – your Bloguero received one while writing this -- telling him he has been hacked. And telling the recipients, that yes, your Bloguero knows and he’s changed his password and he regrets any inconvenience.

How disappointing. From web hero to complete sucker in a nanosecond.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted in the past week at The Dream Antilles. For that you have to visit The Dream Antilles.

The Calmest Of Seas

2011-10-19T19:01:00.000-04:00

October in the Riviera Maya is a risk. Six years ago today Hurricane Wilma arrived. That category 5 storm destroyed everything and killed people. And then there’s today: the calmest of seas, a bay like a mirror, the softest of breezes, and a slightly overcast sky. In other words, a day of beauty. And sighs. And maybe naps.

There are virtually no tourists here now. This really is the off, off season, the time for maintenance. The palaperos, workers who for generations have repaired and constructed palapas, palm thatch roofs, were working next door. You can hear their chainsaw and the hammering, but when the stop, there is silence. And lovely bird song.

It’s so quiet and calm that small herons, usually skittish, have been fishing at the shore. And the needlefish, usually driven away by swimmers, are gliding in the shallows. They are almost invisible when they are still and are over turtle grass. And of course, my favorite bird, the sociable flycatcher, has been hanging out with me all day and offering me literary advise.

What a delight it is to be here.

Hurricane Wilma's Sixth Anniversary

2011-10-18T19:09:00.000-04:00

In 2005 Hurricane Wilma, a category 5 storm, arrived in Bahia Soliman, just north of Tulum in Quintana Roo, Mexico. It would later destroy much of Cancun and move on to the United States. It was a slow moving storm, and it hammered the Riviera Maya for two days. Tulum was without electricity for a long time, roads were impassable, people were stranded. Roofs were gone; windows were vaporized; sand was everywhere; trees and power poles fell. Many were injured and some 8 people died here. That was six years ago on October 19 and 20.

In the small community of Bahia Soliman everyone fled for the interior, for Coba, Valladolid, Merida, Chichen Itza, for points west. Anywhere that was at least 100 miles from the Caribe. While everyone was gone, the storm raged. And destroyed. Houses filled with sea water and sand. In some there was 4 feet of sand in the living room. Swimming pools were filled. With sand. Roofs were ripped off. Windows broken. Trees snapped. The mangrove flooded the road, making travel impossible. Electricity vanished. Cell service was out. Telephone lines were down. The normally peaceful Caribe became outraged and extremely agitated. Tulum was a complete mess. And unreachable from the outside.

The Caribe became so turbulent that it deposited this smuggler’s ship on the beach about 10 feet above the usual water level in Bahia Solima. It’s been sitting there on the beach ever since. This is a photo of its front, where its name should be.

So, what is the name of this vessel? And to whom did it belong? And where did it come from? And what was it doing before the storm hit? And what happened to its crew? Nobody seems to know. Nobody has tried to claim it. Nobody has tried to move it. And the places in it where its cargo might be stored were empty when it arrived.

It’s a phantom ship. One with no name. And no registry. And no crew. And no apparent owner. And no destination.

And now it’s a Monument to an enormous, killer storm. And this is its Sixth Anniversary.

The Caribe

2011-10-16T10:42:00.001-04:00

The Caribe is churned up. There is a gigantic, hovering low, now called Invest 95, roosting over the Yucatan. Rain. Wind. Churned up sea. Everything dripping. In Bahia Soliman it just looks like this:

On Weather Underground it is much more dramatic and looks like this:

‘Tis the season. The mangrove, the lush plants, the cocos, the selva all need this inundation. It is what makes Tulum so green, the plants so dense, the air so clean. And your Bloguero? Reading, writing, napping, relaxing. Yes, your Bloguero loves the sun. And yes, it hasn’t really shone since Friday morning. But there is something luxurious, wonderful, exquisite about napping while the tropical rain falls on the roof and the cocos clack their leaves.

Calderon's Alternate Reality

2011-10-15T15:15:00.000-04:00

Maybe I have finally entered an alternate reality.

As I write this, I am in lovely Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico, and it is raining. Hard. After all, it’s October and the Caribe is stirred up. The rain is exquisitely beautiful. The sea is rippling with pockmarks. And the cocos are swaying and dripping. The sky is gray and white cotton. The wind shakes the trees and agitates Bahia Soliman. Everything is wet and the air is filled with mist. It is a day made for napping and reading. And thinking.

Where I am is paradise. No doubt about it. And it is far, far away from the shooting war between the Mexican government and the drug cartels. That is happening in other areas: the border states, the west coast, the capital. Where I am is far from that immense national tragedy. Regardless, it remains a topic of enormous concern. And Javier Sicilia remains a personal hero.

So it was with great interest that this morning the New York Times reported on its Front Page an interview with Mexican President Felipe Calderon about the unsuccessful drug war he has run for five years and has left 40,000 people dead. Calderon, whose term is up next year, apparently seeks to justify and perpetuate his shooting war on the cartels:

He insists that the country will eventually become more secure, although about 40,000 people have been killed since he declared his war against organized crime. He began waging it shortly after taking office in 2006 as violence climbed, and he has continued pressing his offensive against drug organizations as they have splintered and descended into bloody infighting over territory and criminal rackets.

But in a wide-ranging interview, he could not say that his approach had made Mexico safer….

The inability to control the violence, with fresh horrors nearly every week, has rattled even some admirers in the United States Congress, who have begun to question publicly whether Mr. Calderón’s strategy — supported by the $1.4 billion in anticrime aid the United States is providing through the multiyear Merida Initiative — is making progress….

Still, coming close to self-criticism for someone who has typically blamed the United States or Mexican lawmakers for what goes wrong, Mr. Calderón said he would have shored up state and local police forces that were now overwhelmed as well as hobbled by inexperience, lack of training, incompetence and corruption.

And so it is in the fifteenth paragraph of the article that the “c” word first appears. Corruption. And even there it is the fourth reason given why police forces are “overwhelmed” and “hobbled.” Does that strike anyone except me as exceedingly odd? Am I in some alternate reality?

Maybe this omission makes sense if you are in the United States and don’t know anything about life south of the Rio Grande. Maybe it makes sense if you know no Mexican history. Maybe it makes sense if you think that everywhere in the world is exactly the same: Burger King, Wal-mart, Coca Cola, malls, neighborhood policing. Maybe it makes sense if you think that the state is always above reproach. Maybe it makes sense if you haven’t read anything about Mexico.

I’m not suggesting reading non-fiction to get the feel of this, although Eduardo Galeano’s non-fiction discussions of Latin America are extremely important. The real truth (is there any other kind?), I think, is in the fiction. And for the sake of brevity, I offer for your consideration two wonderful works that I think should inform discussions of the drug war in Mexico. Evidently, neither informed the Times’s credulous discussions with Sr. Calderon.

First is Paco Ignacio Taibo II’s “No Happy Ending” (“No habra final feliz”), a 1981 detective novel. Hector Belascoaran Shayne, an independent detective in Mexico City, confronts a series of murders. There will be no spoiler here. What you have to watch for is how the suppression of demonstrations by the central government in 1971 figures in the tale. And the role of the police. Enough said. It’s a remarkable book, a critique of Mexico by someone who loves it, masquerading as a detective story.

Next is Martin Solares’s 2006 novel “The Black Minutes” (“Los minutos negros”). Someone is murdered, and the question, of course, is why. And by whom. Is this really a police procedural? Probably not, though it sure looks like one in the beginning. There will be no spoiler here. Yet again, the issue is how someone escapes the consequences of a series of serious, brutal crimes for decades and what the role of the police, of the state might be in all of that. No mas. This is a literary masterpiece dressed up as a detective story. If you don’t read anything else this year, please read this wonderful book.

Both books are remarkable works of art. And they could actually change the way people in the US perceive the war on drugs without ever mentioning it. Both are available in English. And both do not directly discuss any of the particulars of 2011. They don’t have to. They provide the tablecloth on which to spread out the present war as if it were a picnic.

And then there’s also this: la mordida (literally, “the bite”), a bribe, is a fact of life here. An ugly one, but one nonetheless. It’s not really unusual for a police officer to stop a car for speeding or running a red light and to say that the matter can be settled right there at the roadside, without a trip to court, for $US50 of $US100. No receipt will be given. And everyone knows that if you only appear to have 200 pesos (slightly less than $US20) that will probably work as well. This is a small thing. It’s no big deal. It’s customary. From the motorist’s point of view it’s better than going to Municipal Court or sending in a check. But it raises important questions.

If a speeding ticket is the common cold of crime, and it produces bribery and pervasive official misconduct, what, one wonders, does the trafficking of tons and tons and tons of cocaine produce? Does it produce so little corruption that the idea can be overlooked until the fifteenth paragraph of a story about the war on drugs? You have to be kidding to do that. Really.

In whose interest would such an oversight be? You don’t have to speculate deeply about this. You just have to acknowledge the multitude of possibilities this odd placement might indicate and what that says about the reality in which I find myself.

The Week In The Dream Antilles

2011-10-14T16:47:00.000-04:00

When I arrived in late afternoon, La Bahia was asleep. I tiptoed up to her. She was only partially covered by the white and grey cotton blanket, frequently used, often washed and very soft. I could see her bare back as it rose and fell with her breath. I watched her sleep. I listened to her breathing. I did not wake her.

As I think about this and try to write it down, I know that this is what love feels like when it is raining.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted in the past week at The Dream Antilles.

On The Road Again

2011-10-11T18:11:00.000-04:00

You would think that by now your humble Bloguero would be able to move himself from autumnal Upstate New York to warm Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico effortlessly. That he has had enough practice to accomplish this feat. That he would efficiently wrap up the remaining work and household chores, pack a tiny bag (bathing suit, t-shirt, toothbrush), assure that the house and the pets were well taken care of, reach his escape velocity, and propel himself across the Caribe in one giant leap. But, alas, no. Gravity is an unforgiving master, and overcoming inertia requires energy. Leaving isn't quite the task of Sisyphus, but it remains for your Bloguero a real one.

The next post will in all likelihood be from Nah Yaxche in Bahia Soliman, just north of Tulum in Quintana Roo, Mexico. What remains is completing the ever increasing number of chores and getting on an airplane.

Your Bloguero admits that he has tendencies toward procrastination, and he knows that there are more than 24 hours until he must pass through those scanners. Plenty of time, he says. Plenty of time. And now, if only your Bloguero could convince himself.

Foto by Sr. Bill Koller, 10/12/11

This Week In The Dream Antilles: Not Columbus Edition

2011-10-07T08:35:00.000-04:00

Once again, your Bloguero notes that it is Columbus Day Weekend. Your Bloguero often takes ten days off at this time. Why? Funny you should ask. Your Bloguero has short answers: it's his Birthday. Your Bloguero was born exactly 399 years after the christening of Cervantes in 1547. Also, it's a weekend he takes off to help facilitate a Shamanic Men's Retreat. This year will be the second wonderful year of that gathering. And finally, your Bloguero cannot abide the celebration of Columbus Day, which he sees as the beginning of the subjugation of this hemisphere. The last is best expressed in this 2008 post:

The Church In Baracoa, Cuba

Across the Caribbean from desde Desdemona is Baracoa, a small town inaccessible by land from before 1500 (when Columbus first landed there in 1492) until the 1960's. In 1512 Baracoa was the first Spanish settlement in Cuba. It's like Macondo. The lush forest of the Sierra Maestre and El Yunque, the tallest peak in Cuba, tower over the town. The town is nestled against the warm ocean. North of town is Maguana, a beautiful, white beach, shared by tourists and occasional foraging pigs.

Join me in Baracoa. We can celebrate Not Columbus Day together.

In the church in Baracoa is a part of one of the original crosses that Columbus planted in Cuba when he first landed there. It's not under guard. To see it, you knock on the back door of the church. Nobody there? Go across the street, as Bardo did, to find someone in the Parochio to let you in. Bardo goes and asks to see El Cruz. The woman behind a counter says ok, let us find the key. She takes Bardo across the street, opens the back door, enters the silent, dark church, and in the nave there it is, in a glass case with no security at all, El Cruz de la Parra . The cross's 500 year old wood (it's been carbon dated) is held up by a metal holder (which is from much later on).

In many ways this is the most important relic, and maybe the most important marker in the history of the Western Hemisphere. It represents the beginning, the zero mile marker on the highway from then to now. If Columbus, instead of planting a cross and taking on the conquest and/or conversion of indigenous people, had said, "This place is really great so let's hang out here and enjoy it with the locals," the last 500 years would have been significantly, inconceivably different. And maybe, Bardo reminds us, a whole lot better. Bardo cannot believe what he's looking at. He makes a small donation to the church, and wanders off into the heat of the day. The woman closes up the church. Nobody else is waiting to see the cross.

If the Cruz were in New York or Madrid, it would have laser Mission Impossible security, armed guards, and lots of publicity around it. Lines of buses of tourists. Souvenir shops. Air conditioning. T-shirt sales. But there's none of that in Baracoa. Just the cross and the empty church in the middle of Baracoa.

Bardo buys a bottle of Habana Club rum ($3.25), sits on the roof of the Casa Particular where he's staying, and wonders if Macondo could be any more beautiful. He decides Baracoa is perfect and beautiful. He loves the way the mountainous jungle cascades to the town at the edge of the ocean. Columbus, he thinks, was right about one thing: Baracoa is one of the most beautiful places Bardo has ever seen. About everything else, he decides, he's with Alejo Carpentier, Columbus was dead wrong.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted in the past week at The Dream Antilles. Your Bloguero regrets that this week because two of his recent posts, one from this week and one from last week, are among the best he has written. Regardless, please leave a comment so that your Bloguero will know that you stopped by. Or click the “Encouragement Jar” if there is one. Your Bloguero likes to know you've visited.