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July 31, 2006
Below are some of the lovelier moments caught on film from my first few days back in the DR. (I was away in Indiana and various other cities from June 23 to July 26. Perhaps I'll say more about that later. Perhaps you were there and saw some of it.)
At the airport I was met by six very lovely friends and one shady character, Carlos (right), who, while carrying a box of my books past a security guard, asked, "This isn't going to explode now, is it?" |
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Carlos, yes, that Carlos, (and come to think of it, the same Carlos who played "Uncle Joey" in my Full-House-like production of May 17) had a great idea for my MARSH t-shirt. Ten minutes later, I was wearing this. |
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Erin found a treasure of a deal at a grocery store in Jarabacoa, DR, following the storied Dominican tradition of attaching free (often related) items to other items in the supermarket. In February I wrote about the joy of buying a package of bacon stuck to a stick of butter.
Here, if you can see it, is a bottle of Pepsi Saran-wrapped to a package of spaghetti noodles. Erin reports that she has also bought diapers with Dominican Kool-Aid powder affixed to them. |
You leave your garden for one measly month and look what happens to the weeds. I'm serious. The weeds were four feet tall. The pineapple and aloe plants were happy and healthy, and so (clearly) were the weeds. |
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July 24, 2006
I'd heard that New York is the city that never sleeps. I guess I just assumed that when New Yorkers couldn't sleep, they went downstairs, scrounged up some cookies, and went to the living room to watch QVC.
Turns out that's not true. A better name for New York would be The City That Rides The Subway At One In The Morning. Everything I saw leads me to believe that's what you do in New York when you can't sleep. You put on your clothes and you go ride the subway for awhile till you get sleepy again.
So the other night I was crammed onto the 4 Line in Brooklyn, sporting a huge tummy full of Italian desserts. I finally got a seat, and the four women next to me just busted up laughing. Just carrying on, laughing and falling all over each other.
I had no idea what they were laughing about, but it seemed to be a good time, so I started right in with them. I gave some big old belly laughs, and that got my friend Angel across the aisle going too.
The two of us and the four ladies were nearly rolling. It would die down a bit, then one of us would catch another's eye and it was bedlam all over again. Angel's children pretended like they didn't know us.
This laughter had a renewing quality about it, a life-giving quality I'm sure I won't be able to describe adequately. There was something about the spontaneity of the moment, and the ridiculousness of the whole scene, that awakened something in me. Something more human, something that understands what it means to be alive.
I hadn't even gotten the joke. Yet -- and perhaps precisely for that reason -- it was one of the purest moments of unadulturated joy I have ever felt. A warmth, a connection -- I'll never see those women again -- but for a minute and a half we were six human beings in a sea of machines.
Two stops later Angel and I nearly skipped off the train, wiping our eyes. The four women dabbed themselves with Kleenex and checked their makeup.
Angel's children, naturally, followed a safe distance behind us.
Do you know those weirdos? I don't.
July 15, 2006
We've pulled out all the stops – we made flyers, we bought sweet corn, we even made it into
the Elkhart Truth newspaper. It's the Justicia Global train, and it's making a stop in your neighborhood!
Tonight we're having a dinner and forum on the interconnectedness of social issues, focusing on
immigration, free trade agreements
and food production. We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Angel Pichardo Almonte, the founder of Justicia
Global and a professor in the Dominican Republic.
Read more
July 4, 2006
This Independence Day our ambassadors are hard at work in Venezuela, bringing not freedom and democracy but arms and cash to violent right-wing groups in the city of Mérida.
This is part of an effort to destabilize the country before December elections. US Ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield is supporting and funding violent acts at the Universidad de Los Andes (ULA) in Mérida. ULA is home to a Justicia Global student group.
Read a summary by
Josué Wilson, who is living and working in Mérida:
[During May and June] a heavily armed opposition student organisation [called the M-13] has held violent protests in the city of Merida. Using handguns, shotguns, and Uzis they have repeatedly attacked the police and the National Guard leaving between 26 and 36 wounded.
The proclaimed reason for the protest is the ULA student elections, which were postponed when the Supreme Court ruled that the Administration and Faculty of the ULA were exerting unjust influence on the election.... The M-13 claims that this is a violation of the ULA's autonomy and that, although the Venezuelan judicial system is independent of the executive branch, the executive branch is responsible.
During the protests members of the M-13 chased down, stripped naked, beat, and attempted to rape police woman Sofía Aguilar at gunpoint. She has identified Nixon Moreno, the leader of the M-13 (who has been a "student" at the ULA for 15 years), as the man who shot her partner and a member of the group who then beat him into a coma before she was assaulted.
Read Wilson's full report
Aporrea.org reports Brownfield meeting with Nixon Moreno and giving the M-13 "a lot of money." According to Wilson,
"it is widely suspected that the arms and extremely expensive elections materials possessed by the M-13 have been directly provided by, or bought with resources provided by, US Ambassador William Brownfield or the CIA."
It's not conspiracy theory if it's true.
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