The Dream Antilles

Stomping On This Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 24 Feb 2018 23:13:00 +0000

OK, I'm offended. For many, many years the only way to put a photo on this blog was with photo bucket. You can see that they've cut off my "free" photo storage and posting. They've decided that they can do that and collect money from me to post pictures I've used for years. Welp. No thanks. You wanna do this prospectively have at it. You wanna mess up this blog retroactively, not ok with me.

End The Death Penalty

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 01 Jan 2018 17:34:00 +0000

Today is January 1, 2018. I haven't posted here in a long time, but today's New York Times Editorial inspired me. The Editorial calls for the abolition of the death penalty throughout the United States.

Here it is.

The arguments aren't new. I've been making many of them for more than 40 years. In fact, the Times has been making them for a long time as well.

It would be a wonderful event for the death penalty to end in 2018. I don't know that it will. It may die, as Justice Ginsberg has noted, less ceremoniously than I'd like. But I'll settle for that, too. I just want it to stop. How it ends doesn't matter to me. I doubt it will end in a Supreme Court decision, but my hope remains that it might.

You can help make this happen, each of you, in your own ways. Gifts to abolition organizations, writing, talking to friends, families, people who disagree with you. All of these can help. May 2018 bring an end to the barbarity of state killing. And may 2018 bring each of you health, joy, and abundant love.

Arkansas Executions This Evening

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 20:54:00 +0000

This evening Arkansas plans to kill two men by lethal injection. Jack Jones, Jr., convicted of rape and murder 22 years ago, is scheduled to die at 7 pm; Marcel Williams, convicted of murder 23 years ago, at 8:15 pm. Litigation concerning both men is pending; no stays have been issued. Governor Asa Hutchinson has repeatedly argued that it was proper for him to schedule a mass of executions before the end of April, because one of the drugs used to kill prisoners will expire then. The state’s inability to get fresh drugs, or find out of if out-of-date ones would work, resulted in the unseemly rush to execute prisoners who have been incarcerated for decades. The Courts have stopped some of the planned executions. But tonight’s might go ahead. Hutchinson also argues that somehow Arkansas owes it to the victims’ families to carry out these executions. It doesn’t. In fact, the decision to kill or not isn’t up to victims. If it were, states would allow honor killings and vigilantism. They don’t because punishment is a state, justice function. Medicalizing state killing with gurneys and medical apparatus doesn’t make it less barbaric. It just hides the violence. But state killing remains violent at its core. It remains unreliable, error prone, racist, and regionalized. It continues not to be a deterrent, but instead to represent the ugliness of vengeance. The suffering in all of this is horrible and ever expanding. The victims, the prisoners, their families, those who prosecuted and defended them, the police officers who arrested them, their jailers, other prisoners, the waves of suffering grow as time passes. There is no closure. Only suffering. May those facing execution be spared.May all beings be well and safe. May all be free from suffering.

noreply@blogger.com (david seth michaels) — Tue, 20 Dec 2016 00:28:00 +0000

Felices Fiestas! Queremos tomar esta tiempo para ofrecerle nuestros mejores deseos a usted y sus seres queridos. Esperamos que su hogar este lleno do 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.

The bird at the top is a Caribbean laughing gull. In Spanish its name is guanaguanare. This bird always appears when the fishermen are unloading their catch after a day of fishing. The bird hopes for a fish to be dropped from a basket as the boats are unloaded so it can whisk it away. Manuel Acero (you remember him from the novella "The Dream Antilles") has watched the guanaguanare for his whole life. Whenever he unloads fish, he saves a few to throw to the gulls. He wishes them and you a joyful Holiday Season and ease and prosperity in the New Year.

If A Blog Falls In The Woods

noreply@blogger.com (david seth michaels) — Wed, 04 May 2016 15:22:00 +0000

It's been over a year since I posted anything here. I haven't disappeared.

Instead, I've been posting on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Do I wish I were producing more writing here? Sometimes. But to be honest, not strongly enough actually to do the writing and post it.

Yes, I'm working on a new novel. It's coming in fits and starts and long intermissions. Maybe it will be finished during 2016. I hope it will.

I see all of this as a logical progression in my Internet activity. First it was mass emails. Then there was my death penalty listserv (Affirm_Life_Absolish_Death_Penalty at Yahoo groups). That dried up a long time ago. Then there was this blog. I haven't posted anything here since early 2015. Then there were the 600 or so hiakus I posted on Facebook and later on Twitter. And the many, many pictures of plants and landscapes (and never people) on Instagram and Facebook.

You can still find me if you want to on any of those platforms. David Seth Michaels on Facebook. @thedavidseth on Twitter, davidsethm on Instagram. Also, there are lots of pictures of Tulum and Bahia Soliman on Facebook pages for Nah Yaxche, Bahia Soliman and Soliman Bay.

I leave this blog here so that if I feel called to write on it, I can.

The Busted Brackets

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 22 Mar 2015 21:08:00 +0000

This year it was the pundits who led me astray. If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, lots of information is worse. Far worse. And so it was that Eastern Washington/Iowa State and their Cinderella spokesmodels led me astray. Once again, as two years ago, my brackets are pretty much busted.

That means it’s time to recall the story of Diane (not her real name). About five years ago members of her extended family encouraged her/bullied her to fill out a bracket and enter the family $100 pool. $5 per person. She probably felt this was just another attempt to filch money from her. She acknowledges that she doesn’t know anything about basketball (but has a loyalty to Illinois) and the pool wouldn’t be the first time she was played for a sucker. She ponied up the fin and set to work.

Her method was unusual. It’s Applied Kinesiology, in other words: use a pendulum to choose the winner of each game. This is very time consuming. She filled out the full bracket, but Diane never put it up on line. That was a level of commitment she didn’t quite summons. I was a part of her family pool also: I came in second.

After the tournament, noting that she didn’t actually post the bracket at ESPN, I asked her how she did. Said she, “Well, I got them all wrong.”

“You mean almost all of them, right?”

“It’s embarrassing. I got them all wrong, every single one.”

When I first heard this, I was astonished. I immediately thought that she must have asked the wrong question of the pendulum or didn’t know a yes from a no or maybe she just should have inverted her choices. She, of course, didn’t recognize that hers was an incredible achievement.

Mathematically, it is not as hard to get all of the choices on a bracket wrong as it is to get them right. That’s because after you lose the first 32 games, all of the following ones are also losses. You don’t need to worry about the second round or the Sweet Sixteen or the Final Four. All of your teams are on a bus home after Friday.

In comparison my brackets are clear, muddy mediocrity. The better of them (yes, I did 2 this year) now has 67.1 percent correct and is ranked 3,812,839. The other is far, far worse. My hope, the same as at all other times, is just to beat the President. He is hard to beat because he is very conservative (not just in basketball predictions) and does not get inveigled by the Georgia States, Iowa States and Eastern Washingtons of the world. He doesn’t like me automatically try to pick a 9 to beat an 8 or a 14 to overturn a 3. Unlike me, he’s not trying to bring home the long shot. So let me note that right now, the President has 56.2 percent correct and is ranked 5,065,809.

You're welcome to draw from this whatever conclusion you like.

Even Less?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 15:43:00 +0000

Your Bloguero notes that Andrew Sullivan has decided to quit blogging. He has two reasons:

The first is one I hope anyone can understand: although it has been the most rewarding experience in my writing career, I’ve now been blogging daily for fifteen years straight (well kinda straight). That’s long enough to do any single job. In some ways, it’s as simple as that. There comes a time when you have to move on to new things, shake your world up, or recognize before you crash that burn-out does happen.
The second is that I am saturated in digital life and I want to return to the actual world again. I’m a human being before I am a writer; and a writer before I am a blogger, and although it’s been a joy and a privilege to have helped pioneer a genuinely new form of writing, I yearn for other, older forms. I want to read again, slowly, carefully. I want to absorb a difficult book and walk around in my own thoughts with it for a while. I want to have an idea and let it slowly take shape, rather than be instantly blogged. I want to write long essays that can answer more deeply and subtly the many questions that the Dish years have presented to me. I want to write a book.

Sounds familiar. Your Bloguero has ruminated frequently on blog death. In fact, the demise of this blog. Would he just let the blog entries become further and further apart until one day there were no more? A fade out. Or would he write a farewell, a Good Bye Cruel World entry explaining himself and the end in detail? If only your Bloguero took himself and his output so seriously. Or his imagined significance to his readers.

And so this Blog limps along. Breathes shallowly. Seems to be sleeping. Or in a far deeper state of repose. Is it alive? Is it expiring? Will it stand up suddenly, Frankenstein like and bellow? That seems unlikely.

Meanwhile, your Bloguero has been listening to and thinking about winter night sounds. The sirens and the flashing blue and red lights. The car horns. The wind in the trees. And about radio signals, that invisible cloud in the sky. There is probably no more room for a novel or short story about that. David Foster Wallace, Daniel Alarcon having weighed in, there's not much left. Your Bloguero remembers how Jean Shepherd sounded half a century ago, but when he sits upright, awake in the dark, searching for the idea, your Bloguero cannot find it. Perhaps it will come.

Your Bloguero is working on a third novella. He can no more rush it than a cook can hurry a souffle.

The End of the Haiku Road

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 02 Jan 2015 17:00:00 +0000

On New Year's day your Bloguero posted his 600th Facebook haiku. For now, it is his last. He felt it was enough. He stopped (for now). The repeated "for now" seems to have something to do with obsession.

He still has the odd habit of having a thought, thinking of a line and counting its syllables on his fingers, but that will pass soon enough. He hopes. That has something to do with obsession also.

In the meanwhile, he notices his present disinterest in "social media." This reveals itself in fewer and fewer blog postings (here and elsewhere), the end of the haiku project, few FB posts, an absence of tweets, a dirth of Instagram photos. Maybe it means that the next thing is about to arrive. Who knows what that will be? It might also mean that the "next thing" has already arrived, your Bloguero has missed it, and it has irretrievably passed him (and maybe you) by. This is a problem only if you or your Bloguero remains at all concerned about keeping current about the latest things. Or at least knowing what they are before the New York Times discovers them.

Season's Greetings From The Dream Antilles

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 24 Dec 2014 00:49:00 +0000

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.

The bird at the top is a Caribbean laughing gull. In Spanish its name is guanaguanare. This bird always appears when the fishermen are unloading their catch after a day of fishing. The bird hopes for a fish to be dropped from a basket as the boats are unloaded so it can whisk it away. Manuel Acero (you remember him from the novella "The Dream Antilles") has watched the guanaguanare for his whole life. Whenever he unloads fish, he saves a few to throw to the gulls. He wishes them and you a joyful Holiday Season and ease and prosperity in the New Year.

The Haiku Road

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 11:28:00 +0000

I know how it began. In high school someone showed me haikus by Basho. They were unbelievably profound. So some classmates and I tried writing them. Eventually, the novelty wore off. We stopped. Fast forward to the New York Times Haiku contest in 2014. I forgot to enter it. But in April, fed up with pictures of cats, brunch and boobs, I decided that Facebook was best used for photos of the sky and haikus. I don’t know exactly how this idea arose. Maybe Twitter was better because then the little poems would disappear in an ocean of words, never to be seen again. Oh well. After a while, I lost count of how many I had posted, so I put a number on each one, like a upc on an organic tomato.

I continue. Today I posted number 471.

Why do I continue? A great question that deserves a legitimate answer. Unfortunately, I don’t have one. Maybe it’s a sign of my obsession. Maybe it’s because there is no logical stopping point. Maybe I’m deriving some special benefit from these. Maybe it’s simple. I enjoy it. And I was right, Facebook is a great place for collecting Haiku. And it’s contagious: some of the comments have themselves been haiku. That’s wonderful.

Is there some benefit from this? I hope so. I was stuck on the manuscript for a novella. I haven’t worked on it for a few months. But I notice that all of the haiku are gently loosening up whatever obstructions there are in the manuscript. We’ll see whether I go back to it, or whether it becomes one of those projects that just gets abandoned.

Dearly Beloveds

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 02:36:00 +0000

Your Bloguero notes that it's been 3 long months since he tickled the ivories at The Dream Antilles.

That calls for an update. Here it is now.

Your Bloguero is busy writing haikus. He is posting them regularly on Facebook. He has posted more than 400 of them. You can see what he's writing if you click the link.

Why haiku? As John Lennon wrote, funny you should arsk. Haiku because most of what your Bloguero sees on the Internet is so dehumanizing. And ironic. Cat videos, photos of brunch, selfies, political screeds, verbal barking. Ooof. All this when Social Media are so perfect for evanescent poetry. Like Haiku. Of which there is not a ton. Your Bloguero cannot imagine an Internet inundated with poetry.

Your Bloguero laments that he is no Basho. He regrets that he will never write a haiku as perfect as this:

Blossoms on the pear
a woman in the moonlight
reads a letter there.

It is perfect, isn't it.

But he will try again and again to write a good one. If practice truly makes perfect, a proposition about which your Bloguero nurtures significant doubt, your Bloguero is practicing. And trying.

Not Good Bye Cruel World

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 07 May 2014 22:59:00 +0000

Maybe there are Bloggers who announce that they have come to the end and are retiring from posting, that the Blog is over. Maybe they write a last post summing everything up and saying farewell, but that seems rare. It seems that most just run out of steam, post more and more infrequently, and one day the post is their last. Most often, it probably doesn’t seem that a final post is one, when it goes up; it’s just that it turns into one. Something lets the air out of the tires. The battery dies. Things fall apart. The blog becomes a corpse. The blogger walks away.

There are by now probably millions of corpse blogs. Some might have a single brave entry announcing what is expected to come next, but didn’t. Others have thousands of entries, series of essays about various topics. The posting stops. The end. Corpse blogs are like ship wrecks on the bottom of the ocean: you can find them if you search, but nobody works on them any more. They’re visited only infrequently and then only by divers who like wrecks.

Is this blog about to join the under sea wreckage? Your Bloguero fears it’s so. He didn’t post for two months and didn’t miss it. He didn’t feel compelled to announce any of his opinions to his readership. What a surprise. Instead, he wrote many haikus and posted them on Facebook. That is fun. It will continue. But writing a blog post? Your Bloguero cannot give assurances. Sad. He wishes he could.

Your Bloguero notices a potential pattern here. In the old days, he wrote a listserv denouncing the death penalty. There was no last post. Eventually the listserv had no new original content written expressly for it, and was used only to transmit links your Bloguero’s blog posts on the topic on this blog. Then there was nothing. The last post there was in September, 2011. Your Bloguero posted frequently from March, 2002 until June, 2006, and only sporadically thereafter. Then he just stopped. It wasn’t because he stopped fighting state killing. No. It was something else.

This blog, The Dream Antilles, began in August, 2005 and has now had 1460 posts. But it’s been silent for 2 months. Your Bloguero hopes this isn’t the last post. But he can’t say it won’t be. Just in case, thanks for reading The Dream Antilles. Thanks for your comments. And thanks for being there.

Where Has El Bloguero Gone?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 04 May 2014 16:23:00 +0000

Oh my. Your Bloguero has let this blog fall silent.

Where has he gone? Nowhere really. Just doing an almost daily Haiku at Facebook. You can join him there.

Thinking About Eugene V Debs

noreply@blogger.com (david seth michaels) — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 01:59:00 +0000

A Poor Workman Always Blames His Tools

noreply@blogger.com (david seth michaels) — Sat, 15 Feb 2014 17:02:00 +0000

Your Bloguero is amazed. US speed skaters claim that their performances have been hindered by an Under Armor racing suit jointly engineered by UA and Lockheed Martin.They say it's slowing them down. Right. They're one whole second or more per lap slower than the winners because of a suit engineered to save them a few thousandths of a second per lap. Instead of placing first and winning the expected gold medals,they're coming in 33rd or so. And now they're reverting to old suits, also made by Under Armor. They have confidence in those. Why? Because they won events wearing them at the world championships. Can anyone here spell "neurosis?" Or "superstition?"

As a former (and not very talented) runner, your Bloguero can tell you that the Buddha was right when he talked about timed events (life being the longest one, speed skating being of much shorter duration and significance). He taught this Gatha: "From interdependent causes all things arise and fade away." Here the focus isn't on the fading, impermanence end of the equation, the one your Bloguero consistently notes. It's the interdependent causes. The racing suit is easy to isolate and complain about. Heaven help anybody who focuses instead on the multitude of other interdependent causes, like mental toughness, "athleticism", competitiveness, training, coaching, diet, weather, distractions, and, please do not forget the sports writers' favorite, the intangibles.

Meanwhile, your Bloguero notes that his third novel is creeping along far too slowly to be satisfactory. He wonders today whether the lack of swift production might be because he's been wearing an Under Armor sweatshirt. Tomorrow he has a plan. When writing time arrives, he'll resurrect his old, tattered, ripped African Nations Football t-shirt and see how much his performance is enhanced. Your Bloguero does not have confidence that will change very much.

In the interim, he'll remember that old poor workman's saw.

Enough!

noreply@blogger.com (david seth michaels) — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 15:10:00 +0000

Your Bloguero just got the text message from CodeRed. It warns of yet another winter storm, more than a foot of snow, extreme cold, and yadda yadda. This idea arrived embedded in the text: maybe this is the last big winter storm for this season? And maybe the next thing is crocuses.

Here's hoping.

February 11, 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 12:31:00 +0000

Please join your Bloguero and support The Day We Fight Back Against Mass Surveillance"

February 11, 2014. Be There.

noreply@blogger.com (david seth michaels) — Sat, 08 Feb 2014 23:41:00 +0000

The Day We Fight Back Be there.

Happy Holidays!!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 21 Dec 2013 02:59:00 +0000

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.

The bird at the top is a Caribbean laughing gull. In Spanish its name is guanaguanare. This bird always appears when the fishermen are unloading their catch after a day of fishing. The bird hopes for a fish to be dropped from a basket as the boats are unloaded so it can whisk it away. I have watched the guanaguanare, and I admire them. Whenever fish are unloaded, the fisherman should save a few just to throw to the gulls. This seems to say, "We're all together, we're all in this together, we're all sharing the earth. May you be well and happy."

I wish each of you a delightful Holiday Season. May you have ease and prosperity in this holiday season and in throughout the coming New Year.

--------

This is a re-publication of our essay on 12/19/07

A Winter's Tale

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 00:57:00 +0000

‘Tis the season.

Your Bloguero left work early today because it was snowing hard, the roads were already slick,it was getting dark, and soon the roads would be impassable.Two obstacles to the trek.First, your Bloguero in a moment of supreme distraction dropped his car keys in the deep, fresh snow. He searched his tracks but could not find them. Thoughts of hitching a ride home for the spare keys and returning for the car. Or maybe staying home and hitching a ride back in the morning. Who to call? Better to search more thoroughly. Better to continue searching. Hence, a painstaking search, with your Bloguero distracted by this: a few years ago he dropped a mailbox key in the snow in the driveway and lost it. He could not find it. He had to wait four months for the snow to melt before it reappeared. Was this the sequel? He sighed. Better to keep searching. At long last, your Bloguero discovered a small hole in the fresh snow, and at its bottom he found the car keys. Crisis averted. Time at last to drive the snow covered road.

Obstacle two. In Eastern New York the weather is beastly. It snows a lot. The temperatures get so cold that car seats make a distinctive “crunk” sound when you sit on them. And when you then turn the key, the engine makes a single metallic sound, “Sput.” It does not start. Then there is silence. The silence of deep snow and zero degrees and an anemic blue sun. You sit in the driver seat, your breath rapidly fogging the inside of the window with ice. Best to give up. Your Bloguero knows this is a common experience. Too cold to start. You’d think with such a harsh, unforgiving teacher everyone in Eastern New York would learn about winter. Wrong.

On today’s after work commute, usually 20 uneventful minutes on two lane blacktop Routes 9-H and 66 and County 9 and Route 203 filled with the hushed sound of NPR, your Bloguero drove at less than 18 miles per hour behind a minivan with tires too bald to go up or down the snowy hills safely. This cautious citizen created a long string of impatient cars and wallowing trucks that crept dangerously close to each other on every up and down for miles. As time elapsed, the string grew longer and longer, the bright lights coruscating, an impatient, floating, halogen and mercury constellation, aimed for the North Star. Your Bloguero eventually arrived at his destination.

Your Bloguero is not dismayed by inclemency. The shortest day of the year is coming. The Holidays. Some vacation time, if you are lucky. Your Bloguero has said it before and it bears repeating: days like today are demonstrations of the reasons why so many farmers left here as soon as they could and headed for more temperate climes. It’s this very kind of unremitting, beastly weather that forged America’s 18th century history and the drive West.

May your Winter be kind, and may you and your loved ones be warm.

'Tis The Season for Shameless Commerce And Self Promotion

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 13:23:00 +0000

Please forgive your Bloguero some seasonal commercialism and some self promotion. If it's one thing your Bloguero now understands, it's that the Internet isn't just, as they sing in Avenue Q, for pron. No. It's as much about other forms of commerce. In this environment, what's a small, literary blog with just a few viewers, dwindling posts and a lazy blogger/writer to do? Your Bloguero knows: run a commercial in which he pumps/pimps his own product. Oh, here it comes now.

Two really wonderful stocking stuffers are your Bloguero's two novellas, Tulum and The Dream Antilles. You can get them in paperback and in all eBook formats. And you can get them at Amazon (Tulum and The Dream Antilles) and B&N (Tulum and The Dream Antilles). You can take your Bloguero's word for it, they are a great gift and the recipients will really enjoy reading them.

If you order soon, and send them to your Bloguero, he will autograph them, inscribe them however you would like, and return them to you (please provide well stamped envelope).

Is that a deal, or what?

Not Columbus Day: Baracoa, The Beginning

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 12:09:00 +0000

Note: This essay was originally posted at NION in 2008. That site no longer exists. And it was reprised and updated in 2011 at The Dream Antillles. It was expanded to form a central part of my 2011 novella, "Tulum".

Once again, your Bloguero notes that it is Columbus Day Weekend. Your Bloguero often takes this time. Why? Funny you should ask. Your Bloguero has two short answers: it's his Birthday. Your Bloguero was born exactly 399 years after the christening of Cervantes in 1547. Also, 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:

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 Parrocio 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.

That Other September 11, That Other 3,000

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 12:09:00 +0000

Salvador Allende (1908-1973) Vive En Memoria

It was on September 11, 1973, 40 years ago, that democracy died in Chile. A CIA backed coup, led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, overthrew democratically elected President Salvador Allende and began a repressive, 17 year military dictatorship. Some say that Allende committed suicide during the coup; others, that he was murdered. This event preceded the phrase "regime change" but embodied it.

The BBC put it this way in 1973:

President Salvador Allende of Chile, the world's first democratically-elected Marxist head of state, has died in a revolt led by army leaders.

Air Force planes attacked the presidential palace with rockets and bombs and tanks opened fire after President Allende rejected an initial demand for his resignation.

According to military sources, Dr Allende asked for a five-minute ceasefire in order to resign. But the armed forces said that was impossible because snipers loyal to the president were operating from buildings near the presidential palace.

At least 17 bombs were dropped in an attack on the palace, one of which scored a direct hit. Martial law has been declared throughout the country, a curfew has been imposed and the carrying of guns has been banned.

Although Dr Allende called on his followers to support him, there appeared to be little organised resistance.

Troops blasted buildings in the city centre around the presidential palace in an attempt to dislodge pro-Allende snipers. Helicopters repeatedly machine-gunned the top floors of buildings near the British Embassy. Bullets ripped through the windows of the embassy - but no-one was reported hurt.

Thousands of workers are said to be marching on Santiago from the north, despite a warning any resistance would be met with air and ground fire.

Opposition to President Allende has been growing for months. He was elected to power in 1970 with only 36% of the vote. He has not held a majority in Congress and gradually his authority has been eroded.

His attempts to re-structure the nation's economy have led to soaring inflation and food shortages. A prolonged strike by lorry drivers who opposed his plans for nationalisation has recently been joined by shopkeepers angry they have nothing to sell.

President Allende brought senior army officers into his government last month in an attempt to head off a revolt.

But the final crunch came three days ago when the two major opposition parties called for the President's resignation. ***

After President Allende's death, General Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean Commander-in-Chief and a leader of the military junta, appointed himself President. His Cabinet was made up almost entirely of military men. Martial law remained in effect. Troops patrolled the streets. Dissenters were disappeared. Bodies piled up in the streets and the soccer stadium.

President Allende's widow and a number of his other supporters were granted political asylum in the Mexican Embassy and flew to Mexico five days later.

Pinochet's regime was characterised by brutal repression and more than 3,000 people were killed or disappeared during his 17 years in charge. He was arrested in London in 1998 for human rights abuses but after a protracted legal battle he was ruled unfit to stand trial.

And so, in Chile, a different, sad 9/11, one which our Government would just as soon have us forget. But it's a 9/11 I hope you will pause today to remember, as I do.

I think of Allende and Neruda drving around Chile campaigning. Allende sleeps between the frequent stops. Neruda stares out the window and scribbles. After Allende speaks of politics to small groups of villagers, Neruda, who had by then won the Nobel Prize, reads his poems to them. I imagine that Allende and Neruda are weary but happy. I imagine that they smile and are thankful that they can bring economic justice to their country. I prefer to dwell on these optimistic images of hope than the violent bombing of the presidential palace by Pinochet's colleagues. I prefer to think of Chile (and the world) like this:

Maybe You Could Just Apologize?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 00:46:00 +0000

Imagine your Bloguero's shock when he discovered that according to Conde Nast Traveler the city of his birth, Newark, New Jersey, is rated the most unfriendly city in the United States. Right. And Jackson, Mississippi, he learned,is one of the most friendly? Please. Stop. This is total bs. He wasn't going to dignify this latest insult to the Brick City with a comment. But listen. A few surly employees at the airport do not an unfriendly city make.

Au contraire. If you're from Newark, and in the broad, wide world you meet someone else, someone you didn't know before from Newark, the comradery is instant. Your Bloguero, in fact, everyone, even people from Short Hills and Summit and Livingston, knows Newark is tough. And has crime issues. And housing issues. And employment issues. And corruption and education issues. Your Bloguero is not telling you it's the Garden (State) of Eden. Not at all. But all of those unpleasant attributes, and others your Bloguero chooses not to dwell upon here, mean that when members of the vast Newark diaspora meet in other places, far from Springfield Avenue and Market Street, we're happy to be alive. And we joke, that's right, we joke about coming from Nurk. That we must be like those legendary cockroaches, able to weather nuclear winter and climate change and bad juju and every damn other thing, including Newark winter and its public transportation, and we're filled with gratitude that we're making it, that we're out here, doing whatever we're doing. We're escapees. But all of that does not make the city unfriendly. It does not. It just makes its people friendly.

To be simple, Conde Nasty is taking a cruel shot at the city of my birth. And they do that because they have no clue. And they are entranced by the myth of Southern hospitality. They don't know that behind that smiling, nodding, gracious, Southern demeanor is usually somebody who at the slightest provocation will stab you through your jugular vein with a fork and then tell you, "Oh sir, let me help you with all that blood there."

The other thing to be said is that Conde Nasty is no Philip Roth. They don't know the difference between having character and being bland.

Part Two: Where's Your Bloguero's Dough?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 13:10:00 +0000

(Amig@s, you will recall yesterday's banking drama in which your Bloguero learned to his surprise and horror that, alas, five of his accounts had been emptied. And they all said they had no dinero in them. You might want to check that out before beginning today's installment

Last night was a sleepless one for your Bloguero. He couldn't figure it out how so much money could be so swiftly syphoned from all of his accounts. It did not help that his bank has no 24-hour contact number. It did not help at all that he had to wait until after 8 am to contact someone at the bank to find out what in the world had happened. Your Bloguero knows this part of the time space continuum too well: the more he wants time to pass, the slower it crawls. Call it Watched Pot Syndrome. Call it anything you want. Your Bloguero was crazed, sleepless, fearful, anxious. Not sleeping

Instead of sleeping, Your Bloguero reviewed in microscopic details all of the potential causes of his loss of all of his money. He had not confirmed that the funds were actually stolen even though all the accounts were zero or minus. Maybe they were just seized by the IRS or Big Brother or Mr. Boh. On one hand, maybe it was a hack. Maybe it the eBay and payPal transaction in which he bought of all things not now needed an antique bottle opener? Or maybe it wasn't a hack and it was your Bloguero's fault in some regard and Agents of Government or other nefarious force had restrained his accounts. Was it some transgression he had committed in probating his father's estate? Was it some tax he owed in a distant state a decade ago? Was IRS and everyone else unwilling to give him prior notice of their horrendous acts? Maybe even some crazed creditor of someone else had mistakenly restrained every penny he had. These thoughts, these fantasies are not conducive to restful zzzzz's. No. Au contraire. They are the entry level for insomnia, anxiety, shallow breathing, horror and maybe (if it was something your Bloguero did) shame. Ouch. Double Ouch.

8 am found your Bloguero staring at the second hand and dialing.

This is what he learned. His money was not gone, it was being held. By the bank. And they were quite willing to give it back to him instantly. But did he know that somebody had actually tried to steal his money and that the bank had foiled the attempt? No, he didn't know that. He wished he knew it yesterday, but he's happy to know it now.

The details: somebody sent an email to your Bloguero's bank using his usual gmail address. They followed it up with a phone call or two and some request to wire money to an account in South Carolina. Your Bloguero knows no one in South Carolina. Period. To your Bloguero, South Carolina is something you fly over. It was once where South of the Border was.

The problem with these people, these wanna thieves, is that the branch manager knows your Bloguero and has for years. And she (your Bloguero is flattered by this) said that she doubted that the emails she received could be from El B. Their syntax and word choice was awful. Plus El B usually calls on the phone when he's screwed things up.

Anyway, after taking the information, the branch manager called back the person who was supposed to be me AND HAD MY SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER. And she quickly determined that said person did not know El B's Mom's maiden name. So she, the bank branch manager, took steps to protect his money. She froze every last one of El B's accounts. Said she, "I'd rather have you have a sleepless night than lose your money." Your Bloguero concurs with this.

So the would-be thieves didn't get a penny of El B's money. He is totally filled with gratitude for his bank, his branch manager, and her entire crew.

And this morning, after taking various steps to safeguard his identity, no he did not by a new Luchador mask, your Bloguero went to visit some policemen, who are really very interested in this because, living in a small town, the investigators know your Bloguero and they know the he thinks they are incompetent. El Bloguero has shown them more than once why he thinks this. Your Bloguero hopes that justice prevails.

So although some of the commentators to your Bloguero's earlier essay opined that "this doesn't sound good," El B is here to assure you that all is well. He still has his money.

Now he hopes that the miscreants are caught and tried for identify theft 1st degree and attempted grand larceny. And he hopes that there is something he can do next week to express his gratitude to the bankers who truly saved his bacon by being alert. All gratitude to them.