El Gringoqueño

All a man needs out of life is a place to sit ‘n’ spit in the fire.

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Mandela Pancakes

July 16, 2009 /

When I finished reading Nelson Mandela’s memoir, there were many things that stuck with me.  One detail in particular, rattling around in the back of my mind, was the Xhosa tradition of leaving milk in the sun to sour it.  Apparently this makes it easier to digest for those that have mild lactose intolerance and is common practice for the Xhosa people.

Mandela related a specific incident involving this spoiled milk while on the run from authorities.  He was staying in a safe house in a white area, and without thinking, put some milk on a windowsill to sour.  A couple of laborers noticed it and remarked, “Why would a white man put milk in the windowsill?  We are the only ones that do that.”  Nelson was spooked by his near discovery and left for a new hiding place that very night.  Interesting, I thought, and yucky.  But, I mused, sour milk is absolutely perfect in baking, cakes and… pancakes.

“Yes, pancakes,” I said, “I resolve to make Mandela Pancakes.  I will call them Mandela Pancakes, and I will sing an African Folk song while I make them.  Nel-son  Man-del-a, Nel-son Man-del-a. ”

Yesterday, I zipped out on my bicycle to fetch a small carton of whole milk for the purpose of spoiling it.  I left it out the entire day in the hot Caribbean sun, the sides bulging as gases pressed on the waxy cardboard container.  I picked it up several times to check it, shaking it for good measure and when the night arrived,  I opened it and took a whiff.  It was there, yes it was, that faint sweet acrid smell of spoiled milk.  Aha!  Tomorrow, we shall have Mandela Pancakes, and they will be delicious.  “Nel-son Man-del-a, Nel-son Man-del-a,” I sang, and the kids laughed.  I then told the story of how he was almost caught because of his soured milk.

Who knew the things one can learn from a man on another continent?  And it is suggested to me that these things we learn, the serendipitous delights of interconnected knowledge, are made possible by diversity, by embracing the pluralism we find everywhere.  And the pancakes?  They were delicious.

Forgotten Warrior

July 14, 2009 /

“Mira, look,” the young man whispered, “It is Jose Maria. Quick quick, get out of my way, stupid, I do not want to look at him.” The young man pushed his compatriot ahead of him in a hurried jumble, spilling some of the roots he had gathered in his arms.

“Ya, look what you have made me do,” he said as he stopped to gather his food. The first man looked back with a quick smirk at his good fortune, and made his getaway.

Tiedra, in Castilla y León, was cold this time of year, nestled as it was between nothing on the plane and another great nothing for as far as the eye could see. The flat barren landscape seemed to tuck up into itself seeking a lower profile. Let the merciless wind find the taller structures to lash, it seemed to say. The land did not stand up. It had never stood up. The land cowered beneath the low stone structures, and the winds sweeping through sent the heat scuttling away over stone floors, skipping and whistling through cracks in the thresholds. Overlooking the pueblo, just a few hundred feet away out on a brown grassy little hill, higher than any other structure, stood a church.

The young man was happy to have avoided talking to Jose Maria. He found him disagreeable. Jose Maria traveled through town every morning and spent time, from sun up to mid day, on his knees in that little church with the wind that blew through it. The young man had been in that church many times for misa, but that was different.  The church was tolerable when they were huddled together with the people of the pueblo. He would always find a warm seat by a fat old woman.

He never saw the old man on Sundays, though. The old man must have been pious, one could only suppose. You would have to be to spend so much time on your knees. The young man could hardly stand more than five minutes on that hill in the winter, let alone hours on the hard stone floor. He shuddered, “Cold.” and crossed his arms, pulling his woolen cowl tighter.

“You bastard,” his friend called chuckling, “I almost had to talk to the viejito.” He punched his friend in the arm.

“Forget him. He is old and crazy and does not mean anything to me. He is probably a very bad man, or at least has done something terrible. He goes there for penance. Why else? He has no wife, no children, no sick family to pray for. That I can understand. Surely God would listen to such piety. But this one… no, I would not want to talk to him.”

“But then what? Why doesn’t he go to the priest for absolution? Why doesn’t he buy an indulgence? I have seen that he has some money. He is not a poor man. Wouldn’t it be better to rid himself of this ritual on his knees by paying some money?”

“Who knows such a thing? I do not. He probably just does not want to part with his money. He will wait out his death, perhaps.”

“When? When the bastard is one hundred years old? Would he even remember what he did? The old senile bastard.”

They both chuckled supposing a predicament whereby one would pay penance for sins but have forgotten them. Would not God, they supposed, have to absolve one by default? How could God hold you accountable for sins that you have forgotten. So many childhood sins were never confessed, but they were forgotten. To attempt to confess them now would surely have resulted in another sin, one of speaking falsehoods. Did God have a list? Would he make them guess?

Did the old man remember his sins? Maybe not. Maybe he was just an old miser, clinging to his treasure. He would not pay, but would wring atonement from his bent and withered knees. Had he not suffered enough, though? Surely it was enough, no?

And they arrived where they had begun. Obviously he had not suffered enough, so he must have done something truly terrible, horrible.

They could not forgive him for the thing they could not name.

“Bah, it is all the same to me.  I don’t want any of it on me.”

“Forget that old son of a bitch. No one even knows. I will bet even he doesn’t. Just forget it.”

And they continued on their way toward their homes, to feed their pigs, tend to their fowl, and check their stores. The winters were usually hard, but not terribly long, and come spring they would hunt again.

Change is Simple

July 8, 2009 /

This is a little short story I wrote today based on a prompt.  Alex Keegan runs a boot camp and writing group on Facebook (transplanted from the old Compuserve days), and I’ve been participating by writing at least 500 words a day.  I ran dry with my project, so I used one of his prompts to come up with this.  Read it through, and I’ll tell you what the line was in the comments.

The clinic was as clean and bright as
any. The little room met all the needs of the waiting folk, yet
didn’t encroach. What was it that they said in their literature, he
wondered? Ah, yeah, motherfucking feng shie shit or some goddamned
nonsense. The paint was bright, but not too bright, whites were more
like b­one, and the soft greens were of a child’s room. But there
were no children, Frank mused, not yet, anyway.

He sat down and grabbed a magazine from
the table and thumbed through it, waiting for his name to be called.
Frank was neither very young, nor very old, but his face was
strained, tired, and his jacket weighed down on his shoulders as he
slouched in the chair. He was tired all the time, no energy. He
was a rusty old engine before his time.

He thumbed through the glossy magazine
with the beautiful, impossibly thin brunette. “Ten Tips to get
Ready for Swimsuit Season!” the title screamed in sixteen point
Helvetica and below that, “lose 10 pounds in two weeks.” There
were beautiful people inside, airy girls, with legs splayed wide in a
loose jangle, knees twisted in, and bitting their lower lips. They
threw up their arms in others, kicking sand or water, laughing,
twisting, fixing on him. They didn’t have a care in the world. A
smooth fashionably disheveled young man flashed perfect white teeth
and flexed tan muscular arms. Those arms, that chest – they belonged
on another planet, the fuck. Maybe I’ll start working out. Maybe
I’ll finally be able to keep it up and make some progress.

Another page asked him if he felt
moody, if he might have some disorder. Ask your doctor, the page
implored. Another goddamned ad, he thought. There were more
advertisements than articles. Sometimes you couldn’t tell the
difference. Scratch that, it didn’t make a difference, they were the
same shit.

Pharmaceutical ads read like clinical
reports from the New England Journal of Medicine, always adding the
helpful “get a medical opinion.” As if that would make a
difference, he thought. Ask your fucking doctor. Motherfucker’s
probably in the back pocket of the salesgirl in the short skirt.
Give me what I want doc. I need some fucking drugs. Modern doctors
were goddamned drug pushers, that’s all – put us all on a
merry-go-round, an’ collect money on every spin.

Actual articles aways seemed to be
pushing something too. Feed the writer with your agenda, and then
write a “solid” article. Bah! Who are they kidding, The ads are
ads, and the articles are too. Guess everybody needs to make a buck,
though, and he shrugged and tossed the magazine back on the little
table. It opened up, some of its pages spilling over the edge,
dragging it, slithering to the ground in a heap. He sighed, knelt
down, and retrieved it, cursing to himself softly.

Maybe he just needed some drugs after
all. Maybe he just needed a drink. Weren’t the solutions all easy?
Isn’t that what they were selling, easy solutions. He was no
different, and he was here to get things fixed. Easy. He pondered
the notion of easy. Was easy uncomplicated or did it just mean with
little effort. Effort is something he was going to have to deal
with. It took effort, lots of it, so yes, he decided, it would not
be easy. It would just be uncomplicated. Not like now anyway.

“Mr. Koloski?” said a young woman
in a smart uniform, “They are ready for you.”

“But are you, hon?” he
joked.

“Oh, Mr. Koloski, you’re much too
young for me,” and she giggled. “Maybe in a few years, hmm?
Sign here, and proceed to room 9.” And she handed him a tablet with
a place to scan his thumb.

Frank shuffled down the hall, leaving
black scuff marks in the newly waxed tiles. He turned the knob to
room 9 and entered.

“Hello, Mr. Koloski,” the doctor
said, smiling, “Welcome, again. Let’s just get a few formalities
out of the way, shall we? Do you have further instructions before
we do the trace? As you know, legally, and practically, the rights
of your person will be terminated at the moment of the procedure.
All we will have to maintain continuity is your trace and this
document. Carefully consider any instructions you have for us, and
rest assured that they will be followed in the strictest confidence
and faithfulness.”

“If possible I would like to be born
C-section this time. My shrink told me that my difficult birth…
left me blocked.” He waved his hand in front of his face. “Time
before that, I didn’t get into a good school. Limited my career.
Yes, I have decided, I would like to have a less traumatic birth this
time. They tell me I’ll have it easier.”

My Choice – A Logical Fallacy

July 8, 2009 /

I’ve written about it before, and I thought that was all I could say on the topic, but leave it to recent events to tweak my logic receptors off the charts.  There are several logical fallacies on either side, granted, but the ones that irritate me the most are pro-choice.  

From an article in the Washington Post (online) on why this soon-to-be doctor would be performing abortions in her practice  (go ahead and read it, I’ll wait):

I was 14 years old when that clinic was bombed, killing a police officer and spraying Emily’s body full of hot nails and shrapnel. Back then, I lived in a small Alabama town, went to church every Sunday and was adamantly opposed to abortion…

"That’s horrible," I reply,  "Such a tragedy for that poor woman who was a victim of an abortion clinic bombing.  There are certainly some wackos out there.  I hope they rot in jail for their crimes.  But I have to ask, why does this make you think performing abortions is a good thing?  So some wacko bombed an abortion clinic, and you said to yourself, "I’m convinced, let’s do some abortions."  I ask for rationality’s sake, because I’m not following your argument."

I read the entire article.  Ms. Love seems to be a thoughtful person, a decent person.  I’m not knocking her intentions, nor her conscience.  I’m kickin’ it to her logic.  Here’s another gem:

One friend begged me to help her concoct a legitimate-sounding excuse — painful or irregular periods, say — for why she needed to be on birth control. No one could know the real reason: She was sexually active and didn’t want to get pregnant.

Her point, using the ever helpful friend scenario, was that people were kept ignorant by the bible thumping masses, that they didn’t know about their own biological reproductive systems, that they couldn’t get the pill or condoms.  First, I don’t think in this day and age, that these anecdotal stories should be the basis of public policy, but again I’d like to know what this has to do with abortion? 

And finally:

It wasn’t until I spent time in ultrasound rooms during a research job in graduate school that I began to see late-trimester abortions in a very different light. In one case, the patient’s baby had just been diagnosed with a lethal congenital anomaly. The high likelihood was that it wouldn’t survive after birth for more than a few minutes. As long as the baby remained in her mother’s womb, however, she would live. I asked the physician what this woman’s options were. The answer was, not many. She could choose to continue the pregnancy, but then she might be waiting for almost 20 more weeks to give birth to a baby that would never take more than a few breaths on its own. She was past the point where she could legally terminate the pregnancy in Alabama.

Instead of evaluating these issues on a case by case basis, she’d be more willing to say that now she favors late term abortions.  I’d wager that late term abortions are rare and heart wrenching in any scenario, but here we have another logical fallacy, or at least a conclusion being made with a very small data set, and it leaves out something very important.

The child.

The little baby was forgotten, malformed or not, wanted or not, imperfect or not.  That little baby was everything it was going to be at the moment of conception.  You hear that?  Conception.  It’s not magic, breath of God, type stuff.  It’s simple biology.

When my children were born (all four of them), they were locked in at the moment of conception.  Jaimito became Jaimito at the point.  Olaia became Olaia.  Javier, loud as he is, was Javier.  And little sweet Asier was nothing more and nothing less than Asier at the moment of conception.  What else could they have been?  Somebody show me how that little embryo could have turned out to be something other than what it was unless someone intervened? 

I have the benefit of hindsight, of course.  I didn’t know what my children would be like until they were born, but that doesn’t change their history.  Just because I was not privy to their uniqueness in utero, doesn’t mean they weren’t unique and special.  I can step their biological development back to that point, start it up again, and they would still be them.  Before conception?  They didn’t exist in a fixed format.  There is no beginning point.  Statistics and probability govern their futures before conception.  No one can say what would have happened if conception had occurred an instant before or an instant after.

No, it is at the moment of conception, that their being, their essence was fixed.  I can’t and won’t debate souls, or magic pixie dust, or legalities, because I find no value in proving the existence of a soul, nor am I a lawyer.  All I can say is what I know – that at the moment the sperm fertilized the egg, each of their little lives was on a irrevocable march through life and onward to natural death.

In our society, a society that cares about whales, stray dogs, and trees, I find it hard to reconcile the absolute rights of a woman with a basic right to live, to breathe.  If a gestating human is not a person, what is it?  At what point does it become something other than what it is?  Is it magic when it passes the birth canal?  If it is a person today, what was it yesterday? 

If a doctor’s first duty is to do no harm, how do we reconcile human rights with what a mother wants?

Nelson Mandela’s Secret Weapon

June 25, 2009 /

I just finished Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, and throughout I kept asking myself, how did he stay true?  How did he persevere?  By his own admission, there were others who were smarter, bolder, and wiser.  So many of the things that he wrote about himself sketched an ordinary man, but there had to be something extraordinary and I wanted to find it.  And there is was on page 615, his secret weapon.

"I never lost hope that this great transformation would occur.  Not only because of the great heroes I have already cited, but because of the courage of the ordinary men and women of my country.  I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there was mercy and generosity.  No one is born hating another person because of the color of their skin, or his background, or his religion.  People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.  Even in the grimmest times in prison, when my comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just for a second, but it was enough to reassure me and keep me going.  Man’s goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.

Nelson Mandela hated apartheid, but he never hated its agents.

Wouldn’t It Be Nice?

June 10, 2009 /

We were watching CNN this morning.  The morning show gave a brief introduction to Soledad O’Brien’s "Black in America" with a short report and a plug for the series. 

Jaimito asked me,"Daddy?  What means Black in America?"

"It’s kind of complicated, Jaimito, but let me try to explain."  So I ran through a basic primer of just what it meant to be black in America since the days of slavery and why it was still an issue.  Olaia helpfully pointed out that things had gotten better because Barack Obama was elected President.  "I agree," I said, "and I think it says a lot that the majority of America has gotten past color as a qualification, but that doesn’t mean prejudice doesn’t exist."

And that was that.  They asked, I tried to sum up years of legal and cultural discrimination over breakfast.   They seemed satisfied and a few minutes passed until Jaimito, who was obviously still pondering something, asked.

"Daddy," he began, "am I black?"

The Humpty Dance as Dinner Music

June 1, 2009 /

I’m a whiner.  Anybody who knows me, knows this to be true.  But I really prefer to keep my whining verbal, rather than fix it in written word, so it is only sometimes that it spills out here.  In any case, things have been kind of rough for us here for a while, for me personally and for the family.  I’ve been in a funk, lost my mojo, and been a mofo.  I could blame approaching forty, economic downturn, feeling like I’ve not accomplished what I’ve wanted to, stress, overworked, underpaid, blah blah blah.  It’s just not that interesting.  I’m sure we all have funks, no? 

So here’s the scoop: I just had a really nice dinner made possible by the following:

  1. My new super duper outdoor kitchen grill.  It’s an early Father’s day gift, a super awesome backyard propane grilling monster with rotisserie, external gas burner and 36,000 btus of gas grilling power.  Hear me roar.  I like to cook, and this makes me feel useful.
  2. Squash and churrasco cooked and grilled to perfection eaten on our patio that we tiled ourselves.  It was a beautiful clear night.  The wine was delicious, the lights added a cozy ambiance, and the dinner conversation with the niños was sparkling.  Javier smacked my shoulder every time he had something to say.  He’s boricua through and through, and it tickles his mommy so.
  3. Olaia’s iPod, loaded with my music because she knows I like it.  Such a sweet little girl.   Midway through dinner we jammed to the Digital Underground’s, Humpty Dance.  It was a riot.

It just doesn’t get any better than eating under the stars, laughing with your children, cracking each other up, and jamming to the Humpty Dance.

I Promise This Won’t Turn into a Tomato Blog

May 7, 2009 /

­­Laura said she hadn’t had a tom­ato that good since Italy.

­tomato_sliced_0061_sm

Doesn’t that look good?  It was.  I haven’t had a tomato that tasty since the ones we were forced to grow as kids.  I never would have known what I was missing.  Thanks, Mom and Dad.

Excited By My First Tomatoes

May 2, 2009 /

I finally got off my butt this year and planted a little vegetable garden.  I have always loved fresh tomatoes, and I find the quality of grocery store produce has declined so drastically that you’re basically paying for tasteless fibrous water.  Starting with Olaia’s science fair project on compost, we began our green journey to the perfect tomato.  The vegetable garden is about fifteen feet long by two and half feet wide or so and has been stocked with nearly three cubic feet of homemade soil from compost. 

Our compost is composed of yard waste (green grass and leaves), vegetable and fruit waste from the kitchen, coffee grounds, a bit of ash from barbecuing, some paper waste, and egg shells.  You should not use meat or protein as it is said to attract varmints.   Anyway, all that lead to the creation of this:

­my_first_tomatoes_2_0046_sm

Lovely, isn’t it?  Isn’t nature cool? 

I planted two varieties, roma and these called beefeaters.  Today, I was surprised to find that a third variety had sprouted from the composted seeds and was bearing a different type of fruit. I imagine that even though they are from tasteless grocery store tomato seeds, homegrown they will taste much better.

I can’t wait to eat it tomorrow on an egg sandwich with lettuce, fresh mayonnaise, and cheddar cheese on bakery bread.

And then I took this little picture for Olaia for a class project as we dined outside next to our garden in the cool night air.

Chee-bow-bow, the moon.

­night_time_0005_cropped_sm­

Gutenberg.org

April 21, 2009 /

I’ve been using and abusing Gutenberg.org a lot lately.  It’s a web site dedicated to public domain books, mostly in English but there is variety in other languages too including Beowulf in Old English.  You can basically find anything you want that was published before 1923.  They have ebook formats, pdfs, html documents, and a lot of audio books submitted by supporters.  All the classics are there.

I’ve been reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan and John Carter of Mars books to the kids at bed time.  I loved those books as a kid and now despite limited library space and an unwillingness to store any more books in this house, I can read the classics to my heart’s content.

So here’s the work flow:  Download a book at gutenberg.org, open it up in konqueror or firefox and when you come upon a strange archaic word pop it into your kdict public domain dictionary reader and peruse several different definitions and usage entries.  I’m simply amazed at how awesome the public domain is and how many volunteers have come together to make it all possible.  Consider donating to gutenberg.org.

I just noticed that the character of Tarzan went into the public domain in 1998.  Is it a coincidence that Disney’s movie was released in 1999?  Hmmm.

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