Pinnacles and the Pedestrian

Occupy Everything! and Other Random Thoughts

2011-11-21T13:48:00.000-08:00

Been really swamped with grading lately but today I am home with a flu bug, thus find myself with enough time to post a few links. In no particular order, these are some of the news headlines for the past few days. Of course, the conspiracy theorist in me wonders if there's rhyme or reason to some of them, or are they all just disconnected threads pulling our world in a coincidental direction?

1) President Obama announces that some U.S. troops will now begin rotation at a base in Australia, so as to shore up the U.S. presence in the Asia Pacific theater. Even as soldiers are leaving Iraq, they don't really get to come on home. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-17/obama-says-u-s-troops-in-australia-will-keep-asia-pacific-region-secure.html

2) The Congressional Super Committee, which is charged with cutting the deficit by $1.2 trillion dollars, announces that it's deadlocked over the issue of revenues. http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/21/politics/super-committee/index.html

3) UC Davis students are pepper sprayed while seated during a peaceful protest against high tuition costs. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/world-wide-mind/201111/the-turning-point-the-moral-example-uc-davis-students

4) A bill was introduced into Congress to stop those same members of Congress from trading in the stock market on information they gained from their position in government. http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/9864-stock-act-banning-congress-from-insider-trading-is-revived

5) Newt Gingrich is rising in the polls in an effort to beat Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination for president of the United States. http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2011-11-20/newt-gingrich-tops-republican-field/51324928/1?csp=ip

6) Cairo's streets look more like a war zone than ever before and youth unemployment hovers around 25%. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45383062/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/

7) Spain becomes the third country in two weeks to replace its head of state in response to the Euro crisis and still the debt problem is not resolved. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/business/global/signs-mount-that-european-debt-crisis-is-spreading.html

8) Iran continues to develop nuclear capability. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2011-11-21/iran-sanctions-nuclear-program/51337204/1

9) The Japanese yen is beginning to be viewed as a currency safe haven against the euro, which is something I predicted back on 6 August 2011 http://pinnaclesandthepedestrian.blogspot.com/2011/08/fighting-decline.html . http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-21/japan-s-exports-fall-more-than-estimated-as-yen-gains-europe-curb-demand.html#

10) A young man from Hawaii makes a videosong about Occupy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq3BYw4xjxE&feature=player_embedded

I Didn't Write This: Sarah Van Gelder Did, But It's Worth Repeating

2011-10-16T17:17:00.000-07:00

Here are 10 recommendations for ways to build the power and momentum of this movement. Only two of them involve sleeping outside:
1. Show up at the occupied space near you.
Use this link to find the Facebook page of an occupation near you. If you can, bring a tent or tarp and sleeping bag, and stay. Or just come for a few hours. Talk to people, participate in a General Assembly, hold a sign, help serve food. Learn about the new world being created in the occupied spaces.
2. Start your own occupation.
Use this Meetup site. Or call together friends, members of your faith group, school, or community group. Reach out to people from parts of your community you don't normally work with. Unexpected alliances keep the movement from getting labeled as partisan or representing only some people.
3. Support those who are occupying.
Most sites need food, warm clothes, blankets, tarps, sleeping bags, communications gear, and money. Many need people to do loads of laundry, to help with medical care, to provide legal support, to serve food, and to spread the word. Some people call in pizza orders from nearby vendors. Support the folks at Liberty Square in New York here, or check in with your local occupiers to see what they need.
4. Speak out. Get into the debates and the teach-ins.
Many occupation sites have workshops and discussions on critical issues of our time. Get into the discussion. Bring your expertise and reading materials to share. YES! Magazine is offering free copies of the current New Livelihood issue to occupied sites (request them by emailing JobsIssue@yesmagazine.org). Bring the discussions to other groups you are part of. Listen to perspectives you haven't heard before. This process represents a critical, but under-reported side of the movement: People are shifting from being passive, frustrated observers of politics to active, powerful players. Instead of waiting for our leaders to do the right thing, people from all walks of life are becoming leaders. It makes us unstoppable.
5. Share your story.
Post how you're part of the 99 percent on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, or in print. Through this movement, people are discovering others who are also losing jobs and homes, who are overwhelmed by debt or working a dead-end job. Through this sharing, humiliation turns into compassion and self-respect. And it builds understanding of the sources and the impacts of our crisis: A Wall Street system that funnels wealth to the top 1 percent is leaving the rest of us behind. Community plus insight makes us powerful.
6. Be the media.
Show up with your video recorder, camera phone, or laptop and share the stories of the occupation. You can download a selection of posters donated by graphic designers and spread them around. Highlight the human dimension of the protests. It is harder for critics to disparage a movement when people see the faces of those involved.
7. Name the meaning of this moment.
What will make the world better for the 99 percent? How has the power of the 1 percent gotten in the way of your hopes and dreams? Make a sign, write a blog, update your Facebook page, or speak out on the issue that means the most to you. Include the phrase, "I am the 99 percent."
8. Insist that public officials treat the occupations with respect.
The eviction of the Liberty Square occupation on Wall Street was averted by massive public resistance from those in the square and from others. Other occupations also need support. The 99 percent don't have the money, political access, and media empires of the 1 percent; the occupations are one of the few ways we are building power. Ask your local officials to respect people's right to assembly.
9. Study and teach nonviolent techniques.
There are many examples of outside provocateurs who spark violent incidents that can discredit nonviolent movements such as this. The corporate media is hungry for violent images. (There's already been an example of an admitted provocateur from the right-wing American Spectator who provoked pepper spraying at the National Air & Space Museum). Learn how to lovingly and firmly interrupt and contain violence, and teach what you know. Here are some resources.
10. Be resilient.
This movement is here for the long term. Some efforts may fade because of cold weather or harsh police responses. Others may self-destruct through faulty process or violent outbreaks. The movement may be idealistic, but it won't be ideal. Don't get disillusioned; the demand for a society that serves the 99 percent won't go away. The movement may morph, but it has become unstoppable. Help it evolve.
The genie is out of the bottle. People will no longer accept the systematic transfer of wealth and power from we the people to the 1 percent. In this remarkable, leaderless movement, each one of the 99 percent who gets involved helps shape history.
Sarah van Gelder is co-founder and executive editor of YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions.

Occupy Sacramento: Doing My Part

2011-10-09T20:30:00.000-07:00

For several days now I have been following the Occupy Wall Street movement with interest and sympathy. My interest stems from trying to understand what they are saying, and the sympathy comes from realizing that the country we have become is not the country we once were when I was a kid.

It would appear that young people realize our political, economic, spiritual and social trajectory is not sustainable and they are engaged enough in a vision of the future that they want to do something about it. To me, that's cool and I support them in their efforts.

A few pieces of information that seem relevant to consider.

First, there are about 312 million people in the United States right now. About 92 million of them are called Millennials. That's young people born between 1982 - 2003. They consist of nearly 1 out of every 3 persons in this country. Although half of them are still not yet adults, many of them are and they are beginning to throw their demographic weight around. Occupy Wall Street is just an early expression of the ways in which Millennials are bringing their power to bear on American society. I cannot wait to see what else they will do to shape their future.

Second, the Millennials of the U.S. mirror the Millennials of the world. They are steeped in technology, not because it's new and exciting like it is for some of the older generations, but because they have literally grown up with it and view it as a natural part of their existence. Furthermore, global numbers of this generation are as astounding as the U.S. numbers. As the planet's population reaches 7 billion, nearly 60% of the world's population are under the age of 40. Thus they are "history’s largest and most interconnected population of young people . . . transforming global politics and culture" ever known to the human race. In short, it's an exciting time to be alive!

Third, the vision Millennials have for their world may not look much like the vision older folks have about the world. The perspective is different because Millennials have many more decades in front of them, while the rest of us can count the decades before us on one hand. Also, they are a cooperative, collaborative bunch who LIKE to work together to get things done. This attitude shapes their world view in important ways. Rugged individualism is not part of Millennial make-up. A go-it-alone personal responsibility narrative does resonate for the young people today. They thrive on working problems together. They like to help each other out. They are a gregarious bunch. Thus, when they say they want to occupy public spaces in order to get the attention of authorities, it's because they see collective action as the key to their success. It's a signature trait of this generation's personality.

Finally, because of the Millennials' heft in population, it would do some of us old cats a bit of good to pay attention to what they are saying rather than just disregard them out of hand. To do the latter will be a recipe for irrelevance. Older generations can do one of three things: watch them passively without offering mature guidance, dismiss them as lazy and on the fringe, or embrace them and assist them through mentoring that comes from experience. Frankly, I choose the latter so as to have some semblance of influence on this, our 21st century's most powerful generation.

All of that frames my trip to downtown Sacramento today. You see, on Thursday last week, this region saw the birth of an Occupy Sacramento movement in the spirit of Occupy Wall Street. Figuring I needed to see what they were up to, and realizing that the media was not adequately covering this movement, I decided to see for myself. And so, this afternoon, I headed down to Cesar Chavez Plaza for a little look around. These are the things I saw:

A modest turnout of youthful and used to be youthful individuals

Some creative signage

Some provocative signage

Some interesting concepts

Some athletic juxtaposition

Some clearly stated needs

Some throw back to the 1960s

For more information about Occupy Sacramento, they have a website, a livestream and a Facebook page. Here's more information about the Occupy Together movement, including the planned Global Occupy on October 15.

Here's to catching the youth's vision!

Curbside Conversation

2011-09-18T14:49:00.000-07:00

Roger misses his right leg. Cut off at the hip, he lost it when he slipped off a train somewhere in Wisconsin. That was five years ago. Now Roger lives in a rented garage in South Sacramento. There's no kitchen or bathroom, but he is glad to have a safe place to retreat to at night. He has a wheel chair to get around, although in the past he had an electric one. Someone stole it. Roger's birthday is October 7. During our curbside conversation today he said he will be 42 this year. While he was in the hospital recovering from losing his leg, the doctors told him he had diabetes. So now Roger has to take insulin every day.

Roger is one of 46 million Americans who live in poverty in this country. According to the latest census data, 1 out of every 6 persons in this country is poor. That's the highest rate since the U.S. Census Bureau began keeping track of income levels in the 1950s.

What's more, the Census Bureau claims "that unemployment benefits kept 3.2 million people out of poverty in 2010, and that Social Security retirement benefits did the same for nearly 14 million seniors." In short, without the help of the U.S. government, things would actually be much worse than they presently are right now.

In addition, just under 50 million Americans have no health insurance. It's likely that many of the same people who are in poverty also don't have health insurance. Furthermore, the census data tells us that nearly "25 million Americans who lack health insurance have pre-existing conditions such as heart disease and diabetes." So half of the people without healthcare coverage already have a pre-existing condition for which they need medical treatment.

There is at least one politician running for the office of President of the United States who implies that the American people should just let a person who doesn't have insurance die. The underlying concept behind this libertarian rhetoric is that individuals and civic organizations in society should care for those who can't care for themselves. Or, in a 21st century version of social Darwinism, the individual who cannot take care of himself (because he does not have healthcare insurance) and who cannot find others to care for him, pays the price of freedom by dying. This isn't just a dramatic rhetorical flourish by a presidential candidate, however. Reuters reports that 45,000 people died in the U.S. in 2009 because they didn't have health insurance.

Although unintentional, this would appear to be a round about endorsement of the individual mandate portion of President Obama's healthcare overhaul. The individual mandate requires all individuals have healthcare insurance.

But there's more. According to Bernie Sanders, based on data from a report generated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, "the United States has both the highest overall poverty rate and the highest childhood poverty rate of any major industrialized country on earth. This comes at a time when the U.S. also has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth with the top 1 percent earning more than the bottom 50 percent." So one of the richest industrialized countries on earth also has the greatest amount of poverty on earth. How sadly unneccessary.

Back to Roger: he says he is a mechanic and he has lots of tools. The problem is cars have become more like computers than machines. Thus Roger's tools and car repair skills are becoming obsolete. He, like millions of other Americans, needs re-training in order to compete in a new global order.

Our Canaries in the Coalmine: American Youth and Addressing the Global Achievement Gap

2011-09-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

It would appear that the present state of education in the

United States

may be our country’s canary in the coal mine. That’s because the future direction of the country depends on how well (or not) the

U.S.

educates its young people for the 21^st century workplace. Thus the relevant question for all adults, and particularly for those of us who are in education, would be: what are we going to do to rescue modern education and our youth who are stifled by it in its present condition?

Fortunately there are some educators who are thinking and writing about this issue, including Tony Wagner whose 2006 book entitled The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need and What We Can Do About It addresses the problem in interesting and inspiring ways. Among other things, Wagner presents the material in a pattern that challenges the reader to action through a four step process.

First, the reader is confronted with a frank compendium of statistics and facts about the current state of

U.S.

education today. For example, Wagner tells us that “students are graduating from both high school and college unprepared for the world of work. Fewer than a quarter of . . . employers recently surveyed . . . reported that new employees with four-year-college degrees have ‘excellent’ basic knowledge and applied skills” (xxi). And that’s actually the good news! Wagner also claims that “the high school graduation rate in the United States – which is about 70 percent of the age cohort - is now well behind that of countries such as Denmark (96 percent), Japan (93 percent), and even Poland (92 percent) and Italy (79 percent)” (xix). Thus not only are we not graduating young people in numbers that are competitive with other countries around the world, but once our young people do graduate only about 1 in 4 show signs of excellence in basic knowledge and skills. This is what I call the where we are portion of Wagner’s analysis. While grim, it also compels the reader to conceptualize solutions.

However before Wagner leads the reader toward those solutions, he presents us with a list of new world skills necessary for students and employees in the 21^st century. This is Wagner’s what we need segment. This includes a trifecta of reasons young people need to excel in school: for work, for lifelong learning and for informed citizenship in a democracy. In this case, Wagner maintains that without this trifecta “children are at an increased risk of not being able to get and keep a good job, grow as learners, or make positive contributions to their community” (14). To this end, Wagner suggests Seven Survival Skills as a mechanism for achieving this trifecta. Of course, any discussion of education would not be complete without a nod toward critical thinking and problem solving. Wagner’s text is no exception. In fact, critical thinking serves as the first item on his Seven Survival Skills list and consists, primarily, as the “ability to ask good questions” (14). Importantly, though, Wagner also links critical thinking to the world of work when he asks CEOs of major corporations what they need in employees. It’s not surprising that what they want is an employee who can “approach problems and challenges as a learner as opposed to a knower” (17). Employees “need to be curious versus thinking ‘I know the answer.’ Yesterday’s solution doesn’t solve tomorrow’s problem” (17). This is relevant because, as Wagner tells us, “70% of the employers . . . ranked the high school graduate as deficient” in the area of critical thinking/problem solving (20). Furthermore, “companies face all kinds of challenges everyday – globalization challenges, talent challenges” (20). Without the critical thinking skills necessary for the 21^st century workplace not only does the employee suffer, but the company for which the employee works suffers and, by extension, the country in which the company is housed suffers. Although Wagner does not go so far as to say it, this may explain why

U.S.

corporations have been steadily shipping jobs overseas for the past twenty years. The talent pool is larger (and cheaper) in India,

China

and beyond.

Another one of Wagner’s Seven Survival Skills includes accessing and analyzing information. In this case, employers are clamoring for employees with the “ability to analyze information in order to discern new challenges and opportunities” (37). This need is related to the rise of the internet and the glut of information that resides there. Anyone can do a Google search and read posted information. Not everyone, however, has the ability to discern the accuracy of that information. Thus students need to be taught how to “access and evaluate information from many different sources” (37) in conjunction with their critical thinking skills in order to make decisions in the workplace, in their personal lives and in their democracy.

After outlining the Seven Survival Skills, Wagner then proceeds to walk the reader through the corridors of contemporary education. This is the what we are currently doing and how it fails us segment. Chillingly the reader is presented with a litany of worst practices: multiple choice exams (which, above all, teach the student how to beat the odds in test taking), film viewing as time filler, teaching to the test and busy work handouts. It’s enough to make even the most inquisitive young person feel intellectually choked. It could also depress even the most optimistic educator. To be fair, Wagner does discuss the role of (and inadequate preparation for) school principles, laws such as No Child Left Behind and the immense drain on resources posed by the need for remedial education. But overall, this section of his book is tremendously demoralizing when the reader considers that the standard for educational practice across the country right now can be summed up in one line: “there is only one curriculum in American public schools today: test prep” (71). Wagner claims “there is no strong evidence that any of the Seven Survival Skills are being taught at any grade level in American public schools. Instead, class time is narrowly focused on teaching only the skills and content that will be tested” and that there’s a “growing gap between what’s being taught and tested . . . versus what today’s students will need to succeed and be productive citizens in the twenty-first century – [this is] the global achievement gap” (72). Thus in this section Wagner identifies the heart of the problem. Not only is there the traditional achievement gap between Asian and white students with their Latino and African American counterparts, but there is also a global achievement gap between what students are taught in relation to what they really need to know in order to work, learn and engage in 21^st century society. Or, to put it in Wagner’s words, “we are simply not developing our intellectual capital to the extent that many other countries are” (75). Furthermore, because “the needs of our society have changed dramatically” (256),

U.S.

educators must address this achievement gap in order to preserve American society. This, then, is the crux and it’s the reason education is the canary in the coal mine. “The days of well-paid unskilled or semi-skilled work are over in this country, due to the forces of global competition. . . [and] the only decent jobs that remain in this country will go to those who know how to continuously improve products or services or create entirely new ones – the knowledge workers of the twenty-first century” (256).

This leads us to the final segment: where we need to go and models for getting there. In this section, Wagner shows us some examples of education that appear to be working well. For instance, he introduces the reader to High Tech High, a charter school in San Diego, California which Wagner calls “a different kind of ‘Business’ school” (208). Among other things, High Tech High focuses on rigor, which Wagner explains as “being in the company of a thoughtful, passionate, reflective adult who invites you into an adult conversation which is composed of the rigorous pursuit of inquiry” (210). With an emphasis on “intellectual behaviors” and “habits of the mind”, High Tech High is held up as a model for closing the achievement gap.

Perhaps most appealing about Wagner’s ideas is the way in which he frames work, life-long learning and citizenship in relation to education. To that end, Wagner states that “work, learning, and citizenship in the twenty-first century demand that we all know how to think – to reason, analyze, weigh evidence, problem-solve – and to communicate effectively. These are no longer skills that only the elites in a society must master; they are essential survival skills for all of us” (xxiii). The italics are Wagner’s, and they serve to highlight the skills which are most needed, and to some extent, most profoundly missing in education today. It’s not enough that a student knows how to memorize names and dates. Today’s worker-citizen must also know how to analyze the messages that bombard her too. The relationship between the educational system which teaches those skills and the individual who uses them is integral. And without those skills people cannot get the jobs they need to fuel a society that wishes to compete on the global stage. Indeed, as Wagner claims “Effective communication, curiosity, and critical-thinking skills . . . are much more than just the traditional desirable outcomes of a liberal arts education. They are essential competencies and habits of mind for life in the twenty-first century” (xxiii). What he is striking at here is the integral relationship between the competitive society and the competent individuals who make up that society. We can parse them out, yet they are integrally connected.

These skills are important at the individual level as much as they are at the workplace level. Thus life-long learning becomes code for maximized human potential: “Young people who want to earn more than minimum wage and who go out into the world without the new survival skills . . . are crippled for life; they are similarly unprepared to be active and informed citizens or to be adults who will continue to be stimulated by new information and ideas” (14). If we continue to teach 20^th century skills to a 21^st century student body, we are not only squeezing the air out of the nation’s ability to compete but also denying quality of life for the millions of American children who go through this system. Thus, “the main purpose of teaching [ought to be] the development of students’ core competencies for lifelong learning” (258). In the model schools Wagner puts on the display for the reader, this is the case. In the worst practices schools chronicled in the beginning of the book, students are starved for educational oxygen in cavernous teach-to-the-test 20^th century models. Just because teachers can continue using old educational models doesn’t mean they should.

Finally, Wagner challenges the reader to think about the role of citizenship in relationship to the global achievement gap. He cites a corporate consultant who claims that there are “only three reasons why people work or learn. There’s push, which is a need, threat, or risk . . . There’s transfer of habits – habits shaped by social norms and traditional routines. [And there’s] pull – interest, desire, passion . . . [to which] increasing numbers of young people are seeking and responding to in school and at the workplace” (205). The take home message here is that in order to teach youth how to be engaged citizens, educators need to draw or pull youth toward the issues and ideas that inspire their passions. Relevant lesson plans dealing with current events would be one such way to do this. Without it, we have unengaged students who age into society as unengaged adult citizens.

Addressing the issues that this book presents is challenging. Educators are already grappling with the traditional achievement gap between Asian and White students and their Latino and African American peers. Although some movement has been achieved recently in some school districts, this traditional achievement gap appears entrenched in 20^th century problems of race, class and geography. Thus it would seem that adding another achievement gap – a global one at that! – into the mix, might be the one straw too many.

On the other hand, the first step to implementation is awareness of the issues at hand. Each educator (and that would include administrators and classified support staff as well as teachers in the classroom) must make a conscious decision to personally strive for excellence. It’s not enough to expect students to rise to a 21^st century standard; educators must also model that standard in their daily practice. Thus, in order to “fix” education, the adults in the room need to first inspect their own practices and check those practices to make sure the messages sent to our young people are the ones that we want to be sending. If multiple choice tests don’t really force students to learn content, but teachers use them because they are easy to grade, what does that say about the level of commitment to rigorous education embraced by the teacher who uses multiple choice exams? Hard questions like this are the ones that educators need to ask -- and answer -- before casting a gaze at our youth and blaming them for being bored and unruly in the classroom. As educators, are we modeling the lifestyle choices that project excellence individually, as a society, and as international players on the world stage? As educators, are we being the excellence we seek?

Another challenge to implementation is the absence of acknowledgement of the global achievement gap in teacher training programs. Educators cannot respond to a problem if they are not aware of the nature of the issue. Thus, when teachers are not being instructed in the dimensions of the global achievement gap, they cannot begin to address the issue in their classrooms. Arthur Levine’s 2006 report entitled Educating School Teachers highlights this problem succinctly: “More than three out of five (62 percent) [survey respondents] report that schools of education do not prepare their graduates to cope with the realities of today’s classrooms” (145). Ultimately, then, the problem is not just with teachers inadequately teaching youth to meet 21^st century needs, but it is also teachers teaching future teachers inadequately. This must be addressed comprehensively if the United States is serious about remaining globally competitive.

The one position or idea presented by Wagner with which this reader takes the most exception has to do with the role of unions and charter schools in education. Frankly, I am a devoted union maid. I believe in the power of unions and collective action. I would rather stand with others than try to go it alone. The greatest advances in American society correlate with the strongest union participation. Thus when Wagner repeatedly uses charter schools (non union schools) as the model by which we can solve the global achievement gap, I am skeptical. To be blunt, it’s the government rules and regulations (such as those found in No Child Left Behind) that are hamstringing regular schools into failure. Regular schools, caught in a web of government policies, are not agile and responsive to a changing educational environment. That’s not because of unions; it’s a result of politicians who have made rules in a discipline they often know little about. The result: charter schools – which are not caught in the same web of governmental regulations -- have the appearance of success because they are allowed to be nimble and responsive to issues in education without dancing the contortionist’s act of meeting government demands in the same way.

To be fair, Wagner does cite Randy Moore, an administrator in Hawaii, as saying “If you wave your wand and the union vanishes, all the problems are still there . . . The major problem in education is the adults, not the students” (144). With this, I whole heartedly agree. The failure in education is not the students, and it’s not due to the unions. The failure in education is much more complex and multi-faceted. And, increasingly, there is evidence to suggest that charter schools are also failing our youth. According to Diane Ravitch, a well known researcher and author on issues related to education, “Charter schools have been compared to regular public schools on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009, and have never outperformed them” (Ravitch, Op-Ed, The Washington Post, 2 April 2010). There is also evidence that suggests charter schools are perpetuating some of the traditional achievement gap problems with regard to race, class and geography. In a study released in February 2010, by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, researchers found “that charter schools are more racially homogenized than traditional public schools and asserted that those in the western United States are havens for white re-segregation” (The Civil Rights Project, Choice Without Equity, February 2010, http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/news/news-and-announcements/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/choice-without-equity-2009-report). Thus claiming charter schools are the solution and unions are the problem is an inaccurate method for addressing the ongoing, underlying issues in education today. While some charter schools (which are also non union) may be doing a stellar job at dealing with the problem, other charter schools are not. Their bag is as mixed as publicly funded schools, and therefore we cannot look to charter schools exclusively for the solution.

In conclusion, Wagner does a good job of laying out the challenges surrounding the global achievement gap. Those challenges are myriad and labyrinth-like for students, their parents, teachers, employers and policy makers. Also, to return to the opening metaphor, those challenges are prescient about the direction our country is heading. Students in the U.S. are the canaries in the coalmine of globalization. And they are not singing. Rather, they are suffocating under a cloud of out-dated educational practices, short-sighted governmental policies, and a misguided public understanding of the necessary workplace competencies for the 21^st century. Our collective task: to inject fresh air into the country’s educational system before it’s too late. The rescue operation needs your help. What will you do to help?

Big Day on the Emotional Rollar Coaster

2011-09-04T20:48:00.000-07:00

Today was a big day on the emotional rollar coaster.

It started this morning when my family went down to Stockton Blvd with food to distribute to the hungry and homeless in the community. We have taken to doing this about twice a month. It's the least we can do.

And it's actually pretty simple. Just put a home made sandwich in a paper sack with an apple and a bottle of water. You'll be surprised at how appreciative a hungry person is to enjoy the gift. Lately we have been putting a toothbrush and toothpaste in each bag too. Hygiene seems to fall by the wayside pretty quickly when a person doesn't have a roof over her head.

Jay, a 30-ish white male, is the first person we have seen twice on our rounds. He remembered us too, which was pretty cool. He actually looked better today than the last time we saw him. Still, whatever has driven him to the street, has taken its toll on him. What a loss of human potential. I hope we get to see him again, and find out more about his situation.

Then there was the young woman, African American, probably in her 30s, sitting against the wall of a car parts store, disheveled, unnamed. When I approached her with the bag, she hesitated. Life on the street is doubly treacherous for women. Her trembling hands and wary eyes haunt me even now.

And there were many others. Some, like Scotty, another 30 something visibly recovering from a night of drinking. He asked if we had spit in the food we were giving him. When I said "no, it was made with love," he thumped his chest and said he knew how to love too. I can only imagine the wound that got him to this moment. When he was a squalling child, someone loved him. Now, he's just a big scruffy bluffer with his bed laying on the sidewalk.

And it went on and on like this all morning. Several women, mostly men. Several young, many over 60. The life blood of a great country poured out on the mean streets of Sacramento.

And then there were the prostitutes. One of them, etched firmly in my mind, sat on a cement wall. Her dark pendulous breasts, nipples and all, fully bared above the remnant of her blouse. A big, beautiful woman marketing her wares in broad daylight. I may never forget that sight as it seems to have shattered some reservoir of naivete I had garnered in my middle class world. The cop car down the road paid no mind to her version of capitalism.

Once we ran out of food, we headed for home. I took a short nap and then headed to the Wonderful Chinese Restaurant for a family reunion of sorts. My mom, two uncles and their mates, a cousin's wife and daughter joined my daughter and I to celebrate my grandmother's 94th birthday. Plates of food in juices and greases circled before us on the rotating table. The juxtaposition between want and plenty in my day was not lost on me. The gift of life my grandmother gave to all of us can't be captured in the little presents wrapped in glossy bags topped with floppy ribbons, nor quantified by the 15 entrees from which we tasted. She once founded a local chapter of Habitat for Humanity. Today she received a small box of chocolates. Is this really the way it goes?

There was a melancholy to the meal that I couldn't put my finger on. It was only after the left overs were wrapped up and the tip was laid out that I learned my grandmother's younger brother had died alone in Modesto this morning. My mom didn't want to spoil the party with the news but it weighed on the hearts of those who harbored it.

His life was simple. He never married, cared little for material wealth and read voraciously. He was 91. Reflections on his life and passing bring my big day on an emotional rollar coaster full circle.

Not Believing Can Be Lonely

2011-08-27T15:49:00.000-07:00

Riots in London, Gaddafi in hiding, a hurricane in New York and flailing stock markets around the world could make even a thinking person wonder if the end of the world is nigh. Of course, there are some folks who really believe that the world is about to end, often hanging their hats on the purported Maya prophecy that December 21, 2012 represents either doomsday or the dawn of a new era in human consciousness. So which is it? Does 2012 signify destruction or transformation? Or will it just be another winter solstice caught in the clutches of the West's Christmas consumer frenzy?

Fortunately for all of us, Matthew Restall and Amara Solari offer some even-handed analysis of all things 2012 in their recently published book entitled 2012 and the End of the World: The Western Roots of the Maya Apocalypse. Although slim, the six chapters which make up this volume pack a lot of information about the Maya and their calendar, Europeans and their Christianity, and 21st century New Agers and their claims of secret wisdom about the end of the world as we know it.

Indeed, Restall and Solari have woven the topic of 2012 into three distinct, but interrelated, strands: about the Maya, about European Christianity, and about modern (mostly American) attempts at synthesizing the two. As a result, our authors have embroidered a fast-reading explanation of historical events, artistic works and contemporary psychological projections in an attempt "to explain what the 2012 fuss is all about" (5).

The first thread includes a summary of what the Maya said and the ways in which they said it. A helpful, albeit simplistic, explanation of the Maya Long Count calendar (which, in our numbering system, looks like 13.0.0.0.0 and begins on or about August 13, 3114 BC) accompanies this portion, along with a general description of Maya creation mythology. This material overlaps with a few specific locations, including ancient Maya sites at Coba in Mexico, Quirigua in Guatemala and El Tortuguero, also in Mexico.

These three Maya sites are significant for dating purposes because they each contain glyphs with dates that figure prominently in 2012ology. For example, the "oldest date recorded by the Maya" appears at Coba's Stela 1 in the form of a Long Count date consisting of twenty four places. The date is "about a billion years larger than 13.7 billion BC, which is the age that astrophysicists currently assign to the universe" (17). Although some Mayanists, such as Prudence Rice call this "computational virtuosity," Restall and Solari suggest the "Maya elite at Coba may have been demonstrating how the calendar was the formula that could be used to decode time" (17). In short, this glyph may well have been an embellishment by a light-hearted stone carver, which offers us a glimpse into the playful nature of the Late Classic Maya, or it could be pointing us to the realization that “the ancient Maya were accomplished scientists a millennium or two before the West’s scientific revolution even began” (125).

In the case of Quirigua, Guatemala this site contains Stela C, carved in 775 AD. On the east side of Stela C appears the “zero date of the Long Count, 3114 BC” or 13.0.0.0.0. What’s important about this, according to Restall and Solari, is that “the glyphs that inscribe this date exemplify the combined impact of Maya art and calendrics; the conjunction of creativity and knowledge, beauty and intellect” (20). Thus, we are not to read this stela as an ominous portent of the end of time, but as a work of art reflecting the cyclical beauty in the passage of time. Or, as Restall and Solari claim, Stela C exhibits “the end of the cycle as simultaneously the start of the next one” (33). This last idea is key to understanding the Maya and their sense of time. Unlike the linear concept of time embraced by the West, Maya time is one of cycles. Planting season comes and planting season goes, only to return again next year in an ongoing cycle that spirals back into the distant mists of the past and forward into the distant haze of the future. It is ongoing and, importantly, it does not portend an end of the world. Rather, it suggests that the Maya of the 3^rd century BC (about the time when the Long Count calendar was conceived) were imagining “that the world they lived in had been created a few thousand years earlier and dated that creation in order to give the current year a satisfying trio of zeros in a five-place Long Count date. They then structured that count around the number 13, pinning the end of the cycle a couple of thousand years in the future and placing themselves more or less in the middle” (31). This placement in the center of time is relevant, too, because The Center is a paramount concept in Maya social construction of reality. They believed they were at the center of the world. Thus, placing themselves at the center of time is completely consistent with their concepts of who they were in the world in which they lived.

The third location that’s important to the discussion of Maya calendrics is the now-destroyed site of El Tortuguero, Mexico. Indeed it was the razing of the site by the Mexican government in the 1960s which allowed for the discovery of the glyph which refers to the end of the Long Count known as 13.0.0.0.0 or December 21, 2012. El Tortuguero’s Monument 6 was likely carved in the 7^th century AD and contains a dedication for the completion of a new building. It also cites a future date to mark the end of the calendrical cycle. In short, this is the glyph that has raised all the commotion! However, according to Restall and Solari, there is “nothing in the dedicatory texts to suggest the prediction of disaster” (28). It was intended by the Maya as “dedicatory, not prophetic” and “its spirit is arguably the opposite from apocalyptic, invoking longevity and permanence rather than ephemerality and predetermined destruction” (28). So how is it that a dedication monument can fuel End of the World rhetoric as can be found so prolifically on the internet today?

For the answer to that question, we must now turn to the second strand in Restall and Solari’s book, which summarizes medieval European ideas about the Apocalypse and the ways in which those ideas traveled to the New World in the 16th century. To do so, our authors have named the chapter outlining European Judeo-Christian apocalyptic ideas as “God is Angry.” Claiming that “Western civilization is the millenarian mother lode,” Restall and Solari make the case that Judeo-Christian concepts of the end of the world were born in Mesopotamia, fostered in medieval Europe and then transported to the Americas with the help of the Franciscan friars and the Spanish Conquistadors in the 16^th century. What follows is an explanation of the interactions and the impositions between the indigenous Maya and their Aztec neighbors with the Europeans they encountered, including a few pages of detailing the impact of Diego de Landa, the priest who notoriously burned most of the Maya texts. Importantly, Restall and Solari suggest that “the Franciscans [were] keen to maintain their vision of the New World as an opportunity to create on earth a version of the ‘New Jerusalem’ described in the Book of Revelation. As a result, the history of the Conquest of Mexico was revised and reimagined, and the [indigenous] culture infused with the Franciscans’ millenarian spirit” (89). Thus the Judeo-Christian tendency to see crisis as evidence for the end of the world was transported and then imposed upon the Maya and others in the New World. What’s more, that tendency has embedded itself into the consciousness of New World society so perniciously, that “the many threads of eschatology and millenarianism run so deeply and colorfully through Western civilization that the Apocalypse acts today as a common and casual reference point” (117). In other words, millenarianism has become part of contemporary Western psyche.

This understanding, then, helps the reader pivot toward the last point Restall and Solari make which has to do with Western contemporary (and often incorrect) interpretations of Maya writings and thought, and Christian eschatalogical projections based on pseudo-Maya mathematical and scientific conceptions of the world. Accordingly, it doesn’t take a Jungian scholar to realize that the modern impulse to exoticize all things Maya is based on deeply embedded ideas in the Western tradition. According to Restall and Solari, “belief offers an explanation without need for evidence. It offers a simple solution to life’s complexities, a source of meaning and hope in a world of cruel whimsy and chaos” (115) and “not believing can be lonely” (116). Although our authors are a bit more diplomatic than this, in short they are suggesting that believing in the end of the world – whether it’s about destruction or transformation – is fantasy for the intellectually lazy and the emotionally insecure. There is no basis in Maya calendrics for believing in the end of the world. Neither is there evidence in what little bits of Maya writing escaped Landa’s flames. Rather, “the 2012 phenomenon is not ultimately about the year 2012, or about the Maya. It is about the apocalyptic impulse that lies deep within our civilization” (131).

Thus, what makes 2012 and the End of the World: The Western Roots of the Maya Apocalypse valuable is the way in which Restall and Solari explore this particular piece of popular culture. Although fast-paced, this slim volume challenges the reader to a greater understanding of the beauty of the Maya, but also to the intellectually shallow, albeit titillating, notions of the end of the world. Although not believing might be lonely, it is more intellectually honest.

Coba Stela 1 photo by Maureen Moore 9 July 2011

The Fighting Decline

2011-08-06T17:47:00.000-07:00

It's official. Standard and Poor's rating agency has dropped the United States of America's credit rating from AAA to AA+. Since this is the first time in U.S. history that we have not had a AAA rating, this is an historic moment. In a statement explaining their reasons for the downgrade S and P blamed, in part, the political wrangling in Congress over the debt ceiling: "The majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act."

Yes, folks, you read that correctly. One of the reasons given by S and P for downgrading this country's credit rating was because of the posturing by the Republicans over the debt ceiling. They postured us into downgrade; they own this economy. "The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed," the company said. "The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy."

Other items of note in the statement include a reference to higher interest rates, which I suggested would happen in an earlier blog entry, and the need for allowing taxes to go up on high income earners. Scroll to the bottom of the statement for that latter salient point. Even S and P thinks a tax increase for the rich would help the U.S.

But to the matter at hand: we now have an historic downgrade in our country's credit rating. These are the things that will probably happen in the coming days, in no particular order:
1) stock markets across the globe will be erratic (at best) or plummet (at worst);
2) dollar values will drop as investors run to the Yen (yes, the Yen!) and possibly the British pound;
3) Republicans will blame President Obama for this;
4) interest rates will go up.

A couple years ago I read and reviewed a book by Farheed Zakaria entitled The Post-American World. Although he gets a few things wrong, overall Zakaria does a pretty good job of identifying the challenges the U.S. faces in the years and decades to come. One of those challenges is how to decline gracefully. As a society, we are faced with a choice: whether to go down gracefully and graciously, or whether to go down fighting and take the rest of the world with us. Based on the events in Washington, D.C. and their grand consequences, I think I now know which method of decline we have chosen.

In Belize with Jaime Awe

2011-08-04T22:29:00.000-07:00

Dr. Jaime Awe, field lecture at Xunantunich, Belize on 25 June 2011

While in Belize, we spent some time with Dr. Jaime Awe (his name is best pronounced Hi-me Ah-way) who serves as the Director of the Institute of Archaeology for the Belizean government. Although he is a native of Belize, he studied in Canada, the U.S. and England before returning to Belize to head up the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconaissance Project (BVARP).

This project focuses on the western region of Belize along the Guatemala border, where Maya cities were most highly concentrated during the Classic era (250 - 900 AD). A printable version of this map can be found by clicking here.

During our time with Jaime Awe we made site visits to Xunantunich (pronounced Shoe-none-to-nich), Cahal Pech, and Lamanai. All of these sites are considered important Classic Maya cities, both for the architecture built at each location as well as for the influence they had on the region.

Dr. Jaime Awe on site at Xunantunich, Belize

Prior to each site visit we were to read texts about the location. One of those texts was a field report, entitled "Architectural Manifestations of Power and Prestige: Examples from Classic Period Monumental Architecture at Cahal Pech, Xunantunich and Caracol, Belize" authored by Jaime Awe. Caracol, another important Classic Maya city that we visited, is also in Belize. Although Jaime Awe was not with us for that excursion, he had performed recent restoration work at Caracol.

The central idea about the three sites (Xunantunich, Cahal Pech and Caracol), as identified in the field report, was that "spatially distinct units represent socially distinct segments of society" (170). In other words, in this region of the Maya world, buildings were placed and constructed to represent the power of the individuals inhabiting the structures. In Classic Maya society different social classes have been identified. They include commoners (those who worked in the fields), artisans (those who possessed specialized skills and worked for the elites) and the elites. This latter category appeared to be stratified as well, into high elites who were royalty or directly related to the royal family and low elites who worked for the king but may not have been blood relatives. Furthermore, this hierarchy was very important to the elites as it reinforced their power and authority. In short, they needed physical symbols to project their position when commoners, artisans and outsiders came to visit the city. Thus, access to some buildings was restricted as one kind of manifestation of power, and that "architecture was purposely and effectively used by the ancient Maya to distinguish between private elite space and public space" (169). This restriction to access was exhibited in three important ways:

north side of the Castillo at Xunantunich

1) access was restricted by elevating a building above others. For the Maya, "elevation was a much more important criterion than cardinal direction for distinguishing status in Classic period . . . cities" (170) and "elite living in the more elevated . . . plazas may have enjoyed a higher status than elite living in less elevated . . . courtyards" (170). Thus, it would appear that in Maya society, the most important people inhabited the tallest buildings or the buildings at the highest elevation;

2) access was restricted by creating Audiencias, which is an architectural form associated with doorways. An Audiencia is created on a structure by limiting the number of doorways through which individuals below can access the ruler above. Many Maya buildings have multiple levels or stories. As the staircase ascends the various levels, access can be restricted by reducing the number of doorways that open out from a staircase. A good example of the use of Audiencia can be found at the Castillo at Xunantunich. Take note of the central staircase that ascends to an intermediary level about halfway up the structure. Although it's difficult to see in this photo, there are thirteen doorways facing the plaza. Yet only one doorway -- the central or seventh doorway -- provides access higher up the structure. This is an Audiencia. According to Awe, it "marks a point of transition between private space (the upper sections of the Castillo) and public space (the plaza courtyard)" (166). Thus a person could ascend the staircase up to the midway point but only one of the doorways at the midway point would allow further access to the higher portions of the temple.

It might also be important to point out that the number thirteen is symbolic to the Maya as it represents the levels of the Upper World. Thirteen is also an important number in the Maya calendar so it's probably not a coincidence that their architects would design temples that incorporate it.

A view of the Audiencia from above;
note access is restricted to only one opening by counting seven from the left

Furthermore, it is believed that the ruler would stand in doorway seven (the center of the thirteen doorways, which represents the center of the world) and look out over the public sphere below. This served to reinforce his power and reassure the people in the plaza below. "The Xunantunich rulers could have used this building to view public events in [the] Plaza from a discrete vantage point. That [the] Plaza was used for events that allowed public participation is suggested by the fact that the site's two major causeways [known as sacbes] terminate at the [Plaza] courtyard, just below this Audiencia at the eastern and western base of the Castillo" (166);

Side view of the Audiencia;
note the restricted access between the portals on the right and the rooms on the left
(photo courtesy of Jaime Awe)

Artist's recreation of Xunantunich, courtesy of Jaime Awe

3) access was restricted by entry points into plazas. Sacbes (roads within and between Maya cities) would channel the public into open plazas. Typically the open plazas would be accessible from three or more directions. Other smaller, more restricted plazas could only be accessed by one or two directions and, in some cases, only by going through a restricted access building. These are what Awe calls "restricted and semi-restricted access plazas" (166). These restricted access plazas "are indicative of private space reserved for the upper echelon of the society. Conversely, some semi-restricted access plazas probably served as residence for elite of lower status" (170).

In this artist's recreation of the core of Xunantunich, the sacbes are the roads entering the site at the bottom of the image. Adjacent to the two sacbes are three numbered plazas. Plazas 2 and 3 are more easily accessible by the sacbe on the right. Thus Plaza 2 is not restricted and Plaza 3 is semi-restricted, thus both are, to varying degrees, accessible to the public. Plaza 1, however, is a restricted access plaza located halfway up the Castillo. The only way to access Plaza 1 is by way of the Audiencia. It should be pointed out, though, that because the sacbe on the left runs right below Plaza 1, scholars believe that "the Castillo represents a large, multi-function, acropoline, complex that included the dwellings, private shrines and administrative hub for the elite rulers of Xunantunich" (166). The elites who used Plaza 1 would watch the comings and goings of the commoners on the sacbe below.

The take away message from this is that the Classic Maya of western Belize used architecture to depict and project power, and to identify public from private spaces.

View from the top of the Castillo, looking north, Xunantunich, Belize

Shiny, Bright and New

2011-07-31T18:27:00.000-07:00

Current events in the good ole U.S. of A. are causing me to turn my sights abroad for inspiration. Thus today's perspective focuses on the recent work of Nana Awere Damoah, an emerging writer in Ghana whose work is simultaneously intellectual and inspirational.

Damoah has published two books, including Through the Gates of Thought, as well as many short stories, including a morality tale entitled "Truth Floats" which appears in the anthology African Roar, edited by Emmanuel Sigauke and Ivor W. Hartmann. About a year ago I wrote a review for African Roar, but today I will examine Damoah's work exclusively.

Based on a line written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Through the Gates of Thought acts as a vehicle of advice by way of anecdotes, vignettes and action exercises, which serve as calls to action. Each chapter is numbered as a "gate" through which the reader passes, after first presenting a series of Akan proverbs along with Emerson's passage: "The gates of thought - how slow and late they discover themselves! Yet when they appear, we see that they were always there, always open." One encounters the book's title as a reflection of Damoah's desire to have the reader's mind expanded. And it works!

This easy didacticism is reinforced when Damoah tells the reader that his intent is to bless, teach and encourage by "instigat[ing] thought, provok[ing] reflections and educ[ing] action." Thus the reader begins a journey of the mind through the gates of thought.

Gate 1, entitled "Bringing Up Someone Else's Kid", is about showing kindness to others, particularly strangers. Damoah introduces this by explaining his mother's behavior toward strangers, when he says "if she extended kindness to someone's child who was living in an alien land, the same courtesy would be extended to her child when the situation was reversed. By her example, Mama taught us to be kind to others." If this sounds a bit like the concept of karma in the Hindu tradition, or the idea of the Good Samaritan in Christianity, it may be because kindness and its benefits are universal. Oh, that we need more kindness is the world today!

This notion of the Good Samaritan is presented again in Gate 16, which is entitled "The Challenges of a Twenty-first-century Good Samaritan." Here Damoah uses an anecdotal event from his life to make the point that kind people "face a big challenge as [they] strive to be . . . Good Samaritan[s] in the twenty-first century." The problem: unscrupulous people view kindness as a weakness to be preyed upon. The consequence, according to Damoah: "[the] fear of being a victim in our attempt at being a Good Samaritan is that we have created a society where one is reluctant to do good, to lend a helping hand." Of course, this inclination for self preservation must be rejected and the higher calling of caring for others must be embraced. Damoah offers an action exercise in Gate 16 which encourages the reader to "not lose that desire and eagerness to do good to your fellow man or woman" because, according to a Hindu proverb, if you "help thy brother's boat across, and lo! Thine own has reached the shore."

This is just the kind of optimism I am in need of in the wake of the debt ceiling debacle in Washington, D.C. However, it's not clear that the Tea Party got the memo about helping others as a way of helping self. Their rhetoric seems to be very self-centered. Are any of my dear readers up for telling them?

But I digress, so it's back to the book! The last gate through which Damoah takes the reader is 24. This one, entitled "Pro Patria, for the Sake of Africa!" deviates from the others both in content and in form. After introducing the reader to Damoah's school -- Ghana National College --, he then explains the school's interesting history. Apparently it was established in 1948 by Kwame Nkrumah, who went on to become the first President of Ghana after the country gained its independence from Britain in 1957. The school was built and named before Independence as a prophecy of "the nation he [was to lead] out of colonialism." As a result, the school's motto -- Pro Patria -- means "for the sake of the fatherland." This kind of patriotism was foundational in Damoah's education, and in many ways explains his upbeat attitude toward life and the world in which he lives. The patriotism was further reinforced by the school's emblem, which "consist[ed] of the map of Africa, with the map or outline of Ghana highlighted in gold." Ghana under the British was known as the Gold Coast, thus making this highly symbolic. Students of the school were to be "the beacon of hope for [their] nation and [their] continent, to bring the needed development and advancement to Africa." This kind of patriotic hopefulness is inspiring, and almost unheard of in the U.S. today.

All told, as a reader from the developed world, Through the Gates of Thought challenges me to confront my own cynicism. For Damoah much about the future is shiny, bright and new. Better yet, much is possible in a Ghana that is only five decades old. His country is rising and he can see a future full of potential. I, on the other hand, come from a country that is in decline financially, morally, and politically. His optimism and my cynicism both flow from our views of the future. And, as Damoah so aptly claims "The time to build the future for our children is now, to give them a head start." If Ghana is composed of others who are seeking kindness, goodness and the well-being of the country, then Damoah is a fortunate man. For now, at least, I am stuck with a Tea Party who shrilly worships at the altar of Ayn Rand selfishness, thus making me . . . in need of entrance through more gates of optimism.

Debt Default, Interest Rates and Who Stands to Benefit

2011-07-30T12:07:00.000-07:00

Been thinking a lot about the debt ceiling debate taking place in Washington, D.C. right now. Not discussed amidst the dire warnings of a credit rating downgrade from AAA to AA is the consideration of who stands to benefit from higher interest rates, which is what we are told will happen should the U.S. Congress not increase the debt ceiling, thereby allowing the government to go into default.

However, little guys like you and I can think this through and arrive at some interesting conclusions even as we ask some profound questions.

First, higher interest rates will impact home loans with adjustable rate mortgages (does anyone still have this type of home loan?). Higher interest rates will also impact credit card rates, student loan rates and vehicle loan interest rates. All of this will likely add extra drag to an already very sluggish economy as goods will cost more by virtue of the higher interest rates required when purchasing on credit. (This begs the question about paying cash or not buying it if one doesn't have the cash, but that's actually a rant for another day!)

Second, and the point of these musings, is the "positive" impact higher interest rates will have on savings accounts, investment accounts and other financial instruments for the wealthier class in American society. So here it is: at a moment in U.S. history when corporations and the ultra-rich are stockpiling cash at staggering levels (rather than injecting that cash into the economy in the form of hiring, R&D and increased production), they are also now poised -- if the credit rating is downgraded -- to begin reaping greater amounts of interest on those investments.

Is this a coincidence? Or is this some kind of grand machination that some of our elected officials are complicitly engaged in bringing to bear upon the American people? Why, after all, was the debt ceiling negotiation (which is a discussion about past spending) tied to the federal budget (which is a debate about future spending)? The two issues have never been an issue before. The debt ceiling was always just raised in a pro forma manner. Under Ronald Reagan it was raised 17 times. Under George W. Bush it was raised 9 times. Never was there this manufactured crisis linking paying past debts to future spending.

To personalize it: when my husband and I discuss finances, we don't refuse to pay the bills we have incurred for past expenses (debt ceiling) because we don't like the shape of the budget for future spending (family budget). Rather, if the budget for future spending is not adequate to pay future bills we make one of two choices: either we raise revenue (by selling stuff or working more) or we cut spending (less dinners out or no new shoes). At no point, however, do we ever say we won't pay the bills we have already incurred until we are able to cut spending. The two issues are related but not necessarily intertwined.

Thus, the debate in Washington, D.C. is a manufactured crisis aimed at generating limited choices and poorly designed solutions as a way of obfuscating what is really happening to the American economy. The richest corporations and people have stockpiled vast amounts of cash in the economic fallout of the 2008 recession. Now, those same people are poised to reap huge rewards in the form of higher interest rates, thereby drawing (dare I say sucking) more money out of the average American consumer.

That's my two cents and I am sticking to it.

Reading in the Houston Airport

2011-07-23T20:39:00.000-07:00

My flights out of the Maya world on Sunday consisted of one short hop from Merida, Mexico (2 hours) to Houston, Texas and then another longer leg from Houston to Sacramento, California (4 hours). Since I love flying, this was the easy part.

There was, however, one minor detail: an 8 hour layover in Houston in between those flights. Needless to say, I had time to kill. So the first thing I did after I got through Customs and Homeland Security was stop at a bookstore. So many books, so little time. And, after weeks of only reading about the Maya, I was ready for a change of pace. Thus, I selected Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World. I made this choice partly because I had heard of the book before, but also because of the current discussions about the debt ceiling and the national deficit running through the halls of the U.S. Congress.

In terms of readability, this book is pretty appealing. Ferguson balances dense economics with fun historical tidbits in such a way that the reader is not overwhelmed with the typical graphs and charts associated with finance. He also adds some humor into the mix with the use of clever chapter titles. For instance, the chapter entitled "Blowing Bubbles" is about -- you guessed it -- bubbles in the economy. The chapter begins with an overview of Argentina but it quickly shifts to 17th century Scotland and then moves on to the Dutch and their unique contribution to global finance: the joint-stock company. Apparently in their quest to compete with Spain and Portugal, Dutch merchants strategized with the Dutch parliament to create the United Dutch Chartered East India Company. As a result of this joint venture with government, which was established in 1602, this company "enjoy[ed] a monopoly on all Dutch trade east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellen" (129). The European spice trade had begun in earnest.

Once Ferguson explains these early elements of Dutch trade and financial system, he moves on to France in the 18th century. In this case, the reader is introduced to John Law in the regency era of Louis XV. Law, among the other things that he did, "obsessively tinkered with the exchange rate of the banknotes . . . altering the official price of gold twenty-eight times and the price of silver no fewer than thirty-five times between September 1719 and December 1720" (151). This was done in a vain effort to hold off a gold and silver collapse, which came to be known as the Mississippi Bubble in honor of France's role in the early economic development of Louisiana and the Mississippi River region. Louisiana is, after all, named for France's King Louis XIV, while New Orleans is named after Louis XV's regent, the Duke of Orleans. When the Mississippi Bubble burst in 1720, "the noise of escaping air resounded throughout Europe" (154) which led to French financial problems for the next 80 years. Ultimately the Mississippi Bubble resulted in French "royal bankruptcy [which] finally precipitated revolution" (155).

The take away message here is that bubbles have consequences, although sometimes causality isn't clearly seen for decades after the fact. It's pretty clear that Ferguson gives the reader this cautionary tale about John Law and the Mississippi Bubble as a result of the U.S.'s recent real estate bubble. But before he goes there, Ferguson moves the reader into a helpful explanation of the U.S. stock market and the Great Depression of the 1930s. There are correlations to be found if one is looking, suggests Ferguson. Furthermore, "the Great Depression had its roots in the global economic dislocations arising from the earlier crisis of 1914" (160). Thus one can surmise that just as France experienced a bubble and collapse in 1720 but the social revolution didn't hit the country until 1789, so too did the global economy experience a crisis in 1914 which had a dramatic effect in 1929. And, to walk this logic down the road a bit, perhaps we will eventually look back at the real estate bubble of 2008 and realize its long term consequences on U.S. society. We are living through times, to quote Bob Dillon, that are a' changing. The question is: do we have the financial acumen to see those changes and respond to them effectively?

Of course, we cannot know the future. But a strategic person can use events of the past to inform herself about potentialities of the future. Ferguson suggests this, too, when he says "There was a time when academic historians felt squeamish about claiming that lessons could be learned from history. This is a feeling unknown to economists, two generations of whom have struggled to explain the Great Depression precisely in order to avoid its recurrence. Of all the lessons to have emerged from this collective effort, this remains the most important: that inept or inflexible monetary policy in the wake of a sharp decline in asset prices can turn a correction into a recession and a recession into a depression" (164).

The emphasis is mine to make the point. Right now our elected officials in Washington, D.C. seem to be playing a game of chicken with, arguably, the world's economy. The devastating potential for the outcome of this political game -- to raise or not to raise the debt limit -- is very high. At best, the U.S. recovery is fragile. China has a real estate bubble of their own to contend with right now and the Euro is under assault with a debt crisis brought on by Greece and Ireland. Meanwhile nearly half the world's population is living on less than $2.00 per day. Thus, if some kind of deal between Speaker Boehner and President Obama is not tacitly agreed to before the Asian markets open tomorrow (Sunday, July 24) then Ferguson's "lesson" will not have been learned and the stock market will be in for a very bumpy ride next week. I hope I am wrong, and this is just early evening alarmism. Regardless, in 24 hours we will all know whether a deal can be wrought and a roil in the markets avoided with this (inept? or inflexible?) House of Representatives.

It's Over!

2011-07-23T07:32:00.000-07:00

After five weeks (four in Mexico and one in Belize) traipsing around in rainforests, I flew back to the States. Happily I was greeted at the airport by two of the most beautiful people on the planet who came bearing a bagful of Thai food takeout along with their smiles of greeting.

The trip was a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship Institute which was focused on studying the Maya. This means that 24 university and college faculty from across the country were drawn together for an intensive study. We were given a bibliography of texts prior to departure, some of which I read on the road and some that I am still plowing through now that I am back home. We had site visits at important Maya archaeological sites (Palenque, Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Bonampak), and we visited some fairly obscure locations as well (Hochob, Cahal Pech, Sayil). During the Institute, we were introduced to archaeologists, art historians, epigraphers and other scholars in the field of Maya Studies who presented seminar and field study lectures.

As it was originally planned, we were to have visited Guatemala (in particular Tikal), but recent violence in the Flores region of Guatemala caused the U.S. State Department to issue a travel restriction for the region. And, since we were operating as "consultants" for the U.S. State Department, we were required to heed that travel restriction. Thus, a few days in Belize was substituted for the time we should have spent in Guatemala. If I was disappointed by this change in itinerary, I was also relieved.

All in all, the Institute was an awesome experience. The people of southern Mexico and Belize are hard working, friendly, cheerful in the face of poverty, and dignified in the face of global pressures they cannot control. I am humbled by the ways in which they conduct their lives, and I hope that I was a respectful ambassador between their world and ours.

Portals of Mexico

2011-07-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

North Palace at Sayil

Mask of Itzamna at Hochob

Structure 2 at Calakmul

Bonampak

Palace at Palenque

Palace at Yaxchilan

Becan

Kohunlich

Mask of Itzamna at Chicanna

Palace at Edzna

Fort San Miguel Archaeological Museum, Campeche

Cathedral in Campeche

Campeche Street

Campeche

Temple of the Magician at Uxmal

Into Nunnery Quadrangle at Uxmal

Cloister of the Cathedral at Mani

Labna

Palace at Labna

Cathedral in Valladolid

Coba

Tulum

Ek Balam

La Iglesia at Chichen Itza

At the top of El Castillo at Chichen Itza

Wattle and daub at Chichen Itza

Izamal Street

Cathedral at Izamal

Santa Lucia slave church, Merida

Continentale Restaurant where we said good-bye, Merida

A Magical Night in Merida

2011-07-15T21:08:00.000-07:00

After nearly five weeks tromping around in the rainforests of Mexico and Belize, we have finally come to a real city. Merida is the capital of the state of Yucatan, and with over 1 million population, is a bustling old colonial town on the northwest edge of the Yucatan peninsula.

After checking into our hotel this afternoon, I cleaned up and then rested long enough to let the heat of the day pass. By about 7:00pm I was in need of some dinner and so headed out into the street with my map and an appetite.

The streets of Merida are narrow and paved with cobblestones. Most of the buildings are two and three story with oversize colonial style windows and doors. Ornate scroll metalwork often flanks doorways and the houses sparkle blue, green, yellow and pink. It's a lovely city.

I turned right off Calle 57 onto Calle 60. Lots of people were walking about and music floated by on the light breeze. I came to a small plaza adjacent to a small cathedral where workmen were setting up a stage. It looked like a street concert was in the making. Across the narrow cobbled street from the stage was a lovely old colonial buildings with several small balconies hanging over the sidewalk. It was a restaurant. A man was setting up tables and immediately he started talking to me in both Spanish and English. Although the restaurant was not yet open, he showed me into a courtyard with a blue tiled mosaic fountain and explained that the building dated back to the 18th century. He said that at 8:30pm the street in front of the restaurant would be closed off to vehicle traffic and people would begin dancing in the street.

I told him I would return when the restaurant opened and headed off down the street to see what else I could find. Within a couple blocks another plaza opened up with lots of vendors and little Maya girls hawking hand made jewelry. Music played from each of the cardinal directions and buskers worked the crowd in clown costumes. I walked around, pausing to listen and watch the sights and sounds. A Maya woman was selling herbal remedies and I talked with her at length about the ingredients in each of her concoctions. She had something for arthritis, hemorrhoids, flaky skin and asthma. I almost bought the asthma brew but decided against it at the last minute. Some of her remedies contained tobacco and she proudly displayed a tobacco plant along with her bottles of potion. I didn't want to go down that road.

After leaving the plaza I headed back down Calle 60 until I found a cement bench parallel with the sidewalk. It was people watching time. I must have sat there for about 30 minutes watching the beautiful youth, the gentile middle class and the gringo tourists pass by.

Many people greeted me on the street and several Maya girls asked if I wanted to buy a bolsa. No gracias. Pretty soon it was time to go to dinner. When I made it back to the restaurant the four piece band had started playing on the stage across the street. I planted myself at a table on one of the overhanging balconies and ordered eggplant parmesan. When in Merida, order something you haven't eaten in a long time. The food arrived and it was excellent. The music played and pedestrians swirled around the tables and chairs, tracing colorful patterns with their bodies. Children toddled with ice cream cones in their hands and lovers held each other in the calle. Some fireworks erupted in the night sky behind the cathedral. Could the evening be any more perfect than this? Yes. Porque mi espouso esta en Estados Unidos y el was not sitting on that lovely balcony with me.

It was a magical night in Merida but I am missing David.

The Vendors of Chichen Itza

2011-07-13T18:58:00.000-07:00

Today we spent a full day site visit at Chichen Itza. Located adjacent to the pueblo of Piste, Chichen Itza sees over 3 million tourists each year. The people who service the tourists are primarily the Maya who live in Piste.

Each morning the vendors load all of their goods onto a bike (if they have one), or a truck (if they can afford to pay for one), or their back (if that's the only option) in order to make the trek to Chichen. Once they arrive it takes about an hour for them to unpack all of their sale goods. They often work in family teams so it's not unusual to see young boys and girls helping their parents or older siblings unwrap the day's wares.

Setting up in the morning

During the peak of the day (note the young man in the green shirt in both photos)

A family group setting up (note the boy in the yellow shirt; he is about 10 years old)

Once set up, they wait for the tourists. Sometimes they work the crowd, calling out to passersby: "Barrato" which means cheap or "only one dollar" which usually ends up being more like ten dollars. Toward the end of the day, I heard one young man say in English "Cheaper than at Target." When I laughed and turned around to see his face, he said "Cheaper than Wal-Mart." He was laughing too. Clearly that's a young man who has been to the States at least once. Politicians often call him "illegal." I would call him "in search of an opportunity." Either way, he's working hard to make a living.

Waiting and watching

Although many of the items the Pistenos are selling are made somewhere else (which means the Maya are once again being commodified in a giant capitalistic game they can never win), some of the families actually produce their own goods for sale.

Take the case of Hiram. He makes wood carvings and tie-dye t-shirts in the evenings after coming to Chichen and working his booth during the day. He also speaks, to varying degrees, eight languages which he has taught himself out of neccessity. When I spoke with him, he was friendly and open. He talked about how his t-shirts were still wet from last night's dying. He also shared the carving and staining techniques used on his wood carvings. The sculpture he is holding took him two days to carve and paint. I bought it off of him for $16 US. Hiram had a prosthetic leg, which can't make his life easier. I hope he made a killing off the tourists today.

Some of the men spend their time at the booth carving. Others nap or rest in the shade.

A woman napping

Hiram

Juan

Reality

One of our seminar leaders brought his son with him on the site visit today. The boy's name is Rafael. The juxtaposition of Rafael playing with his cell phone (age 7) seated next to the two little Maya girls (who look about age 7) resting in the shade during a hard day selling handkerchiefs was too poignant to resist. The location of one's birth determines so much about their lives. This is the story of the contemporary Maya. If these little girls desire to change the pre-determined course that's been set for their lives, they have a lonely and uphill battle against global forces. It's more likely that their lives will be similar to that of the woman's who is napping in the photo above.

Around 5:00pm, most of the crowds were gone and wardens for the park came running through on motorcycles, blowing a whistle and waving people to leave. It was time to pack up and head home. Another day at Chichen was over for the Maya of Piste.

Big man closing up shop

Tulum: Disneyland Style

2011-07-11T19:08:00.000-07:00

This morning our site visit was to Tulum, which is one of the last Maya sites to be inhabited. Evidence suggests that Tulum was abandoned in the late 16th century, after the Spanish had invaded the region. Indeed, one Spanish chronicler claimed, when he saw it in 1518, that it was as big as the city of Seville.

What makes Tulum of interest, besides its late inhabitation, is the location. Perched on top of a hill overlooking the Caribbean Sea, it is a rare and well preserved coastal city.

Sadly, Tulum and the modern Maya of this region have been introduced to global forces that have placed extraordinary pressures on them and their sacred sites. Since the 1970s, the Mexican government has been working hard to develop the eastern Yucatan into one of the top tourist destinations in the country. Tulum, because it is a short bus ride from Cancun, has become one of the most frequented sacred sites in all of Mexico. Of course the financial benefits for this development have not flowed directly to the Maya. Rather, the Maya are exploited and marginalized even as their heritage is commodified and commercialized.

Thus our academic site visit to Tulum was overwhelmed by crass free market capitalism. First the tourists are herded through a corridor of cheap trinkets and psuedo-Maya made-in-China tapestries before reaching the site. Lots of the images are not even related to the Maya. At one point, a hawker tried to sell me a table cloth by proudly pointing out that the design on it was an Aztec calendar. Aztec, as in central Mexico.

It's very sad really. But that's not all. The grounds of Tulum are manicured like a golf course in California and workers were weed whacking as though their lives depended on it. In short it was a far cry from the sacred site that the Maya intended when they built and inhabited it.

Importantly, research at Tulum is beginning to crystallize around the awareness that the leadership structure here was significantly different than leadership structure in the rest of the Mundo Maya. At all the other Maya sites, whether in Guatemala at Tikal or at Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico or Carocal in Belize the leadership structure was focused on one ahau (ruler) who claimed power in the fashion of the divine right kings of Europe. Think Louis XIV of France in the 17th century and the absolute power he held by claiming himself Apollo the Sun God. That's the same kind of political rulership the ahaus of the Maya world established. It was an inherited position, and contesting it required warfare and bloodshed. Interestingly, not only does the ahau glyph represent a king, but it also represents a date in one of the Maya calendar systems. Thus kingship is equated with time and is justified through religious power in the ancient Maya mind.

An ahau glyph variation

Therefore as research at Tulum has progressed, scholars have been surprised to realize that power was not quite as centralized in this kingdom as it was in most of the rest of the Maya world. Rather, power at Tulum seems to have been shared among brothers (possibly) or some kind of council. Some academics have suggested it was a multepal form of government whereby power was held by an oligarchy. Although this theory to explain political power at Tulum is not entirely established, it is the most current explanation for the political structure.

If Tulum was ruled by a multepal, then the architecture would be correspondingly different, too, in order to accomodate more than one ruler simultaneously. There is evidence for this in the archaeological work that has been done at the site but much more needs to be done.

What's unlikely is that the masses of tourists who trundle through Tulum for a brief afternoon respite from the beaches of Cancun realize the unique political constructions which were embodied in the architecture and art at the site.

Cenote at Coba

2011-07-10T15:23:00.000-07:00

After seminar this morning, a small group of us went to a cenote across the lake from our hotel. The cenote (pronounced see no tay) is an underground cave with water in it, which the Yucatec Maya called dzonot or ts'onot meaning "well". In ancient times, and even today, the Maya used cenotes for water storage but also for sacred purposes. Sometimes sacred rituals would be performed in or around the cenote, during which the Maya would make offerings of exotic items such as precious jades, obsidian flints and, occasionally, human sacrifices.

It's likely that the rituals associated with cenotes evolved because of Maya beliefs about the Underworld. Essentially the Maya believe that caves serve as entrances to this other realm, which symbolizes the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Thus the cenote opening is a natural icon in Maya sculpture, architecture and painting.

But there is a practical side as well, for cenotes are important to the Maya for water storage because there aren't any rivers and very few lakes in this region. Most of the soil is porous limestone, so water collection is a precious activity for survival. As a result, many of the Maya temple sites in the Yucatan are located adjacent to these cenotes. Coba, where we are, is no exception.

The cenote we went to was massive and deep, requiring us to take wooden steps from the surface into the cave. Our journey into the Underworld began at this modest thatched roof well-like structure. The man who took our 45 pesos per person ($4.50 US) said that there were 88 steps down to the platform at the bottom.

There was also this sign, cautioning us to download the steps. Since I did not have my computer with me at the time, I found these instructions somewhat challenging to heed.

Once we downloaded the steps, we arrived at a large wooden platform fashioned like a boat dock jutting out over the water. There was one small hole at the top of the cave ceiling, and lots of stalactites hanging down in various lengths. Someone was burning copal, which is ancient incense for Maya rituals.

After cautiously apprising the situation, I decided I didn't want to miss this opportunity so I got in. The water was very clear and very deep. It was also somewhat cool, but refreshing to the skin. I floated on my back for a long time, just staring at the contours of the limestone ceiling above. There were shapes and designs in the rock, and water seeped through and showered down occasionally on the upturned face. The limestone rock acts as a natural filter for the water which is why it is so clean.

After floating and swimming for about an hour, we all got out of the water. Walking back up the 88 wooden steps, I realized how peaceful and relaxed I felt. It was a spiritual experience going into the Underworld, and once again I am amazed at the beauty and wisdom of the Maya.

My photos inside don't really do justice to the place but here they are.

The platform and entrance to the 88 steps

A blurry shot of the cenote wall

A stalactite on the ceiling

The Village of Coba

2011-07-08T14:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we left Uxmal and headed east toward the coast. Near the ancient site of Coba, we stopped at a little village by the same name. We will be here for five nights.

This morning after seminar I went for a walk into the village. Adjacent to our hotel is a lake, which I think is called Lago Coba. Of course we were discouraged by the locals from swimming in it due to the crocodile sightings. I'll take their advice.

A little further down the road, I came to the main section of the village. Really, there is just one paved road and several unpaved side roads. A couple of tourist shops line the main road, and women wearing traditional huipils walk carrying babies and baskets.

The 2010 census claims there are about 1200 people living here. Most of them are Maya.

After walking along the main road for a while, I turned off onto one of the unpaved side streets. Mangy dogs and baby chickens greeted me in the road. The houses are quite modest. While passing a school, some girls called out "Hola!" and then giggled. I greeted them with a wave, a giggle and an hola of my own.

The road was slippery because it's been raining, warm rain, since we arrived last night. I peered into a well adjacent to a house. The well was square and had a wooden ladder set down into it. At the bottom of the well was a purple toy baby stroller laying on its side. The plastic casing juxtaposed oddly against the grey stones.

Another mangy dog barked at me and I headed back to the main road where I stopped in at a fruit stand. White onions, green bell peppers, papayas, grapes, pears, two kinds of bananas and apples imported from the USA all greeted me. I bought a bunch of grapes and bananas and one apple. It cost the equivalent of $2.65 US. The girl at the counter was pretty and shy. She laughed when I fumbled with the coins, holding them closely to my eyes to inspect each denomination.

Walking back to the hotel, it started to drizzle again. It's a simple life in the village of Coba.

The Dwarf of Uxmal: A Maya Myth

2011-07-04T14:22:00.000-07:00

After seminar this morning, I took a walk into Campeche for a last day of checking out the city before we leave in the morning. Along the way, I discovered a cool little shop with books and other assorted goodies. I picked up two books, including one containing several Maya legends. Because our site visit tomorrow will include Uxmal, here is a rendition of the story of the Dwarf of Uxmal:

The elders of the village of Nohpat tell of an old lady -- a sorceress and an herbalist -- who knew the mysteries of the skies and the cures to every illness. Although she was very old, she desired to have a son so one day she went to a secret place to pick up a special egg, which she nurtured until it hatched a baby boy. When the child spoke, the old lady was surprised for he had the body of a child but the wisdom of an old man.

Over the years, the boy grew in wisdom but not in size. He was a dwarf but his wisdom was immense. Among other things, he was very observant and he noticed that the old lady never moved very far from the three hearthstones in the thatch-roofed house that they shared. One day when the old woman was not looking, the dwarf reached into the ashes of the fire to find out what the grandmother guarded. There he found a tunk'ul, a wooden drum with a special design on it. He began banging the drum, pounding so loudly that the sound was heard far away by many people.

a tunk'ul
at the Fort of San Miguel Museum in Campeche

Immediately the sorceress returned. She was very angry, and she explained to the dwarf that what he had done would change destiny for everyone. Now terrible events would occur and he would be caught in the middle of them.

Even as the grandmother was telling the dwarf about the consequences of his actions, the sound of the drum was reaching the king's grand stone palace. You see, the king was gripped with great fear at the pounding of the drum as a prophecy in the land stated that this sound would precede the end of his rule. The king and his advisors decided to find the person who was responsible for playing the tunk'ul, and to see if he was really the one who would succeed the king on the throne. Thus, the king's guards came to the village of Nohpat, found the dwarf and took him to the palace.

When the dwarf came before the king, he was asked to prove his wisdom since only a wise person can become king. The king asked many questions. The dwarf answered them all. But the king was not satisfied and so he decided upon a final test: this would consist in breaking a cocoyol nut with a hammer on the head of the dwarf. The dwarf agreed with one condition: the king would have to undergo the same test.

The king's executioner placed the cocoyol nut on the dwarf's head and struck with all his might. But the dwarf lifted his head with a smile. He had passed the test.

Next came the king's turn. The executioner placed the nut on his royal head and struck with all his might. But this killed the king. Unbeknownst to the king, the dwarf survived because the sorceress had hidden a cap of enchanted copper in his hair.

Thus the dwarf was declared king of Uxmal. On the day of his inauguration, the grandmother told him that she would not live much longer but that now he was king, she could die in peace. She also told him to "Act with justice, and always face the truth. Do not forget it is more important to be good than to be just. Listen to the voice of the gods and follow their counsel, but listen also to the voice of men. Never despise the lowly, and distrust the powerful." These were the grandmother's last words to the dwarf.

For many years the dwarf heeded the old woman's advice and peace and harmony reigned at Uxmal. But over time, the dwarf began to abuse his power. He became a tyrant and cruel to the people.

The gods saw this and became angry. The dwarf had offended them so they punished the city by sacking and burning it. Time passed and the memory of the city was erased by the ashes and the wind.

This is the story of the dwarf who reigned in Uxmal.

An Afternoon at Edzna

2011-07-03T10:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was an ambitious day. We visited three sites, got caught in a thunder shower and had the bus malfunction. There may be a correlation between the bus engine not running well and the gas we got at the roadside stand, since the two events were about 10 minutes apart.

At any rate, here are photos from one of the sites we visited yesterday. I will write more about it later. Until then, just enjoy the scenery.

Getting Gas in Rural Mexico

2011-07-03T09:26:00.000-07:00

The Sign

The Station

The System

Itzamna

2011-06-29T20:36:00.000-07:00

Itzamna is one of the gods in the Maya pantheon. Tomorrow we are going to a temple where this god will be depicted in a giant mask that surrounds the entrance to the building, which is called the House of the Serpent Mouth.

Along with its depiction in sculpture, Itzamna is also a song by Ruben Alvarez. Here are the lyrics in Espanol:

ITZAMNÁ

Descendió sobre un fuego letal
al caer, nuestro pueblo lo halló
corazón de poder inmortal
Señor de los Cielos y el Sol

Hijo del Gran Creador
Nuestro Dios, nuestro guía
hacia el cielo templos se alzan en su honor
Todo nos lo enseñó
el respeto a la vida
armonía sobre las pasiones

Caminó como un mero mortal
susurró y se hizo su voluntad
combatió contra la enfermedad
Señor de los Cielos y el Sol

No quisimos crecer
una noche su partida nos dejó
huérfanos de su sabiduría
Señor de los Cielos y el Sol

Itzamná regresará
nuestro futuro está escrito en piedra
siente el pulso celestial
un nuevo día aguarda tras el despertar

Itzamna also appears to be a medical center in New York, which seeks "to provide world-class, culturally sensitive healthcare services to New York City’s growing Latino community."

Clearly the use of the name is popular and has significant meaning, including as healer and as a figure known to some in popular music.

Leaving Belize

2011-06-29T15:55:00.000-07:00

Belize is behind us now, as we crossed the border back into Mexico earlier today. Before we left I had to say good bye to our Belizean driver, Alvin, who had been awesome about getting us around safely and on time. Here he is goofing off at a stop on the way to Carocal.

Along with his excellent driving, Alvin also had a great attitude. Nothing was a problem for him.

With this in mind, it's worth mentioning a story: on the first afternoon we arrived in Orange Walk Town, I headed into the market to pick up water and check out the place. I had not yet figured out that Orange Walk was a fairly dangerous little city, full of drug dealers and people down on their luck for having been born in Belize. As I was walking around that afternoon, I ran into Alvin in the central plaza. He walked and talked with me all the way back to our hotel. I thought it somewhat odd at the time because he also said he needed to meet up with his sister who lived there. But he gave me some good insights about the region and the economy so I appreciated his company.

It was only later that I learned Alvin was carrying a pistol in Orange Walk. Apparently even he thought it was a dangerous town. He also locked up the wheels of the bus with a huge chain, which is something I had not seen him do in any of the other Belizean cities we had been in.

When I learned this, I realized why he had walked me back to hotel. He was protecting me! So thanks, Alvin. This one is for you.

Water and Sky on the Way to Lamanai

2011-06-29T14:18:00.000-07:00

This morning we got up early and took a fast boat up the so-called New River to Lamanai. The river is a myriad system of waterways which reminded me very much of the Amazon region in Brasil. Sometimes the river was very wide and sometimes the river was very narrow. Often lily pads lined the banks, and birds would walk along them watching for bites to eat in the water below. At least once we caught the bubbles of a crocodile as he (or she?) slid below the surface so as to escape our eager gazes.

Eventually we made it to Lamanai, and upon disembarking the mosquitos began to devour us. These mosquitos were huge! I have seen lots of mosquis before, but never this big. Needless to say, I was glad to have started taking my malaria meds last week, because the lightweight citronella hoighty-toighty organic nonsense I had in my backpack was no match for these monsters.

The Maya site at Lamanai includes 718 mapped structures, an ancient harbor and a well defined sacbe, which is a Maya road leading in and out of the city. All of this suggests that Lamanai was an extensive and important site for the Maya in the region. Furthermore, although some of the structures show evidence of being constructed earlier, Lamanai is important for its Middle Classic traits which combine elements of both Early Classic and Late Classic artistry.

Early Classic is the period which generally runs from about 250 - 600 CE, and is considered the beginning of the high point in Maya political development, art and architecture. Most of the motifs in Maya art and culture have been clearly established by the Early Classic, including social hierarchy, ball court construction, glyphs, the calendar and the pantheon of gods. Interestingly enough, it is also during the Early Classic that we begin to see the first influence from Teotihuacan, which is the great city in Central Mexico and a pre-cursor to the Aztec.

The Middle Classic is really just an overlapping era which runs from about 500 - 700 CE. What's important to keep in mind is that the Middle Classic differs from region to region. Here in the Belizean lowlands the Middle Classic appears a bit later than it does further south in the highlands of Guatemala.

The Late Classic runs from about 600 - 800 CE. This era marks the beginning of the end of Maya greatness, although that decline also differs from region to region.

One of the more significant finds includes a structure that was excavated in the ceremonial section at Lamanai. The building was given the ignominous name N10-27 by archaeologists. The drawing below suggests its appearance when the Maya constructed it, and it's pretty likely that it was named something different by the Maya too. I photographed this from an article so the flower at the top of the picture is the artwork on the hotel room bed covering.

This is what the structure looks like today.

Lamanai was originally settled around 900 BCE. The spot where this structure is located began to take on important sacred meaning for the Maya by about 200 BCE and, as a result, they just kept constructing new temples over the older ones so that there are layers of buildings underneath this one.

By the time we get to about 600 CE this structure has been modified into it's last iteration as an administrative and religious complex which includes the enclosure with three doorways that can best be seen in the drawing above. A stela was placed in the middle doorway of this enclosure. Underneath the stela was an offering pit, which contained the remains of five children ranging in age from infants to about eight years of age. There were also shell beads, chert and obsidian placed in the offering pit. David Pendergast, one of the archaeologists who worked at this site in the 1980s claims "the five children were sacrificial victims ... [because the] remains bear no signs of violent death." Pendergast asserts that the final stage of construction, along with the placement of the stela and the offering of children, was part of a ritual. It's full meaning and importance is poorly understood.

What we do know is that the stela depicts a king of Lamanai known as Lord Smoking Shell. He is dressed in clothing which suggests his accession to the throne, and the writing on the stela tells us this auspicious event took place in 608 CE. The stela itself was placed in the doorway of the structure in 625 CE.

The text from the stela reads,

Wucub ahau ox pop tzoki te tun waa...
Uuac kib kan zec
Wucublajun tunob kan kinob xikah kaan
chicchan pal ahau...
Ukabale butz anki sol kaan tu ton ain
macuch lakin LAMA'AN'AIN

In case you don't read Maya it reads,

It was on 7 ahau 3 pop that the tree stone of time ended
[a 52-year era ended in 625 A.D.]
He had become ruler 17 yrs 4 days before [A.D. 608] on 6 Kib 4 Zec
He was the youngest son of the heir to the king
His name was Lord Smoking Shell

His celestial Progenitor was the Spirit Crocodile
Lord of the east, of the province of LAMA'AN'AIN

From rubbings, photos and interpretations of the glyphs it is believed that the head portion of the stela looked like this in situ:

Today it looks like this:

In terms of interpreting some of the iconography of the image, Dorie Reents-Budet of Duke University Museum of Art has done a nice job in her essay entitled "The Iconography of Lamanai Stela 9."

In her essay, Reents-Budet explains that Lord Smoking Shell's torso is depicted frontally but his head is in profile. Furthermore, Lord Smoking Shell wears a headdress which is similar to other Early Classic images in the Guatemala highlands. Interestingly, Lord Smoking Shell's head "emerges from an open-mouthed serpent headdress." This can best be seen in the drawing above as the serpent is colored blue and surrounds the king's head. In this case, the serpent represents origins so depicting the ruler's head as coming out of the mouth of the serpent is the Maya way of saying the king is great because he is associated with the origin of the world. His head emerges from the center of the beginning.

The king also holds a "double-headed ceremonial bar diagonally across his body." The ceremonial bar is something akin to the king's sceptor and represents his power and authority. This particular ceremonial bar also contains imagery in it that associates Lord Smoking Shell with the two Hero Twins of the Popol Vuh. Furthermore, Lord Smoking Shell's left hand holds a zoomorphic image of Venus, which is a celestial monster. Reents-Budet explains that because of the placement of the ceremonial bar and the symbols embedded in it, the artist of this stela is presenting the viewer with a "Classic Period model of the cosmos, with the front head of the celestial monster (Venus) in [the king's] left hand and, cradled in in his right arm, the ceremonial bar from which emerges" one of the Hero Twins who represents the underworld sun. All of this, according to Reents-Budet, "demonstrates Lamanai's innovative manipulation of the royal symbols that were being reconfigured during the Middle Classic."

Shed a Little Light

2011-06-28T05:45:00.000-07:00

Last night a light went out of this world. Her name was Deva, which in Hindi means "goddess." Of Indian ancestry, raised in Singapore and living in California, she was a woman of the universe. Deva's light shone clear and bright every day. Her passing is a loss to this world but we can be assured that she is out of pain and in a better place.

So today, if you could, please shed a little light on someone else, a stranger, someone who is hurting, a friend. And, please, do it to shed a little light for Deva.

Orange Walk Town

2011-06-27T19:13:00.000-07:00

This morning we left San Ignacio by bus and headed north. We are now in Orange Walk Town, which is a gritty little city of about 20,000 people situated in a predominately agricultural region -- sugar cane, mostly. The town sits on the banks of the New River, which was aptly named by the English because it was new to them. It was not, however, new for the Maya who have lived in these parts since at least about 1000 BCE. They called the river the Dzuluinicob, which means "foreign men." Perhaps they named it this because the river is a deep water channel and a means by which foreigners can navigate up it.

This part of Belize has an interesting history which can be compressed into distinct periods of time. There is evidence of human habitation going back at least as far as 7000 BCE. Then between about 7000-1200 BCE there is evidence of a kind of formative pre-ceramic people. Neither of these two groups are considered to be Maya.

Some time around 1200-900 BCE we find evidence of a ceramic society. These are people thought to be the earliest Maya in the region. They are constructing waddle and daub structures which is essentially plaster stuck between and on top of small wooden poles. What's really cool about this is that very tiny fragments of cotton with textile weave have been found pressed into the plaster.

So picture this: some man is building his house around 1000 BCE. It's hot so he takes a little break to wipe his brow and catch his breath. He leans back against the wet plaster that he just laid and it creates an imprint that dries in the form of the weave of his clothes.

Three thousand years later, we are finding that imprint. And what it tells us, along with the the type of construction of the house, is that weaving and textile making were in place by 1000 BCE. It also suggests that cotton production is already in place by this time because surely whoever this man is, he's not the only one around wearing cotton textiles. Furthermore, agricultural production suggests a sedentary, rather than a nomadic, form of society. We have all the ingredients for a settlement.

This era from 1200-900 BCE is known as the Cunil Phase. Beyond the agriculture, textiles and housing construction other items have been found that are associated with these people. Those items include small ceramic figurines, carved jade objects, obsidian blades and some slate carvings. Since some of these materials are not from the Upper Belize River Valley, scholars suggest that by 1000 BCE extensive trade networks had been established between Honduras in the south, Guatemala in the west and the coastal plains of Tabasco and Veracruz in the north. It is what Jaime Awe calls a "pan-Mesoamerican" network. Furthermore, early motifs associated with both the Olmec and the Maya are beginning to appear in the artifacts. These are also considered "pan-Mesoamerican motifs" and include a slate crocodilian effigy. This last item is important because it relates to one of the oldest temple sites in the region known as Lamanai.

Lamanai was recorded by the Spanish when they arrived in the early 16th century as Lamanay or Lamayna. This is a twist on the Maya word Lama'anayin, which means "submerged crocodile." Apparently the crocodile was symbolically important to the people of the region as far back as 1000 BCE, and it continued to be important to them when they began constructing a portion of the temple complex known as the Mask Temple in 200 BCE.

Perhaps most important for our discussion here is the fact that the Mask Temple at Lamanai not only is "clearly related to characteristics of Olmec iconography" -- which supports that pan-Mesoamerican motif theory, but that the masks on the temple appear with an "up-turned upper lip and broad nose. The masks are each adorned with a headdress representing a crocodile. This symbol validated the ancient site name recorded by the Spaniards as Lamanay, 'place of the crocodile.'" All of the quotes come from Jaime Awe's book entitled Maya Cities and Sacred Caves: A Guide to the Maya Sites of Belize.

Happily, I report that tomorrow we will take a boat up the river with Jaime Awe to visit Lamanai.

Charles Is Looking for the Human Touch

2011-06-26T18:08:00.000-07:00

Charles is one of the faculty on this tour. He is missing his wife and didn't bring his computer so he can't send her photos very easily. So this is for Charles:

Sights of San Ignacio

2011-06-26T17:21:00.000-07:00

Thunder rocked the sky this afternoon in San Ignacio. Shortly afterwards the dark clouds overhead let loose and the rain came pouring down. Even the birds enjoyed the respite from the heat!

After the rain stopped the temperature dropped so I went for a walk about town. San Ignacio Town has a population of about 14,000 people and sits on the bank of the Makal River. If you cross the narrow bridge that spans the river, you will enter the sister city of Santa Elena. Because it's so small, everyone knows everyone. Taxi drivers lounge together waiting for a rider. Women selling fruit in the market stalls gossip amongst themselves between customers. It's a sweet little town in the middle of the rain forest.

These are some of the sights I saw on my after-the-rain walk.

The local electricity company in a modest building

A colorful street

Everything Boutique

Xibalba Expeditions for those who want to travel to the underworld

A colorful house at the top of Colorful Street

An abandoned government building across from the colorful house

A poem

A dive with very good food

A hippie couple from Oregon inside the dive with good food (yes, they are living in Belize full time)

Baby Love's vegetarian restaurant which was not open (does that mean paradise closes?)

A lab that I wouldn't trust

And a mural of caring

Meet David Hernandez

2011-06-26T12:17:00.000-07:00

During our stay here in San Ignacio, David has been accompanying us to all of the archaeological sites. He is patient with our questions, and thoughtful with our interests. In a quiet moment, it is not uncommon for David to point out a cool animal or plant hidden in the jungle growth. Copal, centipedes and red frogs are all within David's purview. He speaks English, Kriol and Spanish, and he's working on his Japanese! So if you are ever in Belize and want the best guide, David is the one!

Feeling peaceful at Cahal Pech

Crossing the Mopan River to Xunantunich

At the ball court giving Cynthia the lowdown on plants at Xunantunich

Flora and Fauna of Belize River Valley Region

2011-06-26T12:00:00.000-07:00

Cahal Pech, Belize

Xunantunich, Belize

El Castillo, Xunantunich, Belize

Ball Court, Xunantunich, Belize

Xunantunich, Belize

Principal Bird Deity

2011-06-24T10:27:00.000-07:00

One of the oldest deities in the Maya pantheon is a figure often referred to as the Principal Bird Deity (PBD). He is also known as 7 Macaw or Wuqub Kaquix in K'iche' Maya language. This deity is most often depicted as a bird monster who appears at a dark moment in the creation of the world. Among other things, the Principal Bird Deity claims the sun and the moon for himself, as himself, which suggests the level of arrogance he embodies. He is a bad dude. He has a special jewel in his feathers and he is generally regarded as resplendent. He is beautiful badness.

In terms of depictions, the Maya displayed 7 Macaw in a variety of medium including on pottery, on building facades, in small jade carvings, in wall paintings and in literature. One of the earliest known depictions is from about 200 BCE in Guatemala at Kaminaljuyu during what is known as the Miraflores phase of the Late Formative (300 BCE - 150 CE).

Stela 11
Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala
200-50 BC
Granite
198.1 x 67.9 x 18.1 cm
Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología, Guatemala City

According to Lawrence Bardawil of Yale University, there are three elements that distinguish the Principal Bird Deity from other deities in the Maya pantheon: the figure, the wing and the head. And, while aspects of the figure, the wing and the head have changed over the centuries, there are certain commonalities that remain. These include the jewel in his feathers, association with a serpent (either a serpent held in his mouth or what Bardawil calls a "serpent wing"), dangerous talons and a long-lipped or beak-like mouth. All of these are on display in Stela 11 at Kaminaljuyu, and according to Bardawil, "the long-lipped head and serpent wing designate the Principal Bird Deity as a supernatural" which relates it to the underworld and assigns to it the task of being an "overseer of significant events both in this world and the underworld." Although the Principal Bird Deity is not fully understood, it is considered by most Maya scholars as a "creature [which] must be an extremely important concept" in the Maya family of deities.

One of the most amazing, recent discoveries of a Principal Bird Deity depiction comes to us at San Bartolo, Guatemala. Found by sheer accident by William Saturno in 2001, this depiction dates to about the 1st century BCE and is the oldest known mural painting in the Maya world. In this instance, the Principal Bird Deity sits on the World Tree (Axis Mundi) in a foreboding position of power. He brings darkness to the world of flowers and beauty which surround the World Tree. He is danger in a world that would be beautiful without him. According to William Saturno, in a lecture he delivered in San Ignacio, Belize on 21 June 2011, the Principal Bird Deity represents chaos and uncivilized wilderness. He is the symbol for all that is wild, thus he must be slain in order for humans to establish civilization.

Principal Bird Deity
Las Pinturas, San Bartolo, Guatemala
c. 1st century BCE

In keeping with Bardawil's elements, this depiction includes the serpent spiraling out of the PBD's beak and sharp talons clutching two fruit in the tree. He figuratively weighs down the World Tree with his beautiful badness.

An Easy Day and a Good Move

2011-06-23T19:26:00.000-07:00

Today has been an easy day. Instead of taking another bone jarring bus trip into the rain forest to visit Altun Ha, William Saturno suggested that we stay in San Ignacio and do two seminars with his slides in relative comfort. His suggestion was happily taken up by the group and so we stayed in town today. Our first lecture was held in a cramped room at the Midas Hotel where we have been staying since our arrival in San Ignacio. After lunch and a nap break, our second lecture was at another hotel across town, The San Ignacio Hotel.

Of course, to the casual eye it might appear that there is no difference between these two hotels. But I am here to tell you that there is. First, let me explain about the Midas Hotel. It is down a dirt road, and appears to be somewhat of a work in progress. As you can see from the photo, there is a nice pool area with tourists basting, er I mean tanning, in the sun. But there are also some problems with the Hotel Midas. Take, for instance, the 4 inch long scorpion that my roommate and I found crawling up the side of the wall INSIDE our room. After trapping it in my handy dandy traveling french press coffee cup, my roommate cut off its tail (yes) and then flung it outside. Neither of us could muster up the violence to kill it. De-tailing it seemed punishment enough. After expressing our displeasure to the insect gods, and making sure to remind them that by keeping the scorpion's tail we were claiming dominance over all insects, we promptly turned out the lights and attempted sleep. Attempted is the relevant word here. Would you, Dear Reader, be able to sleep after removing a four inch scorpion from your room? And lest you think there is any hyperbole going on here, check out the picture of the scorpion in the coffee cup. Keep in mind this was taken after the tail was cut off. So, perhaps you can imagine my delight when we went to the San Ignacio Hotel for our second seminar this afternoon and I discovered . . . luxury and comfort. Air conditioning and a bug free environment. I knew right then that I was not going to spend another night at the Hotel Scorpion Midas.

After some arrangements and a hasty suitcase pack, I arrived at the San Ignacio and have been safely ensconced here. The shower is lovely, the AC is strong and the wait staff even brought me a complimentary fruit drink to start my stay off on the right foot. I am now in Belize Heaven! I will work on some photos tomorrow.

All in all, today was an easy day and a good move.

San Ignacio, Belize

2011-06-21T19:08:00.000-07:00

This morning we got up early and took the bus south to the Belizean border. After going through customs we had to switch buses and drivers, and then we headed southwest into Belize. Almost immediately the terrain changes, the buildings are different, and the language is understandable. Palm trees intersperse with pine, and some areas are quite marshy. The buildings are usually constructed by wood or brick and often painted bright colors. The exterior of the place where we are staying is painted bright lime green.

English is spoken in the market but I have heard people speaking Spanish too. When I approach they switch to English. As for currency, Belize is 2 to 1 on the U.S. dollar. So earlier today I picked up two bananas in the market and it cost me B25 cents, which is about 12 cents U.S. Pretty cheap! Here's a picture of the market that I walked through this afternoon.

This evening we had a seminar with William Saturno, who had just flown in from Boston. He will be the archaeologist leading the seminars with us for the next few days.

Tonight's talk was about the recent (2001) discovery of paintings inside a temple at San Bartolo, Guatemala. The images are early -- dating to about the 1st century BCE -- and advance our understanding of language and text development in pre-Classic Maya. In particular, "This early Maya writing implies that a developed Maya writing system was in use centuries earlier than previously thought, approximating a time when we see the earliest scripts elsewhere in Mesoamerica." According to Saturno, the instruments Maya scribes used to make paper have been dated back to about 1800 BCE. This suggests that if people were making paper they were also writing on that paper, so writing in the Americas may be much older than previously believed. Unfortunately paper is a very perishable material and there are no known books on paper that date back this far.

And, while the glyphs are fascinating, so are the images that accompany them. The scenes that are known include a series of four separate events. Each scene can stand alone, but really they are intended to be viewed in sequence. In the first scene, a figure known as Principle Bird Deity sits in a tree. He is large and imposing, and he represents the chaos of the uncivilized world. To the left of the Principle Bird Deity is the figure of a man, who Saturno believes is a representation of Hunahpu. This figure is from the story of Popol Vuh, and he is known as one of the Hero Twins. Hunahpu, along with his brother Xbalanque, are considered the beginning of the human race.

As the viewer's eye moves through the four scenes, Hunahpu embarks on a quest of sacrifice. He pierces his penis and slaughters a different animal in each scene. By the time the viewer gets to the last scene, Hunahpu is victorious over the Principle Bird Deity, which is now depicted as dead. As Saturno explained it tonight, it is necessary to conquer the Principle Bird Deity in order to create an organized, civilized world. Hunahpu slays the chaos and in doing so, creates civilization.

Thus part of what makes the discovery of these paintings so important is the dating of the glyphs, but also the correlation of the imagery to the known story of the Popol Vuh. This is the oldest known painting of events from the Popol Vuh.

Unfortunately, because of the political situation in Guatemala right now, we will not be able to go to the site at San Bartolo.

Flora and Fauna of Chiapas

2011-06-20T19:30:00.000-07:00

In the past week, I have been to Maya temple ruins at Palenque, Yaxchilon, Bonampak, and the Olmec heads at La Venta in Villahermosa. The temples and other arts made by humans are amazing, but this posting is a simple review of some of the plants and animals encountered at the sites.

At Escudo Jaguar, Corozol, Chiapas by the Rio Usumacinto (on the way to Yaxchilan)

A guardian at Yaxchilan

A toucan (can you see it?) behind the Gran Acropolis at Yaxchilan

A lichen covered rock that looks like the face of a god at the Temple of the Foliated Cross, Palenque

A flower whose name I do not know at Palenque

A monkey at Palenque. His brothers and cousins howled whenever we were there.

Ants working really hard at Olmec Park, Villahermosa

A flower at Olmec Park, Villahermosa

A Long Bus Ride and Then Chetumal

2011-06-20T18:57:00.000-07:00

We have been going at a furious pace the entire week so I have not had time to write anything about the temple ruins we have seen. But I will back fill our activities in Chiapas later. There is much to say and many pictures to show but I want to do it well rather than hastily.

This morning we got up early and left the earthy town of Palenque, Chiapas by bus. The trip was long, sometimes bumpy and punctuated by potholes and police checkpoints. At one stop, the police made Carlos our driver open the hold below the bus so that dogs could sniff our luggage. Mine was conveniently selected and the canine drug sniffer caught a whiff of my malaria meds, which caused a bit of a stir among the cops. But our ever helpful fixer, Alphonso, fixed everything and we were once again on our way. When I retrieved my luggage later I noticed they neglected to zip one of the pockets. Alas, these neglections are the bread crumb traces of power in Mexico.

Almost immediately after leaving Chiapas state the terrain changes dramatically. The jungle hills flatten out to marshy croplands. In some places in this state of Campeche the roads are pretty well maintained, with pedestrian overpasses and tidy little schools. In other places the poverty is apparent. Everywhere there are very young children and lots of dogs. Everyone seems to have a dog in this part of Mexico.

Some time in the late afternoon we rolled into Chetumal, a large city on the Atlantic side of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. It's a fairly wealthy city with an easy affluence that we did not see at all in the Maya regions of Chiapas. Car dealerships, shoe stores and knick knack shops serve as markers for the middle class. The word Chetumal means "place of the red wood" in modern Maya, but the only wood I saw was some face carvings in a tourist shop down the street from our hotel.

After a light dinner of soup and bread in the hotel restaurant, I walked with one of my colleagues down the main street of town. It looked like it had recently rained today because lots of the sidewalks were wet and puddles filled the streets. Loud music blared out from many of the shops and vendors selling belt buckles and earrings crowded the sidewalks. There are lots of passers by, young and old, men and women. It's a town with a good vibe.

The main street ends at Chetumal Bay, which faces east toward the Atlantic Ocean. A nice breeze played along the promenade and locals jogged alone in the easy twilight, or walked together hand in hand. Once the sun set the sky turned blood red and streaked palm tree silouhettes across the west side of the bay. Of course I did not have my camera so all I could do was enjoy the moment. Ah, Chetumal.

Moon Landing Over Villahermosa

2011-06-13T21:32:00.000-07:00

The flight out of Houston was remarkably smooth. The little prop job we rode in tonight sounded a lot like a small lawn mower, which was faintly reminiscent of the plane ride I took in Brasil in 2009. The similarities between the two flights, however, end there.

As our flight this evening began to descend toward the city of Villahermosa, the almost full moon glowed in the sky. Lights twinkled on the ground below. When we passed over a marshy area, the moon was reflected in the water below. It was a lovely moon landing over Villahermosa.

And, as soon as I walked onto the tarmac, the smell of Mexico came rushing back to me like an old friend. I love this smell! It's of rain and heat and spice. If it's possible, and even though I have never been to this part of Mexico before, it feels like coming home.

Two Canoes

2011-06-13T21:18:00.000-07:00

This is the story of two canoes. One canoe, named Continental, was on the road to Flower Mountain. This road was lined with flowers and jewels and the journey was always on time. The other canoe, named United, was on the road to Xibalba. Of course everyone knows that the road to Xibalba forces the traveler to confront every wild animal. These animals usually come dressed as United ticketing agents; they snarl and growl as the canoe passes by. And, if by chance, the canoe on the road to Xibalba gets delayed, the wild animal ticketing agents will lie to you and tell you things that are not true. They dissemble and pass the buck. But interpreting the lies is part of the journey! If the traveler in the canoe can get past the wild animals dressed as United employees, the journey through Xibalba is almost over. The canoe can finally enter the shining path toward Flower Mountain, where jewels of seminar and raindrops of colleagues patter lightly on the soul of the traveler.

A Day at the Airport but Still Only Half Way There

2011-06-13T07:50:00.000-07:00

Apparently, not only does United break guitars but they don't really do customer service very well either. Perhaps that's because they are merging with Continental, so United has no incentive to give Continental a good reputation. At any rate, here's a rundown of my experience with the airlines yesterday. I will try to be brief.

I arrived at SFO about two hours early. The airport was packed, but that makes sense because it's a Sunday morning in June and everyone is going somewhere for vaycay. I got my bag checked and made it through security without a body scan or pat down: all was well. I arrived at the departure gate and the boards listed the plane as on time. Sweet!

After purchasing an $8.00 orange juice and reading a bit, I checked the boards again. Ooops. At that moment United was switching the gates because . . . the plane had mechanical problems. We were being sent to another gate down the terminal, and there would be a 45 minute delay in departure. Of course that meant that our arrival in Houston would be late too.

For those people who had Houston as their final destination this was not a problem. And for those people who had a couple hour layover, this would also not be a problem. But for me, this was a problem. I had a very tight layover in Houston before catching the ONLY flight of the day to Villahermosa, Mexico. I was also supposed to be meeting several people at the airport in Villahermosa. So a delay would be unfortunate. But this is travel and these are the things that one comes to expect while on the road.

Because of my concern, I spoke with the gate agent. She told me there were others on the flight who also had tight connections to catch. As though that would somehow make it better for me. She also said I would probably be okay. As though I would not miss my next flight. All in all, her attitude was quite dismissive and her logic was impeccably flawed.

In my gut, I knew things were not going to turn out well. This awareness became particularly acute when, a few minutes later, the gate agent reported that we were not going to be 45 minutes late but rather 60 minutes late. That would give me 20 minutes to get off the plane, run through one of the largest airports in the U.S. and board my connecting flight. This would also mean that the baggage handlers would unload our plane and throw my checked luggage onto the connecting flight. In 20 minutes. Nope. No way. Not gonna happen. And I knew it. But when I approached a second gate agent with some advice about this, he was as dismissive as the first agent. He suggested I talk with the people on the flight.

So, I did. When I got on the plane I spoke with one of the servers. She asked what seat I was in: 24D. "Okay," she said, "we'll call you." This was not clear to me. Call me? What for? But there were people waiting behind me and I did not want to be the one to hold up the line. So I took to my seat which had become my name.

About half way through the flight, after I had not been called, I approached another server. Immediately as I began speaking with her, she said "Are you 24D?" I had been reduced to a number. This is what it had come to in my relationship with United.

"Yes," I said, acknowledging my less-than-human status. "See, here's the problem," I tried to reason. "Technically I will not be late arriving into Houston. I will have 20 minutes between when this plane gets there and when my next departing plane takes off. So, should I try to run and catch the next flight and hope that my bag makes it with me? Or should I give up hope of catching the connection and go straight to ticketing for a new flight? And if I choose the latter, what can I expect for my luggage? Will it go on without me?"

The server who was a human said "I don't know." That's right: she could not answer a single question. Should I stay or should I go now? Bizarro World. I pressed her for answers and she continued to dissemble. We went round and round for several minutes until turbulence caused the seatbelt light to come on and I had to return to my seat. I swear, the pilot probably did that on purpose just to get her off the hook.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to take a chance on getting a new flight AND recovering my luggage. So when the plane landed I ran as fast as I could to the Continental Customer Service (why not United, you ask? because United did not have a customer service counter and my next flight was on Continental). The lady was quite pleasant. She booked me on the next flight to Villahermosa, which was not departing until the next day. She also explained that United was supposed to give me a hotel voucher because it was their fault that I did not catch my connection and had to spend the night in Houston.

Thus began the next round of negotiations. After about 90 minutes of wrangling, I was directed to the location where a hotel voucher was given out. Then it was off to find the luggage. The lady there tried to dissuade me from retrieving my luggage. She wanted to have it stay there and be routed onto the next day's flight. No way. Not gonna happen. I wanted my luggage. With a sigh, she filled out the form and sent me to another waiting area. After another hour, a hard working young man threw my bag down onto the metal conveyor belt and I was on my way.

Or so I thought. It took nearly an hour for the shuttle to arrive for transport to the hotel. All in all, I spent nearly 4 hours at the airport after my arrival. Finally the shuttle came and deposited me and a vanload full of others who had missed their connections to the Crowne Plaza North Hotel in Houston. It's a lovely establishment. The young man who checked me in, Ryan is his name, explained that Continental/United sends about 40 people each day to their hotel. He also said they have accounts with other hotels in Houston to which they send people regularly. One can begin to appreciate the numbers of missed connections simply by the volume of hotel check ins. The Crowne Plaza does bang up business because of airline inefficiencies.

One other point: Ryan explained that usually when a person was given a hotel voucher, the airline would also give a couple of meal vouchers. I did not receive the meal vouchers so I have ended up spending about US$50 on food since I arrived in Houston. And my flight does not leave until 6:00pm tonight!

So, what's the take away message here? That United employees do not care. Because of re-structuring issues in their organization they have no concern for customer satisfaction. It is understandable when an airplane has mechanical problems. It is understandable when there are delays in travel. What was completely incomprehensible for me, was the way in which United employees did not do ANYTHING to assist me in figuring out a Plan B. They did not give honest information. They did not give ground support. They did not even acknowledge their own role in my travel dilemma. I was simply a number to be passed along. Thus, my advice, don't fly United.

Javier Silicia Comes to the U.S.

2011-06-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

In a continuation from an earlier post, Javier Silicia has now brought his peace march to the United States today. After passing through Cuidad Juarez yesterday, Silicia crossed the border today. At the rally in El Paso, Texas, he said "The U.S. has a grave responsibility in all this, when its citizens remain silent, they are imposing war on us."

This is my attempt at NOT remaining silent.

According to Silicia, the U.S. Congress has approved $1.5 billion since 2008 to help Mexico fight the Drug War. That money could help a lot of college students, unemployed vets, or single mothers here in the U.S. Perhaps if we funded more programs at home, people would be less likely to turn to the drugs which fuel the drug trafficking in Mexico and points further south.

Germany Repatriates Pre-Columbian Objects to Mexico

2011-06-09T22:42:00.000-07:00

After seven years of legal and international wrangling, a collection of Pre-Columbian objects which were stolen from Mexico have been returned.

Apparently, a Costa Rican man by the name of Leonardo Patterson was caught in April 2008 in Spain and Germany warehousing 1029 Pre-Columbian objects with questionable origins. The discovery of such a large cache of objects is known internationally as the Leonardo Patterson Affaire, which makes it sound quite 007. "This is the first delivery made to Mexico of Prehispanic objects seized in Frankfurt, part of the Patterson Collection." The collection was thought to be worth about US$100 million. In particular, one Mayan-like object that sold in Europe for about US$4 million was deemed a fake. I guess you could say it's a bummer for that guy.

Details about Leonardo Patterson and the discovery of the objects are quite sketchy but some sources report that "Patterson currently lives in Germany and has been charged by Spanish authorities with illegal artifact traffic." There are some who claim that Patterson is innocent, while the Stanford Archaeology Center makes a case for Leonardo Patterson's long involvement in illicitly trading in antiquities. Perhaps this is why it is referred to as an affair.

After antiquities officials in Munich, Germany performed analysis on the objects they determined that 252 of them are modern fakes. Another 86 were determined to have not originated in Mesoamerica, but that leaves 691 Pre-Columbian objects of Mesoamerican origin to have been deemed authentic. The objects include "anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures made in terracotta, basalt stone and limestone; terracotta kettles and urns, some polychromatic; miscellaneous figurines; obsidian and stone projectile tips and knives; small braziers and incense burners; obsidian ornaments; a mask carved in metamorphic rock; stone seals, incense holders, cases, necklaces, and strings." It is not clear when these objects will finally end up going on display.

Remember the Memory They No Longer Have

2011-06-09T13:52:00.000-07:00

On March 28, 2011 a 24 year old man named Juan Francisco Silicia was killed in Mexico's Drug War. In the 5 years since the Calderon government in Mexico began the Drug War, nearly 40,000 people have been killed as, in the terminology of the government, collateral damage.

Juan Francisco could have been just one more young person cut off in the prime of his life and forgotten to history except for this: his father is a well known poet in Mexico by the name of Javier Silicia.

Poets love words and the power words give. Although typically this is no different with Javier Silicia, since the death of his son, whom he called Juanelo, "poetry doesn't exist in my anymore." So, he has decided to use his words in a campaign to remember the dead and to give power to the living, as he said at the funeral:

The world is not worthy of words

they have been suffocated from the inside

as they suffocated you, as they tore apart your lungs …

the pain does not leave me

all that remains is a world

through the silence of the righteous,

only through your silence and my silence, Juanelo.

Thus he has called for a series of protests since the death of his son. Across Mexico over 40 cities have participated in silent marches they are calling "We Have Had It" protests. And, perhaps even more poignantly, people across Mexico are being called on to remember those who have died in the Drug War by placing name plaques in prominant locations throughout the country's public squares. In an interview, Silicia says that putting up the plaques with the names of the people who have died innocently is a way to "remember the memory they no longer have."

In another interview, Silicia says “What unites us is the heart to return the dream to this nation. At the heart of it, everything depends on whether we keep loving the poetic word, listening to the heart, to the deep human within, listening to what life is, and forget about the ideological differences or that political differences or those between the political parties. The human being and the human heart have to be the reference point, no matter where it comes from.”

Recently, Silicia has started a new front to the protests: a peace tour from Morelos to Cuidad Juarez. Since this is considered by many to be the most dangerous city in the world right now, perhaps the poetry of words that Silicia has lost has been transformed into the poetry of action. And perhaps this is what happens when one loses love and thus begins "listening to what life is."

Camera Comadre

2011-06-08T20:45:00.000-07:00

Today I spent about one hour with my Camera Comadre, Kristie West. She showed me how to use my new Nikon Coolpics which I had to get recently to replace the camera the lens of which I blew out while in the Amazon jungle during my sabbatical there in 2009.

As part of our session, Kristie had me practice taking head shot photos of her face. While we were doing this, I got the bright idea that I would keep one of those head shots and post it up here in recognition of her tutoring skills. Unfortunately Kristie was very skillful at deleting all the shots I had taken; she even went so far as to re-format the storage card. Alas, I have no pictures to show you of my Camera Comadre.

**Disclaimer: Any good photos I take will be entirely due to Kristie. All horrible photos will be solely my fault.

Shots

2011-06-07T19:50:00.000-07:00

Today I had the delightful opportunity to get the rest of my shots for the trip. They included the third dose for Hepatitis A and B. I got the first two doses of the HepBrothers before going to Brasil back in December 2008 but forgot to finish the round off. Of course, Kaiser keeps records and they patiently reminded me of what I had mercifully forgotten.

I was also graced with a dose of Typhoid vaccination (oh the joy!) and a pneumonia vaccine. I am actually quite happy about that third one -- as happy as someone can be about having needles stuck in both arms -- because I tend to get chronic respiratory ailments. Hopefully the PneuVac will reduce that risk.

Along with the shots I received some tablets for malaria and antibiotics for stomach bacteria. Yes, I am trying to be delicate with the wording here.

As a consequence of these wonderful injections -- yes, you are noting sarcasm here -- both of my arms are REALLY sore tonight. My injectionist (is that what you call a person who gives shots?) said I was to swing my arms a lot this evening. Rather than climbing on the backyard jungle gym, I think I will go for a walk.

The Price of Chocolate

2011-06-07T19:35:00.000-07:00

As a result of a fungis that's destroying cocoa trees throughout Latin America, there is speculation that the price of chocolate may go up on the world market. The fungis, known as frosty pod rot, may be caused by changing climate.

So, if you find that your favorite candy bar costs more in about 12 months, this may explain the reason why.

In the Place of Burnt Fields: Spotlighting Indigenous Human Rights Efforts

2011-06-06T09:09:00.000-07:00

Across Mexico today there are three groups who are gripped in a death dance with each other. In some ways, it's really just a list of the usual suspects: the Mexican military at the behest of the government and the narco terrorists who, mostly, were formed as paramilitaries at the behest of the government during the reign of the PRI.

The third group is comprised of indigenous Indians from various regions across Mexico who have been negatively impacted by outside powers for the past 500 years. As a result, their steps in the death dance are more interesting and complex than the other two.

One organization who supports indigenous groups has been profiled in an article by Kerry Kennedy of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights (RFKCHR). The organization -- Tlachinollan Center for Human Rights -- has been trying to bring international attention to the indigenous people of Ayutla de los Libres who have experienced repression by the police and military.

For those of you who are lucky enough to be fluent in Spanish, here's a link to their website.

Furthermore the founder of the Tlachinollan Center for Human Rights, Abel Barrera Hernandez has recently been granted an award by an American organization for his work. According to the RFKCHR, "Mr. Barrera and his colleagues work under constant threat to protect the rights of peasants and indigenous peoples against forced disappearances, rape, arbitrary detentions, intimidation, dispossession of lands and illegal interrogations, and to improve their access to healthcare, legal representation and education. 'Justice for the indigenous peoples of the Mexican mountains does not exist; it must be won inch by inch and confronting grave dangers. Those that seek a better life and organize to realize their human rights are sought out and assassinated,' said Abel Barrera Hernández. 'The award that we are presented today by the RFK Center for Justice & Human Rights comes to refresh our dreams.'"

And, in a really good 5 minute video Abel Barrera Hernandez explains what the people of Ayutla de los Libres want: dignity and equality.

Maya World Here I Come!

2011-06-04T17:50:00.000-07:00

Several months ago I applied for a fellowship to study the Maya of Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. The objectives of the project include visiting Maya temples and archaeological sites, as well as attending seminars hosted by scholars in the field. Happily, I was accepted and have been making plans for departure, which will be next week.

Unhappily, since I received the acceptance letter, drug cartels from Mexico spilled into the Peten region of Guatemala and beheaded 27 people. As a result of this violence, the U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory to avoid Guatemala. And, thankfully, the people who are organizing the fellowship decided to change some of the itinerary so we will avoid Peten.

Nevertheless, if you are thinking that I am being somewhat vague in my descriptions of people, places and dates you are correct. For security reasons, I have decided to minimize the specifics in my blog entries. Only after I have left certain regions will I be more detailed. I hope you understand! I really want to return to California with my head firmly attached to my shoulders.

Despite these security challenges, we will be studying topics as wide ranging as tourism and its impact on modern Maya today, the Zapatistas and their impact on the Chiapas region of southern Mexico, ancient Maya architecture, the Mayan calendar, and the liminal space between the indigenous of Belize and people of African ancestry who arrived on the east coast of the Yucatan peninsula, originally, as slaves.

All in all, it should be an awesome project and I look forward to sharing it with you. I hope you enjoy the ride!

Remember How President Bush Wanted to Peg Social Security to the Stock Market?

2011-04-07T13:13:00.000-07:00

Well, now it looks like the GOP would like to dismantle Medicare. Whether it's Social Security or Medicare, the main point here is that the GOP would love to remove the building blocks of the New Deal.

Let's hope that the American people (and our democratically elected officials) are smart enough to see through this latest attack on the social safety net. Here's some information to arm people against this GOP attack:
http://my.firedoglake.com/scarecrow/2011/04/06/krugman-exposes-gop-ryans-unicorn-budget-catches-heritage-burying-number/

Media Picks Up on Scientists' Concerns from 1970s

2011-03-15T15:12:00.000-07:00

It would appear that the media is starting to report on the scientists' concerns outlined in Robert Christopherson's letter that I posted earlier.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/fukushima-mark-nuclear-reactor-design-caused-ge-scientist/story?id=13141287

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/15/reactors-japan-crisis-raised-concerns-1972_n_836227.html

Relevant to Meltdown

2011-03-15T13:34:00.000-07:00

The following letter was emailed to me through a colleague. The letter's author -- Robert Christopherson -- was intimately involved in the construction of the nuclear facilities in Japan and so, in my mind, has high credibility.

"Dear Geosystems Team,

We are having a difficult emotional time these several days and not because of my stupid knee. The events in Japan are real to us and relate personally to 40 years of work. I have a personal connection with the engineers that worked for GE who designed and worked on these reactors. I've given hundreds of talks on nuclear power over the years beginning in 1974 and have done debates and panel discussions to audiences in public and on TV and radio about this problematic technology. The 3 GE engineers/managers in charge of GE's nuclear division in San Jose, that resigned from GE in Feb. 1976 in protest, is just as significant today and yet is unreported. I knew these men---here is some back story on what is happening in Japan.

The Japan quake is from a well-understood subduction zone where the Pacific Plate, moving NW, is convergent in area shared by the Philippine and Eurasian plates. Imagine a 210-mi x 50-mi segment of the ocean floor abruptly punching upward 50 ft, as the subducting plate shifts. This is what pushed the sea water upward with such force to produce the tsunami.

As with most disasters death is underreported, the 1000 number has dominated the press, yet towns of 10,000 people cannot be accounted for and as of Sunday night a 1000 bodies were picked up along beaches. Likewise with the 6 nuclear plants that are experiencing cooling problems, the press coverage has been poor and the nuclear power PR machine is in full swing. In the past hour, I have heard 5 people interviewed who gave disinformation about nuclear reactors, the nuclear industry, the ongoing accidents, the mechanics of a reactor, and false information about ionizing radiation. And worse, they presented revisionist history of the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents, getting the years wrong, the accident sequence, and the role of mechanical/equipment failure in both places. I have a bookcase in my garage with all the scientific and government findings about both accidents.

If you see an occasional interview with a scientist from Union of Concerned Scientist, or several other scientists, those are good. The key is that there is no lower threshold for ionizing radiation---none. So all the interviews you hear that radiation amounts are "very tiny," "insignificant," etc., are misrepresenting science (see John Gofman's classic Radiation and Human Health (910 ppgs), among many sources). Also, the innerworkings of a boiling water reactor (BWR) and what is actually happening in Japan is misreported. Of the light-water reactors in service there are pressurized water reactors (PWR) built by the former Westinghouse, Babcock & Wilcox, Combustion Engineering, among others. These are different from the General Electric BWRs, or the Toshiba and Hitachi versions that use the GE design. The 6 reactors at the Fukushima site are all BWR---units #1 through #5 are all the old Mark I designs, Unit #6 is a Mark II design; all built between 1971 and 1979 with the help of GE. The "torus ring" pressure suppression system of the Mark design was problematic from the beginning. There are 24 Mark I plants in the US. By the way the manufacturers of these reactors sold them with a full one-year parts and labor warranty---like a toaster.

The "defense in depth" concept is important in nuclear plants, that is why they have containment buildings in which the reactor vessel containment sits. Fukushima Units #1 and #3 both have had hydrogen explosions that blew down walls and launched the roofs of these highly reinforced structures into the air. This leaves the primary reactor vessels as the remaining defense between the core and the atmosphere. You have no doubt heard interviews diminishing the loss of these 2 containment structures in Japan following these explosions since they are not the reactor vessels themselves. These 40-year old reactor vessels are embrittled from their life in a high-radiation environment (steel ductility lost). Unit #1 was actually scheduled to be permanently shut down by the end of this month.

Hydrogen gas is formed when fuel cladding and pellets begin to mechanically fail (melt) as the zirconium cladding exceeds normal operating temps of 343 C° (650 F°), whereas, the pellets inside the rods operate at about 2204 C° (4000 F°), in a loss of coolant accident (LOCA). In a LOCA action must be taken in the first 60 seconds and even with a scram when control rods are inserted to cease primary reactions, the "ash" build up that accumulates in the core from previous fissioning since the last refueling, will continue to fission producing significant heat---a flow of cooling water is essential. The LOCA at Three Mile Island (a PWR) led to 95% of the core mechanically slumping to the bottom of the reactor vessel, at Chernobyl the meltdown was complete, although that was a graphite reactor. The fact that there have been 2 hydrogen explosions in Unit #1 and #3 and that the second explosion also disrupted the coolant in Unit #2, indicates all this is going on in the plant...extremely serious, yet most media interviews diminish the event's significance, unless it by is a credible scientist.

When cesium-138, Iodine-129, krypton-85, and the many other isotopes, are reported emitting from the failing reactors, they can only originate from one source within the reactor---failed zirconium cladding around the fuel pellets, gathered in assemblies that form the reactor core. And the only explanation of this is a failure in the cladding, meaning, fuel cladding is melting. The report that they are dumping sea water into the plant to cool the core is questionable because sea water contains so much mineral content that can all be radioactively stimulated---more radioactive pollution---nuc plants use distilled water normally. The introduction of sea water essentially ends the possibility that the plant will ever operate again---a billion dollar capital investment per unit lost. The word that fire trucks are being used to pump water into the reactors is sad, the quantities needed are so huge and the exposure to intense radiation of the brave firefighters is tragic.

As people evacuate they are told to cover their mouths and they are given iodine tablets----covering your mouth will not filter out hot particles. Iodine is taken to saturate the thyroid so iodine-129 does not get absorbed and cause thyroid cancer. However, with water and food lacking, I don't have confidence that iodine tablets are actually making it into mouths. I understand the media says this as the plan. All this indicates that this is a major nuclear catastrophe and there is a meltdown underway in more than one reactor.

In Feb 2, 1976, Dale Bridenbaugh, Manager of GE's Mark I Containment Program, Dick Hubbard, GE's Manager of Quality Assurance, and Greg Minor, GE's Manager of Advanced Nuclear Control, with 58 years combined careers with GE, resigned in protest over the Mark I design, deployment, and sales effort. They opposed the behavior of the PR departments in selling the Mark IV designs before the Mark I was resolved. These 3 heroes turned over all files and 1000s of pages to oversight committees and regulatory agencies (see Investigations of Charges Relating to Nuclear Reactor Safety, Hearings before the JCAE, Feb–Mar 1976, 94th Congress, 2nd session, 1037 ppgs). Dale B. worked on India's GE plants at Tarapur, India, and told me of the shock he experienced when visiting the site to see the lax radiation standards and oversight. (GE assisted India getting nucs, Westinghouse assisted Pakistan--we live with the legacy today.)

The Fukushima reactors are the same as those that the 3 men were concerned about, In Dale's 2-page resignation letter he said in part, "I am no longer convinced of the technical safety of nuclear power and I fear the high risk of political and human factors...I have become increasingly alarmed at the shallowness of understanding that has formed the basis for many of the current designs."

I was on programs with these men in talks and debates where we worked together to inform the public, and at the time, fought against significant disinformation on the part of the industry and their politicians----just like we hear right now.

This is all the unreported back story of the Mark I and II.

Long after the tsunami mess and earthquake damages are mopped up the radionuclides and cancers will be a problem. Reactors #1 and #3 are the ones that had hydrogen explosions. Unit #3 unit was using problematic plutonium-enhanced fuel. Regulations state that 20 half lives is the rule for sequestering ionizing radiation sources from the biosphere. For example, Cesium-137 has a half life of 30.2 years...so about 600 years for 20 half lives; iodine-129 with a half life of 1.7 million years, times 20 means 34 million years. Plutonium-239 has a radioactive half life of 24,400 years---this means 480,000 years of sequestration from the biosphere---what a mess.

Meanwhile a US naval task force of ships traveling to Japan to assist, led by the aircraft carrier Reagan, encountered radioactive clouds. Three helicopters had to return to their ship after their radiation censors were set off 60 mi from the coast, all 17 crewmen had to be scrubbed and the choppers decontaminated. I checked the weather maps this morning and the polar jet stream is dipping down right over this part of Japan, carrying materials westward.

Peace,

Robert Christopherson"

More Fallout (no pun intended) about the Unfolding Nuclear Disaster in Japan

2011-03-15T10:56:00.000-07:00

Events are moving swiftly in Japan and the conclusion has not been written.

Or has it?

Jerry Mander wrote a terrific book entitled The Absence of the Sacred which deals with, among other things, the long term consequences of nuclear power and the modern state. In short, Mander claims that nuclear power requires a strong, centralized government to effectively control it. Mander calls that centralized governing body a "priesthood" because of the power it wields. It's a fascinating read and quite prescient for having been written in 1989. It's also a powerful condemnation of nuclear power in the 21st century.

In the mean time, the dialogue about nuclear churns into high gear in the good ole U.S.A.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marvin-resnikoff/fukushima-nuclear-meltdown-japan_b_835932.html

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/03/15/nuclear_power_on_the_brink_109224.html

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/15/this_could_become_chernobyl_on_steroids

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12738459

Finally it is with some irony that Japan's relationship with all things nuclear so closely resembles the bookends of the world's dance with destruction: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 1945 begins the nuclear age. Could Fukushima meltdown March 2011 end it?

Nuclear

2011-03-13T18:08:00.000-07:00

So is it a meltdown or a meltdown?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/world/asia/13nuclear.html?_r=2&hp
or
http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20110312-red-alert-nuclear-meltdown-quake-damaged-japanese-plant?utm_source=redalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=110312(4)&utm_content=readmore&elq=51b68c0a1fef4759b04d2fe55239361c

Perhaps Valerie Plame is right and we should just go to Global Zero. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/valerie-plame-wilson/nuclear-proliferation_b_832399.html

If nothing else, this will put a damper on Obama's interest in nuclear power. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-alvarez/on-the-brink-of-a-meltdow_b_834637.html

Why the world doesn't see the virtue of solar (free energy from the sun, anyone?), which would power the world's electricity needs without adding to carbon emissions and would get the U.S. off the oil teat, is beyond me.

Then again, we could just go along the same trajectory that we are presently on and see what more devastation can be wrought when bad boys from one continent sell to other bad boys on another continent: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/07/zimbabwe-iran-uranium_n_832376.html

Japan

2011-03-13T12:39:00.000-07:00

Today we are all Japanese.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/13/world/asia/satellite-photos-japan-before-and-after-tsunami.html

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami-how-to-help/?partner=rss&emc=rss

http://bit.ly/eAhZBM

My cousin's wife's family lives in Japan. I am trying to find out if they are okay and will post more when I know more.

Random Thoughts with a Theme: Poverty and Wealth

2011-03-12T18:11:00.000-08:00

Just ran into two tangentially related items:

First a cartoon remix by Jonathan McIntosh spoofing Glen Beck
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/20113685813934602.html

Second an article about wealth disparity in the U.S. Apparently out of the 300 million people in the United States today, about 155 million of them (the poorest) possess about $1.25 trillion dollars. This might seem like a lot until one learns that 400 other Americans (the richest) possess about $1.30 trillion dollars. Yes, the top 400 people in this country have as much wealth as the bottom 155 million people. That makes me incredibly sad. http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/mar/10/michael-moore/michael-moore-says-400-americans-have-more-wealth-/

Tell me again why the richest people can't pay some higher taxes? Didn't they make their tremendous wealth from the freedom and largess of American society? Why can't they pay back a pittance in relation to their bounty?

http://dcprogressive.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/human-rights-day-a-glimpse-at-the-issues/

http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=88292

http://www.forbes.com/wealth/forbes-400

http://whoisbrianbeckman.com/?p=3590

UPDATE: At least one politician got the memo! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/16/jan-schakowsky-income-tax_n_836624.html

Liberate

2011-02-25T10:12:00.001-08:00

Random Fast Moving Events in Libya

2011-02-21T17:17:00.000-08:00

"The entire Libyan delegation at the UN has abandoned the regime and asked for international intervention to stop what it called the 'genocide' in Libya." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12529744?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Two Libyan pilots refuse to bomb protesters on the ground, fly to Malta instead: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/21/us-libya-protests-malta-idUSTRE71K52R20110221?WT.tsrc=Social%20Media&WT.z_smid=twtr-reuters_%20com&WT.z_smid_dest=Twitter

I don't have the courage to click on the link but the words say it all:
CNNLive Libyan soldiers are burned alive after refusing to fire upon protesters. Warning, graphic video: http://on.cnn.com/gfsRIz

about 1 hour ago via CoTweet

Awesome that #Egypt and #Tunisia have both set up field hospitals on their Libyan borders, and r trying to send help.

about 2 hours ago via web
eyewitnesses have seen protesters take Benghazi

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/21/eyewitness_in_libya_protesters_have_taken

Revolution Du Jour

2011-02-21T15:31:00.000-08:00

Today's revolution is brought to you by 7 million Libyans. The flavor du jour is Gaddaffi, but the spelling and the expiration date are about 42 years old.

http://www.onedayonearth.org/profiles/blogs/photos-from-tripoli-violence

http://www.onedayonearth.org/profiles/blogs/libya-uprising-organizer-a

Point: People are dying for their freedom.
This one is really grim so only look if you have not eaten in a while. http://yfrog.com/h4oacietj
In the U.S. we talk like we value such dedication. But do Americans have the courage that this kind of fight for freedom requires? Or have the pastries and bad television made us too soft to confront our corruptions du jour?

"February 22

12:49am: Reports emerge that BP is preparing to evacuate its employees from Libya. The corporation has major contracts with Libya, the EU's third-largest supplier of oil" http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2011/02/17/live-blog-libya

In a Foreign Policy magazine article by Marc Lynch: "The appropriate comparison is Bosnia or Kosovo, or even Rwanda where a massacre is unfolding on live television and the world is challenged to act. It is time for the United States, NATO, the United Nations and the Arab League to act forcefully to try to prevent the already bloody situation from degenerating into something much worse."
http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/02/21/the_libyan_horror

the URL is long but the resources are good: http://storify.com/ajestream/libya-live-blog-feb-21-2011?awesm=sfy.co_zf&utm_campaign=Referer%253A%2520http%253A%252F%252Fstorify%252Ecom%252Fajestream%252Flibya-live-blog-feb-21-2011%253Fawesm%253Dsfy%252Eco_z6%2526utm_campaign%253Dajestr&utm_content=storify-share&utm_medium=sfy.co-twitter&utm_source=twitter.com

http://globalvoicesonline.org/specialcoverage/libya-uprising-2011/
"The online group feb17voices has begun interviewing and collecting audio testimonies of people throughout Libya. What they've created is a very personal and immediate perspective of the protests and how people are dealing with the chaos and violence. Here is a sampling of feb17voices from the group's channel on the audioBoo website." http://audioboo.fm/feb17voices

Iranian film wins Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival

2011-02-20T16:00:00.000-08:00

This year's winner of the Golden Bear award is a drama entitled Nader and Simin: A Separation, directed by Ashgar Farhadi.

When collecting his award, Farhadi honored his colleague, Jafar Panahi, who has been jailed by the Iranian government. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12045248

Jafar Panahi, Panahi is a "past winner of the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion award. His most recent film is Offside, which won the 2006 Berlin Film Festival's Silver Bear award." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8656881.stm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12518260

Thankful

2011-02-18T12:50:00.000-08:00

After immersing myself in websites for human rights organizations, I have come up with a take home message: I LOVE the U.S.A.

Does this country have problems? Yes.

Are the problems in the U.S. comparable to the problems in other countries around the world? No.

Most importantly, the U.S. has freedom of speech, right to assemble, freedom from religion, and habeaus corpus. Those four rights make me love my country!

That I can post photos of protests in Iran and criticize politicians in Kentucky are examples of freedom of speech.

That I can go to the corners of 16th and J in Sacramento and gather with others who support the Egyptian revolution is an example of my right to assemble.

That I can choose to be a Christian and have friends who are Muslim and agnostic without threat of sectarian violence as a result of our friendship are examples of freedom from religion.

And the fact that I do not fear being arrested in the middle of the night, and the knowledge that I am confident in my country's judicial system are examples of how habeaus corpus protects me.

I have traveled across four continents, and studied many of the cultures of the ancient and contemporary worlds. And today I conclude that I am thankful to live in the U.S.A.

Fallout from Monday's Protest Continues

2011-02-17T16:42:00.000-08:00

While it's very hard to get information from Iran right now, there is some news that's worth highlighting:

From the Human Rights House of IRAN (RAHANNA), comes word that
"At least 16 students of Tehran University School of Art who were trying to participate in Saneh Jaleh’s funeral, have been arrested by the security forces.

Sixteen students have been arrested after the violence erupted during Saneh Jaleh’s funeral. Jaleh was shot and killed by the security authorities on February 14th.

Furthermore, the Art University students who had gathered for the burial of Jaleh, were beaten by batons and stunned with tasers.

Hamid Hosseini(University of Art), Fataneh Rahghi(University of Art) and Sepehr Saheban (Khajeh Nasir University student) are 3 of the detainees.

Previously, it had been reported that Hassan Fathizadeh, Vahid Nosrati, Abbas Salehi, Abdollah Ranjbar, Fataneh Rahghi, Faraz Sarabi, Enayat Sahraei, Ali Sadighi, Mehrdad Mirzaei, Mohamamd- Tayeb Taheri, Faraz Fasharaki, Amir Binazar and Kourosh Khanmohamamdi have been arrested.

There is no information as to their whereabouts. Reliable sources report that the number of detainees is more than what is being reported." http://www.rahana.org/en/?p=10063

Saneh Jaleh was one of several students at the University of Art who put together a subversive video which included background sound from Pink Floyd's "Brick in the Wall." How many of these other students who have been disappeared also participated in that film?
http://homylafayette.blogspot.com/2011/02/brick-in-wall-saneh-jaleh-story.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Eyiu0LXXRE&feature=player_embedded
http://homylafayette.blogspot.com/2011/02/bodysnatchers-iran-regime-exploits.html

An interesting article about Iran's labor and economic issues:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2011/02/irans-labor-flash-point.html

A tele conference on Iran's economy
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event_summary&event_id=648003

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The Picture Says It All

2011-02-16T13:20:00.000-08:00

This Could Be You Or Me

2011-02-16T11:52:00.000-08:00

4:30 p.m. From Tehran: I cannot connect to anyone using my laptop. The only way I can check emails is through my mobile and only via WIFI. The GPRS is also not working. BBC Persian programs are completely cut. SMS service is very limited. (By 2 p.m., slow internet service available again.)

Last night there were guards everywhere. I couldn't go out. I wrote this poem instead.
To Roger Waters

Luners on TV

The lights are out
Windows shut
And there is a short crazy bearded man
who wants our throats cut

Phones are controlled
The Internet is blocked
There is a communication breakdown
And a crackdown and a showdown

No nobility in faith anymore or faith in nobility
No border for shame, no shame at all
Only a disgusting portrait of a nation
That was once great and now gone
Only a disfigured statue of a faith
That was once pure and now gone

The Lunatics on TV
Chanting death to us
Madmen in the 'House of the People'
Schizophrenic
Systematically sadistic
In jailing, maiming and shooting to kill
My faith, my brothers and sisters my home

We will not go down to a place where we can hide
It's time to change the tide
We will not let them shut us out or up
And no matter how many wily Turks or Chinamen
Sign contracts while we die in the streets
Satisfy and make the lunatics pleased
We will make our voices heard
We will persevere

This is our home not theirs.

One would dream of violence, of cutting the heads off
the lunes
One would dream of doing, what they have done to us,
those goons

One would then think
wait a minute
hold on a second

Maybe that is what the luners really want.

Tehran, Wednesday, February 16, 2011
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2011/02/clashes-at-demonstrators-tehran-funeral.html

Dedication

2011-02-16T09:09:00.000-08:00

Today's post represents continuing coverage of Iran. The dedication of the dissidents inspires me. They can imagine another country for themselves, and they are willing to pay for it with their lives.

College professors arrested
http://www.rahana.org/en/?p=9985

At the funeral of a protester who was killed on 14 Feb (25 Bahman)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12479022?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

About the protester who was killed
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2011/02/saneh-jaleh-and-the-battle-for-a-slain-protesters-memory.html

Amnesty International requests investigation
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/investigation-urged-tehran-protest-violence-2011-02-15

Iran News Now
http://www.irannewsnow.com/2011/02/live-blog-iran-fallout-from-25-bahman-protests-continues/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Watching a Revival
http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2011/2/15/the-latest-from-iran-15-february-watching-a-revival.html

Iran on My Mind

2011-02-15T10:47:00.000-08:00

Protests in Iran continue today. Because I have Iran on my mind, it seems appropriate to offer up some contextual information for their protests. In no particular order, here it is:

Population of Iran: about 77 million people
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ir.html

About 60% of the population is under age 30, and education is free through a BA level college degree http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdzrPFAOGug

All major cities and many smaller towns have full internet access, according to "Telecoms And Technology Forecast for Iran", Economist Intelligence Unit, August 18, 2008

Iran's economy is undergoing a transition right now (from centralized and subsidized to decentralized and unsubsidized), and the average income is about U.S. equivalent of $500 per year
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOe3UbEAWg0

About 30% of the population in Iran lives in poverty
http://previous.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=97282&sectionid=351020102
http://www.payvand.com/news/10/may/1316.html

According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI), "The [government in Iran] is averaging one execution every eight hours since the start of 2011." http://united4iran.org/2011/02/day-of-action-keep-iran’s-hearts-beating-stop-executions-in-iran/

An Iranian hip hop artist video and interview:
http://www.aslanmedia.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1744:blazing-a-trail-of-beats-and-rhymes-an-interview-with-iranian-hip-hop-sensation-yas&catid=306:music-artist-profile&Itemid=559

And here is a little bit of my arm chair analysis. The youth (and others who are older too) of Iran are living a double life.

On the one hand, they are oppressed and forced to live under a government system which is corrupt and repressive. Dissent is violently suppressed.Women are forced to wear the veil, and the government has been increasingly cracking down on those who violate the laws. Many of the executions referenced above are of women who violated "clothing" laws. Sexual orientation is not open for debate and being openly gay or lesbian will get a person killed or imprisoned. These are just a couple of examples to show the repression individuals experience on a daily basis in Iran.

However individuals in Iran are able to access ideas and information about the world beyond their borders. And it's this access that makes for a double life. With the help of technology, the youth (and others) are connecting with the West and Western attitudes. Music, fashion, culture and values are desired by the youth of Iran. At discreet "house parties" Iranian youth display these desires. They drink and socialize openly in the comfort and privacy of their homes. Women are able to take off the veil and reveal their fashionable blue jeans and hair cuts. Men are able to socialize with women, and Western influenced music accompanies their flirtations. All of this is unacceptable to the "old school" government and religious officials (who are largely men over 50 years old) but it is an important aspect to the underground culture in Iran today. The youth see what the West does and they replicate it in secret, and at their peril.

This is the double life that Iranians are living. And now, because their population has reached a critical mass (60% under age 30) and because they are encouraged by what took place in Tunisia and Egypt, they want to come out from under the oppression. They want to live singular, free and honest lives, untethered by the old school religious dogma of the past.

The youth of Iran are the future of Iran, while the political and religious leadership of Iran represent the past.

The cynical among us may suggest that the violent repression that we saw during the last uprising in Iran will be replicated again in 2011. I, however, am a bit more hopeful. The future is the youths' to take, and simple attrition of age will show the youth -- eventually -- achieving rightful control of their country.

As for Western influence on this youthful ascendence of power in Iran: it is limited to culture. This limitation is reflected in the wildly different approach the U.S. government is taking with Iran's protests in relation to Egypt's protests. In the case of Egypt, the U.S. had a relationship with the government. Thus the U.S. was able to tell the Egyptian military to not use force against the protesters. That message was heard by the military and they displayed great restraint, to their credit. In Iran, however, the U.S. does not have a relationship with the government. Thus warnings from the U.S. to Iranian leadership about avoiding violence will not be effective. Hence, U.S. government officials have come out directly denouncing the Iranian government. The U.S. has no influence with them, ergo the U.S. has nothing to lose by overtly criticizing them.

As a result, it will be the individuals from the West who serve as cultural ambassadors to Iranian individuals. Those individuals will one day be in positions of power when the old guard dies. It is that literal. People over the age of 50 in Iran only represent about 10% of the population. They cannot live forever, and when they do it will be the younger generation, hopefully who the West connects with in productive ways, that will take charge. Let's make those connections inspiring and constructive!

Democracy Protests are Spreading

2011-02-14T18:02:00.000-08:00

First Tunisia, then Egypt, now Iran.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2011/02/

http://iran.twazzup.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA1A2PNUnIc

Post- Mubarak Egypt and Beyond

2011-02-13T14:54:00.000-08:00

The youth are on the march across the Mahgreb and North Africa. Here's a little taste of what they are doing and thinking:
Mix tape of contemporary music: http://enoughgaddafi.com/?page_id=294
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2011/02/11/02

Jean Wyclef "Freedom for Egypt"

2011-02-11T18:44:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efcn8LpwlPo

This is a really great song. I am inspired by the people of Egypt today. They achieved a peaceful revolution in the face of a thug.

What the Egyptians showed the world is that people power is real, and peaceful protest has the strongest moral force in the world.

"The Lord will never forget you. He will grant you ... your freedom."

Innaharda, ehna kullina Misryeen! Today, we are all Egyptians!

2011-02-09T18:35:00.000-08:00

Egypt fever has caught a hold of me. Here are some resources for the fluid and fast changing situation. Enjoy!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/opinion/04kristof.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB

http://www.hrw.org/egypt-live-updates

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/opinion/03iht-edzewail03.htm?_r=1

http://content.undp.org/go/newsroom/2011/february/the-arab-human-development-report-worth-a-second-read.en

http://www.opendemocracy.net/asef-bayat/egypt-and-post-islamist-middle-east

http://www.arabawy.org/2011/02/10/jan25-asad-abu-khalil-on-the-egyptian-revolution/

Books, Books, Books!

2010-12-08T06:03:00.000-08:00

My friend and colleague Emmanuel Sigauke blogs about books and literature. There you can find an interview he and I did the other day. http://vasigauke.blogspot.com/2010/12/reading-2010-maureen-moore.html

More blogging to come after final exams are over!

Tofu and Pigs: An Unlikely Marriage

2010-08-28T08:49:00.000-07:00

My uncle, who lives in Vietnam, is staying with my family while he visits the States. Last night after dinner, we sat around and talked about his tofu factory and pig farm.

If a pig farm and a tofu factory seem like odd companions, think again! Apparently the pigs are fed the waste from the tofu production and the waste from the pigs is turned into bio-gas (think methane) which fuels the fires to make the tofu. It's a completely closed loop. Incidentally, the pigs are not slaughtered as one might suspect. They are only used as the engine between factory waste and factory fuel.

And the factory is so productive and cost effective that they are opening another one in the heart of Saigon.

I asked my uncle if he had any photos of the operation. He does not. He did remark, however, that I ought to take a trip to Vietnam to see the tofu and pigs myself. I might just take him up on that offer, so don't be surprised if you see a Dispatches from Vietnam blog (similar to my Dispatches from Brasil blog) in the near future.

Oink oink.

Launching the Goodness Project

2010-08-16T15:56:00.000-07:00

Okay, that's it! I have heard enough mean spiritedness from fellow Americans to finally move me to DO SOMETHING. Since I don't have any political power -- nor am I rich and famous -- the only thing I can think of to do is write and hope that someone out there is reading this blog and will consider responding to this call.

But before I go further explaining The Goodness Project, I would like to unequivocably state that I am opposed to the culture of hate that seems to have sprouted like a hydra-headed monster in my beloved country. Yes, indeed, the good ole US of A has become downright nasty around the issue of a mosque being constructed in Manhatten (on privately owned land that was purchased before September 11, 2001) and toward people who are undocumented immigrants working their hands to the bone to put food in their children's bellies.

In both cases, the rhetoric of hate has reached intolerable levels. It is with grand irony that the same people who -- in the case of the Ground Zero mosque -- espouse such fondness for the Constitution and would violate the very same Constitution by denying a group of people (Muslims) their right to build a house of worship. Thomas Jefferson, in 1807, said "among the inestimable of our blessings, also, is that ...of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will; ..."

Allowing freedom of worship is not some kind of highminded idealism reserved only for Revolutionaries of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It is embedded in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. If we don't uphold this most basic tenet of our Constitution then we are truly morally, spiritually and politically hypocritical as a nation. I rue the day hypocrisy reigns over common sense and goodness toward fellow humans in the United States.

In the case of hatred toward undocumented immigrants (or the overt racism toward people of Hispanic descent who are citizens of this country), I would ask a simple question: when and under what conditions did your ancestors acquire documentation? Did the Powhaten give you a green card? How about the Cherokee? Or the Maidu? Because unless your ancestors were indigenous and living in North America prior to British, French, Spanish and Dutch colonialism then you have no leg to stand on. Not to put too fine a point on it but nativist sentiment today is pure hypocrisy!

Thus I am initiating The Goodness Project.

This is my small attempt to inject civility into the national dialogue. Instead of focusing on the nasty rhetoric of small-minded racism and hate, how about we focus on the beauty and goodness of living?

It's that simple: what is Good in your life?

If you are reading this, I want to hear from you!

Adams and Obama

2010-08-15T16:22:00.000-07:00

As I suggested in yesterday's post, I would submit reviews for books that President Obama has read recently. Today's installment is for David McCullough's biography of John Adams. I originally read the book while traveling in Boston and Philadelphia in March 2008, and wrote the review in June 2008.

John Adams’ mind was a product of the European Enlightenment. Yet this, according to David McCullough in his Pulitzer Prize winning biography entitled John Adams, was only the beginning of the Adams legacy. The list of contributions made by Adams to the establishment of American society and government is long and weighty. He argued – verbally and in written form -- for independence from Britain at a time when many colonies were clinging to notions of peace with the mother country. He nominated George Washington to be the first commander of the Continental Army. Adams was largely responsible for the rules and by-laws of the emerging republic’s first navy, and he was instrumental in the creation of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also served as the second president of the fledgling United States and as a diplomat in The Netherlands and France. Quite possibly though, the most significant aspects of John Adams’ life involved the creation of structures and underlying principles of United States government.

In a 1776 pamphlet entitled Thoughts on Government, Adams produced a work of genius. In it, he laid out the twin themes of independence. “The happiness of the people was the purpose of government . . . [and] that form of government was best which produced the greatest amount of happiness for the largest number” (102). In an era of Enlightenment, Adams was creating a government that “raised fundamental questions about the realities of human nature, political power, and the good society” (101). Largely based on the values of 17th century English political philosopher John Locke, virtue had a prominent role in this “good society.” Moreover, the primary mechanism for achieving virtue in society was through education. Thus the creation and perpetuation of a virtuous government was dependent upon a “government of laws, and not of men” (222) but also on government’s ability to “spread . . . wisdom, knowledge, and virtue among all the people” through the creation of “private societies and public institutions . . . for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and a natural history of the country” (223). Of course, Adams was not alone in promoting education in the late colonial and early republican periods. Ben Franklin also contributed to a pursuit of knowledge in 18th century society. For example, Franklin’s hand is behind the establishment of the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1731 (essentially the first library in North America), the American Philosophical Society in 1745, and the University of Pennsylvania in 1749. Thus when Adams presented the idea of a Boston counterpart to Philadelphia’s Philosophical Society it was, in McCullough’s words “enthusiastically taken up” (223) to become the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1780.

As important as this reader considers education in a civil society, Adams’ greatest contribution to government can be seen best in the “principle of the separation and balance of powers” (222) which Adams first wrote for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1779, only to later argue for it during the drafting of the Constitution in 1787. In January 1787, Adams had produced a pamphlet entitled A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America. Although hastily written, it is considered to be “an expanded, more erudite rendition of the case for checks and balances in government that he had championed in his Thoughts on Government, and later put into operation in his draft of the Massachusetts constitution” (374). In it, Adams identified the salient features of a government free of monarchy and hereditary aristocracies. “There must be three parts to government – executive, legislative, and judicial – and to achieve balance it was essential that it be a strong executive, a bicameral legislature, and an independent judiciary” (375). Once again the power of Enlightenment principles and concepts is apparent in the structure of government which Adams conceived. In this case, Enlightenment notions of balance and symmetry in the framing of power are paramount. This structure has come to be known as the first, second and third articles of the Constitution which were signed into law in Philadelphia in September 1787, and it is sure evidence of Adams’ tremendous contribution to the narrative of the American story.

Indeed, within the past week an example of Adams’ independent judiciary can be found in BOUMEDIENE ET AL. v. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, ET AL. decided 12 June 2008. This decision, although disliked by the President of the United States, ruled against the President and his denial of habeas corpus (Latin for “present the body”). Had Adams not had the foresight to envision the need for a court system which could, if necessary, rule against the executive power without fear of reprisal, the American people – and arguably the world – would not have had habeas corpus restored.

Late in his life, Adams read (or likely re-read) some of the writings of Rousseau, one of the seminal figures of the European Enlightenment. To Rousseau’s line declaring “There is no doubt that people are in the long run what the government make out of them . . .” Adams responded in the margin with “The government ought to be what the people make it” (619). Clearly even in 1815, some thirty years after Adams’ own seminal works were produced, he believed in the power of the people to know what was best for themselves, and to act on that power with rationality and reason. In short, John Adams was a product of the Enlightenment.

What the President Is Reading and a Reprisal of Reviews Passed

2010-08-14T20:55:00.000-07:00

I just ran across a list of books that President Obama has been reading the past several months. Since a couple of them are books I also read and have written reviews on, it seemed fitting for me to post those here.

The first installment is for Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World. Keep in mind that I read the book and wrote the review in July 2008. Bush was still president and the economy hasd not collapsed yet. In hindsight it can be safely said that one of the pillars of Zakaria's theory -- about the strength of the U.S. economy was somewhat flawed. Regardless, here's the review:

The American hegemon is at a crossroads. This is the central and compelling idea behind Fareed Zakaria’s most recent book The Post-American World. In his wide-ranging and optimistic look at the future of the United States, Zakaria argues that hegemonic America, no longer the youthful and ambitious democracy it was a hundred years ago, is much more like an elder statesman who has taught other nations of the world how to be democratic – and perhaps more importantly, capitalistic – and must now step aside and allow the “rise of the rest”. To extend the metaphor, the economically youthful “rest” includes China, India, Brazil, Nigeria and other non-Western countries whose economies and governments are emerging on the world scene with vigor and vitality. In economic terms, these countries are second tier nations that are embracing capitalism and resource nationalism in an effort to compete with the West. Thus, the 21st century represents their rise on the international scene.

And so, the crossroads: America can allow the democratic and capitalistic rise of the rest with grace and magnanimity or can fight it with bitterness and distrust. It is America’s choice to make and it is America’s future to lose, claims Zakaria. Thus, the reader arrives at an explanation for the title of the book. Zakaria makes the case that American power is not waning so much as it is changing, and that change is what will determine the quality of the 21st century, the post-American future. Indeed Zakaria makes an artful distinction between society and economics when he says “Ultimately, the base of American power – a vibrant American society – was its greatest strength and its weakness. It produced America’s gigantic economy and vibrant society. . . [and] this tension between society and the state persists in America to this day” (166). Zakaria maintains that the U.S. will continue to be the most important country in the near future but he also “ask[s] how America itself will react to a post-American world” (166).

If there was ever a vindication for the worn out cliché about the value of understanding history or being doomed to repeat it, this book is it. The answer to the question about America’s reaction to its own shifting power can be found, according to Zakaria, by understanding history. And although he uses other examples of historical hegemons, the most poignant, immediate and obvious is the case of Pax Britannica at the end of the 19th century. Britain of 1897 was the sole world power. Even so, Britain’s grasp on that power was waning. Zakaria claims that Britain choose – quite wisely – to allow power to shift away from itself to the newly emerging center of power, the United States. Furthermore, Zakaria claims that “Britain was undone as a great global power not because of bad politics but because of bad economics . . . its economy was weak” (180), led to its hegemonic demise. This is significant for an understanding of the post-American world because, as Zakaria points out, “Britain’s decline – irreversible economic deterioration – does not really apply to the United States today” (180). According to Zakaria “the U.S. economy has been the world’s largest since the middle of the 1880s, and it remains so today” (180). Importantly he claims that “America will remain a vital, vibrant economy, at the forefront of the next revolutions in science, technology, and industry – as long as it can embrace and adjust to the challenges confronting it” (182).

Those challenges include science in areas such as nanotechnology and biotechnology, manufacturing and American competitiveness, the quality of higher education, demographics and, perhaps most importantly, immigration. Zakaria’s compelling exploration of these challenges to America’s future is rich and, in the mind of this reader, clearly hopeful about the future. He thinks America can and will overcome obstacles such as these, and he concludes with the optimistic perspective that a post-American world is one where “American influence is strengthened by the growth” of other nations (233). Indeed, the central idea is that countries like China and India “want to gain power and status and respect . . . by growing within the international system, not by overturning it” (232).Therefore the 21st century presents the “United States [with] an opportunity to play a large and constructive role at the center of the global order” (233). This is the post-American world, one where America is a power broker within and amongst other emerging nations. Despite all of this high level, global power and with Zakarian finesse, the case is also made that the American people have a role to play in this unfolding global drama. How Americans solve the inequalities in education and how Americans resolve the snares of immigration and latent nativism are integral to Zakaria’s vision of this post-American world. Ultimately he claims that “being the global broker today would be a job involving not just the American government but its society” (233). Zakaria claims it is we the people who will decide at this crossroads.

So there it is. Our system of government is the envy of the world. Our economy is strong and resilient, and will continue to be so. The American institution of “higher education is [our] best industry” (190) and our scientific discoveries are decades and dollars ahead of all other nations. Immigration, one of our greatest issues of contention, is also one of our most potent strengths. These realities serve as the foundation upon which Americans stand as we collectively look into the future. Our choice: gracious acceptance of the rise of the rest, or bitter resistance to its inevitability. It is no simple irony that in a land where we jingle the coins in our pocket engraved with the Latin phrase e pluribus unum, the quality and the direction of the 21st century world might really come down to the citizenry living out its English translation. Out of many, one.

Parables and Metaphors: The Sounds of Africa in a Universal Age

2010-08-09T12:51:00.000-07:00

Parables and metaphors dominate the narrative in African Roar, a recently released collection of short stories edited by Emmanuel Sigauke and Ivor W. Hartmann. Marketed as representing a cross section of contemporary African authors, this slim volume makes a big sound and is worth reading for the quality of its voice and tambor, for the depth of its rhythm and texture.

Because of the generally light nature of parables, one could be forgiven for thinking that this anthology would make for fun summer reading under the beach umbrella. It's not and it won't. Rather, African Roar deals with complex issues such as domestic abuse, romantic fidelity and friendship treachery, the hopelessness of chronic unemployment, political corruption and personal rage. It's a weighty collection handling some of the most compelling problems in the world today, and it does so with depth, integrity and richness.

Take for example Masimba Musodza's "Yesterday's Dog" which presents Stanley, a middle aged man who was a victim of torture at the hands of Rhodesian Security Forces many years ago as a college student. When the story opens, Stanley holds the reader's sympathy for having endured being "hauled [like] a rabbit out of a cage by its ears" and who "howl[s] like a wild animal with its paw in a trap" when the military police brutally arrest him in front of his family based on false charges. During his time in custody Stanley is beaten, waterboarded, and electricuted. Interspered with the detailed descriptions of torture Musodza offers several references to animals such as baboons and chained dogs. The metaphor is apt and prompts the reader to reflect on the nature of humanity. Who is the animal when one human is torturing another? The victim who is called a dog, or the one who beats the victim like a dog?

Like all good parables, the reader learns something as the story progresses. In this case, the reader's identification with Stanley as a hero and survivor wanes. This shift in sympathy comes about when Stanley's vocation -- "the place where he worked" -- is revealed. In short, Stanley becomes that which he survived. "He was that old man now," a torturer who was "commending himself to the mercy of those who were his victims." The victim goes on to be a victimizer, and thus by perpetuating the pain and dehumanization of others he becomes "yesterday's dog."

Because of African Roar's title and the forwarding remarks about how this collection is written primarily by writers of the African Diaspora, one could also be forgiven for thinking this is a book only about African issues. It's not and it isn't. Rather, African Roar confronts and challenges the reader from every continent. One important way in which this is achieved is through narrative voice and perspective. A good example can be found in "Big Pieces, Little Pieces" by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma. In this instance, the narrator's use of "you" oddly personalizes the pain, thereby making the reader become the storyteller in such a way that the sick in the belly feeling, the ache in the soul expression of a mother's death can't be separated from the words on the page. The reader is the read. Are "you" feeling this because "you shut your eyes tight and drag the snot back up your nose . . . because it's all your fault" that Mama is dead? Or because Tshuma the author so handily builds a convincing character full of guilt and childlike responsibility. Once "you" recover from the weight of the drama, the poignancy of the personalized voice and the loss of childhood innocence, the universal consequences of domestic violence is felt. Is wife battering just an African experience? Of course not! Men batter women around the world, on every continent. It's an underrated bane of female existence. And it is certainly not "just" an African issue. Perhaps it's just that what happens in Africa is a parable for what happens to all of humanity.

Finally, lest one think that all of the stories in African Roar are grim reminders of human frailty, there is the comedic "Quarterback & Co." by Chuma Nwokolo, Jr to lighten our spirits. In a satire of corporate culture, Nwokolo has produced a remarkable piece of African style magical realism. Without giving too much away, it can be safely shared that one of the main characters is a pot smoking mosquito named Quarterback who saves a diasporic efficiency analysis manager working in the U.K. from sleep deprivation. But only for a time. And to hear the ending of the story, get a copy of African Roar and listen for yourself.

Making a Garden Grow

2010-04-18T22:09:00.000-07:00

One man’s food scraps is another woman’s compost bounty. Of course that’s adding a slight twist to the old adage about garbage, but in the case of compost materials this is one cliché that seems to ring true. And, more to the point, composting has never been easier than it is right now.

Here’s how it’s done at the Moore family residence: Wedged between the shoe rack and the hot water heater in the garage, sits a small electronic composter by Nature Mill. (Actually, it’s the Nature Mill Plus XE3 Indoor Automatic Composter Value Pack - Item# 434810 at Costco, to be exact.) Inside the black box casing, the composter’s motor whirs quietly. A green light on the face panel glows a reassuring message that all is well with the family’s most recent deposit of orange peels, coffee grounds and celery stalk root. About once a month the machine requires a small deposit of wood pellets (the same as those burned in a pellet stove) and a tablespoon of baking soda be added to the brewing cocktail of organic waste. These ingredients are needed to ensure texture and reduce smell. In a few days, the food scraps and additives reduce to a brown sod-like substance, ready to fertilize the garden. Once the composting process inside the unit is complete, the next step is to transfer the compost into the box’s lower chamber. Then the lower chamber’s canister is removed and the compost material is spread in the garden. Viola! The Moore family has home made fertilizer.

Although composting has been around for a long time, it hasn’t always been as easy as placing food scraps in a small black box. Historically, composting has been a bit more labor intensive. For example, recent archaeological evidence shows that about 8,000 years ago people in the Amazon rainforest were composting fish bones and egg shells with charcoal from burnt trees to create a unique blend of dark soil known in Portuguese as terra preta do Indio, or dark earth of the Indians. In short, the earliest inhabitants of the Amazon were adding compost to the red dirt of the rainforest, thereby making it more fertile and better suited to meet their needs. As a result, pre-historic rainforest dwellers were able to grow over 120 different kinds of trees and plants. In effect, they were producing a garden in the jungle which supported large human populations thousands of years before the Spanish and Portuguese arrived in the 16th century CE.

Of course, Elk Grove is not a jungle and there really is no need to alter the already fertile lands of the Sacramento valley. So, why compost? It’s a good question, and one worth addressing.

First, composting reduces the amount of materials that go into regional landfills. Indeed, between recycling paper, glass and plastic, and composting organic materials the Moore family has managed to reduce its overall garbage offering to one small can each week, and that’s for a family of eight people.

Second, composting is beneficial because it closes the loop. When organic matter remains on the property – rather than gets shipped to a landfill – it becomes a part of the cycle of life. Yes, we’re getting kumbaya here. Compost feeds the tomato plants and orange trees and celery stalks which will later be consumed, except for the peels and scraps, because these will eventually go back into the composter. Thus, the loop is closed.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, composting is fun. There’s something distinctly satisfying about putting home made fertilizer on a home grown garden. This last item is made even more enjoyable because the moment is often shared with my 7 year old daughter and 4 year old granddaughter. Nothing beats turning the spade in good clean dirt that’s fed by compost and plowed by worms as the girls squeal “Ewwww!” under the warm spring sunshine.

And so, to turn a phrase from Emma Lazarus’ famous poem, instead of “give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses” this composter clamors “give me your strawberry tops, your tea leaves, your apple cores” for making a garden grow.

The Value of the Text

2010-01-06T20:13:00.000-08:00

Growing up, Reneet's brothers had often teased her about having fat fingers. "Fat fingers, fat fingers" they chanted, waggling their many hands in her face like little Shivas in a death dance. Sometimes even her father joined in the taunting, which felt like a foreboding double shame to Reneet: her father would never be able to arrange a good husband for her to marry if he, even he, thought she had ugly hands.

Now, as an adult, Reneet felt hyper-sensitive about her hands. She had outgrown her need for an arranged marriage but she still wore gloves, under the pretense of cold Chicago winters long after the snow had melted. At parties or while out with friends, she hid her hands under the table, under her thighs, away from sight.

That's probably why she liked to text while driving. Freed from their confines, her hands danced over the key pad, nimble as Yakshis clutching the vine. In this embrace, Reneet felt a surge of creativity and power. 35, 40, 45, 50. The speed of the vehicle fueled her sense of power and liberation.

Especially when she texted Mike. He was handsome and blonde, nothing like the dark-eyed Manpreets of her family. No, Mike was different. He understood Reneet's need for freedom. Even though they had only been talking and texting for a few days, he seemed to understand her pleasure in being alone behind the wheel. He was not bound by the traditions of her parents, or the desi complications of her brothers. He was free, and like her hands, knew the value of the text. With her foot on the gas pedal, she texted.

u r sexy, she whispered.

lol, he laughed back.

Her '96 Camry sped west down 35th Street. Her fingers whipped across the keys, the steering wheel merely another function between the space bar and the exclamation point.

lets meet, she implored. But her fingers, which were wider than the IPod's keys, missed their mark and it appeared on his screen as lets nrrt.

what? u must have fat fingers today. lol

Reneet never saw the light rail train when the Camry slammed into it. Blasting into her present, Shiva loomed before her, dancing death. His faces were the faces of her brothers and her father. His laugh were their taunts. In that split second Reneet knew that her fingers danced a life that was her destruction.

She died on impact, her chest crushed against the steering column. Mike's text bleeped unanswered on the IPod amid the crumpled shards, and the IPod's ring tones sang in chorus with the emergency vehicles' sirens.

Looking Ahead

2009-12-31T21:29:00.000-08:00

On this last day of 2009, it's worth looking toward 2010 in the hope that it will be a great year for increasing awareness about the planet.
In early December I ordered a Nature Mill composter to produce fertilizer for my garden. To be accurate it's a NatureMill Plus XE3 Indoor Automatic Composter Value Pack - Item# 434810 which can be found on the Costco website. My goal is to close the loop on food waste and reduce excess garbage by returning organic waste products such as coffee grounds and apple cores back into the garden. This composter is compact, efficient and heavy duty. May I enjoy happy and healthy gardening in 2010!

Another goal I have for the upcoming year is to align my lifestyle with climate solutions to reduce my carbon footprint. After recently reading Colin Beaven's crazy book entitled No Impact Man, I am inspired to seek solutions to my unsustainable lifestyle. To help me learn more about this, I have relied on Yes! Magazine as a resource. A 2008 back issue contains some great ideas. Lest I think changing my behavior is impossible, I look to the photo on page 3 where two monks in Nepal are toting solar panels on their backs as they traverse the Himalaya Mountains. If they can do it, so can I! To that end, I pledge to buy used things more than new things, give away more than I buy, and walk whenever possible.

What will you be doing in 2010? Drop me a line and share your good ideas!

My 2009 Reading List

2009-12-30T13:21:00.000-08:00

2009 has been an interesting reading year. I spent the first three months in Brazil, where books written in English were really hard to come by. Yes, there are book stores in Brazil, but only in the big cities. Of the three months I spent in Brazil, one month of it was in the Amazon where bookstores are nonexistent. I thought I was going to die. Needless to say, my Portuguese reading fluency surged by leaps and bounds as I found myself reading anything I could get my hands on. Words, words, words: I must consume words was the mantra of the day.

In cities such as Sao Paulo and Recife, typically the large book stores would carry a small section of English titles. Their collections, however, often consisted of a couple of shelves with a dismayingly large quantity of Danielle Steele novels. This might be good for her sales numbers, but sad for my reading pleasures.

And, yes, there are used book stores in Brazil too. As one might assume, the selection there is even more dismal, and as I suggested in an earlier blog entry, typically the English section would be placed adjacent to the pornography, often in a back room or behind a screen. English or porn: only in Brazil would both choices make the reader want to scuttle in shame for the darkest corner of the store.

Despite these challenges, I did manage to read some good books this year. The following is my list, although because of my travels I may be missing one or two titles. Enjoy!

Andrews, George Reid. Afro-Latin America 1800-2000. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Arons, Nicholas Gabriel. Waiting for Rain: The Politics and Poetry of Northeast Brazil. Tuscson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2004.

Beavan, Colin. No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.

Brooks, Geraldine. People of the Book: A Novel. New York: Penguin, 2008.

Butler, Kim D. Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition Sao Paulo and Salvador. New Brunswick: Ruthers University Press, 1998.

Garwood, Christine. Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2007.

Gordimer, Nadine. My Son's Story. London: Penguin Books, 1990.

Grann, David. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon. New York: Doubleday, 2009.

Hessler, Peter. Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

MacMillan, Margaret. Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History. New York: Modern Library, 2009.

Mann, Charles. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. New York: Vintage Books, 2006.

Matthiessen, Peter. Shadow Country. New York: Modern Library, 2008.

Rakove, Jack N. Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1996.

Scudamore, James. Heliopolis. London: Harvill Secker, 2009.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Treasure Island. London: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1993 (reprint).

Stewart, Matthew. The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.

Strel, Martin and Matthew Mohlke. The Man Who Swam the Amazon: 3274 Miles on the World's Deadliest River. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2008.

Trevor, William. Love and Summer: A Novel. London: Viking, 2009.

Calling All Stereotypes

2009-12-29T14:40:00.000-08:00

Emmanuel Sigauke, my friend and colleague, has recently won first prize in the Arts Initiates/Lion Press Award (UK) for his short story entitled "Call Center." According to the Arts Initiates website, the stories selected will be published in a forthcoming anthology of short stories.

The action in "Call Center" focuses on Tari, a call center employee and his antagonist, Mr. Johnston, a customer on the other end of the telephone line. Perhaps the most striking element is the tension between Tari and Mr. Johnston. Although strangers, their relationship is full of animosity, stereotype and ennuendo. On the one hand Mr. Johnston assumes that Tari, the call center employee, is from India, when, in fact, Tari is from Zimbabwe and living in California. This assumption leads to a series of questions and responses which only serve to heighten the tension and foster the misunderstanding between the two characters. Indeed, the title for the story seems to be more about calling out stereotypes than calling in for customer service. This is best exemplified when Mr. Johnston claims "All we know here in America is that your guys there are taking our jobs, and you can't even speak proper fucking English!" Of course, outsourcing is as much of a concern to employees in California as it is to customers across the United States, but Mr. Johnston appears to be the embodiment of nativist sentiment in our society today: anyone with an accent must be Other, who is the enemy to be distrusted.

On the other hand, Tari, the narrator, reveals to the reader his honest thoughts about Mr. Johnston: "What a loser, I thought, as I got ready to grill him. The fact that he thought I was in India already made me feel like I had more power than he had in this situation." The call center, then, becomes a metaphor for power struggles in the 21st century. In Tari's mind, Mr. Johnston is a "stupid, ignorant moron." And the ambiguity of Tari's accent to Mr. Johnston is part of the problem, and the source for the struggle. This struggle for power can also be seen in the names assigned to each character: Tari, the misunderstood employee of the world (does he live in India, Zimbabwe or Stockton, CA?), is referred to informally by his first name. Mr. Johnston, the mainstream (i.e., "white") customer from Redding, CA is known by his formal name. The hierarchy of power is established by the formal and informal uses of their names, along with their relative positions in society: One guy works, the other guy has the credit.

Because of these dimensions of power, and the tensions they embody, it's easy to see how this story won first prize. Congratulations, Emmanuel.

What Can We Learn from History?

2009-10-13T09:35:00.000-07:00

The flu has caught up with me despite the fact that I went to Kaiser and received my flu shot about 10 days ago. But that was the regular flu shot to inoculate against the regular flu, and we are in the season of H1N1. Do I have H1N1? I have no idea. What I do know is that I am ill and therefore not at work.

Hence this post on the most recent book I have finished reading entitled Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History by Margaret MacMillan.

It's a slim volume, packed with references to people (mostly men), places (mostly far away) and events (mostly misunderstood) of the past. For example, Qin Shi Huangdi strides across page 17 along with Saladin, Churchill, the Shah of Iran and Peter the Great in something like a great male leaders parade.

Bundled together, however, Dangerous Games serves as a cautionary tale for the present. Originally published in 2008, one gets the sense that MacMillan was writing this in the waning days of the Bush Administration as progressive vindication on Bush Era flaws, while simultaneously maintaining that we need to learn from history in order to prepare for the future. Despite the forward-looking approach, it seems as though every chapter is peppered with disdainful overt and covert remarks about George W. Bush: when Bush compared himself to Winston Churchill; when Bush attempted to market himself as a cowboy of the freewheeling western frontier; when Bush, in a 2006 speech to the graduating class at West Point, compared himself to President Truman. Perhaps most of the disdain is due to MacMillan's citizenship: she's Canadian and she possesses a distinctly Canadian perspective on her country's neighbor (and that neighbor's leader) to the south.

Despite the bias and the agenda, MacMillan has some valuable points to make. And she does so with clarity and order. Chapter titles suggest main points, which then are carried to poignant conclusions. For example, Chapter 1 is entitled "The History Craze" in which she promptly rides roughshod over people (along with governments and institutions) who pose as historians without actually being professional historians, and the danger that causes when faux historians produce believable but inaccurate histories of important events. Perhaps the best example of this is Hollywood's penchant for writing out inconvenient aspects of, say, the Trojan War, Cleopatra's choices or Henry VIII's love life. Perhaps more insidious than simple inaccuracies are the stereotypes perpetuated by Hollywood, which are believed by "middle" America in the absence of actual contact with Other. In either event, MacMillan would like to see professional historians not abdicate history to commercial and governmental interests just because mainstream society has a craze for it.

Chapter 2 earns the moniker "History for Comfort," as MacMillan explains "why history can be at once so reassuring and so appealing" (15). Her answer: because history "can offer simplicity when the present seems bewildering and chaotic" (15) and because history "can also be an escape from the present" (16). In short, people use history like they use wine or video games: because it tastes good and offers a respite from the daily grind. It is the 21st century's opiate for the masses. Along with acting like a medicant, history "help[s] us with our values at least in part because we no longer trust the authorities of today" (19). Don't trust President Obama? Then call on historical references to Hitler to prove your anti-Obama position.

But along with history as comfort, MacMillan suggests that history can also cause discomfort, when, for example, it "highlight[s] our mistakes by reminding us of those who, at other times, faced similar problems but who made different, perhaps better, decisions" (22). President Nixon in his overtures to Mao Zedong as a method for getting the United States out of Vietnam serves as a prime example, largely in contrast to President Bush, who refused to interact with his esteemed enemies on any level and for any reason. Hence the rhetorical question: "if Nixon were president today, would he be going to Tehran for help in getting the United States out of Iraq?" (22). Of course, the problem with using diplomatic successes by President Nixon is that he is generally viewed as a political phariah and no credibility is established by invoking his name. Thus the idea behind the question remains unanswered and rhetorical.

MacMillan returns to the problem of armchair historians in Chapter 3, entitled "Who Owns the Past?" when she claims that "much of the history that the public reads and enjoys is written by amateur historians" (36), who by logical extension don't write history well. Another way to say it is that amateur historians write bad history. And the problem with this is that "bad history tells only part of complex stories . . . [and] makes sweepting generalizations for which there is not adequate evidence and ignores awkward facts that do not fit" (36). The example MacMillan uses is contentious. Indeed, I know well respected colleagues who parade this history before unsuspecting college students: "that the Treaty of Versailles, made between the Allies and Germany at the end of World War I, was so foolish and vindictive that it led inevitably to World War II" (36). This, according to MacMillan, is bad history. Rather she asserts that this explanation of events "overlooked a few considerations. Germany had lost the war, and its treatment was never as severe as many Germans claimed and many British and Americans came to believe. Reparations were a burden but never as great as they seemed. Germany paid a fraction of the bill, and when Hitler came to power, he canceled it outright. If Germany in the 1920s had financial problems," MacMillan asserts, "it was largely due to the fiscal policies of the German government" (36-37).

"Bad history" such as the previous example, "ignores such nuances in favor of tales that
belong to morality plays but do not help us to consider the past in all its complexity. The lessons such [bad] history teaches are too simple or simply wrong" (37). This, then, becomes the crux of the chapter: historians "must do [their] best to raise the public awareness of the past in all its richness and complexity" (37). Furthermore, by invoking the ideas of British historian Michael Howard, MacMillan claims that "the proper role for historians . . . is to challenge and even explode national myths" (39) by not shying away from "blunt histories" (41). Such histories challenge our ideas about great leaders and the swirl of events in which those leaders were caught up. President Kennedy took drugs for a little-known illness. Does this suggest that knowing Kennedy's drug use causes his great decisions to become a little less great and his poor decisions to become a little less poor? No. Rather the "blunt history" is a "complex picture [which] is more satisfying for adults than a simplistic one" (43). And recognizing that "we can still have heroes . . . but we have to accept that in history, as in our own lives, very little is absolutely black or absolutely white" (43). It's the lack of clear lines, the absence of clean demarcations between good and bad, right and wrong that make some folks uncomfortable. Yet, that's just what the historian is called upon to do: shake peoples' beliefs and thereby shake their identities.

In Chapter 4, MacMillan takes up the issue of history and its relationship with identity when she asserts that "for those who do not have power or who feel that they do not have enough [power], history can be a way of protesting against their marginalization, or against trends or ideas they do not like" (53). This is where the power of myth becomes insidious. The stories school children are taught about Columbus' voyages or Paul Revere's famous ride are well known, and are beginning to be addressed in mainstream society. The undercurrents for these myths, however, are less well understood. These undercurrents, what MacMillan identifies as "the imagined community" (58), serve as host to nationalists, among other marginalized groups. And imagined communities seem to lead in a straight line toward ideologies. The groups who maintain ideologies work to show how "past, present and future all become comprehensible" (63) through neatly packaged stories known as "closed systems": about origins, about present circumstances of marginalization, and about future consequences of that marginalization. According to MacMillan, "logic and reason do not enter into closed systems of viewing the world" (64). Just as birthers today reject reasonable attempts to validate President Obama's birth in Hawaii (two different newspapers printed birth announcements in August 1961, for example), people with an ideological closed system mindset refuse to accept empirical evidence if that evidence refutes their worldview. In many regards, a closed system view allows an individual or a collection of individuals to escape responsibility for past choices and actions. It's convenient, easy, simple. Yet, history and its uses is more resilient than this. "History that challenges comfortable assumptions about a group is painful, but it is, as Michael Howard said, a mark of maturity" (71). In short, history is necessary for a democracy like ours as it lumbers into middle age.

MacMillan goes on about the relationships between history and nationalism, history and war, and history and its costs, and along the way one gets the impression that MacMillan is simultaneously captivated by and horrified by the ways in which history has been used. Yet she always returns to the idea that history is important, needs professionals to tend it like a garden, and is a primary mechanism for a society's knowledge of itself. She argues in her conclusion that "a citizenry that cannot begin to put the present into context, that has so little knowledge of the past, can too easily be fed stories by those who claim to speak with the knowledge of history and its lessons" (165). That those who don't know history are exploited by those who choose to abuse it. Simple answers about current situations are never truly packaged in neat little closed system boxes. Indeed, if someone peddles events in that context, it should serve as a warning rather than foster a reality. Instead, MacMillan encourages the reader to consider history from the long view: "History does not produce definitive answers for all time. It is a process" (167). This, then, is how the story cycles back to the beginning, not in a closed system but in a process of concentric rings of revelation about past events. Rather than take the long view of events, President Bush abused history and the historical amnesia of the American people by railroading them into a costly, tragic and unnecessary war in Iraq. Poignantly, this is the dangerous game for our generation.