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.

Letter-20: Intellectual Poetry and Pretensions.

Letter #20: Intellectual Poetry and Pretensions.

The primary purpose of this letter is to refer family and friends to a blog being compiled by a friend of mine here in México with the Peace Corps followed by uninvited political bloviation by yours truly.

Mr Arpan Dasgupta exemplifies the type of Peace Corps volunteer praised in my last letter. In our training cycle, because his advanced Spanish speaking ability afforded him free time, Arpan has counselled young drug addicts here in Queretaro. Simply said, Arpan places principles firmly ahead of personalities.

Arpan has been writing out a blog – ‘The Next Cup of Chai’ – that remains oh-so-elegant in its simplicity. This blog celebrates the nitty-gritty of everyday life in México. It is as if Arpan has poetry in his fingertips as opposed to my more abstract (distracted) thoughts. The blog address is http://thenextcupofchai.blogspot.com/.

Now to the more selfish side of this essay. Discussing next week’s mid-term U.S. elections strays “out of my lane” for three reasons.
1. Politics has nothing to do with my work here or the reason for my letters home.
2. As a firm Republican who prides his vote for Senator John McCain in 2008 and remains a faithful fan of President George W. Bush, I have no business counselling Democrats.
3. Ignorance of the political landscape apparently has failed to deter me from bloviating.

Fortunately, I am limiting this essay to the customary length and can only do limited damage to my limited credibility. So here goes…Bluntly stated, my Democratic friends: think long and hard before you give up on President Obama and your political party.

Your party – particularly our President – needs more time in which to succeed or fail. As I described a few letters back, coming from reliable primary sources, President Obama proved his capacity for statesmanship with the delicate dismissal of General McCrystal in Afghanistan.

To limit my wording, I am not going to discuss all that I think is wrong with key Administration policies in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, on the stimulus package, on financial reform or within the health-care insurance law. There are many things I could say, and would, over coffee (perhaps chai).

What strikes me as outstanding, however, is the attempt to address so many problems so long in the making. Health-care is a prime example. Every President who has tried to do something to address this seventy year old political canker–-with the exception of Medicare and Medicaid under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson–-has, well, failed.

Why? Because there are tenacious interests involved in preventing meaningful change.

The venality of current politics dominated by moneyed special interests is neither new nor surprising. President James Madison detailed this fact of strife quite specifically in the Federalist Papers. President Madison was no prophet; however, ‘Jemmy’ was a keen observer of human nature.

So what did President Obama do? Nothing…at first. That apparent inaction proved to make the difference between attaining something and coming away bruised, humiliated and willing to let go of guiding principles to engineer a political comeback.

President Obama recognized, in a manner many Presidents have not, that the President relies mainly on the delegations of power granted him by Congress. Congress funds his initiatives, implements his treaties, operationalizes his policies.

Instead of alienating Congress as President Carter unfortunately did or trying to ignore Congress as President Clinton had attempted to do, President Obama apparently let Congress jawbone the health-care issue to its standard impasse. Only then did he step in with his Administration’s best (sic) thinking and submit a proposal.

This proposal was not intended to supplant debate but to nudge it toward resolution. President Obama used the moral suasion common to modern Presidents to prod his party and listeners on the other side toward an intermediate solution.

Did this ‘landmark’ health-care law resolve the long-running insurance crisis? Of course not. By focussing on progress rather than perfection as a yard-stick of political and electoral accountability, this bill represents an epochal breakthrough.

A policy door, locked tight for so long, has been wedged open, if only slightly. That imperfect bill can be the butt of current criticism or the buttress of a future solution.

But time takes time and my Democratic friends: your party deserves your continued support no matter how disappointing you find President Obama’s policies to date. After all, thanks to the President’s statesmanship and character, what seemed impossible ever to happen a year ago (i.e., comprehensive health reform) now seems improbable not to happen…eventually.

Letter--19: Unpalatable Patriotism

Letter-19 (from Querétaro): Being Palatably Correct for the Good of the Country.

The Peace Corps has three basic missions, the latter two of which make its mission unique and long-lasting, especially with our younger compatriots. First is to convey technical knowledge, usually in things like agriculture, small business development, English or health. The second and third missions, however, make the difference.

These are to generate goodwill in host nations toward the United States and to bring unique cultures back home. From what I have seen in Mexico – though our Southern neighbor is an outlier among Peace Corps missions – the younger volunteers do a magnificent job.

Why?

They connect with younger professionals and will empower them professionally. These young host country counterparts represent the generational inflection points of their societies. It is their willingness to emulate the best Americans have to offer and pride their professionalism above economic opportunism that may turn the tide for these countries.

After all, I know people my age are simply too tired and too used to particular world views to change easily. So, it is a joy to see these young Yanks, whose professionalism sharpens their sincerity, do what I wish I had many years ago. Nevertheless, this old hoot has reasons to chuckle along the way.

For example, a dinner party I attended last evening. A new friend in Querétaro was celebrating her twenty-fifth anniversary and invited me to a very informal dinner. The invitation delighted me and so I picked up my wind-breaker and make-shift Spanish and went to the dinner. The people in attendance were all Mexicans and generally my age and I felt right at home bringing goodwill to Mexico like a Peace Corps Trooper.

Then came the test. The dish at the other end of the dining table with steaming hot corn tortillas looked like a chicken goulash to me. Great, I thought: no ‘puerco’; Mexico is the pork eating capital of the world, surpassing even Germany. The assumed goulash came my way just the way I wanted it and that meant lots of it. Only when it was in front of me did I realize that this was not chicken that everyone was eating but cooked chicharrón.

Chicharrón – yes, do roll those r’s once you have finished rolling your eyes – is basically the fatty part of pig-skin dried and spiced like a cheese doodle. As a munchies food, it is just awful. Though enamored of México in many ways, when I see chicharrón, I head for the hills like Pancho Villa from Woodrow Wilson’s army. I shuddered at the unspeakable horror sitting in front of me. I neither noticed nor cared that others loved their fare. As far as I was concerned this stuff made high-school cream-chipped beef on toast (a / k / a SH*t on a shingle) look like food fit for a king.

I looked quickly for a dog to which I could inflict this madness. None around, dammit. I was trapped by Peace Corp’s second mission. So with all of the earnestness at my command, I ate the slop with no outward hesitance, relying on years on careful training for stoicism to see me through. For all of the private melodrama, the food was not half-bad. I even had a second helping!

What is that last line of the national anthem again? Something about the home of the brave? The only drawback I found was that the chicharrón had the texture of calamari I used to eat in Manhattan trying very hard to impress some dinner date that I was sophisticated. I faked it then and I faked it last night. The critical difference? In Manhattan, I was ‘enjoying’ calamari for some rank courting opportunism. Last night, I ‘enjoyed’ chicharrón for the good of the country.

I apologize for the longer than usual letter. I wanted to answer Choate teacher, Tony Hodgin’s, e-mailed response to my admittedly over-the-top statement that forty Peace Corps volunteers would do more than four hundred USAID field reps in Afghanistan. Actually, there are seventy volunteers in Mexico and my statement was an exaggeration. The reasoning behind it remains the same. Tony understands development issues better than most people; he deserves an answer (long over-due).

The seventy Peace Corps volunteers in Mexico are in a country that wants us to be there working on small projects that people can replicate easily. These matters are all about legacy. What will today’s people think of our efforts in twenty years. I am willing to bet USAID’s bottom dollar (never my own, of course) that Mexicans will not remember the technical skills conveyance or some $5,000 project for bee-hives. What they will remember are that those damn Yankees were damned good Yankees; that they were worth emulating by their basic decency and integrity.

In Afghanistan, however, USAID is operating in a very unfriendly and difficult environment. Much of its effort is being dissipated, with little of the way in positive legacy to leave behind. If the U.S. government pulls development work back to secure and truly welcoming parts of Afghanistan, the aid dollar will go much further. That said, there are other, debilitating issues with USAID around funding out-sourced ‘development’ contracts to a highly in-bred development community.

Letter 18: Peace Corps--American Boners Lost and Found

Well, it has been a long time since I have written. Mine has been an arduous month of trying to learn Spanish and getting acquainted with my upcoming responsibilities in the Peace Corps. Generally, I should be serving as a strategic planning and cost analysis advisor for an agency involved in the transfer of technology.

Truth be told: I am glad to be a volunteer since I these functional areas – and technology in general – are quite new to me. In any case, after four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with civilian agencies, I fully realize that I will likely be doing something else -- and something new -- anyways.

This exciting opportunity will be like school again. I will be learning more than my counterparts will. More on all of that later, when I actually know what I am doing in México’s tech transfer program. At this point, I am delighted to say that my Peace Corps team-mates are top-notch and will be very instrumental to any success I might achieve.

In this note, I would like to discuss the usual pitfall of people in my position: unintentionally quizzical or comical remarks due to the use of false cognates or not knowing an unfamiliar language. Also posted, separately, is a photo-essay on México’s two hundredth birthday. This ‘stride toward freedom’ started right here in Querétaro!

NEVER TEASE SOMEONE ABOUT HIS OR HER IDEALS, especially environmentalists under thirty. At my advanced age, I really should know better: to dismiss another’s core values with levity is to attack someone’s beliefs. For example, a group of us were discussing coping strategies for loneliness in some orientation session. Stuffed animals were suggested as a means of reducing a sense of isolation in some remote place. Whereupon I stated, less than gallantly, that I would have brought my stuffed animal but the taxidermist wasn’t finished yet. At least I am alive to admonish you….

LANGUAGE GAFFES emerge with an annoying frequency. For example, three days ago, in trying to show off my Spanish speaking skills (sic), I discussed how actions can change one’s innate character over time. To defend this idea, I launched into a re-telling of the story in Oscar Wilde’s “Picture of Dorian Gray”.

Initially, I thought my argument had been too sophisticated for my class-mates to understand. Then I realized that I was saying that every time Dorian Gray committed a dead fish, his portrait would get uglier until it was so hideous he went to Hell. Of course, I had been intending to say that every time Dorian Gray committed a sin (i.e., the closest thing I could think of as a translation for “evil deeds”), the portrait worsened.

In Spanish, "pescado" means fish ready for eating whereas "pecado" means sin…what a difference one letter can make. These ‘mad-lib’ confusions occur almost every day; this fishy mis-statement being among the more entertaining. As my father told me many times, “Never try to make an impression because, by golly, you never know impression you are making.”

Then there is THE FALSE COGNATE “embarazada” which means “pregnant” in Spanish. As I aspire to be a man of culture, I will not go there on how ‘embarazada’ embarrassed me!