san pancho journal

Frida, Diego, Mexico: December 2010

2011-01-24T07:19:00.000-08:00

Here in Mexico, images of Frida Kahlo are everywhere. She peers from the shelves and walls of tourist shops where her image is emblazoned on handbags, t-shirts, masks, and children's toys. In the homes of friends, Frida is on tissue boxes and table cloths, refrigerator magnets and matchboxes. So ubiquitous are images of her face that I occasionally feel as if she is watching me.

On a recent trip to Mexico City, I visited the Frida Kahlo museum at Casa Azul, the home Kahlo kept with Diego Rivera, the great man of Mexican modern art.

Seeing the two great artists' works together caused me to wonder at the iconic status of Kahlo as compared to Rivera. Diego Rivera's works are everywhere in Mexico and on everything grand from monumental public buildings to landmark department stores. From the perspective of art for ahhrt's sake, Rivera is a far greater, far more important painter. Frida's works are mainly on display as riffs and reproductions on posters, bead curtains, and postcards.

But, the very fact of the ubiquity of Kahlo's pictures speaks to their importance as cultural artifacts. They are talismans of identity and pride - displayed not just as decoration, but as symbols of their owners' sense of themselves as women or as bohemian and feminist, as survivors and as Mexicans, with all that implies given Kahlo's own multi-ethnic background and contested sense of self and cultural identity.

In spite of the brilliance and technical expertise of Rivera, the smaller, much more personal works of Frida Kahlo, rendered with such seeming naivete, are by far the more popular, the more beloved. And, if the popularity of Kahlo in the election for the great icon of Mexico held during the recent bicentennial celebration (where I believe she may have come in third behind Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata) is any indication, Frida Kahlo's influence extends far beyond the arts.

Diego Rivera was once the dominant artist of Mexico, his success a source of national pride. He was the undisputed king of the arts and a symbol of modern, industrial Latin America. But Frida has surpassed him, I believe, exactly because her art is not so grand, not about the macro, the modern, the bold statements about the brilliance of the age of industry and the greatness of the industrial working class.

Modernism has betrayed us. Scientism is destroying us. And the great age of industry has proven to hold little or nothing to lift the human spirit above the great, heaping piles of profit made of our exploited humanity.

Frida is the artist of the post-modern world. She painted about the parts of us that the homogenizing force of modernism and industry attempted to deny. She illustrated the belittled world of feelings - the struggle to see ourselves as whole, beautiful, precious, especially because of our differences and imperfections. She painted the world as herself, in fragments. In the course of doing so, she turned herself, uni-brow, mustache and all, into an icon of beauty, cultural pride, and the unsinkable, inextinguishable, undefinable stuff of which we are made.

Her oeuvre is the chutzpah of the bullied child as she rises to her feet and shakes the dust from her skirts; it is the steel that holds the transgendered woman's head high as she enters a strange room; and in amongst the bold statements about the indomitability of the self, there is the longing for communion that causes us to struggle against the tears and dropped threads in the fabric of human experience. If Diego was the "what" of great social movements, Kahlo is the "why," the hope.

Beach Dog

2011-01-23T07:12:00.000-08:00

I was warned not to fall in love with beach dogs.

Here in San Pancho, beach dogs are everywhere. They sleep in the street, fully expecting cars and pedestrians to give them the right of way, and they play on the beach, making passersby into friends and meal tickets for a day.

I had a beach dog friend named Frijol. He showed up on my doorstep one day and just decided that we were meant for each other. I didn't feed him, thinking the last thing I needed was a dog, but he stuck around regardless, always waiting outside the door for me to let him in for a nap, or take him on walks in the jungle.

When he would nap in my kitchen he'd roll onto his back, legs akimbo, eyes shut tight, so sound asleep I could step over him without him ever noticing.

I have no idea why he trusted me so much. He rarely lay on his back, exposing his belly to others, even if they were friends. If he did roll onto his back and others made the mistake of stepping over him he'd jump to his feet and take off. But with me, he wouldn't even open his eyes when I rested my foot on his belly and gave him a little rub with my heel.

When he came to visit, often for days at a time, he'd run up the gravel path, sit outside the door, and wait. He never just walked up. He always ran, as though something exciting was awaiting him.

When I let him in, the very first thing he would do is bury his head in my lap. Then, he would jump up and wrap his forelegs around my waist. It was a ritual, just between us. Within minutes, he'd be asleep, flat on his back.

Frijol rarely ate in my house. He, like most people around these parts, preferred street food, in his case out of trash cans.

That, I'm afraid, was his demise. Someone poisoned Frijol. He died yesterday in his favorite restaurant, a creperie on Calle America Latina, right next door to the first house I lived in here in San Pancho.

I was warned not to fall in love in with him, but I'd do it again. We gave each other happiness. He was one of the best parts of my two years in San Pancho. I'll never forget him.

I read and I write...read and write...

2010-12-11T13:38:00.000-08:00

And two months later, I suddenly remembered I have a journal!

I've been buried under work lately. The work is good, satisfying, new, interesting, and all-consuming. Every day I read and I write, and then I read some more and write some more before finally shutting down my brain for the night and indulging in media - movies, bad TV, YouTube.

I never thought I'd become on of those people who sits around watching hours of video on the internet. But, when you live in a town with no movie house, and no late night bars and restaurants, watching funny (anti)Asian karaoke on YouTube is a refuge from boredom. I'm properly ashamed.

The reading has pushed me to the outer edges of my very limited (mis)education. If not for wikipedia, I'm not sure I'd be able to keep up with the new vocabulary words I'm encountering. For instance, any of you ever hear of the word "irredentism?" What about "plantocratic?" Care for a little "despoliation?" Or would you prefer to "bricolage?"

Yet I perservere. Here are a few of the greatest hits in my reading:

Subaltern: a term in post-colonial social theory to refer to everything (and everyone) that lives under the thumb of empire.

Marronage: a verb referring to the act of escaping and becoming a fugitive of slavery, often forming marroon communities.

Diaspora: the movement or migration of a group of people away from an established or ancestral homeland, often by force, as in the Korean diaspora following the Korean War, and the African diaspora driven by the slave trade of the 16th-19th centuries.

Manumission: the act of a slave owner freeing his or her slaves.

Antinomy: a fundamental and apparently unresolvable conflict or contradiction, as between freedom and slavery.

I'm sure by now you have a pretty good guess regarding the subject matter of all of this reading. Those of you who are in the human rights field are probably closest to the mark.

I am reading about all things related to what one of the authors on my list, Howard Winant, refers to as "the world historical dimensions of race...the new world racial system" which presents itself as "beyond race," "color-blind," and, most vehemently, post-racial, even as "the disparities between the world's North (more white than not) and it's South (more dark than not) are intensifying, and when northern fears of 'swamping' by immigrants" is growing ever greater as we head toward a future, right around the year 2050 to be precise, when whites in the U.S. in particular will find themselves living in a country in which no one racial group will dominate (and that I'm guessing will be an economic subaltern to China).

If you see me around San Pancho, finally getting out and enjoying the beautiful weather we've been experiencing lately, ask me how all of this relates to the most recent U.S. national elections. I will talk your ear off.

On Being Chinese in Mexico

2010-10-16T16:38:00.000-07:00

I'm not Chinese. I thought it best to establish that upfront to make sure there's no confusion. There isn't a Chinese bone in my body, not that I believe one's bones reflect one's ethnicity, but I'm sure you get my meaning. I'm not Chinese.

Normally, I don't consider such distinctions particularly relevant. I mean, I'm as proud as can be of my actual ethnicity, but it's not like every time I meet a new person I think, "I know you think I'm Chinese but I'm not." However, here in Mexico, I find myself frequently saying, if not to someone else then at least to myself, I'm not Chinese. And no place was this as much the case as in Mexico City.

In Nayarit, I occasionally get an "hola Chinito!" or a curious look. Kids here are especially good gauges of people's interest. When I walk by kids unabashedly stare. If I smile, they often smile back and get excited as in, "mama the Chinito just smiled at me!" Normally, I'm not offended. I just roll with it, aware that in much of Mexico referring to someone by the color of their skin, the cast of their eyes, their weight, height, hair texture, past bouts of alcoholism, famous childhood trauma, or almost any other characteristic is considered a-okay. There's no real intention to offend.

However, in Mexico City, the staring often felt a bit more like an affront. In a city where people assiduously avoid eye contact most of the time, and where making direct eye contact is often considered a come on or a challenge, people still stared. Usually, the starer would quickly avert their eyes. However, now and then, the staring continued, even turning to glaring.

Once, while eating a taco in the neighborhood tianguis, an old woman sat next to me, crowding me with a grocery bag and obviously making a case for priority seating by bumping into me with her chair, her arm, and then with her leg as she settled in. A friend of hers stopped to say hello and remarked at the number of "Chinos" in the market (by my count, zero, but whatever). The old woman glared at me and responded to her friend, "en todo tu pais!"

She would not even accept ownership of her own country, she was so spitting mad at the number of Chinos it had allowed in. Her friend glared at me, just to make sure I was fully aware that they meant me, and then stalked off. Altogether, it felt very much like Portland, Oregon circa 1986 when the Japan Wars made anti-Asian racism as commonplace as teal fleece and Birkenstocks.

In Mexico City, Barrio Chino occupies only two blocks along Dolores Street. According to the Mexican government, less than 20,000 Chinese immigrants live full-time in Mexico City amongst a fantastically diverse population of millions. However, Chinese nationals are everywhere, especially in the financial district and downtown. There's even a Chinese character on Hoy, the Mexican version of The Today Show. The character, named Chinito, looks to be around 30, yet has a bi-level Tinkerbell style hair-do and 'tween appropriate costumes. One would think he was 12.

But, in spite of their small numbers among Mexico City natives, the influence of China is growing at a time when the Mexican economy is struggling. And, while I have no evidence to support my assertion, the glaring and the pushiness sure felt like resentment of that growing influence.

Of course, the dirty looks weren't all that came my way. Most people were polite, and in the majority of one-on-one interactions with people, perceptions of my ethnicity seemed immaterial. Among some, my Chino status caused me to be received as a (I'm guessing rich) new customer.

I guess it's the same story the world over. Perceived economic opportunity opens people to new ideas, and competition for scarce resources pisses them off. It's just a base human response to the need to make ends meet, one way or another.

A Letter to a Friend Upon Returning Home: October 2010

2010-10-10T17:02:00.000-07:00

Hola D.,

Back in San Pancho again after the world's second longest bus ride from el D.F. to La Penita. If you haven't done it yet, don't, not unless you absolutely need to save the money over traveling by air. It was perfectly okay, especially if you enjoy vibrating, which the bus does a lot of, and watching Spanish dubbed straight to video U.S. movies. I'm not big on either of those activities, but my guess is that of those two, vibrating is pretty popular, at least if sex store inventories are any indication. A friend of mine used to have this store called Toys in Babeland that sold bedroom toys, and the bestsellers were always vibrators...but I digress. The bus ride was way too long and extremely boring, even with the vibrating.

I can't read while in a moving car or bus without hurling so I was stuck listening to Spanish lessons for four or five hours until I finally drifted off to sleep. Talking was not an option since I was the only one awake on the bus with the possible exception of the driver (I say possible because he hit the topes going into and out of towns at such speed I'm guessing his eyes were open, but only about half way).

El D.F. was fantastic. I blogged about that experience but without many details. I won't offer many more here, but suffice to say I found the city remarkable. At first it was a little overwhelming, but it became manageable when I gave up on seeing it all and settled into a routine confined mainly within four neighborhoods - La Condesa, La Roma, Polanco (for gay haircuts and walks in beautiful parks and a couple of fantastically expensive eating experiences), and Zona Rosa. Most of our time was spent house-sitting for a friend in La Condesa and caring for her dog Zulema, truly a great treat. We loved Zulema and she in turn loved us back so lavishly we almost had to bring her to San Pancho with us.

The parks in el D.F. are wonderful. The famous parks - Chapultepec, Lincoln, et al - are awe inspiring, but what I loved most of all were the little neighborhood parks in Condesa and Roma. They're full of public art and people and dogs, lots and lots of dogs. Every now and then a gay couple necking on a bench reminded me that Mexico City recently legalized same sex marriage. Funny how so many of us in the U.S. carry around the impression that Mexico is a conservative back water when it comes to social politics. In fact, while it is conservative on many issues (as is the U.S., even in liberal meccas like Portland and Seattle where gay marriage is decidedly not legal), Mexico City, at least in some of her neighborhoods, seems to have fully embraced gay male couples.

We ate in every imaginable kind of dive and a fair number of nicer restaurants until that got too routine, not to mention expensive, and then we cooked in, something we enjoyed especially because of the abundance of markets full of fresh produce. I particularly loved the Mercado San Juan with it's fish mongers and butchers and seemingly endless array of fruit stands and purveyors of ethnic culinary treats including Thai fish sauce and Filipino shrimp paste, freshly made tofu and fine Spanish hams.

And the bicentennial celebration was amazing! The fireworks were so spectacular we could see them from our apartment window miles from the Zocalo. We didn't brave the crowds downtown, but we did walk through the parks in our own neighborhood and saw people walking about dressed as Frida Kahlo, Zapata, or Hidalgo heading to the capitol or to neighborhood parties where most of us watched the festivities on TV.

But, all good things must come to an end. We left D.F. for Cuernavaca, the capitol city of the state of Morelos, a couple of weeks ago for language school. We had a home stay and private classes (because there were no other students). I came to Mexico not speaking a word of Spanish and more than a year later I can speak about 5 words. I had no idea I was such a shitty language learner.

I usually think of myself as a 51% person. I'm no genius, but when it comes to learning aptitude, in most subject areas at least, I'm better than average. But attempting to learn Spanish has been humbling. I'm definitely not 51%. But then, everyone is bad at something and language happens to be my weakness - that and a million and one other things like algebra and science, art, music and geography, but whose counting, right?

The school seemed lost in time. I was surprised by how dated everything was, from the confusing online test, to the books about the Contra war and the life of Sandino, and the even more telling dearth of more recent titles.

My teacher was a woman in her 60s who went to high school in her 30s in order to be able to learn to read and write. I found her story inspiring and thought we'd hit it off, the two of us having a self-professed lack of formal grammar training in common. But, it turns out, her approach to language was all rules and very little intuition. She also talked at what to my less than 51% ears sounded like lightening speed, and on subjects as complicated as the unhealthy eating habits of Mexican teens, liberation theology and the Catholic Church, and the alternative structures of governance being created by the autonomous communities of Chiapas. For bits of time, I found myself emotionally devolving to the days when, as an uncoordinated 10 year old in grade school P.E., I would pretend to have to go to the bathroom or feign illness in order to avoid my turn at bat in softball games.

We did get to go to the pyramids in Cuernavaca and to enjoy weather spectacular beyond belief for this time of year. The city is lovely in parts, and it is, as the locals say, all up and down being built mainly on the south facing slope of the Sierra de Chichinautzin mountain range in an area riddled with deep gulches and ravines dug by mountain-fed streams.

Cuernavaca's remarkable climate has won it the nickname of City of Eternal Springtime. I'm not sure of the meteorological assets that make the climate there so stable, but its famous weather has attracted the rich and royal for centuries. Today, it is known by many as the Beverly Hills of Mexico, with the vast majority of new housing starts at the high end of the market.

In Cuernavaca proper, where most of the poor of city lives and where we lived for almost two weeks, the neighborhoods feel altogether overgrown and over-developed. Over the last 70 years, Cuernavaca's population grew by almost 800%, from around 80,000 to over 800,000, and most of that growth has been in spurts. This rapid and awkward growth pattern is very evident in most of old Cuernavaca where skyrocketing housing costs have caused concentrations of poverty, and is less obvious but no less definitive of the shape and location of the expensive, vacation suburbs of the new Cuernavaca that sprawl away from the city center.

In spite of the heavy traffic and overcrowded sidewalks, I loved the city, mainly for it's amazing weather. It is cool in the mornings and warm but not hot in the afternoons. The evenings quickly cool and nights can be a bit nippy, just the way I like them. I ended up spending a bunch of time hanging out at an old hacienda near the centro, drinking beers and decompressing after the daily routine of 4 or 5 hours of classes. The hacienda was beautiful, capturing and magnifying all that was great about the place and its mountain location, what with it's grand old trees, rainforest landscaping, and wide verandas full of shaded, open air tables and lounge chairs. Like the school, that place, too, seemed lost in time.

Classes stretched out over two weeks, and the weekend was open so we took advantage of the free-time to take a little trip to Taxco. Taxco is a beautiful colonial town in the hills of the state of Guerrero about an hour and a half by bus from Cuernavaca. Taxco grew up around sliver mining and the crafting of fine silver jewelry, and its main industry these days is tourism. It's obviously successful as it was packed to the gills with touristas engaged in one of my least favorite activities - shopping.

In spite of the crowds, Taxco is beautiful. The vistas were breathtaking and our hotel, a converted colonial convent, was stunning both for it's beauty and it's low, low price. Staying there cost only $40 a night. In Taxco we found our way into a hippie restaurant with vegetarian menu items and decor representative of an aesthetic that seems ubiquitous throughout neo-hippy Mexico. It was full of Hindu and Buddhist iconography(one is led to believe they are basically the same thing), airbrushed wall murals, over-sized novelty candles, mirror beaded shawls, and other relics of 70s era hippydom, and not a little bit of old fashioned hippy food and music. Appropriately, the next day we happened into a funky old antique shop where we had fun meeting a fascinating elderly paleo-hippie antique dealer who sold us an overpriced old plate for our home stay mother who collects tourist plates representing what she refers to as "travels," taken through the experience of students' stories.

Our old hippy acquaintance had wonderful stories to tell. It felt like a privilege to pay too much in order to support his remarkable lifestyle.

Of course, you know I can't resist describing our home stay mother. She was something, nearly 70, a recent widow, and a lover of gay men and others who, but gently, stray from the path of tradition. She had another boarder staying with her who is a deaf, gay college student named Diego who she has counseled into accepting his sexuality and, apparently, becoming a weight-obsessed, serial dating disco queen. Boy she could talk. The constant talking was fine for Jon who could understand her, and Diego who couldn't hear her, but Ascaut, as she called me, could only really follow about 40% of the conversations. I was sleepy by around 9pm every night from the strain of listening and trying to understand.

The stories were long and complicated and as often as not populated by ghosts and strange dreams, unfaithful relatives, her weekly dance classes, Diego's love life, and her errant daughter who lives in Houston, has leukemia, and refuses to marry for immigration papers. It's an accomplishment for me to have gathered that much from our talks but I'm pretty sure this was only the tip of the iceberg. Jon has mercifully chosen to spare me the rest of the details.

Our home stay mama was very sweet and we would have stayed with her for a few more days, but our trip to Cuernavaca was interrupted by news of our house having been broken into in San Pancho. We returned to deal with whatever there might be to deal with and, honestly, to escape spending more time at school. Don't get me wrong. The people there were absolutely great. It was just the pedagogy that left something to be desired, at least for me. I'm sure many benefit greatly from the earnest tutelage offered there.

Break-ins have been happening a lot down here as you know. We didn't lose anything personal and the damage was minimal. The only thing broken was the screen in a kitchen window and the only valuable thing stolen was our gas tank, some speculate by the gas man himself. They left the year's accumulation of coins on our kitchen table, a laptop computer, our landlord's TV and DVR, and loads of other things including new clothes still in their packages. Odd, huh?

And that brings us to the present. I'm sitting in my kitchen watching the gas man replace the gas tank I suspect he might have stolen.

We were kind of stunned to see the town when we got here, though we're told the worst is over and that much has already been repaired. The bridge is still gone and the footbridge that has replaced it isn't exactly what you'd call solid. The river is still rushing but cars seem to be getting through it at the usual secondary crossing. One friend apparently drove through it in her bug, but then she'll will do almost anything - not someone to emulate in these matters. I'm unsure about going through it in Bosque (the name of our Jeep) but we'll have the brave it soon if we're to get any decently priced groceries.

The beach is a ruin, but beaches heal pretty quickly on their own, as I'm sure you know from having lived through tropical storms in Hawaii. I haven't had a chance to take a close look, but it's a pretty amazing transformation. Most people seem to be proceeding as though everything is fine and nothing has happened. Funny how once things start getting back to something like normal, folks just forget the past and move on. The families who were washed out of the arroyo have even returned to their former lots, and before the end of the rainy season, confident that nothing so bad can happen again. Keep your fingers crossed that we don't get more rain this year.

I hear your house is fine and that it turned out to be a real refuge for your neighbors. Their house leaked like a sieve. It was kind of you to let them live in your place until the rain stopped.

I'm about to do some investigating to see what else is up, but it looks like businesses are re-opening and that folks are bracing themselves for what will likely be a terrible high season. I guess that's good for people like us who don't care for the tourist rush, but I think the economic consequences will be pretty serious and we need to brace ourselves for some hard work this winter.

That bridge isn't likely to be up again for a while, and news of the damage has spread far and wide. Between not having a bridge, the damage to our beach, and bad news about airlines bankruptcies and narco trafficking, I'm afraid folks will stay away in droves. Oh, and the hospital reports that they have had 500 cases of viral pink eye.

I'm not touching anyone, just so you know. Air kisses are fine but touching will have to wait until pink eye season is well over. There are lots of things about being a teenager that I miss, but pink eye, mumps, and mononucleosis aren't among them.

When you coming back?

xoxo

P.S. No pictures this time. I just got a new computer and haven't transferred the files yet.

d.f. - September 2010

2010-09-25T10:44:00.000-07:00

La Ciudad de Mexico, just plain Mexico to most of it's residents, is a fantastical, giant, sprawling, monstrous, beautiful, exciting, diverse wonderland of a city. Mexico is the national capital, the largest city in the Americas and the third largest metropolitan area in the world. At last count, about 21,000,000 people live here in 16 boroughs spread out over almost 1,500 square kilometers of the floor of the Valle de Mexico, 2,240 meters above sea level in the dead center of the country.

The city is surrounded by volcanic mountains. If you can get up high enough on a clear day, you can see peaks looming on the horizon in every direction. The view would take my breath away if I had any left in me at this altitude. I'm breathless much of the time; breathless and goo goo eyed and overwhelmed at the marvelous things I'm seeing.

The city is ancient, but there's something new and very modern about her, especially in Condesa, the neighborhood I've called home for the last two months and where I've marveled over the number and variety of parks and plazas, high-end restaurants and bars, fondas and tacquerias, tianguis, mercados, museums, and librerias.

Condesa was once full of art deco architecture and Porfirian mansions, but the 1985 earthquake took down a lot of those old buildings. Now, there is a mix of older architecture and buildings more recently erected that exude a 70's and 80's vintage charm. One almost expects to see Holly Go-Lightly, returning to her New York 15 or so years after her escape, looking around and saying, "groovy!"

But as marvelous as Condesa is, Mexico is much, much more that one neighborhood. Just look at the wonderful things I've seen!

Magnificent examples of pre-Hispanic art and architecture - artifacts of the ancient and remarkable cultures of Mexico on display in the National Anthropology Museum, one of the best in the world...

and Ecobici rent-a-bikes! If only Portland was on this tip...or San Pancho. There's a strong environmental consciousness emerging here in Mexico, and it's famous air pollution problem, the metal helmet of smog, is slowly being mitigated...

and recycling is starting...it's a small start, but maybe, just maybe...

and everywhere examples of marvelous contemporary architecture and art; lot's and lot's of beautiful art!

Frida, of course. Frida is everywhere...

and the Museum of Modern Art with it's amazing sculpture garden was revelatory...

and a remarkable example of architectural ingenuity, below, at the anthropology museum - a gigantic umbrella roof held aloft by this central post/fountain...

and more art...

and more, including this sculpture, below, made out of styrofoam packing material...more evidence of a growing environmental sensibility...

and the beautiful traditional crafts of Mexico - these are but a few examples from a collection in the modern museum that indicates a strong and growing feminist sensibility in culture and the arts...

religious iconography!

And restaurants. Lots and lots of restaurants including some unexpected little twists...evidence of globalization everywhere...

plazas and parks and fountains...

including fountains where people bathe and wash clothes...

the amazing Palacio Bellas Artes...

the aqueduct...

gay couples holding hands and kissing in parks...

the Zocalo that has to be seen to be believed...so big and so remarkable, especially on the Grito de Dolores when the fireworks were overwhelming...

the Angel de la Independencia in the Zona Rosa...

and Parque Chapultepec that is so, so much more than pictures can describe...

I was in awe of the monument to the Ninos Heroes...

and everywhere there were street performers, including this "group" of dancers, one a real live man and the rest mannequins...hmmm...

and bookstores, including this one that carried a book familiar to many in my generation - can you see which one I mean?

And there was so much more. And never did I feel unsafe. The reports about how dangerous it is here in Mexico are greatly exaggerated. You should see it for yourself.

A new job and a trip to the (really, really) big city: August 2010

2010-09-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

A view on a rare clear day in Colonia Roma, Mexico City

After more than a year of worry over work, I finally managed to fall into a new job in June. I'm a partner in a consulting firm that provides research and capacity building services to groups working on issues of racial equity in the U.S. It's a logical extension of the last 30+ years I've spent chasing organizational missions aimed at eradicating racial and sexual violence, winning indigenous rights and immigrant rights and humane criminal justice policy; doling out free food packages; opening emergency shelters; and marching, protesting, and generally raising a ruckus in the hope that speaking up is a meaningful step toward making the world a better place.

How's that for a mouthful? I only wish that all of those years of investment resulted in more victories. The sad truth is, my years of work have mostly been about trying to keep things from getting worse. And, lately, worse appears to be the general trend in U.S. politics. Boy is it a mess up there.

But mess or no, I'm back in the political game as a consultant and strategist, helping community leaders and public policy advocates fighting for reforms that benefit those on the down side of unjust power relations. Only now, after years as a player in the field, I'm a coach.

My colleagues include my friend Soya, someone whom I've worked with in the past, both in her former role as an immigrant rights leader in the U.S. and when we were both program officers for the same social justice foundation. Soya has been with me on my sojourn in Mexico, one of the 5 who became 3 who left the U.S. more than a year ago to chase a dream of creating a life here.

As I write, Soya is in Chicago, representing our little firm at a conference. When she returns, it will be to San Pancho, to a little, leaky apartment with a rooftop terrace (sans guard rails as is often the case in rural Mexico where no insurance and no money means no lawsuits and very little in the way of safety codes). Her apartment is right under Eva's tacqueria, next door to the yoga studio on Calle Egipto, and a stone's throw from the house on Calle China that we once kept together.

The new job, at least in it's current iteration, was not in my plans until, well, there it was, a golden opportunity to continue work I've loved since I was a teenager, and among friends, and with start-up capital provided by an investor. The best part is that I can work in Mexico.

The change in jobs has brought on a change of moods. I'm suddenly mobile, and my new mobility has inspired wanderlust. I want to travel and try out different places in the world. San Pancho is still home, but the summers, I think, will be times to live here and there, mostly in other people's (off)seasonal homes, among their things rather than among my own possessions, as house-sitters if possible, as renters if necessary.

This August, I started to try to satisfy my wanderlust by arranging to spend two months in Mexico City and then two weeks in Cuernavaca. The trip is intended to speed up my language learning and to provide a much needed dose of something different to do. For those who follow this journal, that's how I ended up with a view of the Plaza Villa Madrid and the Fuente Cibeles, in La Colonia Roma, smack dab in the...well, I'm not sure you could call it the middle, but somewhere in the vast expanse that is Mexico City, the third or fourth largest city in the world.

More than 20 years after moving away from rural Hawaii, my escape from urban living and return to el campo was necessary for my sanity. I needed to know whether I was destined to return to the life I so often missed.

My return to rural living in the tropics sparked warm(and not so warm) memories on one hand while, on the other, also helping me to see, finally and with some clarity, how much the world has changed since my Hawaiian childhood. Long held points of reference and nostalgia drenched memories of the past have finally come face to face with the reality of change; of progress or something like it, and much to my surprise. I sometimes feel the fool, not having realized just how much time has passed and how the changes that occurred during those now nearly 3 decades have transformed rural communities. And if time and the shifting tides of global capital have changed rural Mexico, what can it mean for change among the less remote rural plantation towns of Hawaii?

If you don't believe me when I say things have changed, really changed, check Exhibit A, below, a page from a yearbook from my high school back in the day -

Notice the kid with the mushroom? In the school yearbook? That's innocence - maybe not as the term has been used to sell us the illusion of an easier and gentler past to return to via evangelical churches and Republican politics, but no doubt we were less jaded. I'm sure the faculty yearbook advisor had Euell Gibbons on the mind, not Timothy Leary.

Perhaps even more telling is this yearbook ad by the plantation manager, congratulating the new graduates, the vast majority of whom were expected to go to work for him alongside their parents and grandparents. Note his wish to continue being of "support" to the class of 2000? There would be no 2000 for the sugar company. They went belly-up in the 90s, a victim of globalization.

This was before the war on drugs; before AIDS; pre-Reagan and Bush and Bush; back when the global economy wasn't quite so global; before the internet and You-Tube and Sky TV; and long before 9/11 and the war on the "axis of evil." Back then, dressing down was de rigueur, going back to the land was not considered a granola move because almost know one knew anything about granola, and those of us on the down side of traditional power relations were feeling our oats, believing better days were soon to come. Oops!

My escape to rural Mexico has forced me to recognize that times have changed, and they just keep changing, faster and faster. I've changed, too. And the inevitability of change is why, I suppose, as was once famously written, you (or at least I) can't go home again. I'm as much urban as rural anymore, and now and then I need a little fix of urban living; a shot of gin with my tonic to make life go down a little easier.

That long story is why I'm here, amidst the crowds and the pollution, sitting breakfast at sidewalk cafes, and hopping around the bars and museums and bookstores and restaurants of Mexico City. And now we're caught up, sort of. The story of here, or my little slice of it, comes next.

June and July: Chiquis, A Car, And A New Job

2010-09-13T16:56:00.000-07:00

I'm sure that a fair amount of what my memory has chosen to categorize as "happened in June and July" didn't really happen in those months, but they happened some time around then, when the weather started warming up and the tourists disappeared; after most of the seasonal residents returned to their homes up north; and right before the summer rains started.

Thinking back to that time, I recall worrying about how little rain we were getting in July. I looked to the sky day after day hoping for rain. Of course, we know what happened next. In early August, the rain started to fall, and fall, and fall. The volume of rain was awe-inspiring by month's end, disastrous by September. Now the bridge connecting San Pancho to the outside world has collapsed and, at last count, 73 people are living in our community center, homeless, and facing an uncertain future.

June revolved mainly around our dog Chiquis. Chiquis came to us in April. She was a rescue, saved by friends who discovered her chained to a stake outside a house on Calle Asia. Chiquis was about 10 months old, but she looked absolutely ancient. She'd lost almost all of her fur to mange. One of her fore legs was twisted and deformed from having once been run over by a car and then never treated.

Most people who we ran into on the street wouldn't touch Chiquis and many got off the sidewalk when they saw her approaching. To those who knew her, she more than made up for her intimidating appearance with her sweet nature. I've never known a dog more forgiving nor more gentle than Chiquis.

Chiquis means small, or something along those lines. An old woman I ran into a couple of days ago looked at me, put her fingers over her eyes and started laughing and chanting "chiquis, chiquis ojos." While it wasn't exactly as though she meant her taunting to be educational, her use of the word

did at least help me to understand the difference between chiquis and chico, a more familiar Spanish word for "small." Obviously, "chiquis" is a diminutive, meant in the case of our dog as an endearment, and in the case of the old woman as a (to her at least) humorous pejorative.

In the dog's case, I think the name was meant to be ironic. Chiquis was not small. She was a cross between a German Shepherd and a Belgian Shepherd and she was big. She had huge paws and a big head that she liked to rest in my lap.

Saving Chiquis took a village. Funds were raised, volunteers enlisted, and hours and hours of care were invested in making her well again. When finally she seemed on her way to recovery, she was brought to us and we were asked to take her on as our dog.

It took a bit of convincing, but we decided to do it and Chiquis became a member of the family. Our part-time dog Frijol, the beach dog and amigo de todo was totally with the program. He loved Chiquis. They were tight, bosom buddies, friends to the end.

And the end did come. It came in July, a week or so after I returned from a business trip to the U.S.

For several weeks after she moved in with us, Chiquis seemed to thrive. I spent hours with her on walks. She especially loved the beach where she would chase coconuts into the surf and goof around on the shore playing chicken with the waves. In spite of her size, she was clearly a puppy when at play.

But, by June, it was apparent that Chiquis was sick. We thought she had mange, but it turned out to be something much more serious. Chiquis went to the vet several more times over the next few weeks. Finally, though tests proved inconclusive, there was no doubt she was dying and we ending her suffering. It was heartbreaking to watch her in her misery, confused, in pain, obviously growing weaker by the day.

After she was euthanized, we buried her in her favorite blanket on a knoll near our house where she would often take herself for walks. It wasn't our land, and I'm not telling whose it was, just in case someone has a problem with a dead dog being buried on their undeveloped property. It's a beautiful spot with a lovely view. I hope no one decides to start building on it before Chiquis returns to the earth. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust and all that rigamarole.

The car that Chiquis was carted back and forth to the vet in was borrowed from friends. They generously gave their second car to us for almost two months when we moved to the top of the steepest hill in town, to a neighborhood with no water trucks and garbage collection. By the time we got the loan, we'd already been invited to cut through the yard of a neighbor in order to get up and down on a gentler slope. That same neighbor brought us water and checked in on us on occasion just to see if we were adjusting well to the neighborhood. On our trips to the vet, three different friends went along at different times to help translate, and another friendly San Pancho-ite gave us pesos to help pay for Chiquis' vet bills.

That's life in San Pancho. Every week in the pueblo seems to bring a new experience that reminds me of how much community matters here, and of how much of the community spirit we once had in the U.S. has been lost to the cult of mobility and progress, and to economic change.

The loaner car was meant to tide us over until we got our own car. That finally happened at the end of the month. Now I have a jeep named Bosque (forest) by the children of it's former owner. Bosque is big and green and has an automatic transmission (glory be to Henry Ford or whomsoever is the god of cars with automatic transmissions). I haven't had much of an opportunity to drive her, but I'm very happy to have her. Having a car means no longer toting trash up and down our hill; no more bumming rides for water; nor lugging groceries up the hill in a backpack.

I bought the car with funds from my new job. I'm now a partner in a consulting practice and, lucky person that I am, it has the funds to provide me with a salary right away. That and our car together have opened the door to a world of opportunity. I can travel, take Spanish courses, see what's around me and choose what I want. And that job; it's quite a windfall. But I'll tell you more about that later.

Remembering May

2010-09-08T14:52:00.000-07:00

Flooding in San Pancho in August and September has devastated the pueblo. Food is running short in the tiendas, and water and other essentials are in short supply. More than 60 people are living in our community center having lost everything in the flood. They are homeless, the land on which they squatted and built makeshift homes is now covered in water and their possessions have been lost to the river, washed out to sea.

Thankfully, there are no casualties. No one, to my knowledge, has been severely injured. But the story of our friends Fernando and Yuri having lost their home - everything gone, animals dead, the refrigerator and other appliances that provided the basis for their baking and organic egg business seen floating by on the river - that story brought tears to my eyes.

Fernando, who gave up a life as a journalist in Spain before moving first to Colombia and then here to San Pancho, and used his life savings to buy ranch land in the valley when it was still very cheap, is San Pancho's best baker. On this land, he and his partner Yuri, a Colombiana, built a palapa out of discarded telephone poles, installed solar panels, and created a little paradise where they raised rabbits and eggs, baked bread and pastry, and lived quietly and, to all outward appearances, happily, remote from the noise and the bustle of the pueblo.

Now, all of it is gone. Last I heard Fernando was pulling the boat on which he sailed from Spain to Mexico, and his yellow school bus that once carried San Pancho's Cardboard Circus from town to town, out of the mud, hoping to salvage the remnants of a life once whole, now in pieces.

I wrote this entry before the worst of the flood. After the rain, after the certain renewal, after we find our feet again and rebuild, I'm sure we'll figure something out. But, it's a time of struggle in San Pancho.

I find that when things get tough, it helps me to remember better times, to remember that we are the lucky ones, even now, in the midst of a flood. In that spirt, here is a memory of an easier time in San Pancho.

May 2010

In May I moved from one end of San Pancho to the other. I left behind our rental on Calle China with not a little sadness. It was a pretty house full of beautiful art and fascinating books. I loved my 6 months there.

I left that house because it was time; time to get away from the constant stream of neighbors crossing our porch on the shortcut from Calle America Latina to Calle China; our neighbor Ramiro whose love of ranchera music and tequila often kept our household up through the night for days at a time; the Saturday disco on the Plaza del Sol filling our house with pop music so loud that we needed to shout to be heard; the 24/7 crowing of the two dozen or so roosters in our neighbors' yards; the truck vendors with their loud speakers advertising newspapers, gas, cakes, bread, fish and fruit; and the occasional primal scream therapy sessions in the healing center next door.

I wanted quiet, and I found it in a little house on the second highest hill in the pueblo, overlooking ranch land and the jungle at the very end of Calle Tahiti in what, for about a month, was the only truly tranquilo corner of San Pancho. And it was quiet - blissful, sleep-all-night, daydream-all-day, nothing-but-bird-calls-and-the-wind-in-the-trees quiet - but briefly, and then things changed.

By the end of the month, construction was in full swing on a new polo stadium going up in the valley below us. The owners of our local polo club are building a full-sized polo stadium on former ranch land, complete with stables, a bar, and a restaurant. When it is completed, it will replace the half-sized polo field in town and put San Pancho more firmly on the Latin American polo circuit.

It's a sad thing this new development, at least for us and for friends who live adjacent to the new development. I worry that constantly watering of acres of lawn will deplete the aquifer serving San Pancho, and everyday the landscape seems to change a bit more as it is denuded of trees and sculpted into hills and flatlands to accommodate buildings and parking lots. Even the river that runs through the valley has been rerouted, I fear, with terrible consequences.

But at least the construction isn't constant. There are still many moments of calm during the day, the nights are mercifully quiet, and the view across the jungle and into the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental is a beautiful as ever.

My new neighborhood is less developed than Calle China. Here remnants of jungle are just a few steps from our door. Hummingbirds and honeysuckers in all shapes and sizes hover in the woods just a few yards from our dining room window. Wrens and orioles in a remarkable array of colors, from jet black to bright orange and yellow are common here. And magpie jays with yard long tails, emerald green parakeets, two kinds of woodpeckers, crows, cowbirds, ducks, even, just now and then, a rare Elegant Trogan feed and fly in the trees nearby.

Lizards are everywhere. Sometimes the driveway seems alive with them. I've spotted iguanas, including an old male at least two and a half feet long, several kinds of skinks, noles, and geckos. I imagine there are more varieties than I know. Scorpions are also abundant here. They're nasty little creatures whose sting can be dangerous. Fortunately, the mortal enemy of the scorpion, the scary-looking nameless flat, jet black spiders shaped like crabs, are even more common. They lurk in the corners of the bathroom, under chairs, below the deck, beneath rocks, just about anywhere there is shade to hide in you are likely to find one.

To my eye, the prettiest wild things in our little stretch of jungle are the butterflies. They come in all shapes and sizes. The most remarkable to me are church fan sized butter yellow giants with flexible wings. They fly, often in groups of three or four, with an odd, awkward, halting grace amongst the shrubs around our house. They're so big they seem more like birds than bugs.

The butterflies bring to mind a vignette from the classic Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel 100 Years of Solitude. In it, a character is followed everywhere by a cloud of giant yellow butterflies. I wonder if Marquez had this species in mind when he wrote those pages? These butterflies do seem to hover. Now and then I feel like one is following me.

But, my favorite critters are the pair of chachalacas who are building a nest nearby. The Chachalaca is a bird beloved by the people of Nayarit. They disappeared from populated areas a while back but have recently returned. I can hear them cackling everywhere in the woods around us as they run along the ground or perch in the trees, looking like slightly smaller and plainer versions of wild turkeys.

The pair nesting by my new house are so close you can hear them pecking and pulling at twigs and branches as they shuffle about, looking for food or building their nest. They are near enough to see the iridescence of their feathers and their red ringed eyes. Occasionally they even look back at me.

Here are some pictures of my little corner of the pueblo. You'll see that the view really does go on and on.

My house, or at least my house for now, is the only wooden house that I know of in the whole of San Pancho, and for good reason. Maintaining it requires engaging in a daily, unending battle with the elements. On wet days the doors and windows won't close. The decks need to be sealed two or three times a year. We've twice dealt with leaks. It seems as if everyday a new piece of siding starts to pull away from the exterior walls.

Storms cause the windows to rattle. Lightning envelopes us in electricity and light. Thunder literally causes the house to tremble. When big rains come, we have to close up the house and use bungie cords to hold down the awnings to keep the water out.

The closest thing I've experienced to being in this house during a thunder storm was once being caught in heavy rain and rough surf in a fishing boat at sea. To call it startling would be an understatement. At times, it can be downright frightening. Good thing summers in San Pancho are slow (like molasses going uphill in a blizzard). The storms serve as a form of entertainment - a bit of novelty in the midst of nothing in particular to do.

In spite of its drawbacks, I love the solitude and the view and the cozyness of living small. I'm happy in this house. And we have a car now, so there's more to do, places to see. When our house gets too small, we can get out of town and enjoy something new. A new job provided the funds for the car, and that's added interest to my life in San Pancho, too.

But now I'm getting ahead of myself. I don't think those things really happened until June. I'll tell those stories another time. Oh, and by the way, do you see that dog in the doorway? That's a story for another time, too.

April: Circo de Carton and the Illusive Elegant Trogan

2010-09-07T15:30:00.000-07:00

Things start to slow down in San Pancho in April, waaaay down. With time on our hands, we decided to go birding with Luis Morales, a local conservationist who, like many of the young progressive Mexicans in San Pancho, is originally from Guadalajara. Luis is the founder and director of the San Pancho Birding Club and the owner of a family business called Birding San Pancho.

We'd hoped to go birding with Luis last year, but we got rained out. This time, we had spectacular weather on our day out, and spent hours, more than half the day, spotting birds on the local estuary and in the nearby jungle on the other side of Highway 200.

I never imagined birding to be a fun way to spend the way, but this was truly a revelation. Luis's passion for nature and for birding, and his near encyclopedic knowledge of the bird life in the area, is inspiring.

In addition to spotting an amazing array of bird life through Luis's telescope and binoculars, we also learned about the local rainforest ecosystem and discovered new stretches of jungle to explore in the future. Our one minor disappointment was hearing but not seeing an Elegant Trogan, one of the most brilliantly colored and interesting birds in the jungle. That will have to wait for another time.

If you're ever in San Pancho, I highly recommend the tour. The pictures didn't turn out very well, but here are a couple of examples of bird life see saw in the beachside estuary.

The Colectivo San Pancho put on a Circo de Carton, or cardboard circus, on the malecon in April. The Circo de Carton was such a hit it turned into a summer-long touring show. The Circo went to rural schools all around the region to the unmitigated delight of children of the area, not to mention a fair number of adults among whom many have likely never witnessed such a spectacle. Along with giving the kids a good time, the circo introduced the concept of recycling by making almost all of the props and costumes out of discarded paper, construction scraps, and cardboard. Some of our friends were in the show so we went to watch and cheer them on.

The show will live on in my memory, not so much for its scale as for the child-like sense of wonder and whimsy that drove its creation. Check out the Colectivo online and consider coming to San Pancho for the annual Colectivo San Pancho art festival. The festival is remarkable for what it brings to rural Nayarit.

Here's are some pictures of the circus and the circus creator and ring leader Ariel Sainz.

And also in April we finalized plans to move from our house at Calle China to another one, a little less grand and a bit more remote, at the end of Calle Tahiti, the street that winds up to the top of the second highest hill in town. But that's a story for another entry. Stay tuned.

And four and a half months later...

2010-09-05T19:05:00.000-07:00

My last entry marked the end of my first year in Mexico. After I signed off, I decided to give myself a break from journaling. I felt like I was telling the same story over and over again and, upon reading my last entries, I'm sure I was right. I was badly in need of inspiration.

The break was intended to last for a few weeks. I never imagined it would stretch on for four and a half months. But today I felt the itch to tell you something and when I opened my journal I saw the date of the last entry, April 17.

I tried to find a word in Spanish to register my surprise, and found after a bit of searching in my Spanish resources that Mexicans generally use the word "wow." It's not very poetic, but it works, so, Wow! You and I have some catching up to do.

Case in point - the scene on the other side of my window today is of a fountain in the center of which sits a statue of Cibeles (the Roman goddess Ceres) driving a chariot drawn by a pair of lions. The fountain and statuary are copies of a famous monument in Madrid. It was reproduced here as a gift to the people of the Mexican capitol by the city's Spanish expatriate community.

My view is from a modern, glass and steel apartment on the 9th floor of the Torre Cibeles on Madrid Plaza, a public square (really a circle) dedicated to the Cibeles monument. From my vantage point, Mexico City stretches out in every direction and feels every bit like one of the largest cities in the world. I can see Zona Rosa and Polanco, the major business districts of the capitol, and miles and miles of urban sprawl reaching all the way up onto the foothills of the mountains and volcanic peaks that surround the city.

From here I feel a million miles away from San Pancho where, last I heard, heavy rains washed out the bridge on mainstreet, the only route in or out of the pueblo. The Highway 200 bridge over the Ameca River on the way to Puerto Vallarta also washed out, but that means nothing to San Pancho as long as the bridge from the pueblo to the highway is gone. Pictures I've found online feature friends staring at the gap between the pueblo and the Highway, with water rushing below. I worry about my friends in San Pancho and wonder what will become of them if food, propane, and other supplies run low before a new connection is established with the highway. But here, rain is but a minor inconvenience. It falls almost daily in the afternoon, but only briefly, as if on a schedule meant to clean the air and the streets in preparation for the next day.

The Torre is the second apartment building I've lived in here in el D.F. The first sat between the Parque Mexico and the Parque Espana in La Condesa, an adjoining neighborhood just south of the historic center of Mexico City. For weeks now, my life in Mexico has revolved around walks in the neighborhood parks, visits to Parque Chapultepec and the monument to the heroic child soldiers of the revolution, the Museo de Arte Moderno, the National Museum of Anthropology, the Museo Rufino Tamayo, La Zona Rosa, weekly trips to the neighborhood tianguis for produce and meat, Carlos Fuentes, Roberto Bolano, Michel Foucault, and lunches at taco stands and fondas and, on occasion, some of the finer restaurants of the city.

In my kitchen I have a bag of Chapulines, a beloved food of Mexico. Chapulines are fried grasshoppers dusted with chili. These particular little critters want to be made into a salsa to have with quesadillas of hand-pressed blue corn tortillas fresh from the market and raw milk Oaxaca cheese from a nearby street vendor. And on my list of things to do are trips to the Mercado San Juan, a place famous for wonderful culinary ingredients, Turibus rides around town, a visit to La Casa Azul, famous as the former home of Frida Kahlo, a tour of the Trotsky museum complete, I'm sure, with the requisite ogling at the bullet holes in the wall, an excursion to the Lagunilla flea market and its acres of antiques and junk and antique junk, and language lessons.

How I got here is a long story. I won't try to tell it all at once. There's too much to tell all at once. Instead, I'll go month by month to keep the entries bite-sized. But not yet. Come visit me again and I'll tell you about April. I promise that by the end of the month, you'll be all caught up and you'll learn a little bit about Mexico City in the process.

San Pancho Year: 21 April 2010

2010-04-21T10:17:00.000-07:00

I came to San Pancho on the 22nd of April, 2009, 364 days ago. I arrived fresh from a Northwest year marked by freak heat waves, crippling blizzards, and one of the dreariest, rainiest springs in memory. Bruised and battered by the difficult weather and the precipitous downturn of the U.S. economy, I arrived in San Pancho feeling like a person just released from a carnival ride that had run too long.

Years of confining my aspirations within the bounds of what is safe, both financially and personally, had broken me in a way I wasn't sure I could recover from, at least not fully, not with the vigor with which I once embraced life and uncertainly, challenge and opportunity. I was burnt out, jaded, dull in mind and spirit and desperate for a change. I chose San Pancho sight unseen, hoping, wishing, praying, dreaming on my feet, even, that here I could create a new beginning.

I soon learned that I'd stumbled into a very special place. San Pancho seemed to me a place lost in time. Upon coming here, I was immediately flooded with memories of my childhood in rural Hawaii. Life at this latitude produces so many of the same effects of light and temperature, flora and fauna, that I often felt as if I'd seen this or that little corner of the pueblo, that stretch of jungle road or beachfront before, perhaps in a dream.

A year later, flashes of deja vu still hold me in thrall. But nostalgia has been pushed to the margins of my experience by my year in San Pancho. New memories and increasingly complex layers of understanding have distinguished this place from my childhood home. No longer Hawaii-lite, San Pancho now holds it's own distinct place in my consciousness.

When the decision was made to leave the U.S., I was one of 5 who wanted to expatriate and start over together. Two of the original group lost their dream of Mexico to the collapse of the U.S. economy. The three of us who remained harbored big dreams of a social business enterprise and NGO building, but those dreams died along the way as well, casualties of changing priorities and changing lives.

6 months ago, as I contemplated the changes to our plans, I wrote,

I started on this adventure as one of a group of five. Five quickly became three. Now I wonder if three will become two. Alone, I worry, what will we do?

...I won't pretend the thought hasn't kept me awake a night or two. But the fear is balanced by the excitement of making a life in the world and of the rich narrative I can create if I have the courage to act boldly, even if it costs me material comforts. Every lifetime is a story that unfolds in chapters. The materials with which our stories are bound may not be so grand, but, if we are lucky, the story we make from what we are given is up to us...

At the one year mark, my resolve to live boldly has been hardened by experience. The insecurity that so defines the lives of the majority of the people of Mexico has bolstered my belief that none of us is promised more than each moment as it is lived; none more than we can hold in our two hands today, now, and even that only at the behest of others. I intend to revel in the experience of life as it unfolds, unfettered by fears of the future and all it might hold.

My impetuous embrace of an uncertain future has caused some to comment, to marvel at what they call courage. But, you know, it's not courage so much as fear that has driven me out into the world. I fear the certainty of regret at the end of a life lived small.

This embrace of uncertainty, buoyed as it is by the belief that nothing is really certain, is something I believe us middle-aged queers have to contribute in the way of life experience. We have seen the world change dramatically in the last 40 years.

We grew up in a dangerous world where assaults and murders were commonplace. Those of us who came of age in the 80s remember the AIDS crisis. In those years we lost what seemed like everything - our friends, our freedom, our youthful fearlessness - only to learn that it is possible to find solace in survival, in our resiliency and the confidence derived from our ability to recreate ourselves, even in the wake of an ongoing pandemic.

There were no templates for this life. Yet, we knew that if we allowed fear to control us, to confine our aspirations and define us as people, we might just as well not live at all. We defied fear and threw open the closet door. We accepted danger, understanding that it was the price of freedom.

Today we find ourselves living lives we could never have dreamed of as children. We never imagined we would experience even as much as tolerance, much less be embraced by so many. The world has changed, even here in rural Mexico. That change was caused by the collective decision on the part of thousands, even millions of us, to dare to come out from under cover; to live and love and celebrate our difference in hostile company.

That the stigma was so great and the danger so real gave us the fortitude to live boldly. That stigma, that danger, that bleak picture of a future alone and unloved was a gift, at least for me. It forced me to take a leap of faith, to accept a future of uncertainty that has been richer and freer than was promised by the certain limitations and humiliations to which I was born.

When I came here, my aspirations and my confidence were lofted above fear by this experience. I chose to give up my life in the U.S., to give away the safety of the cage for the freedom of the treacherous wild, just as I chose to give up the closet. And I've learned that the wild isn't so wild after all; that people are just people, the world over, and the security we are promised if we just follow the rules and are careful not to rock the boat in the U.S. is not all it's cracked up to be.

I'm not sure I will continue on this road forever but for now, at least, I'm enjoying the journey.

The Exploited and the Exploiters: 12 April 2010

2010-04-13T17:01:00.000-07:00

Remember when we used to call most of the global south the Third World? Back then, we also called the U.S.S.R. and it's allies the Second World, and NATO countries the First World.

We don't use those terms much anymore, what with the fall of the Soviet Union having closed the book on the Second World. Our old ideas about defining who's who in the world according to their alignment or lack thereof with capitalism or communism are ancient history. Those out-dated notions have been relegated to the back row of the library, right next to volumes by such once-notables as Thomas A. Harris, M.D. (remember I'm Okay, You're Okay?) and my favorite feminist sexologist, Shere Hite.

That's the Shere Hite of The Hite Report on Female Sexuality who, back in the 1970s, made headlines with research that revealed the crappily low percentages of women having orgasms during what she, to my barely pubescent delight, called "thrusting" coitus. 30+ years later, Shere Hite appeared after listings for a report on the height of the singer Cher, and a mispelled ebay ad for a pair of Nike Hite Top sneakers in a recent google search, and women's orgasms are discussed by the likes of Oprah, whose approach to female sexuality can be summed up in one word: va-jay-jay.

This is how far we've come. It's been three decades. Third World? Ancient history.

Nowadays, people still use the term Third World when what they really mean is broke. I am hesitant to follow in this tradition, but I'm not sure of the alternatives. I despise the terms "less developed" or "developing" as they suggest countries like the U.S. represent some sort of ideal of development. Yes, potable tap water and electricity are great, but do they really have to come with 400 channels of The O'Reilly Factor and The Real Housewives of Orange County? My tenuous hold on sanity depends on my belief that we can do better.

We've established that Third World is a not so useful term. Poor, while descriptive, doesn't really speak to why or how, simply stating what is obvious and yet not entirely true. I mean, not everyone in Mexico is poor, and Mexico is certainly not resource or people poor. The relative poverty of many in Mexico is most immediately a problem of governance and accountability (or lack thereof), and Mexico's weakness in that regard seems a symptom of something a lot more complicated, more rooted in history and politics, than just being "poor."

So, just what do we call the non-NATO aligned, so called developing countries? As you may already have guessed, I have a suggestion. It's far from perfect, but maybe, just maybe it's a way to start a conversation that will lead us somewhere. My conversation starter is "exploited." I know, it's neither clever nor deep. In fact, it's a little blunt, both as a conservation opener and in its lack of precision. But give it chance. What is the country of Senegal, much less the whole of the continent of Africa, if not a country defined, at least in terms of international relations, by a history of exploitation?

Now, let's address that history for a minute. My meager, mostly homemade education addressed two waves of imperialist expansion in the capitalist era. In the first, Spain went after the Americas and Portugal won Brazil in blood-soaked conquests of such deadly effectiveness that nothing since has matched them in sheer mano a mano brutality and scale. Japan alone stood independent and undaunted among Asian powers at the end of the first wave, only succumbing to Admiral Perry in the mid-1800s. This might explain why, during the second wave, what many refer to as the "new imperialism," Japan behaved like such a royal ass.

During this second wave, approximately from the mid-1800s through the early 1900s, the industrial powers of the world, nations like England and later the U.S. and Japan, systematically exploited the less industrialized countries of the world, countries like Haiti, the Philippines, and Mexico, in order to secure the resources, including land, necessary to feed the industrial machine and accumulate wealth. In one of the most stunning examples of hubris and exploitation, the U.S., in 1848, "bought" all of California, Nevada, and Utah, along with parts of Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado from Mexico as one of the spoils of the Mexican-American War (what is known in Mexico as the War of North American Invasion). The price the U.S. paid amounted to something like $700 a square mile in today's money.

And if becoming king of the hill wasn't enough, once on top of the colonial food chain these powers were in no position to stop. Having pissed off everyone and her brother, they needed resources to build the military power necessary to stay ahead of the hungry masses of the world, exponentially increasing the drain on the countries whose resources they were exploiting. See how well that word works?

Whether it was gold, uranium, rubber, rice, or slaves, they were able to, in the words of a contemporary U.S. retail giant, get it here, and for less. Funny how that slogan also sums up contemporary relations between north and south. The ridiculously low prices north of the border types pay for products in big box mega-retailers continue to be supported by exploitation, often of southern hemisphere workers to the benefit of northern manufacturing giants, some of which were built by fortunes accumulated through the trans-Atlantic slave trade, just to drive the point a little deeper.

Of course, exploitation of this kind cannot simply be achieved by dint of one country aggressing against another. This is no game of football, with teams competing to achieve goals that produce results for all the winners at the expense of all the losers. To execute exploitation on this grand a scale, the imperial powers had to create a global elite, and establish hierarchies of power and control both within exploited countries and transnationally. That global elite controls national politics and wealth, and metes out privilege and influence such that today's European-descended middle-class Mexicans probably have more in common, at least economically, with middle-class white folk in the U.S. than they do with Mixtec migrants in Mexico and vice versa regarding the relationship between U.S. middle class whites and poor people of color. That's the sticky wicket that makes seeking out solutions so damned complicated.

Some of you will, no doubt, suggest colonies as a potential moniker. Well, if you do I won't be mad at you, but I think people throw around the terms "colony," and various related isms and izations way too much. Why? Well, for one thing, these words are confusing and only truly useful in a very specific historical and political context. For another, not every exploited country was or is technically a colony, and I'm not going to get in the way of efforts to achieve de-colonization by straining the definition in order to dignify the experience of being kicked around, treated like crap, and exploited, like somehow that's not enough.

So I'm sticking with exploited. I know some of you will claim it's an obscure term, polluted by it's use in far too many situations to describe far too many things. Even as far back as 1946, George Orwell decried the use the word as an exercise in political manipulation. But, today, even right wingers throw around the word exploited, as in the manipulatively named anti-choice group, Women Exploited By Abortion. It is evidence, I think, that enough of us know what that word means for it serve as a good opening salvo in a dialogue about what's next in our attempt to create a language of international politics that helps us to more clearly understand what we've done and are doing to each other.

Lucky: 9 April 2010

2010-04-10T12:56:00.000-07:00

It's been 25 days since my last post, the longest gap between posts by far since I started my journal. I'd like to excuse my absence by claiming I've been busy, but the truth is that I've had plenty of time to write. I've not been busy so much as pre-occupied.

Since my last post, I've had three visitors, secured a new home for the summer, helped to host two events, did a bit of work on a fundraising campaign, and slogged my way through Semana Santa, the biggest tourism week of the year. I even briefly considered selling bolis (frozen popsicle-like treats in plastic bags) on the beach over the Easter weekend. Between that and working, and for real money and everything, my mind has been elsewhere. So much for making the most of life as I live it, and not just in retrospect via photos and memories and that funny story about the time when this or that happened. Still, I feel very, very lucky.

I'm so sure of my good luck that I have a tattoo on my left arm that reads "lucky." It's on the hilt of a sword that was drawn there many years ago both as symbol of friendship and as a tribute to the great good luck that has followed me all of my life long. I know a sword isn't generally considered a friendship symbol, but the design was chosen to match a tattoo the friend in question received in South Africa while screening a documentary we made together. Making that documentary cemented a lifelong friendship.

Many years have passed since then. In the interim, she's made four feature-length documentaries and had four children while remaining as beautiful and youthful as ever. Meanwhile, I've worked for four different social justice organizations based in 3 states, moved here, gone from 34 to 48, added a couple of dozen pounds, a chin, soon two, and a mess of wrinkles. Still, even now we talk about another matching tattoo - frigate birds this time.

But I digress. The point is, I'm crazy lucky. Few people are as lucky as I am. I haven't won the lottery (yet), nor taken down Caesar's Palace, but I have so far managed to escape a nightmare of a gay childhood, homelessness, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Hawaii's underground economy, several attempts to assault me or worse by neo-Nazi activists (a story for another time), and some serious health scares. Throughout, I've enjoyed a rewarding career as a human rights advocate without the benefit of a college degree (nor, therefore, endless student loans to repay), and a happy 16 year relationship, and all in spite of leading a life that has so far bumped along, sometimes recklessly, from one crazy, fantastical, completely impractical big idea to another. If a seemingly unfortunate incident should befall me now, I want the world to know that I was damned lucky to be there all in one piece when it happened.

If you've been following my journey, you know that I recently went on a field trip into the jungle to pick capomo nuts with school children and was almost hit on the head by a falling tree limb. But, lucky as I am, I managed to escape unharmed. It wasn't all luck, I suppose. I mean, I did actually hear the limb on it's way down, and I did really and quite miraculously manage to scramble and hustle my way to safety all on my own, but, the thing is, such athleticism is not normally within my ability. Most of the time, an uneven patch of sidewalk is enough to bring me down. I'm just not a well-coordinated guy.

Shortly after the capomo field trip, I met with Rosa, the leader of the local capomo effort. Based on information she shared, I've started making connections with people in the U.S. who may be able to help us expand the market for capomo beyond San Pancho and Nayarit. So far, I've made some tenuous early connections but we've still a long way to go. If any of you know of anyone who might, just maybe, have information or knowledge to share, write me a comment or send me an email. With my luck, someone will respond with just the right thing.

During the lull between the capomo excursion and the next big thing, I wrote an appeal (really a group-write) for our local alternative pre- and elementary school, La Escuela del Mundo. The school needs to buy a portable classroom it's been renting. More to the point, an analysis of their financial situation conducted by Jon and others revealed that the school is falling short of the money it needs to stay open year after year and has only managed to stay out of debt by dint of luck and the generosity of very committed donors. Buying the classroom will reduce rent and that boon, along with a few other small changes, will allow the school to run in the black, say amen and pass the salt.

La Escuela del Mundo is nothing short of a miracle. It was started only four years ago and it has already blossomed into a bastion of quality education in the region, with students out-scoring their peers on standardized tests while learning about ecology, responsible global citizenship, community values, and even yoga. And, while half of the students have parents able to pay for school tuition, half are children from local families who attend with the support of sponsors.

La Escuela del Mundo is more than a great school, it is a cross-class, multicultural community of students and parents. Imagine the impact an alternative school that inspires creativity and critical thinking, multilingualism, internationalism, diversity, and environmental preservation will have on a community the size of San Pancho. Here, where most children drop out of school after the 8th grade, La Escuela del Mundo is opening doors of opportunity few even know exist.

Not doing something was impossible. Still struggling as I am to learn Spanish, helping the school seemed like one way I could be useful by being good at English. And, helping is, after all, a privilege. Who among us can call themselves lucky enough to have the time and resources to devote to helping other people in a world where so many must struggle just to help themselves?

And, honestly, who can resist doing something to help out kids like the one's pictured here -

If you're as smitten as I am, write me a note and I'll collect your donation. We're only $18,000 USD from our goal. That's $8,000 for the classroom and $10,000 for a sustainability fund. That's big money down here, but in the U.S., well, that's chump change, right?

Just days after the start of our little fundraising campaign, the Entre Amigos' annual fundraising event rolled around and we, as in Jon and I, were drafted into service. We made food, including vegetarian sushi, szechuan noodles, finger sandwiches, salad and crostini, for 250 plus supporters of one of the best little non-governmental organizations in Nayarit.

Catering the event took days of preparation. By the day of the event, I was sure I had lost my mind when I committed to this seemingly impossible task. But, I was lucky. We had our housemate Soya and two out-of-town guests to fall back on. We couldn't have pulled this little miracle off without them. As it is, five of us ended up making sandwiches and rolling sushi for almost 11 hours on the day of the event, barely finishing before the dinner hour.

The event was successful beyond my wildest imagination and that success was due in no small part to the now up and running kitchen so many of you contributed to last fall. Near or far, you were on my mind on that day. Your donations made it possible for us to run a very lucrative bar, and to stage food, wash dishes, and accomplish all of the other little things necessary to cater an event with volunteers.

A week later, after we iced our sore backs and caught up on lost sleep, we threw a party to celebrate the end (a little early) of our first year in San Pancho. I awoke on party day amazed at how long we've been here. It genuinely feels like just yesterday, or maybe last week, that we moved here from Portland.

Our friends from Portland left shortly after the party and our annual spring festival which features, among other things, a performance by children from the local elementary school that I will look forward to every year. You can see why from the picture below -

Their departure was followed within a few days by the visit of another friend from Oregon. Sara came to San Pancho from Bend to teach us a craft that involves turning discarded plastic bags into purses and handbags and just about anything else you might normally make out of cloth.

Sara held two workshops at Entre Amigos. Now, a small group of people here in San Pancho are prepared to use their new skills to produce products to supplement their incomes. Within a few months, I predict that Entre Amigos will be selling a line of wallets and tote bags made out of recycled plastic.

Here are some of the participants with their plastic bag crafts -

Sara's visit coincided with Semana Santa, Holy Week. Semana Santa transformed the pueblo.

The beach has never been so full of people. While it was crowded and loud and the beach was crawling with vendors, it was wonderful to see so many Mexican families on vacation. They comprised the lion's share of the Semana Santa crowd, making our beach, for this one week, truly feel like Mexico.

In the midst of all of this, I've been working. I completed a contract for a municipal government up north, and started another one for a community land trust in Seattle. I can't believe my luck. I'm working for U.S. scale wages while living in San Pancho. Here, where the cost of living has risen dramatically in sync with the growth of the gringo community and the pressure of globalization, I'm able to afford, at least for now, to live at an acceptable standard of living while doing good work. It's a rare privilege.

Sara left today. It's quiet. I can hear the surf rolling in in the background. In two weeks we will move into our new house, a sweet little bungalow overlooking the jungle in the only quiet corner of the pueblo. I ask you, am I lucky?

Capomo: 15 March 2010

2010-03-16T14:15:00.000-07:00

I was standing in the jungle under a towering old, gnarled and twisted, termite infested tree. Jon was standing about 20 feet in front of me in a clearing. We were twittering on about a subject of little importance as I admired the bark of the tree. Suddenly, we heard the sound of cracking wood followed almost immediately by a crashing noise as a branch 40 feet above me broke free and started to fall. I saw panic on Jon's face as he looked up at the falling branch and somehow, immediately reacted. For someone as slow moving and uncoordinated as I general am, this was a miracle.

I ran for the clearing and reached it just as the branch fell on the ground behind me with a terrific crash, sending up a cloud of dust and termite droppings. It was a lot of commotion for a branch so small - only about 10 feet long and 2 feet around. Nonetheless, it was big enough to take out part of the fence line along the road. My heart felt unmoored. For a moment, I forgot to breathe.

I took stock of my situation. The branch blocked the road behind me. A chilling yet somehow oddly reassuring look of terror was painted on Jon's face. I was loved and unharmed. A potentially calamitous, completely arbitrary, totally fucked up disaster had been averted. I'm sure the reality of my escape was much more earthbound than the scene that played out in my mind's eye, but for a split second I actually felt athletic. It was exhilarating!

Had I not moved, I'm pretty sure the branch would have clipped the back of my head and sent me to the hospital if not the morgue. I was lucky. Luckier still, it was me under that tree and not one of the group of children we were waiting to meet on their school excursion.

Ironically, the branch fell from a Maya Nut tree, the subject of the field trip. The children were coming to the forest to harvest the nuts as part of a project meant to educate them of the historical and potential future importance of Maya Nut to the region.

The nut is really the seed of a tree known through most of Mexico as capomo. Capomo is one of the most common of the rainforest trees of Nayarit, and grows in abundance in the jungle surrounding San Pancho. Each tree can reach a height of about 45 feet, and produces huge yields of a seed that was once a staple of the Meso-american diet.

Today, the trees are going extinct in many parts of their range. The practice of clearing rain forests to make way for cornfields has decimated the once abundant stock of capomo trees, basically trading a wild and sustainable, highly nutritious food source for a cultivated crop that is expensive to grow, in both financial and ecological terms, and yields a product of relatively poor nutritional value.

Now a micro-enterprise movement is afoot throughout Central America and Mexico to reclaim capomo as a food source and educate people about its uses. Here in San Pancho, our old Spanish teacher Rosa is leading a campaign to popularize capomo. As part of her effort, Rosa organized this excursion of school children from La Escuela del Mundo, our alternative elementary school.

We're working with Rosa to help secure funding for a solar dryer, a mill, and a wood burning roaster. Once we have equipment in place, we will begin processing capomo into flour and coffee (really a tea that tastes similar to coffee but is rich in tryptophan, the stuff that makes you sleepy when you eat a turkey dinner). The flour can be used to make cookies, cakes, and bread, and can be mixed with harina to make masa for tortillas and tamales.

Here in Mexico, tamales and tortillas are dietary staples, so introducing calcium and protein-rich capomo as an ingredient may dramatically improve nutrition and overall health. Capomo is also high in fiber and low in fat, and contains significant amounts of vitamin b and e, and folic acid.

In short, capomo could be the basis of a rainforest preservation and food security movement in Nayarit. Even the leaves and branches are useful, providing a sustainable and eco-friendly source of high protein fodder for cattle. Dairy cows fed on capomo actually produce more milk. I'm sure you've guessed it from this journal entry, but I'll say it anyway: I am officially capomo-crazy.

As the children excitedly collected capomo, picking hundreds of seeds off the forest floor, I was reminded of last September. The long, hot summer was coming to a close. It had been months since the last rush of tourists and the pueblo was in the grips of a dengue fever epidemic. Hungry people were going about town begging to work for food.

I wondered, how is it possible that people are going hungry in the midst of so much abundance? The jungle, the sea, the town itself abounds with food, yet here were people, too proud to accept hand outs, begging to work for a bag of beans, some rice, a can of tuna and some bread. I became determined that I would use my time in Mexico to do what I can to address the problem of hunger. No one, I thought, should suffer the indignity of having to turn to someone like me, a mere guest of the community, to beg for food.

I've been sitting on the idea since. Funding a kitchen at the new community center was a step in the right direction. Since then I've struggled to understand what the next step should be. Here, now, and sooner than I'd imagined, is a glimmer of hope.

Living Within Our Means: 14 March 2010

2010-03-15T09:47:00.000-07:00

I just read back my last blog entry and found myself laughing. Jon says it will make people think we're rich, and that thought alone was enough to crack me up.

The reality is that while we were certainly consuming more than our share, our gluttony was scaled to fit our incomes which, while far in excess of the Mexican national average, were relatively modest by U.S. standards and certainly by the standard set by most of the seasonal residents of San Pancho.

We were never unhappy with how much we had, even when we had very little. Somehow we always managed to break even, no matter how little or how much we had. As the amount we earned increased over the years, we adjusted our spending upward even as we told ourselves that the only reason to push hard and earn more was to save and make up for the lean years when there was nothing to put away for the future.

Oddly enough, the result is that we've gotten very good at budgeting and balancing, even if not at saving. Here in Mexico, this budget balancing skill is coming in handy. In addition to juggling bills and income, there are lots of little things that we do to save what money we do have, some of which we do only sporadically and some which are becoming part of a regular routine, like making lists of everything in the fridge so that we don't need to waste electricity in order to know what's in there, or washing and reusing aluminum foil until it is spent, and then using the spent foil to scour cast iron pans. All of these little things along with just buying less, buying cheaper, and eating only as much as we need to eat and not just as much as we would like, add up to the ability to live on about $12,000 U.S. a year, not counting the extras like trips, Spanish lessons, and the occasional treat like a party or a night out, a bottle of wine or a novel.

Because we are able to live on so much less, we have the freedom to do much more. We can take chances and be creative, and we have a lot more leisure time. It's a pretty good deal.

Of course, it means I've gotten used to chewy chicken. I've also gotten very friendly with the bean pot, and I've developed quite a large, albeit gas inducing, repertoire of bean dishes.

Here's my favorite one for empanadas stuffed with black beans. I've posted one before, but this is better. It's a little richer (both in fat and expense) than my usual bean dishes, but it's very good and relatively economical. It makes 20 empanadas, so cut the recipe down for a family sized portion or freeze them before you bake and then thaw and use what you need.

The Dough:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup masa harina

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

3/4 cup water

1/2 stick of melted, unsalted butter plus some extra for greasing the pans

Egg for an egg wash

Sift together the dry ingredients and mix in the melted butter. Add the water a little at a time until the dough is thoroughly mixed and forms a ball. A half cup of water is often enough. If it becomes sticky, you've added too much water. You can fix this by dusting the dough with some flour and kneading it in until you achieve the right texture. Refrigerate to chill.

Once the dough is chilled, you're ready to roll it out. Use a rolling pin on a board dusted with a little flour to spread the dough to about a quarter inch thickness. Then cut the dough into 4 inch rounds with a biscuit cutter or the top of a glass jar dipped in flour to prevent sticking. Alternatively, you can do what we do and use a tortilla press to form the rounds. Just take about two tablespoons of dough and roll it into a ball and then place it on a tortilla press covered with plastic wrap. Fold the plastic wrap over to cover the top of the dough ball leaving enough slack for the dough to spread, and then press, peel off the plastic, and fill.

The Filling:

5 cups of cooked black beans

8 ounces of queso fresco

We fill the empanadas with black beans that we stew ourselves, but canned black beans work just as well. You will need five cups of black beans. That's something like two and a half 16 ounce cans.

If you use canned, just drain them, reserving the liquid that comes off, and then put about 1/3 in the blender. Add the liquid back a little at a time as you puree so the blades of your blender keep moving. Once you're done blending, add the puree back to the rest of the beans and discard the remaining liquid.

If you'd rather cook them yourself, just soak dried black beans overnight in about twice as much water. Drain and place in a pot with unsalted chicken stock or water to cover, half an onion, a whole stemmed and split jalapeno or serrano pepper, two or three crushed cloves of garlic, half of a peeled carrot, half of a stalk of celery, a large sprig of cilantro, a couple of whole, roasted tomatillos (do this with a dozen or so under the broiler in your oven, charring them slightly, and then freeze what you don't use), an avocado leaf of hoja santa if you have it or a bay leaf if you don't, and simmer until the beans are completely tender.

At this point, I drain the beans, reserving the cooking liquid. Discard the avocado or bay leaf and scoop the remaining flavoring ingredients into a blender with about 1/3 of the cooked beans. Add just enough cooking liquid to keep the blades moving and puree. Mix the puree back into the balance of the drained beans and add salt to taste.

Assembly:

Beat the egg and mix it with a tablespoon or so of water to make the glue that will hold your pastry together. Drop 2 tablespoons of filling on each round of dough. If you want, you can add a little queso fresco at this point. Brush the edges with egg wash, and fold the dough over to form a half-moon shaped turnover. Use the tines of a fork to press the edges together to form a strong seal.

Covered the uncooked empanadas lightly with plastic wrap and put them into the refrigerator for at least half an hour. Once properly chilled, assemble the empanadas on a baking sheet, brush the tops lightly with additional egg wash (to make them brown and appetizing looking), prick each pastry with the tines of a fork so the steam can escape, and bake in a 375 degree oven for about half an hour or until golden brown on the outside. Don't forget to prick or the steam will cause your pastry to split along the seams or crack, and the filling will leak.

Serve with salsa verde and cilantro sour cream (which is made with cilantro and sour cream, in case you were wondering).

The First World: 12 March 2010

2010-03-12T13:13:00.000-08:00

Funny how ordinary experiences seem so much thicker with meaning and significance against an exotic backdrop. Here in Mexico, much of what is commonplace to the Mexican people, idiosyncrasies of culture, language, climate and setting, is still novel to me, making the mundane routine that structured my life in Portland, Oregon alien by contrast. I am suddenly an object of curiosity, to myself almost as much as to others.

U.S. domination of the global economy tends to obliterate any understanding that there is such a thing as U.S. culture, especially among those who live within it's often stifling, for some suffocating, embrace. Life in what, for now and the next five minutes is still the core industrial nation of the world, is so defined by power that even those of us who don't fit well within the definition of "normal," get sucked in, certain idiosyncrasies of the national character too shrouded by the long shadow of privilege to be visible even to our jaded eyes.

From this new perspective, certain of my cracks and blemishes are more apparent. What I thought were mere molehills of cultural incompetence in Oregon loom mountainous on the Mexican landscape, and every day brings new revelations.

I'm aware now more than ever that by the time of my expatriation I was taking more from the world than I was giving back. Where natural resources are concerned, I was a hog, no doubt. And when it came to spending money on nothing, I was the piggery itself in my hubris, with an appetite and knowledge of just the right thing to buy far exceeding my relatively meager income.

Of course, I knew I was consuming too much while it was happening. The monthly credit card bills drove that message home well enough. I remember thinking of the tally at the end of each billing period as a financial report on where I'd been and what I'd done in the previous month. The bill always contained at least one odd, spontaneous gesture, like a packet of Sham Wows, or a Slanket (the blanket with sleeves).

I understood I was overspending and (and this distinction is significant) over-consuming, but I reassured myself by contrasting my gluttony with that of many of my friends whose family connections or more mainstream career choices allowed them to consume so much more. I even went so far as to create a sort of moral spreadsheet for my life, balancing my relatively luxurious lifestyle on the income side against the fact that I had made certain financial sacrifices to make a life as a human rights advocate on the expense side.

That I thought of my human rights work as an expense rather than as income speaks volumes about the condition of my spirit. In order to fill the growing void that once over-flowed with my passion for my work, I indulged myself, justifying the treat by remembering that I squatted in that abandoned print shop when I was 25 in order to live on the pocket change I earned organizing against hate groups, etc., etc., etc. I mean, I worked hard, I struggled to overcome, I earned this excess.

Now, in the context of rural Mexico, my Portland lifestyle seems ridiculous, even callous, like recommending cake as a balm to the hungry, restless masses of Mexico and Puerto Rico and every other economic colony of the U.S. where a family of four could easily live on my former monthly grocery allowance. I'm properly ashamed of myself.

But here come the excuses. You ready? I wasn't just being impetuous, I was shutting down and holing up. I used money to create a cocoon of mindlessness that allowed me to avoid dwelling on how disconnected I'd become from any real sense of community, not to mention how the consequences of my lifestyle, really the collective lifestyle of those of us in the first world, was flushing the global economy and the environment down the toilet. Anyway, in a world that had often treated me unkindly, I was being kind to myself.

What do you call something that's both god's honest truth and pure b.s. at the same time?

All of this over-indulgent, Slanket-wearing, embarrassing (to someone who made his living being smug about knowing the difference between right and wrong), silly, mindless excess became especially apparent to me a few weeks ago while on a trip to the U.S.

It was a very full trip, packed with meetings and socializing and catching up. Along the way, I ran into bits of my old life. I saw my old self reflected in people from my past who seemed to expect me to be someone I've begun to leave behind. Why not come out with us and spend a small fortune on dinner and drinks? Why not spend hundreds on shoes I don't need or fly for a day from Portland to Seattle for an evening out? Once or twice I caught myself window shopping. I steamed the glass at the Kitchen Kaboodle staring at a Japanese culinary tool that can make spaghetti out of a radish, and rubber necked at a new pair of kicks in the Adidas window display.

At our hosts' home, I marveled at the luxury of first world living. I mean, there's a whole room in the house dedicated to exercise equipment, 4 bathrooms, two offices (offici?), a wine cellar, and even a bedroom for the dog. I practically twisted my neck gawking at everything, even after having seen it all hundreds of times before. There was so much space and all those closets and electronic equipment, and all kinds of art on the walls.

Oh, wait, that's my art. I could barely remember hanging my art collection here before leaving. In fact, I barely remember having those pieces at all. I used to love all those pictures so much.

And there was lots and lots of hot water. I love hot showers and hot baths and steaming hot towels. I used to run a bath almost every day in the winter time. I'd read in the bathtub for hours, or look at house porn in magazines, drool over recipes, sip wine, eat, and generally debauch myself. When the water cooled, I'd run more until it got so hot it was almost scalding.

In my house in San Pancho, hot water is something you make on the stove. The taps and the shower take so long to reach tepid I often just shower cold. Even a warm shower is kept short to save gas and the electricity necessary to lift the water to the cistern on the roof. One day into my trip to Portland and I was filling a giant tub full of steaming hot water and wishing it was bigger.

I met with a friend who talked about having to sell his house if his kid decides on MIT for college. Sad state of affairs for someone who has worked in the public interest his whole adult life. But then, I remembered, most kids in San Pancho never get past middle school. It's too expensive to catch the bus to the high school in La Cruz and families need the income that 13 year olds can earn.

By the second day, the whole of Portland felt like it was drenched in money. That is, of course, except when witnessing the plight of homeless people panhandling on the corners, a poignant reminder of global inequality made all the more heart wrenching against the backdrop of Saks Fifth Avenue and shoppers carrying $1,500 designer handbags.

How, I wondered, had our humanity gotten sewn up so tight inside of our privilege that we can shop for Jimmy Choos in the presence of this kind of poverty and then grow annoyed when beggars ask for the change from our purchases? The most misery-inducing aspect of all of this was realizing how easily I can be sucked into it all.

I started thinking about the lovely old houses it would be oh so nice to live in, especially if they have off-street parking for my cute little hybrid (cuz I'm concerned about my carbon footprint, you know?), and all the fun restaurants to eat in and movies to see in my million and one environmentally friendly outfits made of bamboo derived fabrics.

I'm such a sucker. No wonder I'm now the proud owner of a house in Portland that, despite being situated on the edge of a nature preserve in the most desirable neighborhood of the city, sits unsold after a year, worth about 70% of what it cost when I first purchased it and a fraction of it's value at the height of the market.

Here, so much closer to the floor of the global economy, it's almost dizzying to look up. Portland practically put me on my ass, and I've only been here in Mexico for 11 months.

Of course, even with the changes I'm undergoing, I remain a person of relative privilege. In Portland, I gave in to my love of fine dining and had a big night out, complete with top shelf cocktails and multiple bottles of fine wine. The tab would have covered half my rent in San Pancho. I cooked a dinner at home for our hosts that cost enough to stock my Mexican pantry for weeks, and when I return to San Pancho I will eat out once in a while; I'll have a beer or two or three under the beach palapas on occasion and splurge on an event now and then. I'll even have a premium bottle of wine every few months, and drink it over a movie downloaded onto my lap top computer while playing games on my iphone. I've changed a bit, but just a bit.

The difference now is that I no longer live with the funky moral spreadsheet. There is nothing left to draw down on previous investments in the social good, nor am I smugly shooting daggers in the direction of the even more fortunate. I strive instead for balance on a very different scale.

It's become fashionable among my set of friends to calculate and reduce one's carbon footprint. I now try to live in a way that reduces the negative side of my political and economic footprint. Now and then I fall off the wagon, but there are no more excuses. Once you get to the point where you can name your problem, you can no longer excuse yourself from trying to do something about it, or at least that's my latest life slogan. Now, let's see if I can live by it.

Getting Started Again: 4 March 2010

2010-03-04T17:28:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've written anything in my journal. I've had good intentions, but all for naught. I keep committing to doing more writing while actually doing less. I'm getting over my malaise, but I'm not entirely out of the doldrums yet.

I guess I have the excuse of having been busy, but that doesn't explain how I seem to have time for the beach and for walks and jungle explorations. More than short on time, I guess I've been short on inspiration as the day to day routine of life here grows less exotic, less blog-worthy, and San Pancho becomes more and more like home to me.

11 months into my sojourn here, I'm at what should be a good summing up point. But, try as I might, I can't seem to pull all the pieces together into a cohesive story with a beginning, middle, and end. I still feel like I'm on the first leg of this journey, still getting my bearings and adjusting, preparing for a voyage into something new.

I've only experienced one spring, summer, fall, and winter. Three weeks ago, I experienced my first winter gale. Every day I see a something new, something I've never seen before, or meet someone for the first time who feels like they could be a friend for life.

This week I experienced the first example of the winter weather so many have described to me as "perfect." I remember days like that in Hawaii. They often come at the end of the spring rainy season, before the tilt of the earth puts the sun directly overhead and the cool spring warms to summer. Never since my childhood have I experienced that particular sunny-cool embrace of climate, that angle of sun, that glittery, shimmering green light filtering through the leaves, falling like shards of stained glass on the grass. Never until this season in Mexico.

Even as I revel in the winter weather, I'm anticipating the low season when the snowbirds fly north to escape the heat, and much of the pueblo goes dormant. Businesses close, tourists disappear, and everything slows down. In the summertime the beaches are empty on weekdays. One can sit on the sand by the water for hours without seeing another person. Then, around sunset, people start to descend on the shore. On a busy day, a couple dozen or so might gather to watch the sun drop below the horizon, sharing a moment with their neighbors before the close of the day.

Late summer is the monsoon season. I wish to again experience the excitement of watching rain clouds gather on a hot day, and the relief when finally lightning bolts and claps of thunder turn anxious, sweaty speculation into happy anticipation of rain falling in torrents, filling the streets with water and cooling everything off. I want to run out into the rain and down to the beach to watch the lightning over the ocean and feel the cool breeze coming off the water on my wet skin.

Fall will come again, time for the San Pancho Days festival, Dia de los Muertos, and the worst weather of the year. I look forward to this, too. The hot, humidity soaked late fall climate is part of the cycle of life here. Living through the fall heat sweetens the high season, seasoning it with gratitude for the beautiful, cool, clear days; days like Monday of this week, when for a moment the perfect climate bathed everything, even the worst of the features of life here, in a rose colored light.

I'm finding my way back into my journal now. When the sink and appliances finally arrive at the community center, our little food project will get started. We'll be collecting and testing new recipes and learning about the eco-system, the economy, and food producers here in Nayarit and Jalisco as we try to build a food program for the pueblo. There will be a lot to reflect on and record, lots to write about.

I guess that's why I stopped writing these last weeks. I'm at the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. It was time to take stock and start over again.

A Whole New Enterprise: 14 February 2010

2010-02-15T09:45:00.000-08:00

This winter in Nayarit will likely be remembered most for its peculiar weather. It certainly seems to be on everyone's minds. Wherever I go, whomever I speak to, the conversation seems to center on the rain, the occasional storms, and that night when a gale caused the french doors of our bedroom to blow open with such force it drove us out of bed. Down the road, boats in La Cruz were blown right out of the water and a neighborhood in Punta Mita flooded.

Normally, this stretch of coast gets nary a drop of rain from December through March. Perfect is how many describe the usual winter weather. When they say the word, it practically drips with nostalgia for winter 2009 and 8 and 7 and every other season in the speaker's memory when each day followed upon the other, dry, mild, and sunny right up to semana santa, making New Haven or Columbus, Seattle or New York seem very, very far away indeed.

But not this year. This year the winter has been wet and windy and, now and then, downright stormy.

The weather seems to be affecting the ocean as well, causing rough surf culminating in high tides almost reaching the edges of beachfront homes and businesses. The unusually big surf has dramatically rearranged our beach more than once this season, and there's no end in sight. Even now, as I write, I can hear waves crashing on the shore two blocks away.

I often find myself speculating about this strange year. I wonder if climate change is responsible for the nutty unpredictability of it all, perhaps tipping nature's usual balance just far enough that normal cyclical fluctuations have been pushed into overdrive, taking us into new territory.

Or maybe our wild winter is dictated by the stars. The duena of our house recently shared an astrological forecast claiming that a rare alignment of the planets will make this year, and especially the two months we are in the middle of right now, a time of unexpected and dramatic change. If the planets have their way, it's time for us to snap on our seat belts and brace ourselves for a wild ride.

In spite of the crazy weather, winter has been good to us. After the heat of the summer, the cool temperatures are a relief, making sleep easy and the days less daunting. I often walk for hours in the cool of the morning, exploring the jungle, climbing steep side streets into exclusive enclaves to enjoy the views between the mansions of the rich and famous of the pueblo. I no longer soak my clothes in sweat; no longer suffer the embarrassment of being the wettest man this side of the playa in todo el pueblo. Now and for the next several weeks, I will glisten rather than drip.

In addition to cool weather, the winter also brought us unexpected but welcome news on the work front. Entre Amigos, a group I've often referenced in this journal, has invited Jon and me to manage a cafe in it's new educational facility.

The cafe is one piece of a more complex plan by which Entre Amigos hopes to achieve economic self-sufficiency. It's a good plan - good enough that we helped to raise the money to build the cafe. When we committed to the fundraising campaign, there appeared to be a tenant in place, ready to take the space once it was completed. But the deal fell through, and the door opened to a new enterprise, a new chapter in our lives in Nayarit.

Tomorrow we'll fly to the U.S. to renew our visas and rummage through the basements and attics of friends in search of cookbooks, coffee accessories and juicing equipment. We hope to build a sun oven, and set up a no-energy cold press coffee brewing system. In short, we are going crunchy, granola, hippy even, and loving the adventure. I may be enjoying my cactus and mint juice with a touch of vodka, but I'll keep it to myself and happily become a guru of good health and ecologically sustainable eating.

My dearest wish is for the cafe to become the basis for a food security program for San Pancho. That dream is one I've nurtured since the end of the last summer. In September, at the very end of the low season, we learned that many families were going hungry here. People were showing up at the Entre Amigos bodega, then still under construction, asking to work for food.

That people would go hungry in San Pancho, on the edge of one of the richest and most verdant jungle eco-systems in Mexico, bounded by the Pacific Ocean, traversed by a river and streams full of bait fish and shrimp, and in the shade of old fruit orchards is a puzzle and a tragedy. How have we become a people whose children must go hungry in the midst of such bounty?

Now, with a food service business based in a community center built by an organization that is dedicated to education and sustainable economic development, the opportunity to do something worthwhile seems plausible, the dream of a program to improve the diets of the community tangible. We will certainly be in good company. Many here have been working on the issue of food security and have much to teach, including our Spanish teacher who shared the delicious albondigas recipe I posted a few weeks ago.

I know it is naive to believe that we will be able to simply start on this project without having had so much as a conversation regarding food issues with a single hungry person, but I'm game to try. After a lifetime in social change I'm accustomed to making plans and having things go in no way as I expected. My life is littered with failed speculation nonetheless amounting to something worthwhile, simply as the result of trying.

So we will try. Hopefully, our efforts will amount to something. Certainly, we'll have fun and that counts as a measure of success, right? I'll keep you posted on the results.

Lucha Libre? 7, February 2010

2010-02-09T13:51:00.000-08:00

I swore I would not write another entry about lucha libre. I figured, how many times can I write about the same thing over and over again. I was wrong. I mean, yeah, I do think I kind of exhausted the subject, or at least my ankle deep knowledge of it, in two previous entries. But this visit by the luchadores was different, really different.

Allow me to expound briefly upon the single characteristic distinguishing this performance from previous ones before posting the pictures that, better than words, explains my renewed fascination with the "sport."

It was Sunday, the matches were held on the Plaza del Sol, just a block and a half from my house, and the event was free. There were bands, children in lucha masks, and, of course, the luchadores in all their glory. Really, an event not to be missed, especially at the new low, low price, and in it's convenient new location.

I waited, having learned that the best matches don't take place until the end of the evening. The fights started at 5, but I didn't roll out of the house and head for the plaza until around 8:30ish, just in time for the ultimate fight of the evening, a tag team affair featuring Chavo Santana and Misterio Negro versus Mascarita Sagrada and Pimpinela Escarlata.

The biggest star of the match was clearly Pimpinela Escarlata who, while named after the Baroness Emmuska Orczy's masked superhero of the French revolution, in no way resembles him. Pimpinela Escarlata is, drum roll please, a gender queer transvestite.

I spotted her at our local tienda earlier in the day, full face of make-up on and topless except for a tight leather vest, a fashion statement I barely noticed, distracted as I was by the puzzle of how she managed to squeeze into an even tighter pair of jeans. I assumed she was somehow associated with the touring luchadores but it hadn't occurred to me that she was the star of the show.

That's not to say she didn't look like she could crush my head between her thighs. She was huge, and her arms were as big around as my calves. If you ran into her in a dark alley alone at night, prudence would dictate giving her a wide berth and a respectful, eyes averted nod as if to say, "I know you can kick my ass; no need to prove it." I just didn't believe that Mexico was ready for transgender wrestling.

Yet, when I got to the plaza, there she was on stage, the real thing, gloriously flamboyant and kicking ass in San Pancho! She took to the ring and the crowd crowed with excitement. She stalked the ropes in a super-tight black vinyl body thong and silver boots, waiting for her opportunity. When at last she was tagged in, she was at first subjected to a humiliating torrent of kicks and jabs. The crowd laughed and jeered as her face was slapped and she was kicked around the ring. Then, suddenly, she retaliated, humiliating her opponent with kisses while she threw him to the mat. First Chavo Santana then Misterio Negro went down, and Pimpinela Escarlata emerged the victor. The crowd went wild.

Boy, the times, they are a-changin'! It was a moment to remember.

Here are those pictures I promised featuring a victory salute and then a few kisses thrown to her appreciative fans:

Ramiro: 31 January 2010

2010-02-01T10:49:00.000-08:00

As I write this at just shy of 11 am on Sunday, our neighbor Ramiro is blaring ranchera music. Based on the volume, his boom box could easily be as big as a small house. The songs started at 7 last night and have played on steadily since for 16 hours, almost without break. The music is accompanied by bursts of joyful whooping and theatrical cackling that would be difficult to produce at any age, never mind in one's 60s and for hours at a time.

That the music plays all night is merely annoying. It happens often enough that it's lost it's power to keep me awake. What's makes these episodes blog-worthy is that the music, the hooting, the hollering, and no small amount of drinking, may go on for days at a time. I go to bed to the polka beat of ranchera, it invades my dreams, serves as my alarm clock, warms my lunch, and carries me to bed again for 2, 3, or 4 days at a time.

Ramiro is famous around these parts, his all night, sometimes weeks-long benders having become the stuff of legend among the neighbors. He seems to need little if any sleep; will drink you and your whole family under the table; and manages to do all of this while sitting alone on a chair, not a sofa or a lazy-boy but a kitchen chair, in the middle of his living room, slightly slumped over but nonetheless conscious, and fully dressed as if for a party. I once peeked in through his open door and saw him sitting alone, his head bobbing under a cowboy hat, wearing skin-tight Saturday-night-go-to-meeting jeans, a bolo, and a western shirt.

The screams and laughter are remarkable, but my favorite antic may be his occasional rambling monologues, shouted to the beat of the music. Now and then he'll step outside. When he does, I can hear him rattling around in his yard, poking at his fighting cocks, goading them to fight and crow while shouting commentary like a ringside fight announcer at a boxing match.

Noise to one side, he's a good neighbor. He looks genuinely pleased to see me when we run into each other, and he seems popular among the elders of the community. I often see him sitting in the old town square with a group of older gentlemen, always dressed up, always with his cowboy hat on, playing dominos under the trees.

And one must respect his love of his country's traditional music. Ranchera is, after all, a symbol of post-revolutionary Mexico's rejection of the old Spanish aristocracy and its embrace of the common people. As the duena of our house put it to me, "he is Mexico." I, on the other hand, am merely a guest. That Ramiro is hospitable enough to greet me with respect is enough for me. I have my palapa with my ocean view, multiple rooms and baths and internet access. He has Mexico - the Mexican's understanding of his own culture, his history, his beautiful, righteous music.

What I find the most striking about him is how much he reminds me of home. By home I mean Hawaii, circa 1970s. When he gets on a roll, he sounds so much like people I once knew that I almost expect to see them at the door, coming to pay me a visit. Hearing him holler takes me right back to the parties of my youth, of friends at play, and the feeling of belonging to the land and to your people.

Those old parties usually revolved around a friend or relative's pay day. Men and boys with names like Fat Joe and Billah, himself once seen wearing a t-shirt with an oh so charming illustration of a dirty old man about to jump a young girl and the slogan broad jumper emblazoned on the front, would gather around an improvised buffet table, often just the hood of an old car parked on the front lawn, and party until the sun rose or we passed out, whichever came first. We were sons of Hawaii, the Philippines, the far east, and the South Pacific, but on those nights we were all just local boys in a once and future kingdom now on its knees and in the midst of a foreign invasion.

Favorites like the Gabby "Pops" Pahinui Band would be played at full volume to calls of "there you go, Pops! Hawaiiaaaan!!" Some would sing; others would dance; everyone drank cheap beer until we were too full to drink anymore, rested, and then drank some more.

Of course, for me, then starring in the role of the gay in hiding, those gatherings provoked mixed feelings. I reveled in the music and comraderie, and the feeling of solidarity with my brothers. But the fragility of my status as a fellow among my supposed kind also served to magnify the creeping feeling that I didn't in fact belong, that I was an outsider, a fairy in the world of men. If a fight breaks out, will I be made to choose sides? When the sex talk starts, will I be forced to play along?

As those old parties wore on into the wee hours, the beer, the herbal refreshment, and the music, especially the music, would draw us out, reminding us of who we were, inviting us to celebrate our continued existence in the world, us descendants of the few who survived the fall, us local boys. I remember the boom box and the singing pushing me to the edge of tears at those parties. I don't think I was alone in that feeling. Those gatherings brought out the best of what was still sweet, not yet bitter, not jaded and angry, in us.

Of course, they were more than just happy tears. Now and then, someone would end up crying about some humiliation, some event or events, or just life in general. I remember watching grown men, 12 beers into the night, breaking down and crying. Embarrassed sobs were punctuated by choked monologues..."fucking guy...fu'ing...haole...who he tink...kick 'is ass, wooootaaaah! Bruce Lee!!!!"

Picture a full grown man, drunk as a skunk, pretending to do a round house kick he couldn't do sober, beer in hand, ass crack in full view, often with a note or a blade of grass stuck in it by one of the boys. With wives and girlfriends always to one side, watching, chain smoking and nervously laughing, he would play out a fantasy of taking down the enemy and destroying him with his bare hands. It was a total Blanche and Stanley scenario. The only thing missing was Vivian Leigh in a blonde wig looking offended by all the course language.

All these years later, I'm able to laugh when I think of those times. But, back then, I felt the source of the tears all too well. Some would laugh and make jokes about all that blubbering. I believe some version of "cryin' like a woman" was the usual slap down. But I understood. Sometimes a girl's gotta have a good cry, even when she's a 230 pound, 40 year old man supporting four children, none yet 18, a grandchild, a nephew, and a diabetic wife with gangrenous legs an no medical insurance in a two bedroom house on a dirt road three blocks from the ocean in what people keep telling you is paradise.

When Ramiro really gets going, I wonder at his joyful whooping. I hear genuine happiness in his voice but there's something else, too. I know that feeling. The poignancy pulls at my heart. He really is Mexico. Not all of it maybe, but he represents a piece we can ill afford to lose. If we do, some bit of our ability to see beyond ourselves to what it means to be truly, fully human will be lost with him.

So I raise a glass (water this time) to Ramiro. Wooootaaah!!!

Neighbors and Friends: 27 January 2010

2010-01-30T15:51:00.000-08:00

Among the distinctive characteristics of life in San Pancho is the diversity of people who live here. In a similarly sized town in most of the U.S. it's not likely you would find yourself living next to a yoga studio, a surfer from Idaho, a shaman, and a Mexican cowboy whose main preoccupation appears to be cock fighting.

On any given day, I might run into a friends from the U.S., France, Italy, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Canada, and of course Mexico. Even the Mexicans seem to come from everywhere - Oaxaca, Mexico City, Guadalajara, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Tepic, and every little burg along the Pacific Coast. Those from the U.S. hail from Seattle, Portland, Taos, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Sun Valley, Lake Arrowhead, Boise, even the San Juan Islands. It sometimes feels as though native-born residents are a rare and exotic breed.

But for all the diversity in regional and national origin, what makes San Pancho truly unusual is the diversity of belief and lifestyle among her people. Queers are not all that queer here. Gender outlaws seem to abound. As my claim relies heavily on gay-dar, most of the queers I've spotted are UFOs - Unidentified Fey Objects. If forced to reduce the queer population of San Pancho to confirmed sightings and actual live contact, the number would dwindle significantly.

Nonetheless, the bases for my hunches abound round every other corner, and that counts for something in the way of a measure of freedom of expression. And real live lesbians have definitely made their mark on the pueblo. They manage properties and own restaurants and, on occasion, bend gender norms while doing so. And all this in a town of less than 2,500. Okay, maybe 3,000. If you've been keeping track, the population statistic is a moving target here.

Whatever the precise number, we are small. In the Mexican vernacular of the moment, San Pancho is super chico. Nonetheless, we are the world. Come to think of it, we are the children, we are the ones who make a better day so let's start giving. There's a choice we're making, we're saving our own...sorry, I digress. In spite of Ronald Reagan, AIDS, the great market crash of 1987, Nancy Reagan, Maureen Reagan, Rambo and Rambo II: First Blood (kind of the Nancy and Maureen Reagan of the cinema), and Heartbeeps (the movie starring Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters that was advertised with the tagline: "Be on the lookout for this gang of robot misfits!"), I loved the 80s.

Anyway, as I was saying, in addition to gender and sexual diversity, there's a fair amount of cultural diversity as well. We are Jews and atheists, Catholics and Protestants, Wiccans and Buddhists and Hindus and Jainists, orthodox and unorthodox, conservative and charismatic. Yoga appears to be a popular pursuit here. So are reiki and ayurveda and some American shamanistic traditions. I've definitely spotted a hallucinogenic cactus or three in the pueblo, not to mention all manner of natural cures and mood enhancing herbal concoctions.

Progressives and liberals abound, especially among the foreign population. There are many who worship at the feet of mother nature, fighting climate change tooth and nail and worrying the local authorities over issues of water quality, wetlands preservation, and the survival of the noble jaguar and her natural jungle habitat. Here and there one can spot a real live leftist, including an uncompromising few who would likely turn their noses up at the likes of me, even. Yup, moi. And those of you who know me understand that Mr. Marx and I have long been buds. I'm no pinko, but not for lack of trying. I just can't go there, not least of which because communism with a small "c," while in certain aspects appealing, seems futile if not a group activity, right? In today's world, cleaving to communism seems a solitary commitment, defeating the point of all that ideology, to be sure, and inviting loneliness to boot.

On the other hand, Catholicism of the non-ecumenical variety is everywhere here. No lonely Catholics in San Pancho, at least not on account of their religion. And on many evenings, sometimes in concert with the crying rituals of the healing hut (the shaman's abode next door) and the ohm-ing of the faithful at the yoga studio, I can hear hymns being sung in the distance. The voices sound young and male, and the hymns have an old-time Protestant solemnity about them. I wonder if the singers are members of the Christian surfers club, another ideological grouping in town.

And then there are the animal lovers. They abound as well. In fact, our local community newsletter recently featured a story about the miraculous rescue of Maggie the Wonder Dog, a Wheaton Terrier who ran off into the jungle after being scared by rough surf. Maggie managed to survive despite days of starvation and dehydration, tick infestation, and what I imagine must have been some terrifying nights among the vermin of the forest for a pampered pooch with gringo "parents." To rescue Maggie a major search was undertaken that included a very fruitful consultation with an animal communicator.

I'm good with all of the diversity, even the Christian fundamentalists and the handful of right wing gringo Republicans. It all serves the interests of a Buddhist-Catholic-Pagan-Queer animal lover like me, providing valuable cover and making me feel welcome, or welcome enough at least.

As a child in Hawaii I lived with the daily fear of being exposed as gay. Having faced my fair share of harassment and violence for relatively minor violations of the social code like wearing quaint hand-me-downs or orthopedic shoes to correct club feet, I was convinced that the revelation that I liked boys, and not in that manly, towel snapping, ass slapping way, would get me killed. Fear taints almost every memory of that time in my life.

When I fled Hawaii for Oregon, hoping to finally be able to freely express myself, I immediately found myself in it up to my eyeballs. The homophobia wasn't as personal, but then it couldn't be in a place where I knew virtually no one. But, the racism was downright dangerous. I was followed by security guards in stores, faced verbal harassment on the street, even once had a row of drunk frat boys demand I return to Japan while throwing empty beer cans and bottles in the street behind me one late night in the middle of the so-called Japan Wars of the late 80s. By the time I was chased down a street by neo-Nazi skinheads a couple of years later, I was fully aware that while I was certainly not in Kansas anymore, nor was I in Oz.

I arrived here in San Pancho almost 9 months ago steeled for the worst. I figured that between being gay, a person of color, and a human rights advocate with a controversial resume, I'd have a tough row to hoe in a rural town in Mexico.

What I found instead caught me completely by surprise. I mean, sure, I realize that I'm an oddity to many here and I'm certain there are a few who disapprove and many more who would if they understood the fullness of my identity. But, regardless, I feel, as I said earlier, welcome enough. All that cosmopolitanism and ohming, not to mention ritual crying and tree hugging has attracted a community that has created a context within which I'm just not all that odd to folks. I'm just another one of those "fucking hippies." Imperfect as it is, I'll take it. After all, I've always thought it might be fun to be one of those hippies, it's just that the hippies weren't so sure they wanted me, until now.

Amigo de Todo: 8 January 2010

2010-01-11T08:41:00.000-08:00

Lately we've been fantasizing about getting a dog. Jon wants a boston terrier that he hopes to name Junior. I want a chihuahua. I've picked out the name Charmonica for my fantasy chihuahua. I could be swayed by a miniature poodle if Jon will let me name her Barbara or maybe Noreen, but Charmonica is the girl of my dreams.

All of the fantasizing is to no avail. Our landlords aren't keen on the idea of a dog in their house. I don't blame them. We once had tenants we let do pretty much whatever they wanted. Without a dog in sight, they managed to tear every screen in the house, destroy a bathtub, divert a sewer line, flood the yard, and punch a hole in the hallway ceiling. After that experience, I can see the appeal in making rules and minimizing the variables.

We tried to be very good; very big about the thing, But, almost 24 hours to the minute after I got the negatory response, a dog showed up at the house. I opened the door and he was just there, peering in at us. He is no American Gentleman as Jon likes to remind me bostons are called by fanciers. He is also no Frenchie, and he certainly would not be flattered by the name Barbara.

Nonetheless, he showed up, cute as can be, and just begging to be adopted. We went for a walk thinking we could shake him but he followed us. We went to the beach hoping he'd get bored and run off, but he sat with us. We returned home and he came all the way back, sat down outside the door, and waited. He waited all night.

I've been "chosen" by dogs before. Usually, the selection process begins with a meal, on me. This time, however, we did nothing. He came to us well-fed and content to do nothing but sleep on his back while waiting to go for walks. I admit to once giving him a little snack of a piece of bread soaked in chicken fat. He sniffed at it and turned it down. He'd eaten already.

He's banished to the sidewalk outside the front door where he sleeps on most nights and about half of the days. He's even taken to protecting the house. I have no idea why we were chosen but nothing short of violating the ASPCA code of kindness to animals will make him go away.

His name is Frijol, as in bean. Cute, huh? And we didn't name him. He came with that moniker.

Frijol is un amigo de todo, a friend of everyone. He is known by name to the folks at the yoga studio and the women at La Nopalita where he is a part-time resident. He's even known to Maria, of Maria's Restaurant on Tercer Mundo, three blocks away. He's so popular that we learned his name two times over on the day after he found us by passersby who stopped to give him a pat.

Frijol seems to have been well taken care of once. He has very good manners and is as friendly as can be. He's also neutered, something that is almost never true of dogs around here, and he seems as attached to this house as he is to us which leads us to suspect we aren't the first residents of Casa Asada who have befriended him.

Frijol's favorite activity is running after coconuts on the beach. He also seems to like watching me swim.

The best thing about him is that all he wants is company. Beyond that, he makes no real demands. He wants to come in, and I mean real bad, but seems otherwise pretty content with his lot in life. He doesn't really eat anything here. I suspect he eats at La Nopalita. He's also surprisingly pest-free.

My one problem with him is his name. He doesn't really answer to Frijol and I'm not sure it fits him that well. I'm thinking of changing his name to Craig. Don't you think he looks like a Craig?

A Day At The Beach: 5 January 2010

2010-01-07T09:38:00.000-08:00

It was day 3 of our borrowed car adventure. I got up excited about going to see the petroglyphs at Alta Vista, just 45 minutes north of here near Chacala. I'm told the petroglyphs are profoundly moving relics of Mexico's pre-Hispanic past, and that the arroyo where they are located is beautiful. There's also a deeply spiritual dimension to the arroyo which continues to serve as a place of worship for many Huichol Indians.

After much anticipation and way too much preparation, we got into the car, turned the key, and got a clickclickclick sound when we should have gotten a rrrr-rrrr. I know that sounds like baby talk, but I'm a baby in the face of any mechanical problem. To me, a broken car is sick, not broken, because if it is sick, it might just get better on it's own, allowing me to put off embarrassing visits to a mechanic that require me to say things like "clickclickclick," and "rrrrr-rrrrr" to explain why the car won't run.

Did I ever tell you I grew up with a sister, a girl mind you, and one year younger than me to boot, who could breakdown down a car engine and put it back together again in her teens? While I was figuring out how to get excused from participating in P.E., she was winning industrial arts fairs and lettering in multiple sports. She earned money for college as a boilermaker and became the first woman traffic light electrician in the U.S. before turning in her tool belt and becoming an industrial arts teacher at a community college. Today she works for an engineering firm while serving part-time as an officer in the national guard.

I know I should be proud, but believe me, it sucked. One's faggotry is never so apparent as when your sister is your dad's favorite son. And, to make matters worse, I grew up in a family of blue collar workers. Men in our family repaired broken plumbing, solved electrical problems, built extra bedrooms onto their homes, and fixed their own damned cars, thank you. Only rich people (read wasteful pale skins), sissies, muffs, pantywaists, women, and other generally useless sectors of the (sub)human population relied on professionals.

Anyway, so like I was saying, the car was sick. I thought it best to allow her to rest so she could get better.

Instead of going to Alta Vista, we went to the beach. It was a great day. Rough surf over the last week or so has eroded the beach, causing a sandbar to form. The water was waist deep as far as 100 yards or so in, and the waves were small. To me, that means body surfing.

Don't get it twisted. Body surfing off the beach here isn't the same experience as body surfing in Hawaii or anywhere else where there is a real reef break. The waves are very small and the rides are very short. The thing is, I'm very old (for surfing at least), and my body isn't what it used to be. I'm not really up for missing the take off on a big wave and getting pulled under. My back doesn't twist like that anymore without breaking, and holding my breath for a minute at a time gives me headaches.

Anyway, I learned my lesson when I decided to become a marathon runner a couple of years ago. On my second day of training (which involved running for ten minutes before I'd get so winded I practically needed to lie down) I sprained my ankle badly enough that my doctor told me I'd probably never be the same again. Even surgery wasn't recommended because, as I was told, "at your age it is unlikely to be effective." At your age. And that was two years ago. And the ankle still hurts.

Lesson learned. Ready to move on.

I'm perfectly happy to just play around in the waves. Every now and then I get a little ride that reminds me of what it was like to skim board the break at Makapuu, or surf the sand bar at Sunset Beach. It's not nearly as fast and it lasts for mere seconds, like 5 of 'em, maybe, but for now, at least, that's good enough for me.

It was a great day. Here are some pictures. That's me on the left. On the right is my friend Frijol, the dog. More about him later.

Oh, and by the way, if you are interested in the petroglyphs at Alta Vista, here's a link to an interesting blog entry about them with some nice pictures by someone who obviously doesn't use his phone as a camera:)

Better Late Than Never: 6 January 2010

2010-01-06T14:14:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about new year's resolutions today and realized I didn't address the change of years in my journal. I know the 31st of December is just another day that Hallmark and Walmart and every other retailer have turned into a profit making opportunity. Nonetheless, it seems to me that a record of one's life should address signal occasions like the beginning of a new year, especially after the old one brought so many changes.

So here's the deal with new year's eve in San Pancho. I did almost nothing. The weather was perfect - cool and dry under clear, star-filled skies. There was no big social pressure, no need to make appearances at parties here and there. There was nothing we needed to do. It was bliss.

I bought a bottle of sparkling wine and Jon and I drank it with fried chicken. We watched a movie, El Orfanato, on my computer.

The chicken was great. I'm sure you think you already know good fried chicken, especially if you live anywhere within a hundred miles of Ezell's in Seattle, but this was pretty special, maybe the best I've ever had. The movie was good, too. Well worth a rental if you didn't catch it in the theaters.

The ambience of that evening was perfect for a scary movie. The moon was full, and the night was still enough to hear the waves crashing on the beach. I had goose bumps before the end of the opening credits, and I'd seen the picture before.

By the end of the movie, the bottle of wine was empty and I'd moved on to tequila shots. Why the hell not, it's a celebration, right? Anyway, I was a little drunk by the time we decided to go for a walk on the shore.

When we got there the beach was full of people playing on the sand, sitting around fires, sharing bottles of wine and tequila and generally hootin' and hollerin' to ring in the new year.

The scene on the beach kind of summed up my eight months here in San Pancho. This is why I came and why I hope to stay.

The parties blended together along their edges. Gringos and locals mixed it up, toasting the new year. Everyone looked happy, really happy. Children ran around in the darkness twirling sparklers, their parents unconcerned about their whereabouts, not fearful of predators around every corner, of boogymen hiding in the dark.

There was no elaborate dressing-up, nor Martha Stewart-inspired fantasy buffets. Just little clutches of people having a good time in their scruffies, excited about the chance to cut loose with their families and friends.

Fireworks over Sayulita were visible in the western sky, just over the ridge of the President's Point.

Each blast was greeted by whoops and shouts.

The moonlight put the beach into soft focus, obscuring its rougher edges. To me the scene on the beach could have been a picture of how it felt to arrive here last spring - like I'd landed securely on my feet after too many years of sliding down a slippery slope, struggling to find a foothold, fighting to make a life for myself where I didn't truly belong.

I realized just how lucky I am; how truly at ease and happy I feel. Here, without a real job or any real property, I feel rich in a way that is very new to me. I think I might, at last, be finding my way to contentment. Hopefully I'll get all the way there in the new year.

Here's to 2010. May it bring you the happiness, prosperity, and peace.

Road Trip 3 - La Cruz de Huanacaxtle: 4 January 2010

2010-01-05T18:11:00.000-08:00

Another day, another trip, this time to La Cruz de Huanacaxtle.

La Cruz is a little fishing village that sits on the northern edge of the Bahia de Banderas about a 20 minute drive north of Puerto Vallarta. La Cruz de Huanacaxtle literally translates to The Cross of Huanacaxtle, and refers to a Huanacaxtle tree in the shape of a cross that sits near the entrance to the pueblo.

Huanacaxtle is the Nahuatl word for a Parota tree, Enterolobium Cyclocarpum if you like. It is also known as an Ear Pod, Elephant's Ear, or Monkey Ear tree. The Parota is one of the largest trees of the dry forest formation of Mexico and Central America, and has been chosen as the national tree of Costa Rica. They are everywhere here in Nayarit, and they are deeply beloved by the Mexican people, not to mention by me. They are beautiful trees.

Like many of the pueblitos along the coast here, La Cruz, at least as it is currently constituted, is relatively new, having been founded in the 1930s by two Mexican families. There were people living here long before the formal incorporation of La Cruz, of course, but little in the way of a written record nor archaeological residue has been left behind to tell the story.

Even the population statistics are rough. Based on my online research, 1,600 people live in La Cruz. My eyeball estimate based upon the number of houses here is that it is about half again that size, and only if you don't count the snowbirds.

Funding of municipalities in Mexico is not based on population, making the keeping of statistics a bit superfluous. San Pancho has, depending on who you ask, 1,600 or 3,500 residents. Sayulita estimates range even more broadly, from as low as 3,500 to as high as 7,000 or higher.

Suffice to say, La Cruz is small, really small.

In this century, things have changed dramatically in La Cruz. In 2008, the harbor of La Cruz was renovated and a new marina was created. On our visit, the marina was about half full. Scattered among the small fishing boats and cruisers were some very expensive looking yachts. In the middle of it all, there is a yacht club, complete with a clubhouse and restaurant overlooking the harbor. It was all very Orange County.

La Cruz is also slated for additional multi-million dollar tourist and residential developments. The construction of the largest project, a mammoth resort complex on the water, has been stalled by legal action. But lawsuits or no lawsuits, La Cruz is definitely on the leading edge of Mexico's Riviera Nayarit development plan.

There are beautiful beaches here, including La Manzanilla, the main beach of La Cruz. There you will find the requisite palapas serving fish tacos and giant margaritas, and lots sweeping views of the Bahia de Banderas. We were in the mood to do something novel so we avoided the beach and went to the yacht club on the harbor for lunch instead.

The club was one of those places that you find in marinas all over the world. It sat atop a two-storey round building, stuccoed, white, glazed on all sides with big windows, full to the gills with the kind of furniture you normally find it hotel lobbies in Ramada Inns, and loaded with jovial, sunburnt gringo retirees. The only Mexican-ish feature was the giant palapa that capped the open-air restaurant on top.

The menu was just what you'd expect. There was ceviche served with crackers (and cooked fish meat, I suppose in order to suit the tastes of gringo suburbanites of a certain age), burgers, quesadillas, tortilla soup, and the catch of the day (the ubiquitous mahi mahi). I had ceviche.

The food was all comfortingly mediocre and relatively cheap, though any restaurant meal is a splurge for us nowadays so we savored the prep-free, no clean-up ease of it all and ate every bit of what was on our plates. By the end of our meal, it started to cloud over. Given the al fresco accommodations provided by our borrowed jeep, we figured it was time to get on our way.

Old La Cruz is a sweet town. New La Cruz is a gringo vacationer's paradise. The beaches here are lovely and the scenery is awesome. Sadly, though, the development here is beginning to feel typical, as in, of a type. Each little town where development of this sort takes place ends up looking like every other Mexican beach resort community. There's a real town here with real people who live and work in the area year-round, but they are quickly being marginalized by all this development.

Little San Pancho is still mainly exempt from this homogenizing trend, but bit by bit it is changing too. I can't help but feel a little melancholy, looking around at what has happened here in La Cruz. I hope that it benefits some of the long-time residents, but I'm not banking on a win-win outcome.

But that's a good part of the reason I'm here, I guess. I chose this little corner of the world in the hopes that I could dig into the good work thats being done here and make a difference. Based upon the growing challenges associated with achieving sustainable and equitable development that I've witnessed in La Cruz, Punta de Mita, Sayulita, Lo de Marcos, Puerto Vallarta, Bucerias, and, bit by bit, right here in San Pancho, it seems pretty clear that there are no easy answers.

We will have to make the road by walking, I guess. But then, isn't it always that way?

Road Trip 2: 3 January 2010

2010-01-04T17:47:00.000-08:00

As soon as I got the message that a friend was loaning us her car while she visits the U.S. for the holidays, I immediately turned to Jon and said, "road trip!" Yes, we can use the car to go to the grocery store, the nursery, the hardware store, and the dentist, but the weather has cooled beautifully and there's so much to see here. I couldn't resist a field trip or two.

Today was the first foray into the world with our borrowed car. Broken windshield and speed-o-meter, rickety steering, even ricketier (if that's a word) suspension be damned, with ol' Che on the windshield to serve as our scout, and our Jalisco license plate to (hopefully) keep the police at bay, we are getting out into the world and seeing a few things.

The first order of business is Punta de Mita. It's not among the many places recommended to us by friends. In fact, a mention of Punta de Mita actually got a little bit of a wrinkled nose reaction from one person. But, the thing is, it's close by, I'm curious about all the fuss about the Four Seasons resort and the new Hotel des Artistes, and Jon wants to check out the gourmet grocer. It all added up to a decision.

Punta de Mita is the newly "remodeled" village on the Bay of Banderas, about a 30 minute drive from San Pancho. It's just 40 minutes northwest of Puerto Vallarta on a little peninsula that includes Litibu, a sweet pueblito that's next on the schedule for major development.

One website I found describes Punta Mita, the gated resort community that anchors residential development on Punta de Mita as "Mexico's most luxurious private, gated resort and residential communities sanctuary." If you ask me, all of the new development in Punta de Mita feels like a private, gated resort. Another web entry includes a list of celebrities who have vacationed there including Ashton Kutcher (Punk'd anyone?), and Karina Smirnoff, star of Dancing with the Stars, a fact none of my gay male readers needed any help with I'm sure.

I think you get the drift of all this P.R. so I'll drop the harangue. This place is headed straight for tropical Disneyland, only without Space Mountain, an omission that makes me question whether it's worth the price of admission.

Just past Litibu (a spot to explore on another day) we rolled into Punta de Mita. Legend has it that when the Four Seasons Resort went up here, developers moved the village of Punta de Mita off the beach and rebuilt it as workers' housing across the street. I've yet to confer with public records to confirm that this is, indeed, what happened. However, it's a plausible story given the odd contradictions between liberal Mexican laws concerning land tenure on one hand, and the power of capital in this economy on the other.

Here, one can buy up property en masse, dig into aquifers with questionable capacity, and develop resorts or gated neighborhoods that block traditional access routes to water ways and oceanfront. Yet, it is difficult to simply evict Mexican citizens from land they have lived and worked on for many years, even if they originally landed there as squatters.

Whether a legal deed exists to document ownership or not, the Mexican government provides some degree of protection. I am told that this is why squatters who live along the river and on the edges of San Pancho have been left to their own devices.

But that's just hearsay. Around here, gossip is a staple of community life. When boredom sets in, it's easy to see the allure of all that talking. Too often, I find myself caught up in games of telephone, with stories changing as they travel the grapevine from person to person.

Punta de Mita is a town that feels as if it has been completely sanitized for our protection. I found it kind of like being in an IMAX movie theater running a film about Punta de Mita. It's not my favorite way to see Mexico, but it's a novel experience nonetheless, what with its smoothly paved streets, English language signage, and its (gringo) user-friendliness.

Punta de Mita sits on the northwest edge of the bay on a point (the Punta in the name), bounded on two sides by water. This position affords a southeastern view of the bay that brings to mind vistas of the Puget Sound with the Olympics on the horizon. Of course, here on the Bay of Banderas, the mountains are green rather than snow-capped, the water is warm, and, in the vernacular of my youth, the vistas are way, way huger.

The little section of Punta de Mita we visited is anchored by the Hotel des Artistes, the new Grupo Blouet resort development. Grupo Blouet is headed by Thierry Blouet, the chef-owner of Cafe des Artistes in Puerto Vallarta, regarded as one of the best restaurants in Mexico. In the hotel lobby a menu for the new Cafe des Artistes del Mar was absolutely anti-Presbyterian in its decadence. Good thing for my waistline that forays into places like these are no longer in my budget, that is unless their claim to cater to every customer includes a beans and rice course.

The hotel sits among other businesses designed to serve tourists on a strip that could be in almost any coastal location on this latitude. I'll admit to being very into the ready availability of parking and just about anything else a vacationer might wish for, not to mention the smooth ride up the main street, but that sanitized-for-your-protection style of development always makes me a little uneasy.

On the Hotel Des Artistes end of the beachfront, the shore is rocky, but over at the other end of the beach there appears to be nothing but white sand. I do wish to be on that end of the beach, however sterile it may be. And because of the bay, the water here is calm. I see the attraction. I would enjoy a swim in calm waters after almost a month of big, sloppy waves on the beach in San Pancho.

Our visit was brief. The gourmet grocery store is shuttered and gone, our stomachs were full of mediocre beach food, and there was nothing left to do that we can afford. Anyway, we came mainly to satisfy our curiosity. That monkey off our backs, I'm not sure we'll return.

That doesn't mean there's nothing to recommend the place. I hear there's a nice surf break on some of these beaches and there's that view I spoke of, better by far in person than in these pictures. And there's a little community here. Almost next door to the hotel there's a storefront occupied by PEACE (Protection, Education, Animals, and Environment). As an animal lover, I'm glad their here.

But the best thing about road trips these days is that, at journey's end, I'm always excited to be returning home to San Pancho. There's just something about our town that I really love. It's hard to capture it in words, but I intend to continue trying.

Road Trip: 29 December 2009

2009-12-30T20:16:00.000-08:00

Here in San Pancho the posada is the main event at Christmas time. The posada is the reenactment of Mary and Joseph's search for shelter in Bethlehem. To remember their sojourn, the faithful go from door to door asking for shelter until they arrive at one of many host homes where they find food and comfort.

Many have asked me if San Pancho hosts mammoth celebrations with monumental nativity scenes and candlelight processions such as they have seen in big Mexican cities. No such events take place here, but neither does Eugene, Oregon host a parade on the scale of New York's Thanksgiving Day extravaganza. Just as New York needs Macy's to host the Thanksgiving parade, the grand events of Mexico City and Guadalajara require institutional support of the sort only large cities can muster.

Our little pueblo erects a plastic Christmas tree in the Plaza del Sol and puts out a call to the community for ornaments so it can be decorated. The tree and a small procession through town on Christmas eve are all of that the public as a whole is invited to participate in to mark the date.

Instead of Christmas gifts and parties, the big holiday event for me this year was a road trip. We went on an overnight drive inland to Talpa de Allende by way of San Sebastian, Mascota, and Yuerba Buena with new friends from Sayulita.

Talpa de Allende is at about 4000 feet above sea level in the Sierra Nevada Occidental range in Jalisco, the state just south of Nayarit. Talpa is famous as the home of the third largest shrine to the virgin in Mexico. The shrine houses Our Lady of the Rosary, a Marian icon made of sugar cane paste by a Tarascan artist in the 1530s that is housed in a basilica built in her honor in the mid 1700s. The icon is tiny, about half again as big as a Barbie doll, and goes by the nickname La Chaparrita or Shorty in English.

Our Lady of the Rosary was displayed in a small church in the Rio Talpa valley until the mid-1600s when wear and tear put her on schedule to be retired. When the icon was taken down to be destroyed she emitted a bright light that temporarily blinded witnesses. When they regained their sight, those present claimed that the icon was rejuvenated, looking as if she had just been carved the day before.

All of this happened before Talpa de Allende was officially incorporated. The basilica that now houses the icon of the virgin and the town of Talpa as we know it today were founded upon the legend of Our Lady of the Rosary.

Over 2 million (by some estimates as many as 3 million) faithful Catholics make the pilgrimage to Talpa each year. Many walk hundreds miles on steep and difficult roads as a demonstration of their devotion, before ending the trip by dropping to their knees at the gates of the city and crawling the remaining mile or so to the basilica.

Pilgrims visit the virgin in her shrine and then enjoy the city, famous for chicle carved into the shapes of shoes and other decorative items, guava flavored jelly candies, and year-round spring-like weather. As a committed believer in miracles, including but not limited to the Catholic variety, I don't doubt the story of the virgin's renewal, nor the stories of miracles that have followed. The fact that a figurine carved out of sugar cane paste has lasted for more than 450 years is, by itself, worthy of a pilgrimage, or least a 3 minute spot on the Discovery Channel. However, I am a little cynical about all of the money that seems to be generated as a result of people making the pilgrimage to Talpa. I find that commercial activity on this scale always smells a little of snake oil and questionable home cures.

We stayed at a little hotel below the statue of El Cristo Rey, another of Talpa's famous tourist attractions. El Cristo Rey sits on the highest point of the city, well above the spires of the shrine to the virgin of Talpa.

From this vantage point, one can see across the city to the mountains on the far side of the valley. At dusk, the low winter sun cutting through the timber line casts shadows evocative of those rare dry fall days in my old home of Portland, Oregon when autumn leaves, no longer pasted down by rain, drift in long shadows amidst stripes of bright light cast by the sun hovering just above the southern horizon. But this is Talpa. Here the sun's rays warms our view of corn shocks on faraway hills greened by late rains, and reflect off the yellow and black tile work on the dome of the basilica of Our Lady on the near horizon.

Before Talpa de Allende became famous as a Christian shrine, it was sacred to the earth goddess Cohuacoatl. In pre-Hispanic times, pilgrims gathered here to pay tribute to her, too. From our vantage point above the city, one cannot help but wonder if it is the beauty of the place as much as Cohuacoatl or the icon of the virgin that has drawn people to it across centuries and faiths in the hopes of experiencing miracles.

We got back on the road early on our second day. We didn't stop in Mascota but were intrigued enough to commit to return. Yuerba Buena merited a brief visit, being the ancestral home of a friend of our companions. It's lovely, but blink and you'll miss it.

San Sebastian is beautiful, a place seemingly lost in time. One can see why it has been considered as a UNESCO world heritage site. I got lost there, quite literally, and reveled in the experience.

The roads of San Sebastian are bounded by high stone walls, some of which have been in place for hundreds of years. The roads twist and turn and roll steeply up hill and down again among mountain streams whose gurgling and gushing only added to my confusion. I tried to keep the water to my left so I wouldn't lose my way, only to find that there was water to my right as well. I started down one path, crossed a stone bridge, turned and walked on the right embankment of the stream, chasing a view I just knew was right around the next corner. After a quarter of a mile or so, I turned around and started back, concerned about the time. I missed a turn. I felt I'd lost my way but was tricked by the sound of water on my left, leading me to believe that my wrong turn was a stream crossing and that I was headed in the right direction.

Fortunately, the steeple of the church of San Sebastian was visible over the walls along the road. I used it to find my way back, though not before worrying my travel companions.

San Sebastian, Mascota, and Yuerba Buena are all mining towns. Silver and gold mined from the high Sierras made them rich and continued to serve as the economic engine of the region until the third decade of the last century. Today, they survive on tourism and little else. That means times are tough.

One of the first things visitors notice is the absence of young men. There are boys and old men here, but young workers leave these towns to travel to Canada and the U.S. in search of jobs.

Lately, the U.S. economic crisis has been driving many immigrant workers to return. In 2007, a paved road replaced the graded but unpaved road between Puerto Vallarta and Talpa de Allende making these towns more accessible to tourists. The new road and the return of many who traveled north across the border for work seems to be breathing new life into these towns, reminding us that, to the hopeful and optimistic, crisis can sometimes serve as the midwife of positive change.

Tropical Fruit Crumble: 22 December 2009

2009-12-22T16:13:00.000-08:00

I got this recipe from Chez Pim, my favorite foodie blog site. You don't know Pim? If you like to eat or just love food porn, you should. Pim Techamuanvivit is, despite her protestations, an arbiter of good taste. Her blog site is a wonderland of great food ideas, tips, and recipes.

We, and by that I mean Jon, made a delicious roast chicken with a soy glaze based on a Pim tip. This recipe for a crispy fruit crumble is even better, mostly because, unlike the chicken, it's really easy to make. It's a real crowd pleaser, especially served with ice cream. I would call it fool-proof, but I have a feeling I might have to eat those words.

Oh, and, of course, it's cheap, which means it meets one of the most important criterion in our kitchen.

Here's the recipe. It's slightly different than the one on Chez Pim. I added additional butter and a pinch more salt to the topping. I also grease the pan to make service and clean-up easier.

Crumble Topping:

1 cup of rolled oats (I mix the stuff in the round box with a smaller grained variety that most often comes in bulk sized bags to get a better overall texture)
1 cup of all-purpose flour
1 cup of brown sugar
1 cup of sliced almonds (or splurge on crushed macadamia nuts)
Pinch of clove
1/2 tsp. grated nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 and 3/4 sticks of unsalted butter

Melt the butter over medium heat in a small saucepan. Mix together the dry ingredients and combine with the butter using a fork or your fingers. The topping will be lumpy and have dry spots, but that's okay. It's part of what makes it crispy and delicious. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate while you prepare the fruit filling.

Fruit Filling:

1 whole pineapple, peeled, cored, and sliced into 1/2 inch thick 2 inch chunks
2 or 3 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and chopped to the same size as the pineapple
2 mangos, peeled, cut off the pith, and chopped into bite-sized chunks
1 1/2 cups of raspberries or blackberries

Toss the chopped fruit and put it all into a 9 x 12 inch greased baking pan. Sprinkle lightly with sugar.

Finishing:

Remove the chilled topping from the refrigerator and use your hands to crumble it over the top of the fruit. If there are chunks, all the better. Try to cover as much of the fruit as possible.

Place the topped fruit in a 350 degree (that's fahrenheit folks) oven and bake for 50 minutes, checking it after 35 minutes or so to make sure it doesn't burn. When it's done, the fruit will be bubbly and the topping will be golden brown.

One of the great things about this fruit crumble is that it is very forgiving. You can use all kinds of fruit, and you can use different kinds of nuts in the topping. If you like, you can add flaked coconut to the topping. The next time I make this, I plan to use a sapote in the filling, but if I was in Portland in the fall, I'd use pears and apples with a big handful of fresh cranberries.

Mega Revisited: 20 December 2009

2009-12-21T10:20:00.000-08:00

I thought this picture would get your attention.

Multiple choice:

This is an advertisement for -

skincare products
underwear
sports shirts

If you guessed 3, sport shirts, you're right! Your prize is the one he's wearing. It'll arrive in time for Christmas delivery.

I took that picture at the Mega, the giant grocery store down the road from San Pancho in Bucerias. I've written about the Mega in a previous journal entry and described it as the enemy of the mom and pop groceries of Mexico. It is, indeed, evil. But, like so many things brought to us by the devil, it's also extremely convenient and affordable. In fact, the difference between the prices at the Mega and the local tiendas is best evidenced by the fact that on a recent visit we spotted the owner of our favorite tienda in San Pancho shopping at Mega for his produce section.

Anyway, I can smugly say that since moving here in April, I've been to Mega three times. I've also been one time each to Costco and WalMart. That's a total of 5 trips to hell and back in 8 months. That aint half bad. The rest of my groceries and a few jumbo sized cartons of self-righteousness have been purchased at ridiculously inflated prices from local mini-supers.

The Mega is worth the trip if you're ever here for a visit. It isn't just a shopping experience; it's a cultural phenomenon. During the cooler months, Mega is gringolandia, the place where snowbirds wintering over in Bucerias, Nuevo Vallarta, Sayulita, Punta de Mita, Lo de Marcos, La Cruz de Huanacaxtle and every other unincorporated pueblito between them converge. Any attempt to speak Spanish with the store clerks gets me nothing but pity and perfectly serviceable English in return.

Each trip to the Mega results in one major bargain. The first time it was mangos, mistakenly priced at what amounts to 10 cents a pound. The second time it was drinking glasses for 22 cents each. This time I got an absolutely gigantic bag of carrots for 26 pesos. I'll be orange by the time I finish eating them all, but it was too good to pass up.

There's a MacDonald's at the Mega. I've been dreaming about it for months. This trip, I finally gave in and decided to buy a Big Mac. I went to the counter, teeth set for a heaping helping of secret sauce, only to find that they only sell desserts. It was a terrible trick, but I take heart in wishful thinking. Maybe the rain forests of Brazil aren't being replaced by cattle ranches because of the eating habits of the people of Mexico.

I got a slice of pizza instead. It was no Big Mac, but it was still the best pizza I've had since leaving the states. It gave me heartburn and caused an oil stain I bet will never come out of my favorite shirt, but it was still a nice treat.

I promised you pictures in my first Mega blog entry. The one on top is from the clothing section. It's really an "after" photo. The shirts transform your body and make all your hair fall out while you wear them.

I've included a few more pictures at the end of this entry just to give you a feel for what the whole shopping experience is like. As you look at them, you may wonder at my overawed sense of the place. I mean, it really is huge and crowded and this time there were even dancers in plastic tiger suits hopping around near the cereal. But, I realize it's not really much bigger or grander than, say, a good sized Fred Meyer in the U.S.

Certainly, Mega isn't the cluster-f--k of hugeness, cultural differences and really bad floor planning I encountered in suburban Parisian mega-markets. The market in Noisy-le-Grand was enough to make me want to go home and lie down (to nightmares of every kind of animal head imaginable, staring out of empty sockets at me from glass meat cases).

The selection at the Mega is different, though not Parisian supermarket different, than you'd find at most U.S. stores. For instance, the cheese section is as big as my whole house. But in terms of size and organization it's about the same as any U.S. big box store. The thing is, San Pancho a very small town. On this last trip to the Mega, the number of people shopping with me was about equivalent to 25% of the total permanent population of the pueblo. That, and, well, I have a terrible sense of direction and get lost a lot.

So did I get lost the first time? Um, yeah, I once got lost for 5 minutes looking for a bathroom at a Starbucks in Washington, D.C. I nearly peed my pants. At the Mega, I got lost the first, second, and third time. ¿Donde estoy? No sé.

Anyway, here are those pictures as promised -

Twinkies and HoHos! But with pineapple? Um, no me gusta.

The Little Things, Part 1: 17 December 2009

2009-12-17T14:44:00.000-08:00

Early on in this journal, I often wrote about why I left the U.S. In my first entry I talked about wanting to "leave behind one life and embrace another...(and) to escape the 'me' that created the lifestyle from which I am seeking refuge."

I committed myself to a process of personal transformation and came in search of bits of myself I hoped were still there, pieces of the past and of the person I was, once a upon a time, when I was a rural social worker. This was nearly 30 years ago, long before rich rewards for minor achievements caused me to give in to the culture of competition and achievement that so defines life in the U.S.

The person I was back then believed that being clever was but a minor personal asset, while kindness was a virtue with a value beyond measure. He believed that being quick was fine, but being patient enough to work at the pace of the slowest person, and with a genuine appreciation of the unique contribution of everyone, was a quality to be treasured.

Unfortunately, that person was also poor and wished for more - more material comfort, security, and acknowledgement. When those things came to me, they came all at once. I suddenly found myself a modest earner, but making more than my parents ever dreamed of in their working lives, and for work that brought me public recognition of a sort I, as a child of the 60s, had always believed was reserved for those a bit taller and a shade lighter than I am.

What's more, I had no college degree. I'd failed high school. Nothing I'd done before had prepared me for this life. Losing my way was easy enough; I had no compass.

Of course, I know the years have changed me in ways that cannot be reversed. I can't erase the experiences I've had, nor would I choose to if it were possible.

I just want to remember how I saw the world when my relative youth and naivete gave me the wisdom to believe in the goodness of every person. I worked for work's sake, and created for the sheer joy of being creative. The very notion that anyone cared about me and what I thought about, what I might have to say, was so novel, so wildly exotic, I treated every chance to participate as if it might be my last.

To accomplish this and more I came here seeking a change of context; a place where I have no history and where I face little if any expectation of consequence. Here I hoped to shed the layers of cynicism and suspicion, arrogance, and entitlement.

Understanding that money is a trap, I purposely lowered my standard of living. I ate less and lived more frugally, conserved water and electricity, and reduced my consumption of everything. I believed then and understand now more than ever that being free of the need to maintain a first world standard of living is, for me, the key to rediscovering the deep and satisfying kind of happiness I once experienced in my creative pursuits before the mortgage, the retirement plan, the home renovation, and a life cluttered with too many choices and far too many expensive diversions blurred my vision.

But the road to freedom has not been straight and narrow. I've wandered from the path, occasionally backtracked, even lost myself completely, especially recently. Boredom is the main culprit. It drives me to seek out immediate gratification, escapist pursuits, mindless puttering.

I've heard that boredom and fear are closely bound emotions. I believe it. The evidence lies in the things I do when I'm bored. I watch TV, eat out, drink like a fish, putter around online, avoid my language lessons, and generally take refuge in activities that give me comfort because they are familiar.

After a youth spent deprived not just of wants but of needs, high living is source of emotional comfort, a reminder that I'm not poor anymore, that I have enough and then some. And so I indulge, especially when I'm bored, which is usually when I'm anxious, feeling timid about the changes I'm undergoing and the strange new world in which I'm living.

But the cumulative impact of all that self-indulgent behavior and mindless puttering around is more boredom. Too many bright lights blur into a dull glare, blinding me to the reality that there is everything and more to occupy my mind right here in front of me. I just need to let go of the distractions and acknowledge the importance of the little things.

Paying attention to life's details turns out to be tougher than I thought. Being grateful, experiencing happiness, living more authentically, these notions that inspire me require discipline and determination to realize day to day in the face of nagging stressors and easy escapes. It requires practice.

In pursuit of practice, I went on a very long walk into the jungle on which I took pictures of every variety of flower I saw along the way. I ended up with nearly 100 pictures. I realized that amidst all of my diversions I'd failed to notice that we're in a blooming season. I'm surrounded by plants in full flower.

I saw bougainvillea, ginger, mimosa, hibiscus, lantana, oleander and dozens more I couldn't name. Chanel No. 5 is just so much cheap cologne compared with mock orange in bloom. And, here and there, mango and papaya blossoms, promises of the sweet fruit we will harvest in spring.

Cooking Class: 11 December 2009

2009-12-12T09:47:00.000-08:00

Three weeks ago, I found a Spanish teacher who has lured me out of cyberspace where most of my lessons have taken place over the last 8 months. I take a group lesson with her once a week on Fridays with my housemates Soya and Jon.

My online programs have worked pretty well at giving me a rudimentary understanding of Spanish grammar, though only in the present tense. I've actually started having very basic conversations about the weather and travel plans which is great, if you're a travel agent. Not being in the travel business, the time had come to engage in a more interactive learning process in a live class. I need to hear Spanish spoken, but slowly, rather than just sitting in front of the computer translating recorded English for an empty room, or, worse yet, into a room full of people trying to concentrate on other things while I blather on and on, saying "Ella abre la tienda temprano en la manana; Ella cierre la tienda muy tarde todas las noches" ad nauseum for an hour or two at a time.

My teacher's name is Rosa. She is, as far as I'm concerned, one of the nicest people in San Pancho. And, she comes with a bonus. She's a great cook.

Yesterday, Rosa cooked with us to teach us how to talk our way around La Cocina Mexicana. Rosa taught us to make albondigas en caldo, a Spanish/Mexican version of meat balls in brodo.

The dish wasn't pretty. It looked great on the stove, but once served the meatballs were a little grey. But, pretty is as pretty does, as they say. The albondigas more than made up for their plain appearance with flavor and texture. It was muy, muy rico.

Here's the recipe -

The Salsa:

8 plum tomatoes, peeled, cored and roughly chopped

2 cloves of garlic, peeled

1/2 of a Spanish onion, roughly chopped

1 chipotle chile en adobo (they come canned in the Mexican food section of U.S. groceries)

1 cup of water

Start some water boiling on the stove. Cut the tough core at the stem end of the tomato out with a paring knife and then cut an x with your knife into the opposite end of the tomato. Drop the tomatoes into the boiling water for a couple of minutes until you see the skin along the x cut start to curl back. Remove the tomatoes with a slotted spoon and drop them into cold water to cool.

Once the tomatoes are cool, peel off the skins, roughly chop them, and put them into the jar of a blender. Add the garlic, water, chipotle chile, and roughly chopped white onion and blend on high until the whole mixture is completely pureed.

Once the tomato mixture is nice and smooth, pour into a mesh colander and push it through, removing the seeds and some of the tougher bits of solids. Rosa advised us to do this, though the next time I make this recipe, I think I'll seed and core the tomatoes before I blend them to save time. But, if you're using Rosa's method, be ambitious and try to get as much of the liquid out of those tomatoes as you can. The salsa will make a delicious caldo so you want as much of it as possible. No wasting.

While you're straining, heat a tablespoon or so of oil in a heavy bottomed 4 quart dutch oven or casserole. Pour the strained salsa onto the hot oil and bring it to a boil. This is called seasoning the sauce. You're frying the sauce in oil in order to cook away the raw flavors. It's a very common Mexican cooking technique that is almost always used when making chile sauces.

Keep the salsa simmering gently on low heat while you make the meatballs.

The Meatballs:

1 1/2 pounds of ground beef

3 hard boiled eggs

1 raw egg

Leaves of 5 sprigs of mint

1 teaspoon ground cumin

Salt and pepper

If you thought making the salsa was easy, you ain't seen nothing yet. The meatballs are a cinch, requiring less work than any meatballs I've ever made.

The first thing to do is hard boil the eggs. Once the eggs are boiled, peel and roughly chop into half inch chunks. Set aside. While the eggs are boiling, add the whole mint leaves, the raw egg, salt, pepper, and cumin to a blender jar and whir the mixture until well blended.

If you want to know how to make a good soft or hard boiled egg that peels easily, check out the tip at the end of this recipe.

Add the egg mixture to the ground beef and mix it all up in a bowl with your hands. Don't over-mix. I think over-mixing meat for meat balls or meatloaf makes the meat too smooth, and that, I think, toughens the texture of the finished product.

Then, using your hands again, pinch off about 2-2.5 tablespoons of meat and roll it into a ball. Press a finger into the middle of each ball to form a depression large enough to put a couple of pieces of chopped boiled egg in the middle, rolling the meat around the egg to seal it inside.

Lower the meatballs gently into the simmering salsa. The meatballs should be completely submerged. Place a lid on your dutch oven and continue simmering for about 20 minutes.

Once the meatballs are completely cooked, serve them in soup bowls with plenty of broth (the caldo) accompanied by hot tortillas.

This is kind of what they looked like. The caldo was a little redder and the meatballs a shade less grey, but they were, nonetheless, not the prettiest sight. The taste however was fantastic. I could have eaten them all day. As it was, there were 11 meatballs. Rosa and I, being the most timid diners at the table, had two each. There was one leftover. I am still thinking about that one meatball, wishing that it had somehow found its way home with me.

Here's that tip on boiling eggs -

Boiling eggs so the shells peel off easily and the yolks are yellow rather than sulfury and green is a bit of a mystery to a lot of home cooks, probably because it's the kind of thing for which one doesn't generally go looking for a recipe or considering technique. Here's how to boil what I consider to be the perfect hard boiled egg.

Boil water over high heat. When it really gets going, gently lower room temperature eggs in, making sure they are completely submerged. Cold eggshells may crack when they hit the boiling water, and that makes a mess. Reduce the temperature to avoid boiling over, and simmer for 10-12 minutes, depending on how solid you want the yolk.

While the eggs are boiling, prepare an ice water bath. As soon as the eggs are done boiling, lower them into the ice water bath. When they are cool enough to handle, remove them from the water, crack the shells (be gentle), and replace them in the ice water. After a minute or two, the shells will peel right off and the yolks should be nice and yellow, not green which is a sign that you've overcooked your eggs.

Egg yolks turn green from the interaction of the iron in the egg and the sulfur in the yolk. The green color is the result overcooking. The way to avoid this is to avoid boiling the eggs for too long and cooling the eggs quickly once they are cooked. The green smells funny so it's not just about how the eggs look. A lot of what makes food taste good is how it smells.

For a soft boiled egg that peels easily, follow all of the instructions above, but cook the eggs for 8 minutes.

These tips come from Alice Waters of the famous restaurant and even more famous song. I believe Alice knows everything and she wears a jaunty chapeau almost all the time to boot. She kicks Martha Stewarts ass in the kitchen. Of course, I'd choose Martha over Alice in a cage fight. Martha's done time.

University of the Third World: 7 December 2009

2009-12-07T14:08:00.000-08:00

I fall to the realm of forget-me-nots,

to a mourning air that clings,

to a forgotten room in ruins,

to a cluster of bitter clover.

- Pablo Neruda

Just off Avenida Tercer Mundo, behind the the old town square, lies a careworn road that narrows to an overgrown path leading into the woods. Just a few steps down the path you will cross a cattle guard, and on the other side, just a few hundred yards in the distance, an overgrown field and a cluster of concrete ruins. Some here refer to the ruins as "el museo." Indeed, it is a museum of a sort, preserving, for now at least, a bit of history and a record of a promise of something more, something to ignite the imagination.

I've often walked this path, stopping just this side of the cattle guard to catch a glimpse of what remains of the once grand building that was to be a marine and agricultural college. The college was a cornerstone of former President Echeverria's plan to turn San Pancho into a "university of the third world." Today it stands as a symbol of the failure of Echeverria's vision, and of his hubris and the bald-faced corruption that finally drove him out of office in 1976.

I have often gazed wistfully at what almost was, wondering what San Pancho would be today if Echeverria's vision of the pueblo as a model of third world development had been realized. I've been curious about what is left of the college, but between signs warning against trespassing and some very (to me) menacing looking cows, I stayed on the coward's side of the cattle guard.

Last week, my curiosity drew me down the path again. The cattle were gone, the field between me and the ruins cleared. Someone is developing this piece of land. I decided that trespassing warnings or no, I needed to see the old college before it is torn down.

I wandered in among the ruins and felt as if I had, like Alice before me, fallen down a rabbit hole, a gateway to a wonderland. No strange creatures or Queens of Hearts lived among the ruins. In fact, what remains gives little indication of even so much as a wish for a major center of learning. But the feel of the place, the sense of something lost, of an unfulfilled dream of something more, still lives between those walls and leads one to wonder about what could have been.

The deterioration, the long years of neglect, wreak of cynicism. The invading jungle reminds me of my puny existence, of the mean legacy of any single life. But hope still clings to these walls. After all, even Echeverria's dictatorship relied on the collective wealth of the people of Mexico to build arches twice as tall as the imaginations of the people of the time in the middle of a field in a rural fishing village just this side of nowhere.

The tiles on the walls offer evidence of the exuberance of the times. It was the 70's after all, an era pregnant with the promise of all that had been accomplished in the generation before; accomplishments that lulled a generation into dreams of an end to the dictatorships of Latin America, of Pan Africa, of finally and fully addressing the enduring legacy of slavery and apartheid in the U.S., of reconciliation between the hemispheres, of a unified third world.

Reflections of Azteca, promises of a new Tenochtitlan.

I imagine the architect inviting us to look up at the soaring arches, away from all things pedestrian and earthbound, to imagine something else, to question, to wonder.

The Roosters Crow: 2, December 2009

2009-12-03T10:10:00.000-08:00

A lot of virtual ink has been spilled in this journal over the wonders of San Pancho. It is, indeed, every bit as "muy tranquilo" as the cabbie promised when he brought me here for the first time in April. San Pancho is among the most beautifully scenic, tranquil, friendly places I'm guessing I'll encounter in this lifetime.

But, wonderful though it may be, life here is, as is the case everywhere to be sure, imperfect. Among the minor (for me, at least) challenges of life in San Pancho is dealing with noise. Yes, I know, I've written about this before, but in spite of having lived in Manhattan and Washington, D.C. I still consider the noise level in our new neighborhood worthy of additional documentation.

Here in our new pad on Calle China, we are positioned on a hill, just two short blocks above the main town square, three blocks from the ocean, and four blocks (three short and one long) from the Malecon, the commercial center of the pueblo and the busiest section of the shore.

Here, the air is thick with jingles blaring loudspeakers attached to the roofs of vending trucks. At least three times a week, a water truck blasts its horn outside our front gate, trying, but failing, to wake us for our 8 a.m. water delivery. As the day wears on, the gas truck makes the rounds, piping music extolling the virtues of Soni-Gas. Next comes the fish peddler who invites customers to buy "Camarones, camaron grande y medio, camaron con cabeza, camaron sin cabeza, camaron del mar!" Occasionally there's a bread truck, a cake truck, a truck with household supplies, even one selling toilets. On Saturdays, the open air disco in the square just two blocks away tops everything by playing a mind numbingly repetitive loop of hip hop, pop, and electronica until as late as 1 a.m., sometimes even later, and at a volume that is audible through most of the pueblo.

And the music isn't confined to the nights. Around every other corner at practically any time of the day ranchero music is played at top volume on radios ("because," I have been told by at least one Mexican music lover, "we are free").

And then there are the dogs, barking, growling, and howling as they roam the streets, especially at night (I suppose because they, also, are free). Not to be out done, cats often join in, yowling and moaning as they get it on in the wee hours of the night. It's a veritable symphony of canine and feline sex and fighting noises.

But, my favorite (in the spirit of maintaining a positive frame of mind) noises are courtesy of the chickens, especially, though not exclusively, the males of the species. Now I'm sure many among you are thinking, okay, so roosters crow at dawn, that can't be all that bad. And you'd be right, if that's all there was to the crowing schedule. But, to quote the great chanteuse of American pop music, Whitney Houston, "hell to the no!" Oh, and "crack is whack!" I threw in the second quote just because, well, you know, crack really is whack and you should try to steer clear of it.

Hell to the no, the roosters of San Pancho aren't just sun worshippers. They crow all the time. They cockle-doodle-doo their asses off through most of the day, with brief breaks around noonish and again just after dusk. Then, right around 1 a.m., just as I start to drift off to sleep, they get their doodle-doos back into gear and continue revving up the vocal chords until just a couple of hours before daybreak. At sunrise, the whole cycle starts again and repeats itself.

I know a little something about yard birds and I can tell you that the roosters around here are no ordinary chickens. Most of the birds around here are made from the same DNA as fighting cocks, and unless fighting cocks are caged, they crow, constantly getting into arguments with each other and with the cats and the rats and who knows what other kinds of predators threatening their broods.

Our little barrio is cock central. During nights of fitful sleep, I've entertained myself with a kind of Mexican version of counting sheep, giving names to the roosters I hear most often, and creating stories to endear them to me. The two loudest I've named Chavo Santana and Chamaco Hernandez in honor of luchadores. They are the survivors of many a battle, and crow to remind us that they are the cocks of this particular walk.

Contending for third place there's a youngish sounding bird who I call Chad. Chad is a new generation kind of dude - a lover, not a fighter. In the morning he crows to his girlfriend Tracy, a marketing manager for an organic grocer, to let her know he's on his way to espresso on the Malecon before going to a brainstorming session to come up with a new slogan for Nike's latest - an all recycled, cruelty-free shoe-phone. You text with your toes.

Chad's named it the Get Smart. It's a shoe and it's a cell phone. Cone of silence not included.

If you come to San Pancho, and I'm hoping you do, you will hear the roosters crow and wonder as I do at how the locals live with all this noise. Of course, just as I start to fall prey to my impulse to criticize and analyze that which I cannot change but which, nonetheless, kind of sucks, I remember 2008.

In that year, most of my days began with a commute from the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle to the downtown financial district. I drove it every weekday and about every other Saturday and/or Sunday at this time last year. The whole drive was only a few miles long, but on the worst days, on days when it rained, sleeted or snowed, or when I'd overslept (usually after lying awake at night, worried about one or another of my staff, or how to meet our fundraising goal), or had a morning appointment that made me late getting onto the freeway, those few miles could take 40 minutes, even a hour.

Oh, you travel by light rail? How P.C. of you. Try taking the train to the beach every morning before work. Oh, and then go for a swim in Puget Sound, I dare you.

Thanksgiving: 27 November 2009

2009-11-28T13:13:00.000-08:00

The Mexican people, for the most part, know little if anything about the Thanksgiving holiday. In fact, a gringa friend of mine told me that her eight-year old, the child of parents born and raised in the U.S., recently asked her “momma, what’s Thanksgiving?”

That Mexicans know so little of Thanksgiving is something about which I suppose I should be thankful. After all, as cultural traditions go, Thanksgiving blows.

I’m sure many among you already know that the story of the first Thanksgiving, sweetly sentimental and full of fine intention though it may be, really never happened. The truth, or a decent facsimile thereof, is that the pilgrims did indeed once host a harvest celebration with Indian guests way back in the day, but just once. They did it to give thanks to Squanto, the last remaining Patuxet Indian (the rest of his people having been captured as slaves or wiped out by small pox) and to the Wampanoag Nation with which Squanto had recently negotiated a peace treaty on behalf of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

This was the one and only time we know of that the pilgrims and Indians sat down together to party, guzzle grog or whatever it was they drank, and happily scarf down the harvest in an attitude of gratitude and friendship. All of the parties after that had a strict dress code: white collars and black hats required.

The next major day of thanks was declared by colonial churches many years later to celebrate a major victory over the Pequot Indians. That successful offensive was just one of many against the Pequots during the Pequot War during which literally thousands of vanquished Pequots were sold into slavery, and many, many more were murdered (and sometimes scalped).

On that day, colonists commemorated their victory by, among other things, playing pilgrim soccer with the heads of murdered Pequots. The colonists in Plymouth were so full of thanks they beheaded a Wampanoag chief, (who was their ally, by the way) and displayed his head on a stake. In case you thought maybe they got caught up in some kind of psychotic frenzy they would later regret, the head of the Wampanoag chief stayed up on that stake for all the public to see for 24 years.

I could give more details, but you get the picture. Thanksgiving is a disgusting annual propaganda campaign when U.S. history gets a major shellacking with the worst kind of bulls—t. Thanksgiving glorifies colonialism, religious fundamentalism, and gross opportunism, not to mention dodging accountability and telling lies. And, it’s been laid on American children for almost 150 years, much to their detriment.

Year after year, we squash our kids’ critical thinking faculties with nonsensical, materially unsupportable accounts of the days of the pilgrims. Kids hear these stories and then look around them for evidence. Finding none, they adopt the kind of irrational thinking that will one day make them susceptible to crazy product pitches (a cream to apply to your thighs to melt away fat, anyone?), and the paranoid delusions of birthers and Palinites who believe that President Obama’s healthcare proposal will lead to death panels, euthanasia lotteries, and eventually socialism, which of course loves the devil and hates Christians.

At this point, some of you may be scrolling back up to paragraph two, sentence one, where I write, “That Mexicans know so little of Thanksgiving is something about which I suppose I should be thankful” and are wondering what the hell I was thinking. And well you may, because I love Thanksgiving.

I love cooking and I love eating and I enjoy doing both of things best in the company of friends. And, to me, Thanksgiving Day is a day to commemorate the one incontrovertible truth of colonialism: in spite of all that has been done to us we’re still here. We survived, and, miracles of miracles, with our humanity intact. Those of us who have survived, whether we be native people of the Americas, the descendants of slaves in the U.S., Native Hawaiians in Hawaii, or just about anyone else who got in the way of western ideals and western empires in the last 500 years or so are living evidence of the resilience of the human spirit. That’s cause for celebration for everyone, including the descendents of pilgrims. Our survival says something about what we as people, regardless of race, class or gender, are made of and what we may some day be if only we can overcome our baser impulses and trust in our goodness. It’s a cause for hope and a source of inspiration.

So I party, year after year. I cook for hours, sometimes days, concocting cocktails and appetizers, desserts and main dishes in an ritual of remembrance and acknowledgment of the determination and stamina of the generations that have gone before me, and of my great good luck in landing on my feet among good friends, well loved (or at least loved enough), relatively safe and sound, as wealthy as I have a right to be, and happy.

This year, we hosted a little Thanksgiving fiesta in our new casa. We made carnitas and bulgogi, sushi, and a fruit crumble. Our friend Glades brought Filipino adobo and a chocolate cake for her son Gael’s seventh birthday which just happened to fall on the 26^th.

There was no turkey or pumpkin pie, but then there probably wasn’t any back in the day either.

Our San Pancho friends gathered around us, bringing bottles of wine and tequila and a bar of the most delicious Argentine chocolate. Once gathered, we partied in the tradition of Hawaiian royalty - we ate until we tired ourselves out with food, rested, and ate again.

Our neighbor Gaby brought her dogs and her newborn Sophia. I have to admit that as much as I love babies, and I do love babies, the dogs really stole my heart. It was nice to have dogs in the house again.

It was a lovely night, right down to the cleaning up. I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving, too. Maybe, if you have a spare minute, you'll share a Thanksgiving story of you own. I'd love to hear it.

Lucha Libre Redux: 22 November 2009

2009-11-26T16:00:00.000-08:00

Sunday brought the return of lucha libre to San Pancho. By Saturday afternoon, children were donning their lucha masks and I'd received at least 3 queries about whether we were buying boletas general o piso, up in the stadium or on the floor. Having experienced lucha libre from the economy seats in the stadium once already, I opted for the more expensive ringside tickets on the floor.

I knew I would reach my lucha limit in about an hour and a half, so I timed my arrival to coincide with the better matches, later in the evening, and positioned myself near the exit. When last I attended lucha night in San Pancho, Jon and I went together, but alone. This time we attended with friends, one with two children in tow, a circumstance that, to me, is like bringing Lowenbrau to a party in the 80s. It makes it kinda special.

You remember the ad, right? It included a jingle sung by a voice actor named Arthur Prysock that went like this -

Here's to good friends,

Tonight is kind of special.

The beer we'll pour

must say something more, somehow.

So tonight,

Tonight,

Let it be Löwenbräu.

It's been so long.

Hey, I'm glad to see ya.

Raise your glass.

Here's to health and happiness.

So tonight (tonight),

Let it be all the best.

It was that kind of night. I almost bought a mask to wear to the fights before I considered the grist for the gossip mill that a middle-aged gay gringo wearing a child's costume to a public event in a town of 3000 people would represent. It would have been funny, and the kids would, I'm sure, have loved it, but the recipe for disaster would have read "take 1 lucha mask, 1 middle aged man, 1 beer in hand, stir together with a cup of speculation and a pinch of gringo-phobia, pour into a jello mold and set. In the morning, unmold one crazy alcoholic gay man luring your children into compromising positions by disguising himself as a wrestler."

Becoming known here as El Hombre Viejo Loco de San Pancho would be about all the incentive I'd need to get on the next bus to Cuernavaca. I left the masks to the wrestlers.

The event went according to it's usual script as it has for most the the history of lucha libre. Mexican wrestling dates back to the turn of the century with what was then mainly a regional sport with relative unknowns traveling the circuit sans the now de rigueur masks. It was nationalized by a promoter named Salvador Lutteroth Gonzales in the early 30s who brought stars such as the Blue Demon, Mil Mascaras, and the great El Santo to public attention.

El Santo was the greatest of the luchadores. Played by Rodolfo Guzman Huerta, El Santo became a folk hero, starring in movies and feted in comic books through which he became a symbol of justice for the common people. His career spanned 5 decades during which he became so beloved he is still remembered as one of the "greatest legends in Mexican sports."

Lucha libre precedes U.S. professional wrestling, and much of what we see in the U.S. is based on lucha libre. Lucha libre and the luchadores are a source of pride for the Mexican people, who though they are well aware of the camp and artifice of the sport, nonetheless love the spectacle and cheer their favorites on.

I attended dutifully, taking my seat in gringolandia, having paid my extra 30 pesos, had my ration of tacos con asada, drank my two beers, made the rounds, and exited. Even the joy on the faces of the children was not enough to keep me for more than my allotted hour and a half. I will certainly go again when the luchadores return to San Pancho, but two matches, two beers, and two tacos was enough for me on this night.

All hail El Santo, may his great spirit and his love of the common people continue to haunt the wrestling rings of Mexico.

Moving/Moved: 13 November 2009

2009-11-23T13:39:00.000-08:00

Moving into Casa Asada, our new house on Calle China, has been kept me occupied for much of the last few weeks. The moving itself wasn't that challenging. We have very few possessions so getting from one house to the other was easy. It was once we were here in the house that I got sucked in.

First of all, I am that odd sort who actually likes washing dishes, sweeping, mopping, raking; really almost any task that relies upon meditation and repetition to do well has the affect of causing me to relax.
Lucky me, there was dust on everything. I washed practically every dish in the house. Our housemate Soya was in the U.S. so I moved her things in after giving the master bedroom a thorough cleaning. The outdoor shower drain was clogged with leaves. The yard was overgrown. The whole house needed a good sweep and mop.

Once that was done, there was organizing to do. We wrapped unfinished art projects left behind by our landlords and stored them away. I sorted through sheets and towels, storing some, washing what we could use I hunted about, figuring out where everything is (or isn't) in our temporary home. I did an inventory of the pots and pans, cups and glasses, dishes, platters, and utensils in the kitchen and made a list of all that we would need to rummage from stores and yard sales in order to entertain as we often do, gathering people over meals and wine.

Exploring the refrigerator was like going on a treasure hunt. I weeded through bags and bags of beans and grains and jars of this and that, throwing out things that were past their expiration dates and celebrating over the occasional discovery of some treat exclusive to U.S. grocery stores or hard to find organic vendors. When finally the inventory was complete, I went on a major tienda run to stock up on staples like rice, flour, sugar, beans, and oil. About six or seven hundred pesos into shopping, I felt like taking a nap on the floor of the store, the fatigue leftover from my recent bout of dengue finally catching up to me.

Once the moving and cleaning and shopping was over and done with, we settled in for a couple of weeks alone, just the two of us. In spite of being plenty big, I've taken to thinking of Casa Asada as the half house. It has one and a half bedrooms and one and a half bathrooms on two and a half floors. It has a half-sized refrigerator in a kitchen with a half-sized sink, and a dining area with a table about half the usual dining table width. It has about half as much storage as you'd expect to find, having no closets and relatively little furniture. It is about half private as the half bedroom is a loft, and nowhere in the house is there a single interior door.

Regardless of it's structural idiosyncrasies, it's beautiful, and that counts for a lot. We have a view of the ocean and the jungle from our palapa. On wild nights, you can hear the surf up there. I consider it a bonus that our landlords are artists. Casa Asada is full of their creations, making the house feel personal, homemade. That we've grown to like our landlords so much, even without ever having met them in person, certainly helps. Committed eccentric that I am, I'm comforted by email exchanges that have me convinced they are my kind of people.

During our two weeks of solitude, I spent hours digging around among the books and movies and researching the potential origins of some of the beautiful folk art our landlords have collected. Having absolutely no talent for the visual arts, I especially appreciate those who do. I also could never in a million years pull together a decorating scheme worth a damn much less a well curated collection of objet d'art. I'm glad to have someone else do it all for me so I can just look and appreciate.

As for books, mine tend to be all of one kind, so the variety of titles in this house offers opportunities to explore what for me is virgin territory. I now have a reading list that includes books about or by Tina Modotti (this is Mexico, after all), Lee Miller, David Hockney, Martha Gellhorn, Wallace Stegner, Thomas Pynchon, Paul Bowles, Edward Abbey, Tom Robbins, and Paul Theroux.

By the end of the second week, we decided we love our house.

Upstairs, our little bedroom is furnished with a desk that once belonged to some countess who left it in Cuernavaca. As a strong believer in ghosts and spirits, I'm hoping the ol' countess was a right on lady and not your run of the mill landed gentry, or at least what I imagine constitutes the run of the mill among that set. Though I have no romantic notions concerning the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment, as a former Marxist, I'm also not such a big fan of peerage and other feudal relics.

The countess's old desk is where I sit to work, just off the palapa where I take breaks, gazing out at the ocean or into the yard where the neighborhood children often play. On it I have placed a little totem given to me by a Portland artist, Tom Cramer. It's supposed to keep evil spirits at bay. I keep it to remind me of Portland.

Yesterday, our housemate Soya returned from a trip to the U.S. and brought a houseguest with her, our friend Sunny from Seattle. Having Sunny visit is a special treat. She's one of the kindest people you could ever hope to meet, and she's full of big ideas and intellectual curiosity tempered by a great sense of humor.

Now that we've had a guest, the house feels lived-in; full of us.

Here are some pictures of the new casa.

Slow Food: 19, November 2009

2009-11-20T14:28:00.000-08:00

The week ending with Friday the 13th was a busy one, too full even to notice the ominous date until it had expired, nor to remember to copy keys to our new house for our housemate, nor even to enjoy my favorite part of working - billing clients and getting paid. Also lost in the clutter of things to do was writing a new blog entry. I'm a week or more overdue.

Life here is full of distractions. The view from our palapa, featured in the picture above, makes keeping my eyes focused on the computer screen a bit challenging. Middle-aged body surfing (close-in, itty bitty waves in shallow water). Walks on the beach or through the jungle. Cooking, which in my case is really more like playing with food. Novels and art books and movies. All of these experiences and more intrude upon my concentration.

Of course, in spite of all of the distractions, my current schedule doesn't come anywhere close to the one I kept in the U.S. Heavens to Mergatroyd, no! That would defeat the purpose of having abandoned my relatively cushy life in the good old, bad old U.S.A. Nevertheless I'm sometimes flummoxed by scheduling log jams made up of measly little to-do lists like: start a compost pile; mop the kitchen; walk to the beach, tienda, pescadoria (all within a couple of blocks of each other); a few hours of writing; a couple of hours of work; cook dinner; play Drop Seven on my iphone; search for interesting movies online; read Mrs. Dalloway, again.

I often find myself wondering how I was once able to maintain a schedule that included traveling 100,000 miles by air in a year (not to mention literally thousands more by rail and car) in the service of a job that required me to commute between Portland, Oregon and Washington, D.C., and all while serving on two or three boards of directors at a time and managing a full social calendar. Here in Mexico, I wonder, how the hell did I manage to jam so much into each day? How was I able to fit in the laundry, the dishes, walking the dogs, brushing my teeth, sleeping, even breathing into that lifestyle?

Obviously, life in Mexico is causing a serious reduction in my capacity for rushing and multi-tasking.

When I first arrived here with no job and little if anything pressing on my agenda, I was relentless in my drive for too much to do. I hovered over the housekeeper, cleaning ahead of her and constantly checking the clock, amazed at how slowly and deliberately she worked. I would occasionally catch myself unconsciously tapping my foot while in line at the tienda, or nervously rubbing my hands and jiggling my feet while sitting with a book, fretting over the slow pace of everything.

I watched in bewilderment at the start and stop construction of the house next door to our former rental. A week of work on that project would produce what to me seemed a day's worth of results. Then the work would stop for a month or more before starting again, but with no apparent concern about making up for "lost" time. I wasn't worried about the management of the project. The maestro and his apprentice seemed more than up to the task. The niggling and nagging going on in my head was over the glacial pace of it all.

Now, 7 months after leaving the U.S., it's as though my internal speedometer is broken. I can never tell how quickly (or slowly) I'm getting things accomplished, nor how much I can fit into a day. I've committed myself to a routine that includes daily exercise and trips to the beach, and blow it by spending four or five hours writing or reading. I look up to see the sun setting on the horizon and wonder where my day went.

I purposely slowed my usual daily sprint through life to a leisurely jog in the dog days of summer. But, as the seasons turned, I tried to rev back up again and found I had trouble finding high gear. Lately I've noticed the jog winding down to a walk. If this keeps up, I expect to soon find myself meandering. Yup, meandering, like Andy Griffith and Ron Howard on their way to the fishing hole in Mayberry, only sans all that red hair and whistling. I am by turns relishing the slow down, and horrified at the decline in my ability to hustle.

I think of life in terms of cooking, probably because I'm perpetually hungry. In the U.S., life for me was a stir fry at Benihana; all high heat, theater, commotion, and speed. In Mexico, life is more like a home cooked pot roast. The ingredients are humbler and require time and patience to prepare, but slow cooking over a low flame makes a rich sauce and yields sweet, tender meat.

Speaking of tender treats, we made empanadas for dinner guests a few nights ago and they were delicious. Pastry is not as comforting to me as a pot roast, but, as with braising, it is the kind of cooking that requires time, lots of time, to do well.

Here's the recipe:

Empanada Filling

1/2 pound of red or white potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks
1 pound of chorizo, casing removed and chopped
1 medium white onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, grated
1 teaspoon of finely minced, fresh oregano or marjoram
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1/2 cup of raisins
1/3 cup of chopped pimiento stuffed green cocktail olives
1/2 cup of chicken stock
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil

To make the filling, put the potatoes in cold, salted water and set to boil on medium heat, uncovered. Boil the potatoes until they are fork tender, but not mushy. Drain them and set them aside to steam off additional moisture while you get on with the rest of the cooking.

Chop up the chorizo, olives, onions and herbs, and grate the garlic. Put the onions in a large frying pan over medium heat and saute them until they are soft but not brown. Add the garlic and saute for 2 or 3 minutes more. Add the chorizo and cook until the fat is rendered and the meat is crispy. Add the salt, herbs and spices and cook for about 5 minutes. At this point, add the chicken stock and simmer briefly before adding the cooked potatoes, olives, and raisins. Cook until the raisins plump, about 2 or 3 minutes. Adjust the seasoning and cool before using.

By the way, when you boil potatoes (or celery root, or parsnips, turnips, rutabagas, taro, yuca, or any other starchy root vegetables), you should always start with cold water. Put the potatoes in the cold water and then apply the heat. If you start will boiling water, by the time the inside is tender, the outside is overcooked and mushy.

Empanada Dough

3 cups of all-purpose flour
2 cups of masa harina
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 stick of butter melted and cooled to room temperature, plus extra for greasing the pans
2-3 teaspoons salt
1 cup of water (a little more if necessary)
1 large egg, beaten

The dough is easy; not like making french pastry at all. Just sift together the dry ingredients and then mix in the melted butter. Add the water a little bit at a time, mixing as you go (use your hands and you'll get the best result). If you need more water, you can add up to a 1/4 cup more. Mix until the dough is smooth and sticky, and all of the ingredients are just incorporated. Don't knead it or it will get tough. Just mix it all together, form it into a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge while you make the filling. Make sure it stays in the cooler for at least half an hour.

Assembly and Baking:

Once the filling is made and the dough is chilled you can start assembling the empanadas. Flour your work surface with white flour so the dough won't stick. Split the large ball of dough in half and roll each half on the floured surface into a 1/8" thick sheets of pastry and use a biscuit or cookie cutter to cut out 4" rounds. We used a tortilla press. If you have a press, use plastic wrap to keep the dough from sticking, then peel the rounds of pastry off the plastic.

Fill each round with about a tablespoon and a half of filling. Use the beaten egg as glue to seal the edges of the pastry. Fold the pastry over the filling to form a half moon, with the egg moistened edges pressed together. Press down on the sealed edge with the tines of a fork to seal the pastry and brush the tops of each empanada with more beaten egg.

By the time you're done, you should have about 20 empanadas. Our experience is that this amount will feed 8 or 9 people if you also serve a hearty salad and dessert.

Place the empanadas on buttered baking sheets and bake in a pre-heated 375 degree oven for about 30 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown.

Cool and serve warm with sour cream. We mixed salsa verde and sour cream together to make a dip. I once saw a Food Network recipe (I think this recipe is based on that one) that included a dip made with a squeeze of lime juice, lots of finely chopped cilantro, salt, pepper, and sour cream. I haven't tried it, but it sounds delicious.

Oh, one more thing, the filling is the best part of this pastry. I had more filling than I needed so I heated it up the next day and had it with stewed black beans. Comforting, delicious, yum. I plan to make the filling again and bake it under mashed potatoes - kind of a pastel de pastor.

Dreams: 5 November 2009

2009-11-06T11:25:00.000-08:00

I’ve heard that the human body has no sense memory of pain. This convenient bit of amnesia may explain the nostalgia I feel for the delirious nights of fever of two weeks ago when I escaped the pain of dengue in the most vivid dreams I have dreamt in a long time.

I had lovely dreams, dreams that returned memories to me that were so long forgotten they took me completely by surprise. I remembered stories and people as though I’d heard and seen them just yesterday. Some of my dreams were unsettling, labyrinthine tales that contorted and changed through long nights of restless sleep, causing me to wake perplexed and agitated. Others were as real to me as any waking memory, bringing back places to which I can never return and people I can only hope to see again in my sleep.

My delirium filtered out the bitter times, the childhood humiliations, the fear, the hiding. My young years were a wind whipped, rain falling in buckets storm of experiences. As with most storms, there was a good dose of wonder and excitement to temper the destructive force of all that wind and rain, but never enough to make up for all the fixing and cleaning up to do in its wake. These dreams fell upon me in a something more like a shower, mostly gentle, just easy.

In one of the most vivid of my dreams, I was a child again, walking to elementary school. School was a short walk from home, but the journey kept growing longer with every step. Along the way, I saw people and places as they were, almost 40 years ago, all strung together in a row along the road.

The walk stretched to a such a length, I was reminded of the stories of walking to school told to me by my parents. To hear them tell it, that walk was at least ten miles long. I’m sure it also snowed on them back in those days when Hawaii was still truly a colony and the burden of oppression was so great that the very weight of it caused the earth to tilt, turning everything on its head and putting our little town nearer to the arctic circle than the Tropic of Cancer.

I was first told the story of the long walk when I was too young to test its veracity. By the time I was old enough to walk to school myself, that old story twisted my sense of distances, leading me to believe that a mile was just a block long. As I grew older, I figured out we lived in a three-mile town. I couldn’t understand out how one could take a ten-mile walk in a straight line through a three-mile town. I figured the school must have moved, or that kids back then were forced to walk by some roundabout route on account of them having no shoes nor, for that matter, anything to eat except one egg per family, cleverly split ten ways and served on rice leftover from other people’s meals.

The dreams brought other fragments of my past back to me. I was reminded of Lefty, a man who started out with the nickname Double Head but who lost that name and his right arm to a race with a train.

As the story goes, he almost outran the train on that fateful day in 1930-something-or-other when he and his friends raced it across a bridge. The problem was that his head was so big it slowed him down. After everyone else made it across, Lefty was still lumbering along under the weight of that enormous head. The train caught him about halfway to the other side and took his arm clean off, changing his nickname forever; the novelty of the story and his missing right arm relegating his double-sized head to nothing more than a minor distraction.

Even now, the fever long past, memories keep coming back to me. There are so many stories, many of them much more difficult to tell, about the queer kids I came up through adolescence with, who introduced me to sex and drugs and stealing from JC Penney, and whose ability to live in the moment and make the most of what is given to us, however meager our share, lifted me out of a suicidal course in life. I came to believe that the durability of their spirits was a cause for hope; that everyone must have this capacity to be loving beyond all hope of being loved; to be decent enough not to roll a kid after he passes out, even when you could really use that money and he can always get more. I still think it's so.

We’re middle aged now, those of us who made it this far. It’s been a long time since that time in our lives when hours dragged on for what felt like days and the space between adolescence and adulthood seemed an eternity. Life, real life, unencumbered by the expectations of parents who were afraid of the gender queer, same sex loving children we were, loomed large on the near horizon, a place we would get to one day if we lived long enough.

Some of the people who live in these memories are long dead, the victims of accidents or AIDS or acts of violence. Some have been very lucky, as I have, and have found their way to happiness. Some were there from the start.

For a few, happiness will always be something for other people. We all know people like that don’t we? I used to be one of them until someone showed me something different. Being poor doesn't help any, but that only explains the Foodstamps and the half dozen cars with missing parts on the front lawn, not the tears. When life puts happiness square in some people's laps they're so surprised they stand right up, letting it slip away.

In the lives we lived, there's a story to be told about what it meant to be native and immigrant, brown, black, and queer, eating government cheese and biding our time in Hawaii during that final stretch of relative calm before AIDS and Ronald Reagan came along and turned jammed up into fucked up and made us all scared to love one another. Before I turn too jaded to give a damn, I want to get these stories out.

Catching Up After Illness: 3 November 2009

2009-11-03T18:13:00.000-08:00

Dengue Fever: 31 October 2009

Tonight is Halloween. With no one honoring the date with parties and costume plans, I very nearly forgot about it as I spent my evening out, having supper with Jon and some new friends made at our dinner table. I’d like to be able to honestly claim that my forgetfulness is the result of deep immersion in my Mexican life, but the truth is that I’ve been distracted by other demons, including a bout of dengue fever.

The first symptoms of the disease started to show up last Thursday. That first evening I thought I had the swine flu. I was flushed, feverish, nauseated, bone tired and little frightened over how quickly I fell to the virus. Within hours I was trembling under thick layers of blankets, cold sweats rolling off of me in torrents, soaking the bedclothes and pooling in the crooks of my elbows and knees. A crazy-high temperature led to delirium followed by strange, intensely vivid, rapid-fire dreams.

I awoke to excruciating pain. Dengue is known as bone crusher disease, and for good reason. The most telling symptom is myalgia, in my case most acutely felt in my fingers, wrists, toes, ankles, and lower back – all body parts that have suffered serious injury in my reckless, hopelessly uncoordinated youth.

The pain was so remarkable that I found myself wishing for a return to the psychedelic seventies. I wanted to be high so badly that as the fever reached its peak I finally broke down and wept over my dry state, cursing my rotten luck and lack of foresight. A few decades into my deep past I had a good friend who kept hits of acid in her refrigerator in case of painful illness or injury or total global nuclear annihilation. Honestly, that was about the sum of it to hear her tell the story. I used to think she was crazy – in that happy, enjoyable way, but nonetheless crazy. In the wake of my 8 days, she has, to me, risen to the status of genius.

Dengue virus is mainly transmitted through the bite of a particular strain of daytime-feeding mosquito prevalent all over the tropics and common here in Latin America down to around the middle of Argentina. Once infected, sufferers quickly develop a high fever, often accompanied by a bright red rash on their legs and chests, sometimes spreading to cover the whole body. Platelet counts drop, and many develop a slight hemorrhagic tendency. I found that my gums bled profusely when I brushed my teeth, and any even very tiny break in my skin would be an occasion for blood, and lots of it.

Once you’ve had dengue, you develop short-term immunity to the particular strain with which you were just infected. Unfortunately, this doesn’t prevent you from falling prey to slightly different strains. If you get infected with a new strain you’re screwed. It’s the worse kind of bad luck because the immunity to the old strain causes the virus to mutate into Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever (DHF).

DHF is 100 million times worse, that is, of course, in medical terms, than plain old dengue. DHF causes serious internal hemorrhaging requiring hospitalization and intravenous feeding. Even then it can be fatal. For those with cirrhotic livers, it can lead to cancer, and within as little as a year of the date of infection. It’s a rare circumstance that leads to DHF, but if you get it, you’re in it up to your elbows.

You scared? You should be. Dengue is a tropical disease, but the mosquito that carries it is starting to adapt to cooler climates. As it does, the virus is likely to spread. It’s already found its way to Hawaii, so it’s a hardy little sucker, and cases have also been reported as far north as Florida and Texas.

I’m grateful not to have had DHF, but fuck if I’m going to claim to have been lucky to get garden-variety dengue. It sucked. In fact, it was bad enough that I find myself hoping the mosquito does adapt to the cold, causing you northern hemisphere types to flex your muscles and speed up the development of a vaccine. Until it affects the north, people down here, whose health woes rate about as high as a case of anal warts to the decision-makers at the WHO, are likely to have to suck it up and muddle through.

Did I mention that contracting dengue sucked? It gets worse. Jon came down sick almost exactly a day after my first symptoms. Having a companion in the sick bed really only makes matters worse. When the other person in bed with you is moaning and writhing in pain in his sleep, it really just serves to remind you of how bad your own symptoms are, not to mention adding the thorn of worry to your troubles.

And to complicate things further, the 30^th was moving day. We are finally making the move from Casa Skip and Nancy, our home for the last 6 months, into our new house at Calle China 27. Moving is by no means my favorite way to spend my first day out of bed after an illness, and the effects of dengue linger on, sometimes for weeks, causing stiffness, fatigue and vulnerability to other illnesses. On moving day, I was sore and so tired that even a few steps would take my breath away.

Mercifully, we had help. When the news of our illness got out into the community we received a flood of emails expressing concern, offering store runs or help around the house. By moving day, we could have had one car for every suitcase we packed. I mentioned this to a friend who showed up to move us, expressing amazement at the outpouring of support. She laughed and explained slowly, as if to a child, “that’s because this is what we call a community, and in communities people help each other.”

Dinner Out: 31 October 2009

As a testament to how badass the dengue virus is, tonight I’m eating my first real meal in a week. Those of you who know me well are shuddering, I’m sure. Anything that could cause me to forgo eating solid food for a week must be too fucked up, right? I also didn’t drink for a week, having convinced myself that using wine as a balm against the dengue virus would be like trying to douse a house fire with a pitcher of grape juice. I touched not a drop.

After a week of very little food and no spirits, I am hollow-cheeked and hungry. It was seriously time for chow. We headed to the Café Bistro Organico (yup, it’s a restaurant so nice they named it twice) at the Hotel Cielo Rojo.

The fastest route between our house and the hotel is a short-cut that takes us through the backyard of a yoga studio called El Estar. El Estar is in a big purple building with a view of the ocean. The yogis of El Estar are committed healers, hosting workshops whose names I assume suffer in the translation from Spanish to English. My favorite is Chakra Dance Revolution.

Once through the yard at El Estar we land on Calle Egipto, half a block from Calle Afrika. The hotel entrance is about halfway up Afrika under a brick red sign.

Our evening at the restaurant was typical of our experience in San Pancho where every foray into the nightlife of the pueblo seems to cause our circle of familiars to grow. We got to the hotel a little bit late for dinner but nonetheless received a warm welcome, the staff addressing us by name, sharing hearty handshakes, genuinely excited to have guests. We sat down to salads and by the time the fish course was on its way we were joined at our table by Barbara, a friend of the hotelier who is in San Pancho for a birthday holiday.

Barbara invited herself to join us and we were happy to have her. She was very LA, very chatty, and very sweet. Naturally we found we knew people in common. In a town this small, everyone has someone in common with everyone else.

An hour later, Barbara was surprised when friends walked into the dining room. A couple from Guadalajara, Marisol and Carlos, joined our table. Marisol’s familiar face soon came to me in a memory of a movie – she’s an actress. The two are in town with their 5 year old for the Dia de los Muertos weekend.

We shared some wine, talked about the great massage Barbara got from the hypnotist around the corner. He apparently matches physical therapy with herbal refreshment, resulting in a mind and spirit expanding experience that is highly recommended. We made connections to the various people whose acquaintance we all shared. An hour later we parted, but with the hope of seeing each other again.

Day of the Dead: 1 November 2009

Today is the ultimate day of El Dia de los Muertos in San Pancho. Altars are being built on the Plaza del Sol where a twilight parade to celebrate the return of lost loved ones will end tonight, followed by a fiesta with music and food. Friends have taken charge of building the main altar and have invited us to add offerings to our dogs, our sadness over their deaths 14 months ago known even to our circle in Mexico.

Our recent struggle with dengue put our attendance at the celebration in question. Wanting to mark the occasion regardless of our health, we built our own little altar on our palapa. I gathered a few of our beloved pets’ favorite things – shortbread and corn chips to remind them of Pat, their favorite person; a banana, our boxer’s favorite food; and a chain full of tags that jingles when picked it up, signaling the beginning of a walk, their favorite times with us over the 15 years since the first of our dogs joined the family. These little offerings and a candle, pictures, a bowl of water, and painted beads made with the seeds of an oil palm were arranged on the table.

By sunset, the procession began. We listened to it as it grew closer, revelers hooted and hollered to the banging of drums, literally waking the dead. As it passed below us, I whistled to help our dogs find their way home. I even managed to remember the lyrics to little tunes I sang to them when they were puppies. They were silly songs, but then I was silly in love with our dogs. They filled a void in our lives created in the wake of the decision not to have children. Our dogs were like babies to us.

Feeling better than expected, we pulled ourselves together and went to the plaza via the short-cut through El Estar. It was an exhausting effort but once at the plaza we felt revitalized by the sight of familiar faces. We quickly ran into our new friends of last night. Barbara was beaming over her company from LA. Carlos cradled his sleeping daughter. They introduced us to Gisela, the proprietor of Hotel Cielo Rojo, and Jon proceeded to get entangled in a cheese making experiment and the prospect of serving as a guest chef at the Café Bistro.

We also ran into other friends – Niko, who was raised in the U.S. but returned to his home country after two tours of duty in Vietnam and an untimely widowhood; Indira who runs the ecological program for Entre Amigos; Silvana, a healer and our yoga instructor, excited about an excursion to a retreat center in the desert; Alan, a biologist from Guadalajara.

This little group was among those who we invited to gather for a last big fiesta at Casa Skip and Nancy on the night of my first dengue symptoms. It was as if we’d made a community announcement of our illness when we cancelled the party. Big news, little news, gossip – any story interesting enough to compete with the drama of the telenovelas travels quickly here. When someone is in distress, the news really flies.

We reconnected with our community and promised a party to warm our new home. The prospect of returning to the old rhythm of our lives inspired fantasies about special meals and rekindled my desire to open our house for breakfast on Sunday mornings.

The celebration on the plaza was small but all the more touching for its size. The parents of the children who attend our little Montessori school sold tastes of their home cooking, and a small band performed folk music, but most of the people on the plaza seemed intent on just sitting together and talking. There were no elaborate calacas on palanquins or candlelight processions winding through the streets for hours as are often seen in larger Mexican cities, but a shared intimacy warmed our little celebration, reminding us that San Pancho is a very small town bound together by tight bonds of kinship and community. I heard the voice of our friend again – this is a community and in a community people help each other.

I’m better now, stronger than I’ve felt in a good while. My bout with dengue seems to be mostly behind me as well.