Letter-24...and not quite a whole lot more...sorry, Neil

Thanksgiving was a busy day in Querétaro and as it was a work-day in México with a business meeting in the afternoon. Further, I had dinner plans on the early side since my novia had to get up for her teaching work at O’dark-thirty. Lastly, I had an eight hundred pound gorilla dancing on my head from the day before.

Eight hundred and two, to be exact. I am slogging my through an eight hundred, two page document in Spanish. The barn-burning subject matter can consume pages with a single thought? The systemization of mexican accounting standards to be compatible with international standards and governmental budgeting procedures as well as – not to be overlooked – to be suited for compilation of national economic statistics.

So much for 90% of life…fuhchrissakes.

But Thanksgiving saved the week since it requires at least passing thought to those parts of my life – people, places and things – that give me cause to “rejoice give thanks and sing…” See you next year so I have time to think of them…

En serio, I really have a great deal for which to be happy. Anyone who knows me well also realizes that the past decade has been challenging with a variety of set-backs, many self-imposed but others the inserted by fate.

King David went through a period like this one. Except, I am no King David…shoot. What these times do tell me is that I have been lucky all the same, not because of something mystical like character enrichment – none of that, thank you – but because of other people.

And certain elements of the past that represent gifts that really do keep on giving. So here are my top five things in life for which I thank God – if He is around – or the fates (if they remain spin-meisters) or whomever.

FIRST, my family. My parents are gone but they still set an example, mostly good and always quite overt. My sister, Claire, and her husband, John Purnell, have given me what money can not: god-daughters and a place where I am welcome. Fortunately, my nieces – Mary (elder) and Elizabeth – get along better than two other, more famous sisters, with those names.

There are just too many relatives to go into specifics; each knows why he or she is special. Special atta-girls to my Aunts Nancy and Marion for coming through significant surgeries this year. Also, a great many thanks to John’s “Purnell clan” who has included me in weddings, holidays, etc.; they have taken this orphan on as one of their own.

SECOND, the United States of America. Yes, I lucked out in the social (perhaps genetic) lottery as, I believe, John Rawls dubbed fate. Distributive justice not overlooked, my prayers to our younger brothers and sisters in uniform labouring under immense pressures in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than most others these young people really care for the people they partner with, patrol and protect.

THIRD, two schools: Saint Edmund’s and Choate. I sing the latter’s praises too often; I have been making up for time lost to years of whining. Saint Edmund’s never gets much press. While Choate did much to develop me intellectually and to start thinking about higher qualities like compassion, Saint Edmund’s taught me character and reinforced fledgling study habits. At Saint Edmund’s, I learned it took a bigger man to fail than to cheat; unusual in the hey-day of the Kennedys and Vince Lombardi.

And, yes, I have lived down to that standard more than a few times. Like Mark Tuttle, Tom Yankus, Ed Maddox and Ben Sylvester at Choate, Bob Izod, Sylvia Martin and – of course – Charlie Appel implanted (or, rather, built on) certain values that still mean a great deal. A quick salute to Washington and Lee for drumming its Honor Code into my head; I went there because of General Robert E. Lee. God and General Grant know that I am no Lee, either.

FOURTH, technology. A grudging concession from this curmudgeon weaned off his mother’s breast with the poetic pitfalls of technology raised by Stephen Vincent Benét, Ray Bradbury et al. Yet Facebook has revived old friendships and started new ones, equally cherished. My Aunts, mentioned earlier, and others important to me have overcome illnesses this year through technology. Bravò to the brainiacs who saved them.

FIFTH, two countries: México and Italy. Both peoples sit on a treasure trove of history but wear it like a loose garment. That makes me want to learn more, much more.

Letter to Friends & Family-23: The twenty-third Qualm

The Centennial came and went last Saturday. In trying to be the dutiful Peace Corps volunteer, I walked over to the Office of Tourism of the State of Querétaro to seek out activities for the evening and found very little except a ´Baile Centenario´ and a concert by a Mexicana pop singer.

Unfortunately, scheduling precluded my seeing the big event which was a ´Desfile de Fraces´ (akin to the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village). This Saturday seemed like any other with families filing along in the streets savouring a restful day off from the work-week.

For a cool hundred pesos, there was also a flamenco dance show at the local cultural center. The Tourism Office did not know of any fireworks. This lackadaisical celebration struck me as strange since México´s highest product of the revolution was a much improved democratic constitution, drafted in 1917 right here in Querétaro.

‘La Revolución´ of 1910 basically overthrew a military dictatorship, with its customary antithesis of banditry, in favor of a democracy actively and controversially supported by then freshly inaugurated U.S. President Woodrow Wilson.

Since this struggle often involved ambitious men of malleable loyalties, it is difficult to get a sense of how bad or good the revolution and the concomitant civil war really were. Yet this slap-dash régime-change is oddly familiar to Americans a hundred years later.

President Wilson becomes President George Bush, both promoting the interests of democracy aggressively. ‘El Presidente´ Porfirio Diaz, the thirty-six year military overlord, resembles what a benign Saddam Hussein might have done. If one substitutes Pancho Villa for Osama bin Laden and General Pershing for General Petraeus, events begin to look familiar.

Like General ´Black-Jack´ Pershing, General David Petraeus is a public figure with a larger-than-life persona, much of it justified. Neither could find their famous fugitives but did succeed in the more mundane task of fracturing the underground networks that supported them.

Anyways, the Mexicans wanted more than the economic security of an authoritarian régime; makes me wonder about what is really happening in China these days.

Since my ‘novia’ had been a flamenco dancer as a teen-age girl in México City, I booked two tickets for that show and warmly congratulated myself for finding such a Mexican way of celebrating the ´Centenario´. Except that flamenco dancing is a Spanish art…whoops. Well, we had a taco to make up for my cultural confusion.

The show as riveting.

There is little sexual about the dance; it truly is a ballet that combines classical music with a distinctly Arab flavor. It is as if ´Isabela la Catolica´ could only go so far in purging the ´muselmanes´ influence after 1492, thank God. The movement of the women evoked appreciation for their artistry.

The flamenco singer was a beauty but her voice quickly commanded the attention. This dance and music combination contains its own paradox – at once very earthy rhythms and frankly sensual movements reaching the transcendent through the sheer discipline required to excel.

What also struck me was the same-but-different sensation I feel quite often here, south of the Border. The three dancers exhibited the same level of mastery in their steps, in their arm movements and in their body swings. The oldest of the three, by what appeared to be ten years and as many kilos, was different. I puzzled over this for a few minutes and soon realized why she was the best among equals.

This older woman understood her body. Experience truly had emerged as the teacher to graduate this veteran dancer’s movements from mastery to grace. As I watched the younger dancers, excellent in their steps and movements, I realized that in a decade or so they would be rising to their unique grace.

Letter-22 to Family and Friends: Peace Corps Training ends; Peace Corps Volunteers begin

Peace Corps Service Training (PST) is a three-month odyssey through stress, limitations, new lessons and private triumphs. I am reminded of my third-form religion class at Choate. Mark Mullin was a Rhodes Scholar and recently ordained minister in September 1972. He turned at least one complaisant teen from the Mid-West (i.e., me) onto mind-expanding, mood-altering substances – on the printed page of course.

In Rev. Mullin’s class, we read an autobiographical account of one minister’s journey across the threshold of radical change. Flanked by his people and steadied by his faith, he triumphed, quietly. Times of duress – times to be vanquished or simply gotten-through (like PST in 2010 or Montgomery Alabama in 1955) – bring out the best and worst in people.

Felled by a bullet some thirteen years later, this prophet came to be venerated more in death than he had been feared, contemned and respected in life. Fifteen years after that religion course, I read a third of that unforgettable book while killing time in a local library.

By then, however, traits of this martyr’s less flattering side – of infidelity and plagiarism – had come to enthrall people across the U.S. Reflecting on that time well wasted in the public library, I came to believe that these faults – considerable as they were – no longer permitted this personal hero to be a martyr. They made him a saint.

¿WHY?

Because, despite these human faults, one man's actions had risen to the godly. He came out in a heavily technocratic and, in retrospect, amoral age to declare that neither brain nor brawn should rule the world. It was the content of a (wo)man’s character that should define the rank of that person relative to his or her equals.

Of course, I am speaking of Martin Luther King, Jr and his book, ‘Stride Toward Freedom’. Looking back, it is easy to see that Dr King was right in saying that his actions and those of other peace-minded Americans would free everyone – that is, his stride toward freedom taken for us all was our stride as well. But getting there took risk and sacrifice.

For half a century, the Peace Corps has been doing the same. I do not pretend to be in a position to label any of my fellow trainees, now Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs), as being at the level of M.L.K.

Nevertheless, yesterday’s 'swearing-in' ceremony proved to be more fulfilling than the previous four, combined. Beyond the slap-dash nature of the previous ‘protestas’, when my government needed warm bodies in Iraq or Afghanistan in a hurry, this ceremony acted out a living symbolism.

That symbolism reminds me that I serve with some really fine people. This letter is not written to adulate the younger members but to salute them for their courage in taking a risk so early in their lives. I admire attributes in others that I strive for myself; that can-do enthusiasm which defies all odds, any reason and many résumés has been an acquired taste for me but remains a required trait for them.

The elders are a source of wisdom and maturity. Life's trials and triumphs provide the basic ballast needed to steady a ship navigating through stormy waters. Some of these people mean a great deal to me; they really helped me make my way through a few turbulent weeks of conflicts and skating by with the proverbial "48½" demerits.

During this quiet day-after, life feels like a ball rolling off a table following twelve weeks of exhausting assignments, Spanish ‘stuRdying’ and little sleep. Consequently, I challenge those thirty younger members to liberate their “Mexi-kin” with computers, shovels, solar stoves and old-fashioned American altruism. To the oldsters like me, I say: ¡let’s stay in contact to keep these youngsters in line!

Below are some lessons I got from younger generations in PCT.
1. Mere presence is powerful.
2. Being young at heart doesn’t work too well on the soccer field.
3. Laughing really is the Lord’s best medicine.
4. Experience is no substitute for the content of one's character.
5. Even Republicans can have fun with Democrats.

Now follow some lessons gained from those PCVs over forty.
1. Cleaning graves on Día de Muertos prolongs your life.
2. Cultural adjustment is more about having fun…their way.
3. It is better to have been married and divorced than never to have married at all.
4. A ‘cerveza’ a day keeps the doctor away; that one I have to take on faith.
5. Even Democrats can have fun with Republicans.

Letter #21 to friends and family: Thoughts on a Mexican Crucifix.

NOTE: written August 29th (before the excellent lecture on the R.C. influence in México on October 29th).

One secondary benefit of knowing absolutely no Spanish is the quiet time I get during the Catholic mass I have attended here in Querétaro for these first two Sundays in the Peace Corps. Not quite like Sarah Miles – Graham Greene’s “bitch and a fake” heroine in his sublime novel The End of the Affair – something shifted in me when I spent more than an hour gazing absently at just another crucifix in just another Roman church. Most crucifixes tend to be the same, though this one seemed different.

No mystical paradox here, as poor Sarah encountered while she succumbed to disease. It turns out that the crucifixes here in México are different than the thousands I have seen elsewhere. Out-to-lunch though I am, I have to doubt that I could plod along for half a century and miss this detail along the way. Of course, it took thirty years for me to “get” the double-entendre behind (Bond character) Pussy Galore’s name; anything is possible.

If the devil hides in the details, so does Christ (at least south of the border). For the crucifix in this church in Querétaro has mutilated knees represented on the figure of the dying Christ; many others are even more graphic, with ribs showing and / or lacerated body broken forever...or so it seems. This small improvement on verisimilitude ought not to be a big detail. Yet it was for me. ¿Why?

For one, these mutilated knees were not the skin-scrapes we earned as kids graduating from tricycles to bicycles. These knees were gashed to the bone; nothing short of gory, really. As I age, I also become increasingly convinced that I have made no breakthroughs not already encountered by billions of others in millions of moments.

While the setting and circumstance of an ‘aha’ moment varies infinitely among so many different people, its essence rarely does. Perhaps that idea demotes a ‘breakthrough’ to a certain inward readiness to grasp a detail; not quite a random moment but pretty close. ¿And so what was my ‘aha’ moment?

Nothing less the realization of how unutterably low Christ was brought at the time of his execution by the Roman Empire for subversion. Yes, the knees would have been mutilated stumbling up that rocky path of Golgotha. The message here need not be religious. If one puts aside the argumentation of Christ’s existence and resurrection simply to look at the story, ¿what does it say? ¿At least to me?

It basically says that no matter how destroyed one’s life is or has become, redemption is possible. Jesus then stands out as the ultimate “comeback kid”; ¡yes, thirty-three years old is a kid these days! And this sentiment is not intended to slight Xianity; far from it. One can lose a belief he never had but still revere the larger Truth for which it stands.

What that ‘knee-capped’ figurine taught me was that I do not have to believe in the Christian doctrine to realize that, even when all human hope has dissipated, there is still Hope. That universal paradox of Hope after all hope, then, becomes my personal responsibility upon its discovery – if not for myself, then for the aid of others.