9/26/2007
Pant, pant, gasp. We were down in Carbondale at the great Salukis' campus. When you drive south far enough, Illinois starts to look like Tennessee. Well, you know, that's where the glaciers stopped flattening out the carpet, and the weave started to bunch up and make pretty hills. Corn fields give way to hardwoods. Lakes, rivers and hawks. I sweat through my clothes twice. Who knew that talking to people was such a full-contact sport. Another good crowd. Lots of books sold again. Blessings shower down like the blinding rain storms that made the road disappear.
Supper with students and the chancellor. He was bustin' some juicy job offers. What do you think? Go down to the land of deer and Fall leaves and buffalo farms and eagles? He even bribed Chayo--they have an equestrian program. "You can have a horse!" he said. What a dirty trick!
We left at about 5:00 this morning. Drove up here almost the entire length of Illinois. Got here in time to do the "Think" radio show on Dallas NPR. It was really, really good. Great, even. I'm hoping the young woman who called in to tell me my poem "Ghost Sickness" changed her life reads this. Send me an email!
I know I said I wasn't going to have time blog, but I just wanted to tell you it's going well out there. I'm showered and packed and much richer than I was last week and depressed as hell. It's weirdly lonesome and alien in the big world. Been touring since 1992--I feel like that grizzled bar band playing "Freebird" and "Love Hurts." That seen-it-all blues guitarist. Would like to stay home. Can't stay home. Can't believe so many people want to talk to me.
I'm doing my best. God bless every one. (And God bless the Latina women--they get those cameras working at every stop. I've been photographed over and over hugging mujeres muy bonitas. "I'm putting this on my Facebook" a young woman told me last night. It isn't book tour, it's 27 senior proms!) Cinderella laughs.
But she isn't going. Just me. Still, I have reached the strange and wonderful time in a career when I have pals at every stop, so there will be many reunions out there.
However, just between you and me, I'd stay home with the fam and the dogs and the cat and the plants if I could.
I'm off to the airport. Have many miles to go before I sleep. I'll be thinking of you.
Loyally, L
iMonday: Literary Edition
Supper with students and the chancellor. He was bustin' some juicy job offers. What do you think? Go down to the land of deer and Fall leaves and buffalo farms and eagles? He even bribed Chayo--they have an equestrian program. "You can have a horse!" he said. What a dirty trick!
We left at about 5:00 this morning. Drove up here almost the entire length of Illinois. Got here in time to do the "Think" radio show on Dallas NPR. It was really, really good. Great, even. I'm hoping the young woman who called in to tell me my poem "Ghost Sickness" changed her life reads this. Send me an email!
I know I said I wasn't going to have time blog, but I just wanted to tell you it's going well out there. I'm showered and packed and much richer than I was last week and depressed as hell. It's weirdly lonesome and alien in the big world. Been touring since 1992--I feel like that grizzled bar band playing "Freebird" and "Love Hurts." That seen-it-all blues guitarist. Would like to stay home. Can't stay home. Can't believe so many people want to talk to me.
I'm doing my best. God bless every one. (And God bless the Latina women--they get those cameras working at every stop. I've been photographed over and over hugging mujeres muy bonitas. "I'm putting this on my Facebook" a young woman told me last night. It isn't book tour, it's 27 senior proms!) Cinderella laughs.
But she isn't going. Just me. Still, I have reached the strange and wonderful time in a career when I have pals at every stop, so there will be many reunions out there.
However, just between you and me, I'd stay home with the fam and the dogs and the cat and the plants if I could.
I'm off to the airport. Have many miles to go before I sleep. I'll be thinking of you.
Loyally, L
9/24/2007
Immigration Monday, Sep. 24, 2007.
I just completed the intro for Peter Orner and Dave Eggers’ awesome immigration book. The usual idiots will hate us and threaten us. But when the book comes out, you must read it. Ignore my part—it’s just an addendum. I hope it is a revolutionary experience—the real stories of the real people in their own words. Immigration, after all, is people.
How pervasive is this subject matter? I mentioned elsewhere on this blog that the editions of DEVIL’S HIGHWAY have somehow reversed the usual publishing trend. They are selling more copies every year, not fewer copies. I told Peter Orner I feel like a Lakota Heyoka, doing things backwards.
I would say this: when literary and poetry journals start doing immigration special issues, then you will know that it has become a national obsession. Doh! Wait! THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW did an immigration issue!
And you ought to get it! It’s one of the best immigration volumes I’ve seen in a long time. Not to mention the fact that my name’s on the cover! Yes, they have good taste!
VQR, Spring 2007. www.vqronline.org.
Git it, bubba and mee-maw. I think it’s informative, smart, and physically beautiful. I think you’ll be happy you got it.
Well, I’m out of here. I’m going on the immigrant writer’s trail, going on the seasonal field-hand’s circuit to speak to you all on Perpetual Book Tour, Iteration #107. Last night, a man in the audience accused me of taking monetary bribes from the US Border Patrol to say positive things about them. I have to laugh, though now I’ve been suspected of treason by both Anglos and Chicanos. Oh-oh.
I am going to move to St. Thomas and groove out to soca music. I am a man without a country. I fly the flag of poetry. I fly the flag of my own family. I fly the flag of my peculiar and book-loving God. I fly my own little black flag: Jolly Roger grinning above crossed pens.
Freedom or death, the bumper sticker says.
So I’ll see you in Carbondale and Wall Walla, Dallas and Santa Fe, Austin and…uh, wherever else I’m going. I wake up and look at the itinerary and say, “Oh yeah! I’m in Idaho today!”
I leave you with a foolish thought. But, you know, you must dare to be foolish or you’ll never get your black belt. Only fools find grace or zen. It’s a fool’s wisdom I accept. So: force has not worked on the border. Violence has not worked. Fences and machines do not work. Sanctions don’t work. Laws don’t work. Politics don’t work. I hate to say it, but religion has so far failed to work. All the hate and fear have failed. So what’s left? I’ll tell you what’s left. Art is left. And love.
Love, on the border? What a crock! What self-respecting man would try to spread love on the border!
Oh yeah—that reminds me. Men don’t work, either. All the gallons of testosterone spilled all over the border have done little more than generate ammo sales and probably genetically alter female mammals until they grow testes.
It’s time for women to take over the border. That’s our only hope.
I told you I was a traitor.
Go, sisters.
#
I leave you for a while with my entry from the VQR. I waited to post it here so they could sell copies and I wouldn’t cut into their sales. But here ‘tis. A little art for the border. A little…love.
#
WALKING BACKWARD IN THE DARK
So, the jury says, once upon a time you fed the poor.
You couldn’t see the ground for the wreckage.
If the women had dysentery behind their sheds,
the earth turned green and red and yellow
and you couldn’t tell what was food and what
was shit and all your Jim Morrison songs
were without avail. No prayers in your head
took the smell. The only relief was the smoke.
Tijuana’s dead dogs, flat cats, starvation cows,
and highway horses split open by retired
Illinois Macks hauling a load of American chairs
into Baja were drenched in a rain of diesel, fired
up with torches: their ribs made smoking cages
to catch your vision, charred hearts
sacrificed to carrion crows.
You couldn’t see home on burning days,
the veils of flesh-fired fog cut the sky in half.
You took them clothes on their burning hills,
took them water in white jugs, took
frozen doughnuts and cans of donated corn.
You went in the name of whatever God you’d cobbled
together from your nightmares and your hopes.
Head lice fell
by the thousands.
This was the dream.
Late, from Mexico, you’d rise
to the neon lightning of America, you’d rise
stinking of dogs and filthy women’s armpits, rise
covered in the sweat of men who kill themselves
mining for garbage in coats made of plastic bags.
Bloodmud was caked on your running shoes.
Too tired to run. Undone by days
talking to people
with no teeth.
Home, your sweet rock-and-roll boys, so pretty
with their Bowie hair and their painted girlfriends
all your best friends so dangerous with their Marlboros,
doing their all-night hang at the doughnut shop
(you peeled a sheet of skin off the back
of a child boiled by overturned cooking pots
of lard)
after their gigs at the strip clubs and bowling alleys.
Coffee and bear claws.
What were you supposed to tell them?
Was Elvis Costello cooler than Joe Jackson?
That you knew where the immigrants were born?
A Gibson SG smokes a Les Paul any day, man,
but a Les Paul is ten times better
than a Strat if you’re even going to think about
“Dazed and Confused.”
(People eating run-over alley dogs.)
Ian Dury and the Blockheads buttons
(she tried to abort her rape-baby with a wire)
on leather jackets.
You didn’t even try to sleep.
It was too quiet.
2:00 a.m.
3:00 a.m.
Televisions then signed off—showed bleached film
of American flags, static, or test patterns:
that Indian chief in the middle looking lost
like you. You had meant to learn to dance.
You, Emperor of Maggots.
That night you knew,
that night it hit you
you were walking
invisible
the abandoned miles of bedtime
Clairemont Drive: duplexes smelling of pot,
your high school already small as a fossil.
John Lennon shot in the head.
You’d been holding down a screaming girl
as a doctor peeled scabs off her face
as blood lipsticked her mouth.
Before you found out.
Walking. Clocking.
Quarter mile.
Half mile.
Mile.
Ahead, almost black against the greater black,
that man. Facing you,
moving away.
You squinted, sped up: he backed away.
You had to catch up to him—it was all in that
crazy son of a bitch hurrying backward into midnight:
it was all there, in him, and when you got close,
started to say it, he spat at you,
backed away running.
You
Stopped.
No moon. No stars. Maybe a Camaro
with glasspaks raced a ’68 Mustang to the stoplight.
You had a notebook in your back pocket.
It was too dark to write
what you needed to say—
I have to get away from here.
Odd Lots
I just completed the intro for Peter Orner and Dave Eggers’ awesome immigration book. The usual idiots will hate us and threaten us. But when the book comes out, you must read it. Ignore my part—it’s just an addendum. I hope it is a revolutionary experience—the real stories of the real people in their own words. Immigration, after all, is people.
How pervasive is this subject matter? I mentioned elsewhere on this blog that the editions of DEVIL’S HIGHWAY have somehow reversed the usual publishing trend. They are selling more copies every year, not fewer copies. I told Peter Orner I feel like a Lakota Heyoka, doing things backwards.
I would say this: when literary and poetry journals start doing immigration special issues, then you will know that it has become a national obsession. Doh! Wait! THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW did an immigration issue!
And you ought to get it! It’s one of the best immigration volumes I’ve seen in a long time. Not to mention the fact that my name’s on the cover! Yes, they have good taste!
VQR, Spring 2007. www.vqronline.org.
Git it, bubba and mee-maw. I think it’s informative, smart, and physically beautiful. I think you’ll be happy you got it.
Well, I’m out of here. I’m going on the immigrant writer’s trail, going on the seasonal field-hand’s circuit to speak to you all on Perpetual Book Tour, Iteration #107. Last night, a man in the audience accused me of taking monetary bribes from the US Border Patrol to say positive things about them. I have to laugh, though now I’ve been suspected of treason by both Anglos and Chicanos. Oh-oh.
I am going to move to St. Thomas and groove out to soca music. I am a man without a country. I fly the flag of poetry. I fly the flag of my own family. I fly the flag of my peculiar and book-loving God. I fly my own little black flag: Jolly Roger grinning above crossed pens.
Freedom or death, the bumper sticker says.
So I’ll see you in Carbondale and Wall Walla, Dallas and Santa Fe, Austin and…uh, wherever else I’m going. I wake up and look at the itinerary and say, “Oh yeah! I’m in Idaho today!”
I leave you with a foolish thought. But, you know, you must dare to be foolish or you’ll never get your black belt. Only fools find grace or zen. It’s a fool’s wisdom I accept. So: force has not worked on the border. Violence has not worked. Fences and machines do not work. Sanctions don’t work. Laws don’t work. Politics don’t work. I hate to say it, but religion has so far failed to work. All the hate and fear have failed. So what’s left? I’ll tell you what’s left. Art is left. And love.
Love, on the border? What a crock! What self-respecting man would try to spread love on the border!
Oh yeah—that reminds me. Men don’t work, either. All the gallons of testosterone spilled all over the border have done little more than generate ammo sales and probably genetically alter female mammals until they grow testes.
It’s time for women to take over the border. That’s our only hope.
I told you I was a traitor.
Go, sisters.
#
I leave you for a while with my entry from the VQR. I waited to post it here so they could sell copies and I wouldn’t cut into their sales. But here ‘tis. A little art for the border. A little…love.
#
WALKING BACKWARD IN THE DARK
So, the jury says, once upon a time you fed the poor.
You couldn’t see the ground for the wreckage.
If the women had dysentery behind their sheds,
the earth turned green and red and yellow
and you couldn’t tell what was food and what
was shit and all your Jim Morrison songs
were without avail. No prayers in your head
took the smell. The only relief was the smoke.
Tijuana’s dead dogs, flat cats, starvation cows,
and highway horses split open by retired
Illinois Macks hauling a load of American chairs
into Baja were drenched in a rain of diesel, fired
up with torches: their ribs made smoking cages
to catch your vision, charred hearts
sacrificed to carrion crows.
You couldn’t see home on burning days,
the veils of flesh-fired fog cut the sky in half.
You took them clothes on their burning hills,
took them water in white jugs, took
frozen doughnuts and cans of donated corn.
You went in the name of whatever God you’d cobbled
together from your nightmares and your hopes.
Head lice fell
by the thousands.
This was the dream.
Late, from Mexico, you’d rise
to the neon lightning of America, you’d rise
stinking of dogs and filthy women’s armpits, rise
covered in the sweat of men who kill themselves
mining for garbage in coats made of plastic bags.
Bloodmud was caked on your running shoes.
Too tired to run. Undone by days
talking to people
with no teeth.
Home, your sweet rock-and-roll boys, so pretty
with their Bowie hair and their painted girlfriends
all your best friends so dangerous with their Marlboros,
doing their all-night hang at the doughnut shop
(you peeled a sheet of skin off the back
of a child boiled by overturned cooking pots
of lard)
after their gigs at the strip clubs and bowling alleys.
Coffee and bear claws.
What were you supposed to tell them?
Was Elvis Costello cooler than Joe Jackson?
That you knew where the immigrants were born?
A Gibson SG smokes a Les Paul any day, man,
but a Les Paul is ten times better
than a Strat if you’re even going to think about
“Dazed and Confused.”
(People eating run-over alley dogs.)
Ian Dury and the Blockheads buttons
(she tried to abort her rape-baby with a wire)
on leather jackets.
You didn’t even try to sleep.
It was too quiet.
2:00 a.m.
3:00 a.m.
Televisions then signed off—showed bleached film
of American flags, static, or test patterns:
that Indian chief in the middle looking lost
like you. You had meant to learn to dance.
You, Emperor of Maggots.
That night you knew,
that night it hit you
you were walking
invisible
the abandoned miles of bedtime
Clairemont Drive: duplexes smelling of pot,
your high school already small as a fossil.
John Lennon shot in the head.
You’d been holding down a screaming girl
as a doctor peeled scabs off her face
as blood lipsticked her mouth.
Before you found out.
Walking. Clocking.
Quarter mile.
Half mile.
Mile.
Ahead, almost black against the greater black,
that man. Facing you,
moving away.
You squinted, sped up: he backed away.
You had to catch up to him—it was all in that
crazy son of a bitch hurrying backward into midnight:
it was all there, in him, and when you got close,
started to say it, he spat at you,
backed away running.
You
Stopped.
No moon. No stars. Maybe a Camaro
with glasspaks raced a ’68 Mustang to the stoplight.
You had a notebook in your back pocket.
It was too dark to write
what you needed to say—
I have to get away from here.
9/22/2007
It's Saturday, and the turkey is hiding behind my van. Chayo went out to get the papers for us, and he spied on her from behind the bumper. "Turkey-turkey-turkey!" she called. "What? What? What?" he answered, hoping the Big Mammal (me) would appear with some tasty sunflowers seeds. I keep hoping he'll just move into Chayo's playhouse under the white birch tree and ride out the winter in there, watchiung turkey TV and chasing out the chipmunks and possums.
I can't be near my best friends, the aspens, here in lowland Illinois. But those holy paperbark birches are bright white and have the ol' heart-shaped leaves that quiver and quake just like the cottonwoods and aspens of my ol' Rocky Mtn home. The other day, the most uneventful miracle happened--I was out on the front porch, waiting for the school bus to drop off The Small One, and watching the Kwiatt's birches doing their best to look like a Boulder afternoon, when a squadron of jays appeared. Rusty squawlks and hearty brays as they ricocheted from three to tree--for a second, I was in Colorado. It was the strangest displacement. I mentioned it before on the blog, but it's still on my mind. It always seems impossible that shamans bi-locate--or claim to. You can't be in two places at once. But I know you can. Who's to say that at that very moment, a mountain biker speeding down Boulder Creek Path saw me there and said, "To your left!" as he passed and didn't notice I vanished before he was even out of range.
I live here, now. That's the rule. I just don't live in this place all the time. Live in this moment. Live in 100 places.
This week, I had my great 300 experience at U of Chicago. I also had an amazing experience at the branch library in the Chi barrio--Pilsen. 100 good people jammed the room, and we had a love-fest. I am always delighted when a Latino audience comes because they like to take a hundred snaposhots. I hug women all night long. It's the super-prom. Cinderella kindly looks the other way. Even the tough guys and homeboys come in for some photo-hugging. However, you might be amused to know that a fellow accused me of getting a monetary kick-back from the Border Patrol whenever I say something sympathetic about them. I almost fell out of my chair. In retrospect, I loved that comment more than any other for the week! I have laughed and laughed about it.
There is big juicy news on the Hummingbird movie. I'm not sure what I can tell you yet. You will forgive me if I'm cryptic. How about this for a clue? If you liked Pan's Labyrinth, you will enjoy The Hummingbird's Daughter. I'll tell you everything soon, I promise.
Finally, as I get ready to leave home on the ol' rock and roll bar band reading circuit, I will leave you with a couple of blog items. But probably nothing new for a while. Now that the computers are back, I can finally post the Wastelander UK Vol. II. Whew. Not that you're clamoring for it, but it does complete the UK entries. Makes a nice set. And the Wastelanders make me happy. Plus, just between thee and me, the UK sections complete the imagined Wastelander book I have built on disk. Yes. Make books. Make many books. My next Wastelander skectches will be the start of a second Wastelander book.
Also, there will be an Immigration Monday blog. The last for a while--I'll be out there talking immigration. No time to research and write.
Also, there is a new edition of Nobody's Son coming out. It has an all-new cover, designed to match The Devil's Highway. I am becoming the king of adobe red and cerulean blue--Mr. Southwest. But I'm excited because there are sections of that book that are the best non-fiction I've been able to create. Certainly better, to my eye, than the more famous Devil's H. Parts of Nobody's Son I would burn, only because I told you too much. And the parts the critics didn't like are my favorite parts. What are you gonna do? The human heart is perverse and willful!
Also, I am muy famoso this Fall. You can find some poems in the anthology, The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century, edited by William Allegrezza and Raymond Bianchi. I'd put the poems here, except I want those guys to make some sales. Besides, I cuss a lot in those poems, and I try to keep the fact that I'm one cussin' son of a bitch out of this bitchin' blog! DAMN IT. Finally, my ol' NPR warhorse short story, "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses," surprised me by appearing in the new hardcover, Best Stories from the American West, edited by Marc Jaffe. It was especially startling to me because at the Pilsen hoedown, a young woman came up to me to tell me she had never read me before, but had just read "Horses" at the library and broke down crying! She had tears in her eyes when she told me! So we took a picture together with our lower lips hanging out as if we were having a sob-fest!
The American West, y'all. I'm a cowboy. On a steel horse I ride!
I'll see you out there.
Bon Jovi
A Joyous Meditation Also About Writing
I can't be near my best friends, the aspens, here in lowland Illinois. But those holy paperbark birches are bright white and have the ol' heart-shaped leaves that quiver and quake just like the cottonwoods and aspens of my ol' Rocky Mtn home. The other day, the most uneventful miracle happened--I was out on the front porch, waiting for the school bus to drop off The Small One, and watching the Kwiatt's birches doing their best to look like a Boulder afternoon, when a squadron of jays appeared. Rusty squawlks and hearty brays as they ricocheted from three to tree--for a second, I was in Colorado. It was the strangest displacement. I mentioned it before on the blog, but it's still on my mind. It always seems impossible that shamans bi-locate--or claim to. You can't be in two places at once. But I know you can. Who's to say that at that very moment, a mountain biker speeding down Boulder Creek Path saw me there and said, "To your left!" as he passed and didn't notice I vanished before he was even out of range.
I live here, now. That's the rule. I just don't live in this place all the time. Live in this moment. Live in 100 places.
This week, I had my great 300 experience at U of Chicago. I also had an amazing experience at the branch library in the Chi barrio--Pilsen. 100 good people jammed the room, and we had a love-fest. I am always delighted when a Latino audience comes because they like to take a hundred snaposhots. I hug women all night long. It's the super-prom. Cinderella kindly looks the other way. Even the tough guys and homeboys come in for some photo-hugging. However, you might be amused to know that a fellow accused me of getting a monetary kick-back from the Border Patrol whenever I say something sympathetic about them. I almost fell out of my chair. In retrospect, I loved that comment more than any other for the week! I have laughed and laughed about it.
There is big juicy news on the Hummingbird movie. I'm not sure what I can tell you yet. You will forgive me if I'm cryptic. How about this for a clue? If you liked Pan's Labyrinth, you will enjoy The Hummingbird's Daughter. I'll tell you everything soon, I promise.
Finally, as I get ready to leave home on the ol' rock and roll bar band reading circuit, I will leave you with a couple of blog items. But probably nothing new for a while. Now that the computers are back, I can finally post the Wastelander UK Vol. II. Whew. Not that you're clamoring for it, but it does complete the UK entries. Makes a nice set. And the Wastelanders make me happy. Plus, just between thee and me, the UK sections complete the imagined Wastelander book I have built on disk. Yes. Make books. Make many books. My next Wastelander skectches will be the start of a second Wastelander book.
Also, there will be an Immigration Monday blog. The last for a while--I'll be out there talking immigration. No time to research and write.
Also, there is a new edition of Nobody's Son coming out. It has an all-new cover, designed to match The Devil's Highway. I am becoming the king of adobe red and cerulean blue--Mr. Southwest. But I'm excited because there are sections of that book that are the best non-fiction I've been able to create. Certainly better, to my eye, than the more famous Devil's H. Parts of Nobody's Son I would burn, only because I told you too much. And the parts the critics didn't like are my favorite parts. What are you gonna do? The human heart is perverse and willful!
Also, I am muy famoso this Fall. You can find some poems in the anthology, The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century, edited by William Allegrezza and Raymond Bianchi. I'd put the poems here, except I want those guys to make some sales. Besides, I cuss a lot in those poems, and I try to keep the fact that I'm one cussin' son of a bitch out of this bitchin' blog! DAMN IT. Finally, my ol' NPR warhorse short story, "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses," surprised me by appearing in the new hardcover, Best Stories from the American West, edited by Marc Jaffe. It was especially startling to me because at the Pilsen hoedown, a young woman came up to me to tell me she had never read me before, but had just read "Horses" at the library and broke down crying! She had tears in her eyes when she told me! So we took a picture together with our lower lips hanging out as if we were having a sob-fest!
The American West, y'all. I'm a cowboy. On a steel horse I ride!
I'll see you out there.
Bon Jovi
9/21/2007
Under the feeder, the juncos
have scribbled all over the snow
while seeds spilled from above
like inspiration. This is the way
each delectable metaphor
so suddenly appears
right under the beak of the poet,
who flutters his tail with delight.
--Ted Kooser
300
have scribbled all over the snow
while seeds spilled from above
like inspiration. This is the way
each delectable metaphor
so suddenly appears
right under the beak of the poet,
who flutters his tail with delight.
--Ted Kooser
9/18/2007
It's Tuesday, Sep 18th. Cinderella and I went down to University of Chicago today to talk to their social work and social justice student. Boy, what a college. If I worked there, I'd probably never leave Chicago. That would wreak havoc with my plan to vanish into the Rockies and take my lunch every day with the elk and tatanka.
There were 300 people there. You never can tell--some times it's 25, sometimes it's 300. I singed almost 200 books. I like it when I sweat through my jacket from signing so many books.
People were asking me how to work for justice in places like Naperville. How do you do witness work, how do you save the world in green enclaves of hunky-dory America.
I came home moved and happy. There was a lot of laughing today. And some crying, too. Cindy went up for a nap. I puttered. Suddenly, I heard my ol' pal and the blog's mascot, the paranoid wild turkey. He was making that worried wild turkey in-the-throat-trill. I spied him under the forsythia, just lurking around like a Central Parl pervert. His bald dino-head poking out to stare at the house. I grabbed my bag of wild bird seed-and-fruit and walked out there and said, "All right, turkey! Come over here!" And he came running. I didn't really think he'd respond. He ran up to me than hit the brakes about five feet away and made believe I wasn't there. I sat. He watched. I tossed seeds. He ate.
And I thought: this is the way you make peace and save the world in Naperville. You listen for, sorry Led Zeppelin fans, a bustle in your hedgerow. It's there.
You make your home a place where small miracles are welcome--and expected. Once they come, they must be accepted.
Your children learn to be kind to firflies and turkeys, field mice and cicadas. They think about the others who live here for such a short and perilous time.
You think, and you becaome aware, and becoming aware, you act.
You talk, and you read, and you show kindness, and you don't waste time feeling guilty. Guilt is bunk. It's a lie. It's a rich kid's indulgence: I feel bad; therefore, I did something moral and don't have to do anything else. Caca de toro!
You invest if you can. You look into the office at your kids' high school that helps needy families. Yeah, even in Napaerville, we have hungry and lonely kids faking it through the BMW and Corvette student body.
You vote.
You urge the world into a smarter, saner, direction.
You lock yourself in your closet, just like Jesus told you to, and you pray.
You know that each small thing you do must add up to a larger good.
You hope. Hope is prayer.
Man, if you're me, you write. In other words, you soul is telling you what to do for yourself, and your neighbors, and the lost stranger, the orphan and the widow. And the turkey! Right now, it's telling you. It's whispering. All you have to do is listen. Then act. Don't waste time feeling bad. Do. Then honor your doing. Yeah, baby. Ice cream and three episodes of DIRTY JOBS. Get that awesome new Nikki Sixx album and see someone doing just what I'm saying.
Be good to the world. The first and closest part of that world is yourself.
Have mercy. Forget pity. Don't say, "Aw how saaaaad." Mercy is action. Be merciful.
That damned turkey cleaned out my seed and then slouched back into the forsythia without saying thanks--safe and sound for another holy day.
I ate a sugar-free cookie, met my little girl at the bus stop, and wrote this.
Do well, new friends at U of C.
L
JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM: It's Immigration Monday
There were 300 people there. You never can tell--some times it's 25, sometimes it's 300. I singed almost 200 books. I like it when I sweat through my jacket from signing so many books.
People were asking me how to work for justice in places like Naperville. How do you do witness work, how do you save the world in green enclaves of hunky-dory America.
I came home moved and happy. There was a lot of laughing today. And some crying, too. Cindy went up for a nap. I puttered. Suddenly, I heard my ol' pal and the blog's mascot, the paranoid wild turkey. He was making that worried wild turkey in-the-throat-trill. I spied him under the forsythia, just lurking around like a Central Parl pervert. His bald dino-head poking out to stare at the house. I grabbed my bag of wild bird seed-and-fruit and walked out there and said, "All right, turkey! Come over here!" And he came running. I didn't really think he'd respond. He ran up to me than hit the brakes about five feet away and made believe I wasn't there. I sat. He watched. I tossed seeds. He ate.
And I thought: this is the way you make peace and save the world in Naperville. You listen for, sorry Led Zeppelin fans, a bustle in your hedgerow. It's there.
You make your home a place where small miracles are welcome--and expected. Once they come, they must be accepted.
Your children learn to be kind to firflies and turkeys, field mice and cicadas. They think about the others who live here for such a short and perilous time.
You think, and you becaome aware, and becoming aware, you act.
You talk, and you read, and you show kindness, and you don't waste time feeling guilty. Guilt is bunk. It's a lie. It's a rich kid's indulgence: I feel bad; therefore, I did something moral and don't have to do anything else. Caca de toro!
You invest if you can. You look into the office at your kids' high school that helps needy families. Yeah, even in Napaerville, we have hungry and lonely kids faking it through the BMW and Corvette student body.
You vote.
You urge the world into a smarter, saner, direction.
You lock yourself in your closet, just like Jesus told you to, and you pray.
You know that each small thing you do must add up to a larger good.
You hope. Hope is prayer.
Man, if you're me, you write. In other words, you soul is telling you what to do for yourself, and your neighbors, and the lost stranger, the orphan and the widow. And the turkey! Right now, it's telling you. It's whispering. All you have to do is listen. Then act. Don't waste time feeling bad. Do. Then honor your doing. Yeah, baby. Ice cream and three episodes of DIRTY JOBS. Get that awesome new Nikki Sixx album and see someone doing just what I'm saying.
Be good to the world. The first and closest part of that world is yourself.
Have mercy. Forget pity. Don't say, "Aw how saaaaad." Mercy is action. Be merciful.
That damned turkey cleaned out my seed and then slouched back into the forsythia without saying thanks--safe and sound for another holy day.
I ate a sugar-free cookie, met my little girl at the bus stop, and wrote this.
Do well, new friends at U of C.
L
9/17/2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
Now, more than ever: The foolish disregard what they see; the wise disregard what they think.
That’s the Zen version. How about some scripture! Lay your hands-ah on the screen-ah and RECEIVE-ah the Holy ANNOINTING of the Urrea Ministry-ah Here’s what the Bible says: “Be ye not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2.
Wall of Voodoo once sang: “Think twice about big tall cities. / Think twice, that’s right.”
Yes indeed, my dear cousins: you better think twice about big tall borders, cities, fences, lying politicians, millionaire talk show hosts, propagandists, and me. Think for yourself! God told you to! Not to mention Wall of Voodoo!
Amen and amen-ah!
(Send your love-partnership donation-offering to be in the special Kingdom Klub
Lulu-Love ministry Founders Foundation. Operators are standing by.)
Speaking of propaganda, I have been recently amazed to learn that DEVIL’S HIGHWAY has been selected for a national all-read program. It’s the first American Brown Book. I guess all Latinos are supposed to read it. This is good, I think. Paranoia would dictate that there is a whole new population waiting to yell at me. But they are always startled to find out that I am motivated more by angels than by dollars of politics. So it ought to be OK.
The madmen in Dave Eggers-world are preparing a revolutionary new immigration book. I was, frankly, ticked off because those low-down bastards caught on to an idea I wanted to do: oral histories! That’s right. I always thought a book of oral histories of the border experience, like Mark Baker’s NAM, would be a killer book. And I was going to do it, honest, after my next 57 book projects were done. But Peter Orner and Big Dave the Lit Pirate swung into action and put together an alarming and brilliant thing to behold. And, the best news for me is that they’ve asked me to write an intro for it. Oh yes. You know it, bubba. Now I can do very little work, but bask in my wise elder position and also glom onto a piece of their hard-won glory.
YOU MUST BUY THIS BOOK WHEN IT’S READY.
I applaud them whipper-snappers.
#
Speaking of DEVIL’S H, my ol’ pal Shawn Phillips wrote an amazing song that goes by that title. I believe he will be launching a rare tour of the US in the Spring. Let’s go see him. I’m going to try to get him to let us put it up here so you can hear it.
Finally, The Perpetual Book Tour, as promised, is kicking off again. Tomorrow: U of Chicago. Thursdays: the library in Pilsen. Next Week: Walla Walla. Then Dallas and Santa Fe and the Wisconsin Book Festival and Carbondale and… Well. I don’t want to go. Even though these good people are paying me excellent money. Must feed my children. Must pay for college. Must pay the mortgage. (You know me: but for the kids, I believe I’d be in a double-wide in Marshall, Colorado, drinkin’ coffee and hiking all day with a hound dog. But—not yet. Soon.)
See the schedule/calendar section of the website.
Hey, you: REDEFINE THE LINE.
Here’s a little data to help you do just that.
_______________________________________________________________________
RAW DATA BLAST—FUN TRIVIA FACTS
Perhaps opinions are useless. At least, uninformed opinions, which I am hearing too much of in border debate. Raw emotion, shouting matches and violence are fueled by opinion. Propaganda and racial stereotyping are fueled by opinion. Radio talk shows are fueled by opinion. ON ALL SIDES. Like anyone else, I like people whose opinions jibe with mine, and I dislike people whose opinions don’t reflect my own. If you agree with me, you are wise, spiritual, and a patriot. If you disagree with me, you are intolerant, ignorant, and evil—not to mention an America-hater.
I am trying to teach myself to listen to facts. You, too. I want you to have facts in hand. So, here are some facts. Interpret them as you will.
“The Border” and “Immigration” are so vast, so big, that it’s almost impossible to focus on any of it. I am going to give you data I have mined about the Tijuana area. Let’s start there. Microcosm. Perhaps my twin hometowns of San Diego and TJ will reveal something larger to us. Certainly, all this data will be useful in your next cocktail party immigration discussion. (You will note, too, some new addresses to add to your Immigration Information Directory.)
Still, for all the local focus of this information, there are a few immigration nuggets of a more universal/national nature. Like this one:
RUN AWAY! American immigration to Canada is up 46% since 2004. (Harper’s, Oct. 2007, p. 15).
Amount undocumented workers pay into US social security on a yearly basis: $6.4 billion. Center for Immigration Studies, cited in Harper’s
Number of border deaths along the US/Mexico border since the implementation of stronger enforcement policies and fences (Operation Gatekeeper — launched Oct. 1, 1994 -- et al):
1995—61
1996—59
1997—89
1998—261
1999—213
2000—370
2001—322
2002--320
2003—339
2004—373
Since the initiation of Gatekeeper, border deaths have risen by 500%.
--Montezemolo, Peralta and Yepez, AQUI ES TIJUANA/ www.stopgatekeepr.org
In 2002, San Diego had a population of 1,255,742; Tijuana had a population of 1,292,993.
The population growth index for San Diego was 2.8%; for Tijuana it was 4.9%.
In San Diego, the median age was 33; in Tijuana it was 24.8.
Per capita income in San Diego rose to $33, 883; in Tijuana, it rose to $9, 812.
In 1999, the poverty index in San Diego was 12%; in Tijuana it was 18.4%.
--www.icfdn.org
In 2000, the profits of smugglers of “illegals” on the border ascended to more than 7,000 million dollars ($7 billion), according to the United States State Department.
Contrary to what is commonly believed, the majority of these “polleros” (coyotes) are US citizens. In 2003, 123 “polleros” were detained at the Tijuana-San Ysidro border crossing. 89% of them were Americans.
--www.mexidata.info
One third of the money that is paid by undocumented entrants to smugglers ends up in the pockets of functionaries of the immigration services of Mexico and the United States.
--Report of the Commission for Population,Borders and Immigration Issues, Mexico,
2003.
At the start of the 21st century, the National Institute of Immigration in Baja California reports that, among the foreigners arrested in the state, the greatest number are Guatemalan. The second largest population is from Brazil. This development is a novelty of recent years.
--www.frontera.info
In 2000, the immigrant population coming into Tijuana was 11.73%, the second highest rate in the country (Mexico)…The population emigrating out of Tijuana was 3.26%.
--XII General Census, 2000
Daily, Tijuanans spend $8.2 million in San Diego. They make an average of 3.5 (legal) border crossings a week, and 80% of them are by car.
--Channel 12, XEWT Mercantile Research
24% of all northbound Border Crossing is to work in San Diego.
--SANDAG 2020 Ethnic Population Estimates
In Tijuana, 1.4% of the population speaks an indigenous language.
The most common indigenous language is Mixtec. 32 out of every 100 indigenous speakers speak Mixtec.
Of the indigenous population, 92.4% also speak Spanish.
In the state, from 1990 to 2000, the influx of Native American speakers was 19, 508. This signifies a yearly growth of 7.6%.
--XII General Census
Tijuana’s urban average ages:
0-14 years old: 33.5%.
15-64 years old: 62.84%.
65 or more: 3.66%.
30.4% of the population is under 15 years of age.
--XII General Census
20% of the immigrants who arrive in the region are under 14.
--INEGI Profile of the Underage Population Of the Municipality of Tijuana
According to the Tijuana Food Bank (Bantai), 260 thousand people have nothing to eat.
--www.zetatijuana.com
From 1996 to 2004, the number of migrant women who have come to this border city in search of a better life has grown by 400%. The majority of them are mothers, and they are between 20 and 30 years old. 8 out of every 10 have only completed a sixth grade education.
--www.frontera.info
Unofficial findings show that the number of homeless children in Tijuana hovers between 5,000 and 10,000.
The principal employment of children in Tijuana is: supermarket baggers, chewing gum sellers, newspaper sellers, flower sellers, curio sellers, popsicle sellers, fruit sellers, balloon sellers, snow-cone sellers, candy sellers, fantasy jewelry sellers, churro sellers, car washers, window cleaners, garbage pickers, shoeshiners, singers, bar cleaners, brickyard assistants, gophers, tourist guides.
--INEGI
According to COLEF researchers, in 2000 there were 466, 800 people living in poverty conditions in Tijuana. 13.2% of Tijuana homes live in nutritional poverty….
--Zeta Weekly, 2004
Of every 100 persons who emigrate out of Baja California, 95 of them go to the United States.
--www.inegi.gob.mx
In 2003, the city of Tijuana had registered 13, 340 sex-workers under its system of Sanitary Cards.
--Reyes, Report to the Mayor
50,000 women and children a year are illegally smuggled into the United States for use as prostitutes.
At least 900 child prostitutes work in Tijuana—a large percentage of their trade involves the internet.
The municipal police serve as “enganchadores” of clients for 50% of the fee.
Rates:
“Truco” (child masturbates client): $20.
Oral sex by child: $50.
Client having sex with male child: $100.
Without a condom: $180.
With a virgin female: $500.
--www.jornada.unam.mx
According to the newspaper Frontera, a national survey in 2004 revealed that the happiest city in Mexico is Tijuana.
Tourists spend $100 million a year on pharmaceuticals in Tijuana.
70% of medications are sold without prescriptions.
--Expansion, June 2003
This is…a tale of two cities. Each of the city’s metropolitan areas houses about one million people. One city is geographically small and the people live in close proximity. One city is large and sprawling.
In one city, inhabitants still suffer diseases considered exotic in the other: cholera, polio, typhus, tuberculosis, rickets. In the other city, separated from the former mostly by an imaginary line, lies some of the richest real estate in the richest half of the richest state in the richest country on the face of the earth.
Joseph Wambaugh,
Lines and Shadows
(I owe a great debt to the excellent book, ASI ES TIJUANA!)
#
Whew.
“What a mess this world is in, I wonder who began it. / Don’t ask me, I’m only visiting this planet.” --Larry Norman
I’m lacing up my boots and heading down the road. See you out there somewhere.
Adios, Amigos!
Sunday: Writing Church is in Session
Now, more than ever: The foolish disregard what they see; the wise disregard what they think.
That’s the Zen version. How about some scripture! Lay your hands-ah on the screen-ah and RECEIVE-ah the Holy ANNOINTING of the Urrea Ministry-ah Here’s what the Bible says: “Be ye not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2.
Wall of Voodoo once sang: “Think twice about big tall cities. / Think twice, that’s right.”
Yes indeed, my dear cousins: you better think twice about big tall borders, cities, fences, lying politicians, millionaire talk show hosts, propagandists, and me. Think for yourself! God told you to! Not to mention Wall of Voodoo!
Amen and amen-ah!
(Send your love-partnership donation-offering to be in the special Kingdom Klub
Lulu-Love ministry Founders Foundation. Operators are standing by.)
Speaking of propaganda, I have been recently amazed to learn that DEVIL’S HIGHWAY has been selected for a national all-read program. It’s the first American Brown Book. I guess all Latinos are supposed to read it. This is good, I think. Paranoia would dictate that there is a whole new population waiting to yell at me. But they are always startled to find out that I am motivated more by angels than by dollars of politics. So it ought to be OK.
The madmen in Dave Eggers-world are preparing a revolutionary new immigration book. I was, frankly, ticked off because those low-down bastards caught on to an idea I wanted to do: oral histories! That’s right. I always thought a book of oral histories of the border experience, like Mark Baker’s NAM, would be a killer book. And I was going to do it, honest, after my next 57 book projects were done. But Peter Orner and Big Dave the Lit Pirate swung into action and put together an alarming and brilliant thing to behold. And, the best news for me is that they’ve asked me to write an intro for it. Oh yes. You know it, bubba. Now I can do very little work, but bask in my wise elder position and also glom onto a piece of their hard-won glory.
YOU MUST BUY THIS BOOK WHEN IT’S READY.
I applaud them whipper-snappers.
#
Speaking of DEVIL’S H, my ol’ pal Shawn Phillips wrote an amazing song that goes by that title. I believe he will be launching a rare tour of the US in the Spring. Let’s go see him. I’m going to try to get him to let us put it up here so you can hear it.
Finally, The Perpetual Book Tour, as promised, is kicking off again. Tomorrow: U of Chicago. Thursdays: the library in Pilsen. Next Week: Walla Walla. Then Dallas and Santa Fe and the Wisconsin Book Festival and Carbondale and… Well. I don’t want to go. Even though these good people are paying me excellent money. Must feed my children. Must pay for college. Must pay the mortgage. (You know me: but for the kids, I believe I’d be in a double-wide in Marshall, Colorado, drinkin’ coffee and hiking all day with a hound dog. But—not yet. Soon.)
See the schedule/calendar section of the website.
Hey, you: REDEFINE THE LINE.
Here’s a little data to help you do just that.
_______________________________________________________________________
RAW DATA BLAST—FUN TRIVIA FACTS
Perhaps opinions are useless. At least, uninformed opinions, which I am hearing too much of in border debate. Raw emotion, shouting matches and violence are fueled by opinion. Propaganda and racial stereotyping are fueled by opinion. Radio talk shows are fueled by opinion. ON ALL SIDES. Like anyone else, I like people whose opinions jibe with mine, and I dislike people whose opinions don’t reflect my own. If you agree with me, you are wise, spiritual, and a patriot. If you disagree with me, you are intolerant, ignorant, and evil—not to mention an America-hater.
I am trying to teach myself to listen to facts. You, too. I want you to have facts in hand. So, here are some facts. Interpret them as you will.
“The Border” and “Immigration” are so vast, so big, that it’s almost impossible to focus on any of it. I am going to give you data I have mined about the Tijuana area. Let’s start there. Microcosm. Perhaps my twin hometowns of San Diego and TJ will reveal something larger to us. Certainly, all this data will be useful in your next cocktail party immigration discussion. (You will note, too, some new addresses to add to your Immigration Information Directory.)
Still, for all the local focus of this information, there are a few immigration nuggets of a more universal/national nature. Like this one:
RUN AWAY! American immigration to Canada is up 46% since 2004. (Harper’s, Oct. 2007, p. 15).
Amount undocumented workers pay into US social security on a yearly basis: $6.4 billion. Center for Immigration Studies, cited in Harper’s
Number of border deaths along the US/Mexico border since the implementation of stronger enforcement policies and fences (Operation Gatekeeper — launched Oct. 1, 1994 -- et al):
1995—61
1996—59
1997—89
1998—261
1999—213
2000—370
2001—322
2002--320
2003—339
2004—373
Since the initiation of Gatekeeper, border deaths have risen by 500%.
--Montezemolo, Peralta and Yepez, AQUI ES TIJUANA/ www.stopgatekeepr.org
In 2002, San Diego had a population of 1,255,742; Tijuana had a population of 1,292,993.
The population growth index for San Diego was 2.8%; for Tijuana it was 4.9%.
In San Diego, the median age was 33; in Tijuana it was 24.8.
Per capita income in San Diego rose to $33, 883; in Tijuana, it rose to $9, 812.
In 1999, the poverty index in San Diego was 12%; in Tijuana it was 18.4%.
--www.icfdn.org
In 2000, the profits of smugglers of “illegals” on the border ascended to more than 7,000 million dollars ($7 billion), according to the United States State Department.
Contrary to what is commonly believed, the majority of these “polleros” (coyotes) are US citizens. In 2003, 123 “polleros” were detained at the Tijuana-San Ysidro border crossing. 89% of them were Americans.
--www.mexidata.info
One third of the money that is paid by undocumented entrants to smugglers ends up in the pockets of functionaries of the immigration services of Mexico and the United States.
--Report of the Commission for Population,Borders and Immigration Issues, Mexico,
2003.
At the start of the 21st century, the National Institute of Immigration in Baja California reports that, among the foreigners arrested in the state, the greatest number are Guatemalan. The second largest population is from Brazil. This development is a novelty of recent years.
--www.frontera.info
In 2000, the immigrant population coming into Tijuana was 11.73%, the second highest rate in the country (Mexico)…The population emigrating out of Tijuana was 3.26%.
--XII General Census, 2000
Daily, Tijuanans spend $8.2 million in San Diego. They make an average of 3.5 (legal) border crossings a week, and 80% of them are by car.
--Channel 12, XEWT Mercantile Research
24% of all northbound Border Crossing is to work in San Diego.
--SANDAG 2020 Ethnic Population Estimates
In Tijuana, 1.4% of the population speaks an indigenous language.
The most common indigenous language is Mixtec. 32 out of every 100 indigenous speakers speak Mixtec.
Of the indigenous population, 92.4% also speak Spanish.
In the state, from 1990 to 2000, the influx of Native American speakers was 19, 508. This signifies a yearly growth of 7.6%.
--XII General Census
Tijuana’s urban average ages:
0-14 years old: 33.5%.
15-64 years old: 62.84%.
65 or more: 3.66%.
30.4% of the population is under 15 years of age.
--XII General Census
20% of the immigrants who arrive in the region are under 14.
--INEGI Profile of the Underage Population Of the Municipality of Tijuana
According to the Tijuana Food Bank (Bantai), 260 thousand people have nothing to eat.
--www.zetatijuana.com
From 1996 to 2004, the number of migrant women who have come to this border city in search of a better life has grown by 400%. The majority of them are mothers, and they are between 20 and 30 years old. 8 out of every 10 have only completed a sixth grade education.
--www.frontera.info
Unofficial findings show that the number of homeless children in Tijuana hovers between 5,000 and 10,000.
The principal employment of children in Tijuana is: supermarket baggers, chewing gum sellers, newspaper sellers, flower sellers, curio sellers, popsicle sellers, fruit sellers, balloon sellers, snow-cone sellers, candy sellers, fantasy jewelry sellers, churro sellers, car washers, window cleaners, garbage pickers, shoeshiners, singers, bar cleaners, brickyard assistants, gophers, tourist guides.
--INEGI
According to COLEF researchers, in 2000 there were 466, 800 people living in poverty conditions in Tijuana. 13.2% of Tijuana homes live in nutritional poverty….
--Zeta Weekly, 2004
Of every 100 persons who emigrate out of Baja California, 95 of them go to the United States.
--www.inegi.gob.mx
In 2003, the city of Tijuana had registered 13, 340 sex-workers under its system of Sanitary Cards.
--Reyes, Report to the Mayor
50,000 women and children a year are illegally smuggled into the United States for use as prostitutes.
At least 900 child prostitutes work in Tijuana—a large percentage of their trade involves the internet.
The municipal police serve as “enganchadores” of clients for 50% of the fee.
Rates:
“Truco” (child masturbates client): $20.
Oral sex by child: $50.
Client having sex with male child: $100.
Without a condom: $180.
With a virgin female: $500.
--www.jornada.unam.mx
According to the newspaper Frontera, a national survey in 2004 revealed that the happiest city in Mexico is Tijuana.
Tourists spend $100 million a year on pharmaceuticals in Tijuana.
70% of medications are sold without prescriptions.
--Expansion, June 2003
This is…a tale of two cities. Each of the city’s metropolitan areas houses about one million people. One city is geographically small and the people live in close proximity. One city is large and sprawling.
In one city, inhabitants still suffer diseases considered exotic in the other: cholera, polio, typhus, tuberculosis, rickets. In the other city, separated from the former mostly by an imaginary line, lies some of the richest real estate in the richest half of the richest state in the richest country on the face of the earth.
Joseph Wambaugh,
Lines and Shadows
(I owe a great debt to the excellent book, ASI ES TIJUANA!)
#
Whew.
“What a mess this world is in, I wonder who began it. / Don’t ask me, I’m only visiting this planet.” --Larry Norman
I’m lacing up my boots and heading down the road. See you out there somewhere.
Adios, Amigos!
9/16/2007
What I'm reading: Denise Levertov.
What I'm listening to: NIKKI SIXX!!!
All writing meditations are living meditations. At least they are if you pursue writing as a spiritual discipline. Of course, the way I approach it can't be seen as "discipline," since it's capricious and wild as rain squalls and skunks. It will do what it will, and it will do it when it will. I try to remin open, to ride it out, to follow the rocky path that leads to the meadow. I usually get there.
Lately, with Nayeli's Seven, I am so deeply there. I feel much gratitude. I'm cranky and old, but I feel joy. Hummingbird, Devil's H, House of Broken Angels, all the blogs, my developing book of poetry, many reviews/blurbs/introductions/poems/haiku/stories/op-eds/essays/lists have finally fried my poor old Toshiba lap-top. Nayeli is beginning the demise of my bright shiny new one.
Tolstoy said it:
"The aim of an artist is not to solve a problem irrefutably, but to make people love life in all its countless, inexhaustible, manifestations."
Oh, by the way: The Devil's Highway has been selected as the first national "Brown" book. In other words, the first nationally-selected Latino book that is to be read by, um, I guess, everybody. Just in time for Perpetual Book Tour to restart. I'll see you on the road.
L
Writing Meditations
What I'm listening to: NIKKI SIXX!!!
All writing meditations are living meditations. At least they are if you pursue writing as a spiritual discipline. Of course, the way I approach it can't be seen as "discipline," since it's capricious and wild as rain squalls and skunks. It will do what it will, and it will do it when it will. I try to remin open, to ride it out, to follow the rocky path that leads to the meadow. I usually get there.
Lately, with Nayeli's Seven, I am so deeply there. I feel much gratitude. I'm cranky and old, but I feel joy. Hummingbird, Devil's H, House of Broken Angels, all the blogs, my developing book of poetry, many reviews/blurbs/introductions/poems/haiku/stories/op-eds/essays/lists have finally fried my poor old Toshiba lap-top. Nayeli is beginning the demise of my bright shiny new one.
Tolstoy said it:
"The aim of an artist is not to solve a problem irrefutably, but to make people love life in all its countless, inexhaustible, manifestations."
Oh, by the way: The Devil's Highway has been selected as the first national "Brown" book. In other words, the first nationally-selected Latino book that is to be read by, um, I guess, everybody. Just in time for Perpetual Book Tour to restart. I'll see you on the road.
L
9/15/2007
I believe we are more like rivers than we are like meadows.
--Annick Smith, Homestead
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
--Marcel Proust
I wrote the best chapter I've ever written. Happened two days ago. It shocked me into silence, so I spend the next days watching t-vo cable shows and walking on the treadmill. Nayeli's Seven is going to be a great novel, if I can keep this up. It's the funniest and saddest yet. Now, if I can just work in some true romance. I guess I need to get back to work.
Speaking of GETTING TO WORK, you writer sisters and brothers of mine, let our motivational speaker and all-around lover of life, Franz Kafka, offer us this thought:
#
"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet."
#
That reminds me of our pal David Grayson's writing about his desk, and my shameless rip-off of Grayson in "Time to Write." (Both offered, free, free, free of charge! On this blog!) We are in a continuum. The heat wave has made storms come here from Missouri. A squadron of cickadees came from nowhere to feed this morning. Basho and Issa said what Grayson said and what Kafka said and I try to say what they said. And writing, like the rain and the birds and the haiku poets, will not fail you. All you have to do is find writing's season, then surrender to it.
Y'all come back now, hear?
L
Americanology
--Annick Smith, Homestead
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
--Marcel Proust
I wrote the best chapter I've ever written. Happened two days ago. It shocked me into silence, so I spend the next days watching t-vo cable shows and walking on the treadmill. Nayeli's Seven is going to be a great novel, if I can keep this up. It's the funniest and saddest yet. Now, if I can just work in some true romance. I guess I need to get back to work.
Speaking of GETTING TO WORK, you writer sisters and brothers of mine, let our motivational speaker and all-around lover of life, Franz Kafka, offer us this thought:
#
"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet."
#
That reminds me of our pal David Grayson's writing about his desk, and my shameless rip-off of Grayson in "Time to Write." (Both offered, free, free, free of charge! On this blog!) We are in a continuum. The heat wave has made storms come here from Missouri. A squadron of cickadees came from nowhere to feed this morning. Basho and Issa said what Grayson said and what Kafka said and I try to say what they said. And writing, like the rain and the birds and the haiku poets, will not fail you. All you have to do is find writing's season, then surrender to it.
Y'all come back now, hear?
L
9/12/2007
I’m a roadrunner baby, you know what I am
I can speak American.
--The Screaming Blue Messiahs
If you were to drive south out of Chicago toward, say, Memphis, and it was getting dark, and the massive late-summer western skies were piled with glowing jade and peach and black Missouri and Iowa storm clouds, blinking and flashing with lightning in their guts, their feet a deep purple fog of rain on the darkening prairies, you might notice that the corn fields—hundreds and hundreds of miles of them out there heavy and dense in the gloaming—looked and felt like a sea. You might also notice that the occasional lines of abandoned box cars, or the dirt country lane with six semi-trailers parked between I-57 and the maize shore, would look for short moments like the white spume of night waves rolling at you from the ghost sea of the plains. It’s eerie.
It’s tornado alley. There’s nothing between your little car and the Rocky Mountains but empty and cold combines in the rain, lone farmhouses with one yellow yard light burning, strange midnight ramblers driving the highways listening to the Stones and nursing a flat bottle of whiskey, wet coyotes sniffing at the edges of the cattle pens. Nothing to stop the twisters. It’s so empty of landscape out there that, if you were like me, and listened to the low-budget Air America station in Chi-town, AM 850, which goes off the air at 7:00 p.m. every night, your radio would start to pick up the right-wing talk station out of Colorado. There would be crackles of sizzle as the lightning flashed, and in one sizzle, the liberal blab would become conservative blab. And you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. They both dislike the Mexicans.
South of Kankakee, beyond Chebanse, a huge porn shop squats on the port side of the road. One shiny semi angled in, a couple of pickups. Moths frantic in the parking lot lights like living snowflakes burning wild circles. LINGERIE, BOOTHS, TOYS, 24 HRS. Gone into the dark as Denver’s Gunny Mike asks his listeners, “What is wrong with America?”
The small city toward which you speed appears as a bright glowing mass on the cloud bellies, its lights making big UFO gleam for miles to your southeast.
#
We wake up in the cigarette-stinking Ramada Inn in Champaigne/Urbana and go to the Fighting Illini game at U of Illinois in a downpour. They aren’t allowed to feature Chief Illiniwik anymore, but the heart-broken and angry white folks wear his shirt and yell “Chief” all during the game and post threats on their t-shirts like, “No Chief, No Check!” The cries of “Chief” sound like “Boo!” Of course, there are many real boos mixed in there too.
F-16s do a fly-over and their noise is so loud it goes off like a bomb in the stadium and Chayo starts to cry.
Two corn-fed shit-heads behind us are making the requisite ball-game sounds—no, I’m sorry, FOOTBALL sounds, because you always have to say the full word “FOOTBALL” when discussing a football game. FOOTBALL is so important that it must be recognized with respect. “Let’s have us a FOOTBALL game.” “We gonna have us a goddamned FOOTBALL game today.” “Today, we gon’ see some FOOTBALL.” I listen attentively to this, since I always feel I have missed some man-code I might pick up. I’d like to speak American. It’s my job as a writer to do some eloquent listening, as Kim Stafford calls it.
I would be good at a wrestling match. Hell yeah—I can talk tombstone piledrivers and figure-four leglocks with anybody. I can hold my own with baseball, but baseball guys are freakin’ pansies and only say lame shit like “Play ball.” “Let’s get down to it and play some FOOTBALL.” There is a great variation I totally love: “C’mon, Huddey, let’s man-up and play FOOTBALL!”
Man-up.
So, we are sitting in the rain and a group of older African-Americans is led to the seats right before us. I cannot believe it: it’s the Tuskeegee Airmen. I whisper about them to Chayo and Megan. I tell them we are sitting with greatness.
At half-time, the University honors these heroes with some medallions. The two FOOTBALL fans behind us refuse to stand or clap when the audience rises to honor them. As the men receive their medals, the guys make Fat Albert jokes. “Hey hey heeyyy” they yell. They scoff when they hear that the Airmen faced racism and prejudice. Someone makes an error and tries to give the wrong medal to one of the Airmen, and he steps aside. We watch it on the Jumbotron. Asshole # 1 behind me says to Asshole #2: “It aint mine, but I’ll takes it!” in a “Negro” accent.
Hey hey heeyyy.
I would submit here that The Tuskeegee Airmen manned the hell up and that these good ol’ boys should be shining their shoes. But what do I know.
When the ceremony ends, Asshole #1 says, “It’s about time we got to some FOOTBALL.”
Maybe I start to wish we had a draft.
#
We’re all Americans gathered on a rainy weekend afternoon in a stadium built over the bones of the buffalo, ghosts of the Illini and the pioneers baffled by the hubbub and fireworks (yes, we won—21-0). The prairies are plowed under and covered in Dairy Queens and Wal-Marts.
We take our drumline boy out to pancakes in the morning, and I stare at the tattooed necks of bikers. I am in love with everybody. My family thinks I’m kidding when I love the 400 pound woman in the tight t-shirt who can barely walk. I want to hold her hand and taste her white skin. I want to buy the creaky old sport in a red ball cap an ice cream cone. I’m losing it—I’m feeling my heart get way too broad. I want to buy the new Nikki Sixx CD because I love Nikki Sixx, but Cinderella teases me, “That kind of thing goes on your permanent record.” I have a delightful chat with the girl in Hot Topic who shows me the stump where her pinky was chopped off and has a full-back tattoo. I find, to my deep shock, that our boy thinks I’m a freak and embarrassing. “He, like, talks to chicks that torture small animals.” I cry, “But I love her! She had to give up clarinet when her finger was cut off!” I reel myself in. I’m not living in one of my notebooks, where God spills out of the trees and angels disguise themselves as beggars to see if we will help them. I’m not in that place where the dirt and the trees are telling me secrets and things are holy. Or maybe I am.
Yes, I am.
#
As we drive out of town, I take the wrong highway, but they all go to Chicago. How can you tell 55 from 57? It’s all cows and soy beans and RV centers. Stuff I also love, by the way. Chicago doesn’t care how we return--itis the monster on the lake. All wind goes there. Tumbleweeds try to get there. All trains dream of Chicago. Bluesmen get off the bus there and head for Maxwell Street, though there isn’t much left of it.
Every single pond and lake I see is the pond and lake I want to live beside.
We open the sun roof to watch a pair of hawks cut quadrants in the sky, scaring up rabbits and prairie dogs.
I turn on the radio. They are still mad at the Mexicans. We have 124 miles to go. The corn is dry and rattling. The fields are yellow as Van Gogh paintings. Clouds of birds fly across the road and turn as one and vanish in the air, like Venetian blinds suddenly opened. My family is eating Oreos.
My daughter says, “I bet there is a dinosaur footprint out there and nobody knows it.”
I love America.
I can’t wait to go back.
September 11, and the miracles are small
I can speak American.
--The Screaming Blue Messiahs
If you were to drive south out of Chicago toward, say, Memphis, and it was getting dark, and the massive late-summer western skies were piled with glowing jade and peach and black Missouri and Iowa storm clouds, blinking and flashing with lightning in their guts, their feet a deep purple fog of rain on the darkening prairies, you might notice that the corn fields—hundreds and hundreds of miles of them out there heavy and dense in the gloaming—looked and felt like a sea. You might also notice that the occasional lines of abandoned box cars, or the dirt country lane with six semi-trailers parked between I-57 and the maize shore, would look for short moments like the white spume of night waves rolling at you from the ghost sea of the plains. It’s eerie.
It’s tornado alley. There’s nothing between your little car and the Rocky Mountains but empty and cold combines in the rain, lone farmhouses with one yellow yard light burning, strange midnight ramblers driving the highways listening to the Stones and nursing a flat bottle of whiskey, wet coyotes sniffing at the edges of the cattle pens. Nothing to stop the twisters. It’s so empty of landscape out there that, if you were like me, and listened to the low-budget Air America station in Chi-town, AM 850, which goes off the air at 7:00 p.m. every night, your radio would start to pick up the right-wing talk station out of Colorado. There would be crackles of sizzle as the lightning flashed, and in one sizzle, the liberal blab would become conservative blab. And you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. They both dislike the Mexicans.
South of Kankakee, beyond Chebanse, a huge porn shop squats on the port side of the road. One shiny semi angled in, a couple of pickups. Moths frantic in the parking lot lights like living snowflakes burning wild circles. LINGERIE, BOOTHS, TOYS, 24 HRS. Gone into the dark as Denver’s Gunny Mike asks his listeners, “What is wrong with America?”
The small city toward which you speed appears as a bright glowing mass on the cloud bellies, its lights making big UFO gleam for miles to your southeast.
#
We wake up in the cigarette-stinking Ramada Inn in Champaigne/Urbana and go to the Fighting Illini game at U of Illinois in a downpour. They aren’t allowed to feature Chief Illiniwik anymore, but the heart-broken and angry white folks wear his shirt and yell “Chief” all during the game and post threats on their t-shirts like, “No Chief, No Check!” The cries of “Chief” sound like “Boo!” Of course, there are many real boos mixed in there too.
F-16s do a fly-over and their noise is so loud it goes off like a bomb in the stadium and Chayo starts to cry.
Two corn-fed shit-heads behind us are making the requisite ball-game sounds—no, I’m sorry, FOOTBALL sounds, because you always have to say the full word “FOOTBALL” when discussing a football game. FOOTBALL is so important that it must be recognized with respect. “Let’s have us a FOOTBALL game.” “We gonna have us a goddamned FOOTBALL game today.” “Today, we gon’ see some FOOTBALL.” I listen attentively to this, since I always feel I have missed some man-code I might pick up. I’d like to speak American. It’s my job as a writer to do some eloquent listening, as Kim Stafford calls it.
I would be good at a wrestling match. Hell yeah—I can talk tombstone piledrivers and figure-four leglocks with anybody. I can hold my own with baseball, but baseball guys are freakin’ pansies and only say lame shit like “Play ball.” “Let’s get down to it and play some FOOTBALL.” There is a great variation I totally love: “C’mon, Huddey, let’s man-up and play FOOTBALL!”
Man-up.
So, we are sitting in the rain and a group of older African-Americans is led to the seats right before us. I cannot believe it: it’s the Tuskeegee Airmen. I whisper about them to Chayo and Megan. I tell them we are sitting with greatness.
At half-time, the University honors these heroes with some medallions. The two FOOTBALL fans behind us refuse to stand or clap when the audience rises to honor them. As the men receive their medals, the guys make Fat Albert jokes. “Hey hey heeyyy” they yell. They scoff when they hear that the Airmen faced racism and prejudice. Someone makes an error and tries to give the wrong medal to one of the Airmen, and he steps aside. We watch it on the Jumbotron. Asshole # 1 behind me says to Asshole #2: “It aint mine, but I’ll takes it!” in a “Negro” accent.
Hey hey heeyyy.
I would submit here that The Tuskeegee Airmen manned the hell up and that these good ol’ boys should be shining their shoes. But what do I know.
When the ceremony ends, Asshole #1 says, “It’s about time we got to some FOOTBALL.”
Maybe I start to wish we had a draft.
#
We’re all Americans gathered on a rainy weekend afternoon in a stadium built over the bones of the buffalo, ghosts of the Illini and the pioneers baffled by the hubbub and fireworks (yes, we won—21-0). The prairies are plowed under and covered in Dairy Queens and Wal-Marts.
We take our drumline boy out to pancakes in the morning, and I stare at the tattooed necks of bikers. I am in love with everybody. My family thinks I’m kidding when I love the 400 pound woman in the tight t-shirt who can barely walk. I want to hold her hand and taste her white skin. I want to buy the creaky old sport in a red ball cap an ice cream cone. I’m losing it—I’m feeling my heart get way too broad. I want to buy the new Nikki Sixx CD because I love Nikki Sixx, but Cinderella teases me, “That kind of thing goes on your permanent record.” I have a delightful chat with the girl in Hot Topic who shows me the stump where her pinky was chopped off and has a full-back tattoo. I find, to my deep shock, that our boy thinks I’m a freak and embarrassing. “He, like, talks to chicks that torture small animals.” I cry, “But I love her! She had to give up clarinet when her finger was cut off!” I reel myself in. I’m not living in one of my notebooks, where God spills out of the trees and angels disguise themselves as beggars to see if we will help them. I’m not in that place where the dirt and the trees are telling me secrets and things are holy. Or maybe I am.
Yes, I am.
#
As we drive out of town, I take the wrong highway, but they all go to Chicago. How can you tell 55 from 57? It’s all cows and soy beans and RV centers. Stuff I also love, by the way. Chicago doesn’t care how we return--itis the monster on the lake. All wind goes there. Tumbleweeds try to get there. All trains dream of Chicago. Bluesmen get off the bus there and head for Maxwell Street, though there isn’t much left of it.
Every single pond and lake I see is the pond and lake I want to live beside.
We open the sun roof to watch a pair of hawks cut quadrants in the sky, scaring up rabbits and prairie dogs.
I turn on the radio. They are still mad at the Mexicans. We have 124 miles to go. The corn is dry and rattling. The fields are yellow as Van Gogh paintings. Clouds of birds fly across the road and turn as one and vanish in the air, like Venetian blinds suddenly opened. My family is eating Oreos.
My daughter says, “I bet there is a dinosaur footprint out there and nobody knows it.”
I love America.
I can’t wait to go back.
9/11/2007
After the most humid summer in years, the weather broke instantly, and it got chilly. Cinderella was delighted because I am The Ice Man and anyone with the slightest degree of body heat may not come near me from June-September unless there is an a.c. unit blasting. But last night, it was cuddles and huggin'. I am the King of Love as long as the temp is down in the 50's. Bring it on.
I look at this blog and think nobody really reads it, so who cares what I say? Then we check the numbers and I'm abashed that lots of people seem to read it. Who are they? I not only don't know, but I don't know why bloggers like me write blogs. It is a community, though, isn't it. Those of you who talk to me--I feel like we gather at the drygoods store checker board of a morning and have a cup of coffee. Farmer Joe brings in some pumpkins, and Mrs. Wilson made those muffins again. So hello and good morning, Isabel and Jenny, White Eagle and Carlos the Warrior, Boston Cindy you hottie, and Prudencia, dear Frankie and Clarke and Grace and Janna. Hello, Jefito and Esteban and Juan Sanchez. What up, Poage and Olivas! Hello everybody! Good morning unknown friend, whoever you are, wherever you are.
It's our most haunted American day, again. And here we are having our chat. The day here is still cool--I walk Chayo to the school bus stop in shorts and a windbreaker. What's wrong with this picture? Still, I'm stylin' in my South Dakota baseball cap--bison and elk on it, my dear pals. Cup of coffee.
I'm actually up and out before my FBI neighbor gets rolling in his scary black government SUV. How Leave It to Beaver is that. Grumpy Dad sipping morning coffee among the various second graders on the corner, and we all pause to wave at the Friendly FBI Man, off to fight evil-doers and protect America. Or Deb, in her red mini-van, off to work. If we're lucky, the paranoiac turkey will creep out of whatever hedge he's hiding in and spy on us from the bushes, making his bizarre little turkey noises. He stalks around, looking fretful, like an undertaker in a dusty coat, wringing his hands.
And here's the silly detail that makes it all feel like grace and miracles: Annie, our cat, is ten years old, so she should know better. But she seems to think she's a dog. Chayo says, "Annie thinks I'm her kitten." And she walks us to the bus stop. I've never seen a cat walk a kid to school, but Annie does. Walks with us down the street, then crosses the street, then hangs out on the corner and watches Chayo get on the bus. Then Annie walks me home. What a freak!
I get so much delight out of the cat-walk that I can't stay cranky for long. If the turkey shows up, all the better. Chickadees and finches have been raising hell in the back yard. We seem to have inherited a hummingbird--something fairly rare in Naperville. If I were in Teresita-mode, I would see harbingers in it. But I'm in Ward Cleaver mode. So instead of levitating or seeing spirits, I say, "Isn't that swell!"
Didn't John Mellencamp say: "Ain't that America"?
This day of sorrowful memory and eternally falling people is crisp as an apple and clean. The hummingbird doesn't know what happened that day. The paperbark birch is white and somehow heart-rending in the morning light. My sunflower is taller than me, and tattered now since the wicked little bird-raiders have been attacking its face for seed. Blossoms everywhere. The garden is a riot of color, and the butterflies warm up with the sun and hit it, outracing the coming freeze.
So, here's what I do on a day like today. I will watch the memorial stuff on TV. Eat my daily oatmeal--are you watching your cholesterol? Are you eating your oatmeal and raisins? Then I'll read a couple of newspapers, as I do every morning. News junkie! Don't get between me and my bad news! I'll check CNN just to make sure nothing has slipped past me with The Today Show, Drudge, 27 websites and the papers! Then I'll A) hit the treadmill or B) go up to my li'l desk and start back in on Nayeli. In which case I'll force myself to hit the treadmill later.
Maybe. It takes a lot of forcing.
Nayeli's Seven is so far the best book I've written. No promises--just pound-for-pound more delightful, I think. Whether I can keep it up for the whole book remains to be seen. I'm happy writing it. I think you'll be happy reading it. Section One, of Three, is basically complete. I think I told you it's the Devil's Highway/Immigration Monday universe but with The Hummingbird's Daughter magic and humor. And butt-kicking women. Hey--chicks dig me, man. What can I say?
We are alive.
One of my high school classmates recently shot himself with a shotgun. All these trivial delights I am sharing with you feel sweeter and more sad in their joy because I see his face in the sky. No, we weren't close. One of those guys who you liked 35 years ago. A serious guy. A guy who treated you well, and then vanished. And then blew his own head off.
Peace be upon him.
Bless him.
I catch myself thinking, if only he could have been here this morning. If only he had read Basho. If only he had come to South Dakota with us and seen the thundering buffalo herd that swarmed around our van and rocked it with their astounding weight. If only....
We are alive.
This is--honest--the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice in it. We survive. You and I, we prevail.
Hug it out--
Luigi
Immigration Monday: Do It Yourself Edition
I look at this blog and think nobody really reads it, so who cares what I say? Then we check the numbers and I'm abashed that lots of people seem to read it. Who are they? I not only don't know, but I don't know why bloggers like me write blogs. It is a community, though, isn't it. Those of you who talk to me--I feel like we gather at the drygoods store checker board of a morning and have a cup of coffee. Farmer Joe brings in some pumpkins, and Mrs. Wilson made those muffins again. So hello and good morning, Isabel and Jenny, White Eagle and Carlos the Warrior, Boston Cindy you hottie, and Prudencia, dear Frankie and Clarke and Grace and Janna. Hello, Jefito and Esteban and Juan Sanchez. What up, Poage and Olivas! Hello everybody! Good morning unknown friend, whoever you are, wherever you are.
It's our most haunted American day, again. And here we are having our chat. The day here is still cool--I walk Chayo to the school bus stop in shorts and a windbreaker. What's wrong with this picture? Still, I'm stylin' in my South Dakota baseball cap--bison and elk on it, my dear pals. Cup of coffee.
I'm actually up and out before my FBI neighbor gets rolling in his scary black government SUV. How Leave It to Beaver is that. Grumpy Dad sipping morning coffee among the various second graders on the corner, and we all pause to wave at the Friendly FBI Man, off to fight evil-doers and protect America. Or Deb, in her red mini-van, off to work. If we're lucky, the paranoiac turkey will creep out of whatever hedge he's hiding in and spy on us from the bushes, making his bizarre little turkey noises. He stalks around, looking fretful, like an undertaker in a dusty coat, wringing his hands.
And here's the silly detail that makes it all feel like grace and miracles: Annie, our cat, is ten years old, so she should know better. But she seems to think she's a dog. Chayo says, "Annie thinks I'm her kitten." And she walks us to the bus stop. I've never seen a cat walk a kid to school, but Annie does. Walks with us down the street, then crosses the street, then hangs out on the corner and watches Chayo get on the bus. Then Annie walks me home. What a freak!
I get so much delight out of the cat-walk that I can't stay cranky for long. If the turkey shows up, all the better. Chickadees and finches have been raising hell in the back yard. We seem to have inherited a hummingbird--something fairly rare in Naperville. If I were in Teresita-mode, I would see harbingers in it. But I'm in Ward Cleaver mode. So instead of levitating or seeing spirits, I say, "Isn't that swell!"
Didn't John Mellencamp say: "Ain't that America"?
This day of sorrowful memory and eternally falling people is crisp as an apple and clean. The hummingbird doesn't know what happened that day. The paperbark birch is white and somehow heart-rending in the morning light. My sunflower is taller than me, and tattered now since the wicked little bird-raiders have been attacking its face for seed. Blossoms everywhere. The garden is a riot of color, and the butterflies warm up with the sun and hit it, outracing the coming freeze.
So, here's what I do on a day like today. I will watch the memorial stuff on TV. Eat my daily oatmeal--are you watching your cholesterol? Are you eating your oatmeal and raisins? Then I'll read a couple of newspapers, as I do every morning. News junkie! Don't get between me and my bad news! I'll check CNN just to make sure nothing has slipped past me with The Today Show, Drudge, 27 websites and the papers! Then I'll A) hit the treadmill or B) go up to my li'l desk and start back in on Nayeli. In which case I'll force myself to hit the treadmill later.
Maybe. It takes a lot of forcing.
Nayeli's Seven is so far the best book I've written. No promises--just pound-for-pound more delightful, I think. Whether I can keep it up for the whole book remains to be seen. I'm happy writing it. I think you'll be happy reading it. Section One, of Three, is basically complete. I think I told you it's the Devil's Highway/Immigration Monday universe but with The Hummingbird's Daughter magic and humor. And butt-kicking women. Hey--chicks dig me, man. What can I say?
We are alive.
One of my high school classmates recently shot himself with a shotgun. All these trivial delights I am sharing with you feel sweeter and more sad in their joy because I see his face in the sky. No, we weren't close. One of those guys who you liked 35 years ago. A serious guy. A guy who treated you well, and then vanished. And then blew his own head off.
Peace be upon him.
Bless him.
I catch myself thinking, if only he could have been here this morning. If only he had read Basho. If only he had come to South Dakota with us and seen the thundering buffalo herd that swarmed around our van and rocked it with their astounding weight. If only....
We are alive.
This is--honest--the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice in it. We survive. You and I, we prevail.
Hug it out--
Luigi
9/10/2007
September 10, 2007
Blah, blah, blah. – Zen Saying.
COMMENT:
Here comes September 11.
Did you see there was a terrorist attack in Mexico this week? Blew up Pemex lines. It’s being called a political act, but we know terrorism when we see it. Pemex—petroleum. Oil. Gas. Is there a better target?
Mexican truckers began the experimental long-haul drives in the US this week, also. Did you see that? On the talk radio shows there have been good Americans suggesting they will stand on bridge overpasses and throw cement blocks through the Mexicans’ windshields.
The conservative president of Mexico scolded the US for harsh anti-immigrant policies.
Switzerland is urging a round-up and deportation on all foreigners.
Israel has to move parts of their Great Wall that have been placed in the wrong place.
Part of our own border fence in Texas is actually in Mexico.
In Arizona, contractors who built the fence are in trouble for hiring undocumented Mexicans to build it.
Syria and Iran and Jordan and Saudi Arabia are being flooded with Iraqi illegal immigrants.
Hezbollah is recruiting in Mexico.
I did an interview with the New York Times this week about border deaths—the numbers are now officially going to be acknowledged: there are fewer “illegals” coming across, but the death numbers have not changed…in fact, seem to be rising. As our son says, WTF?
Look it up. It’s easy to do. Google any of it.
Are you laughing?
#
I had all kinds of trenchant things to say this week. But I’m all talked out. This might not be a good sign, since I’m about to go out into the Big World again to talk about THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY. I was wondering why it suddenly started to jump in sales—man, schools and cities are reading it again. It’s Wisconsin’s state book. In Texas, 3,600 students are reading it at one college alone. You might not believe me when I tell you my excitement is tempered by a feeling that I can only describe as: Oh Nooooooo.
Last year, Phoenix sent gigantic police officers to my appearances in case any conspiracy buffs wanted to cap me. The only one who tagged me was an 80 year old woman who told me I was too short and too fat to be a real Urrea. I was quick on my feet, however, and quipped: “Uhhhh….”
This just goes to show you can’t tell what will capture anyone’s attention. DH was my fourth non-fiction border book. I was not intending to write it at all, and I was fairly certain it would be ignored. This was a blessing in disguise: I was free to write it any way I wanted to, and my general rage and loathing for the border slaughterhouse we have running (All hail, Baal! All hail, Moloch!) fueled the snarky tone of the book. Can love be angry and harsh? I think it can. But if I’d thought I’d become a mouthpiece for immigration, immigrants, Mexico, Border Patrol, coyotes, Chicanos, I’d have watched what I said. Fools rush in, after all. So I didn’t hedge my bets. And now look what’s happening.
Did I expect to be a finalist for the Pulitzer? No way. Did I expect to win the Lannan Award? Nope. Did I buy a new car with the money? Oh yes—and my family thanks Lannan. Did I expect to be pals with USBP agents? You’ve got to be kidding. Movies? Well, okay, yeah—I was sure I’d have movies either starring, by, or about ME when I was thirteen. When you’re typing your John Lennon/Bob Dylan/Leonard Cohen/Richard Brautigan/Jim Morrison masterpieces in the kitchen on your mom’s WWII manual typewriter, these things occur to you.
Honestly, I was worried about HUMMINGBIRD’S DAUGHTER and forgot about DH as soon as it was done. I’ve been tolling this bell since 1993. Since 1990, if you include my journalism and essays about the border. That’s a long time, an ocean of ink. I didn’t think anybody was listening, except maybe God. And God didn’t seem to be doing anything about it, either. But—oops, people are listening. Thanks to the Little,Brown books, I’m actually earning royalties on books that never earned royalties before. Trickle-down economics! I’m as good as a new improved sausage biscuit! I’m a brand name!
New and Improved! Urrea 3000! Cleans, Whitens! Fat-free! Rich Sinful Flavor!
What am I selling?
Here we are. It’s Monday. You want to form Border Policies, get dirty. Look around. Learn. Fuel your opinions. Do it yourselves.
REDEFINE YOUR OWN LINE.
BORDER INTERNET DIRECTORY
Prepared for Your Edification by Luis Urrea
Nobody seems to know where to look for a straight answer about the border. And that’s because there are no straight answers! People tell you what they want you to know so they can get you to do what they want you to do or vote the way they want you to vote. Find out for yourself! Take action! Be informed. The best thing you can do is prowl and think about what you find. Make your own informed decisions and ignore the pundits.
There are far too many sources to list here. But I offer some places you can begin.
[Note: since this was a document originally prepared for my classes on a different computer program, the hyper-links didn’t transfer to blogger.com. So you can’t just click on them. However, it isn’t difficult to jot down the addresses. Better yet, print this out and use it to begin your own Border Research Institute.]
General Information
THE BORDER INFORMATION OUTREACH SERVICE (USA)
www.us-mex.org/borderlines
MEXICAN IMMIGRATION WEBSITES
www.colef.mx
www.inegi.mx
www.conapo.mx
embassyofmexico.org/eng
GOBIERNO MEXICANO
www.gob.mx
SCHOLARS ON IMMIGRATION
Socrates.berkeley.edu/7001/Outreach/education/migrations2003/index.html
IMMIGRATION NEWS WIRE
www.cis.org/
idexer.com
www.usimmigrationsupport.org
Immigration Law
American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA)
www.aila.org
Numbers
CENSUS IMMIGRATION DATA
www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/immigration.html
GENERAL IMMIGRATION DATA
www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/
www.erien.com/index.cfm?fuseAction=SocTrends.Main
SOCIAL SECURITY AND IMMIGRATION DATA
www.slate.com/2096880/immigration.about.com/b/a/211786.htm
www.csmonitor.com/2005/0509/p17s01-wmgn.html
IMMIGRATION AND WELFARE DATA
www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n11_v49/ai_19517838
www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4761&sequence=0
www.heritage.org/research/Immigration/bg1936cfm
www.ncpa.org
IMMIGRATRION AND EDUCATION DATA
www.rand.org
www.udart.com
www.education .ucsb.edu/news/releases5-2-06/immigration-forum.html
IMMIGRATION AND MEDICAL COSTS DATA
www.mensnewsdaily.com/archives/p/powell/2005/powell120605.htm
immigration.about.com/cs/economicslabor/i/ImmHealthccosts_2htm
NAFTA
www.citizen.org/trade/nafta
www.mac.doc.gov/nafta/
BORDER DEATHS DATABASE
www.regulus.azstarnet.com/borderdeaths/
US Border Patrol, Etc.
THE BOYS IN FOREST GREEN (USBP)
www.cbp.gov
honorfirst.com/usbpl.htm
ANTI-BORDER PATROL
deporttheborderpatrol.com
WE HEART THE BORDER PATROL
www.friendsoftheborderpatrol.com
US CUSTOMS\SERVICE
www.cbp.gov
search.cbp.gov/query.html
HOMELAND SECURITY
www.dhs.gov
www.whitehouse.gov/homeland/
The Minutemen
www.MinutemenBorderFence.com
www.minutemanproject.com
www.minutemanhq.com
Mexican Border Police
GRUPO BETA
www.gob.mx/wb2/egobierno/egob_grupo_beta
www.americas.org/item_27769
migration.ucdavis.edu/MN/more.php?id=1177_0_2_0
LUIS URREA WITH GRUPO BETA IN SONORA
www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040328/news_la28urrea.html
The Local News
(I did not include the excellent Mexican border papers in this section.)
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
www.starnet.com
ARIZONA REPUBLIC
www.azcentral.com
LOS ANGELES TIMES
www.latimes.com
SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE
www.signonsandiego.com
TUCSON CITIZEN
www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/
YUMA SUN
www.yumasun.com
Blogs
(These are only three of the MANY blogs available—Google “immigration blogs” or “illegal immigration blogs” or “border blogs.”)
www.illegalaliens.us/blogs.htm
www.coyoteblog.com
blogs.chron.com/immigration /archives/2006/05/blogs_and_immig.html
Talking Heads
THE DAN RATHER OF MEXICO
www.jorgeramos.com/books
THE LOU DOBBS OF AMERICA
www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/
HA HA HA! ARE YOU OFFENDED YET? (Ask A Mexican)
www.ocweekly.com/ink/05/19/news-arellano.php
Human Rights and Rescue Workers
HUMANE BORDERS
www.humaneborders.org
humanebordersblogged.blogspot.com
NO MORE DEATHS
Nomoredeaths.org
HUMAN COST
www.immigrationshumancost.org
DERECHOS HUMANOS
www.derechoshumanosaz.net
MEXICAN AMERICAN LEGAL DEFENSE
www.maldef.org
Pro Immigration
www.arthurhu.com
dmoz.org
www.floricanto.net
librarylawschool.cornell.edu
www.gothamgazette.com/resource/immigrants/beginners
www.ilw.com/lawyers/immigdaily/digest/2003.0304.shtm
www.aztlan.net
www.tolerance.org
THIS WILL MAKE LOU DOBBS MAD
www.reconquista.org
Anti Immigration
MICHELLE MALKIN
www.michellemalkin.com/Immigration/
OTHERS
www.dfrie.org
www.alipac.us
www.fairus.org
WeNeedAFence.com
www.theamericanresistance.com
www.numbersusa.com
grassfire.com
REALLY Anti Immigration
KKK
www.kkk.com
www.k-k-k-.com
WHITE ARYAN RESISTANCE
www.resist.com
SHOOT A MEXICAN COMPUTER GAME
www.nothingtoxic.com/media/1147260264/shoot_the_illegal_immigrants
Violence Against Women
THE JUAREZ KILLINGS
www.amnestyusa.org/women/actions.do
www.savejuarez.org
www.pbs.pov/pov2002/senoritaextraviada/
www.wola.org/Mexico/hr/ciudad_juarez/juarez.htm
latinalista.com
www.cfomaquiladoras.org/mujeresjuarez.com
BORDER RAPE
www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_n9_v60/ai_18610915
VIDEO
www.witness.org/index.php?option=com_rightsalert&Itemid=178&task=links&alert_id=40
Drugs, Etc.
NARCO
www.narconews.com
DEA
www.dea.gov
FBI
www.fbi.gov
Border Deaths
(See: DEATHS DATABASE in “Numbers” section.)
www.derechoshumanosaz.net/deaths.htm
www.tolerance.org
www.uh.edu/cir/death/htm
www.fas.org
Immigration Monday's Wednesday Update
Blah, blah, blah. – Zen Saying.
COMMENT:
Here comes September 11.
Did you see there was a terrorist attack in Mexico this week? Blew up Pemex lines. It’s being called a political act, but we know terrorism when we see it. Pemex—petroleum. Oil. Gas. Is there a better target?
Mexican truckers began the experimental long-haul drives in the US this week, also. Did you see that? On the talk radio shows there have been good Americans suggesting they will stand on bridge overpasses and throw cement blocks through the Mexicans’ windshields.
The conservative president of Mexico scolded the US for harsh anti-immigrant policies.
Switzerland is urging a round-up and deportation on all foreigners.
Israel has to move parts of their Great Wall that have been placed in the wrong place.
Part of our own border fence in Texas is actually in Mexico.
In Arizona, contractors who built the fence are in trouble for hiring undocumented Mexicans to build it.
Syria and Iran and Jordan and Saudi Arabia are being flooded with Iraqi illegal immigrants.
Hezbollah is recruiting in Mexico.
I did an interview with the New York Times this week about border deaths—the numbers are now officially going to be acknowledged: there are fewer “illegals” coming across, but the death numbers have not changed…in fact, seem to be rising. As our son says, WTF?
Look it up. It’s easy to do. Google any of it.
Are you laughing?
#
I had all kinds of trenchant things to say this week. But I’m all talked out. This might not be a good sign, since I’m about to go out into the Big World again to talk about THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY. I was wondering why it suddenly started to jump in sales—man, schools and cities are reading it again. It’s Wisconsin’s state book. In Texas, 3,600 students are reading it at one college alone. You might not believe me when I tell you my excitement is tempered by a feeling that I can only describe as: Oh Nooooooo.
Last year, Phoenix sent gigantic police officers to my appearances in case any conspiracy buffs wanted to cap me. The only one who tagged me was an 80 year old woman who told me I was too short and too fat to be a real Urrea. I was quick on my feet, however, and quipped: “Uhhhh….”
This just goes to show you can’t tell what will capture anyone’s attention. DH was my fourth non-fiction border book. I was not intending to write it at all, and I was fairly certain it would be ignored. This was a blessing in disguise: I was free to write it any way I wanted to, and my general rage and loathing for the border slaughterhouse we have running (All hail, Baal! All hail, Moloch!) fueled the snarky tone of the book. Can love be angry and harsh? I think it can. But if I’d thought I’d become a mouthpiece for immigration, immigrants, Mexico, Border Patrol, coyotes, Chicanos, I’d have watched what I said. Fools rush in, after all. So I didn’t hedge my bets. And now look what’s happening.
Did I expect to be a finalist for the Pulitzer? No way. Did I expect to win the Lannan Award? Nope. Did I buy a new car with the money? Oh yes—and my family thanks Lannan. Did I expect to be pals with USBP agents? You’ve got to be kidding. Movies? Well, okay, yeah—I was sure I’d have movies either starring, by, or about ME when I was thirteen. When you’re typing your John Lennon/Bob Dylan/Leonard Cohen/Richard Brautigan/Jim Morrison masterpieces in the kitchen on your mom’s WWII manual typewriter, these things occur to you.
Honestly, I was worried about HUMMINGBIRD’S DAUGHTER and forgot about DH as soon as it was done. I’ve been tolling this bell since 1993. Since 1990, if you include my journalism and essays about the border. That’s a long time, an ocean of ink. I didn’t think anybody was listening, except maybe God. And God didn’t seem to be doing anything about it, either. But—oops, people are listening. Thanks to the Little,Brown books, I’m actually earning royalties on books that never earned royalties before. Trickle-down economics! I’m as good as a new improved sausage biscuit! I’m a brand name!
New and Improved! Urrea 3000! Cleans, Whitens! Fat-free! Rich Sinful Flavor!
What am I selling?
Here we are. It’s Monday. You want to form Border Policies, get dirty. Look around. Learn. Fuel your opinions. Do it yourselves.
REDEFINE YOUR OWN LINE.
BORDER INTERNET DIRECTORY
Prepared for Your Edification by Luis Urrea
Nobody seems to know where to look for a straight answer about the border. And that’s because there are no straight answers! People tell you what they want you to know so they can get you to do what they want you to do or vote the way they want you to vote. Find out for yourself! Take action! Be informed. The best thing you can do is prowl and think about what you find. Make your own informed decisions and ignore the pundits.
There are far too many sources to list here. But I offer some places you can begin.
[Note: since this was a document originally prepared for my classes on a different computer program, the hyper-links didn’t transfer to blogger.com. So you can’t just click on them. However, it isn’t difficult to jot down the addresses. Better yet, print this out and use it to begin your own Border Research Institute.]
General Information
THE BORDER INFORMATION OUTREACH SERVICE (USA)
www.us-mex.org/borderlines
MEXICAN IMMIGRATION WEBSITES
www.colef.mx
www.inegi.mx
www.conapo.mx
embassyofmexico.org/eng
GOBIERNO MEXICANO
www.gob.mx
SCHOLARS ON IMMIGRATION
Socrates.berkeley.edu/7001/Outreach/education/migrations2003/index.html
IMMIGRATION NEWS WIRE
www.cis.org/
idexer.com
www.usimmigrationsupport.org
Immigration Law
American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA)
www.aila.org
Numbers
CENSUS IMMIGRATION DATA
www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/immigration.html
GENERAL IMMIGRATION DATA
www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/
www.erien.com/index.cfm?fuseAction=SocTrends.Main
SOCIAL SECURITY AND IMMIGRATION DATA
www.slate.com/2096880/immigration.about.com/b/a/211786.htm
www.csmonitor.com/2005/0509/p17s01-wmgn.html
IMMIGRATION AND WELFARE DATA
www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n11_v49/ai_19517838
www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4761&sequence=0
www.heritage.org/research/Immigration/bg1936cfm
www.ncpa.org
IMMIGRATRION AND EDUCATION DATA
www.rand.org
www.udart.com
www.education .ucsb.edu/news/releases5-2-06/immigration-forum.html
IMMIGRATION AND MEDICAL COSTS DATA
www.mensnewsdaily.com/archives/p/powell/2005/powell120605.htm
immigration.about.com/cs/economicslabor/i/ImmHealthccosts_2htm
NAFTA
www.citizen.org/trade/nafta
www.mac.doc.gov/nafta/
BORDER DEATHS DATABASE
www.regulus.azstarnet.com/borderdeaths/
US Border Patrol, Etc.
THE BOYS IN FOREST GREEN (USBP)
www.cbp.gov
honorfirst.com/usbpl.htm
ANTI-BORDER PATROL
deporttheborderpatrol.com
WE HEART THE BORDER PATROL
www.friendsoftheborderpatrol.com
US CUSTOMS\SERVICE
www.cbp.gov
search.cbp.gov/query.html
HOMELAND SECURITY
www.dhs.gov
www.whitehouse.gov/homeland/
The Minutemen
www.MinutemenBorderFence.com
www.minutemanproject.com
www.minutemanhq.com
Mexican Border Police
GRUPO BETA
www.gob.mx/wb2/egobierno/egob_grupo_beta
www.americas.org/item_27769
migration.ucdavis.edu/MN/more.php?id=1177_0_2_0
LUIS URREA WITH GRUPO BETA IN SONORA
www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040328/news_la28urrea.html
The Local News
(I did not include the excellent Mexican border papers in this section.)
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
www.starnet.com
ARIZONA REPUBLIC
www.azcentral.com
LOS ANGELES TIMES
www.latimes.com
SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE
www.signonsandiego.com
TUCSON CITIZEN
www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/
YUMA SUN
www.yumasun.com
Blogs
(These are only three of the MANY blogs available—Google “immigration blogs” or “illegal immigration blogs” or “border blogs.”)
www.illegalaliens.us/blogs.htm
www.coyoteblog.com
blogs.chron.com/immigration /archives/2006/05/blogs_and_immig.html
Talking Heads
THE DAN RATHER OF MEXICO
www.jorgeramos.com/books
THE LOU DOBBS OF AMERICA
www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/
HA HA HA! ARE YOU OFFENDED YET? (Ask A Mexican)
www.ocweekly.com/ink/05/19/news-arellano.php
Human Rights and Rescue Workers
HUMANE BORDERS
www.humaneborders.org
humanebordersblogged.blogspot.com
NO MORE DEATHS
Nomoredeaths.org
HUMAN COST
www.immigrationshumancost.org
DERECHOS HUMANOS
www.derechoshumanosaz.net
MEXICAN AMERICAN LEGAL DEFENSE
www.maldef.org
Pro Immigration
www.arthurhu.com
dmoz.org
www.floricanto.net
librarylawschool.cornell.edu
www.gothamgazette.com/resource/immigrants/beginners
www.ilw.com/lawyers/immigdaily/digest/2003.0304.shtm
www.aztlan.net
www.tolerance.org
THIS WILL MAKE LOU DOBBS MAD
www.reconquista.org
Anti Immigration
MICHELLE MALKIN
www.michellemalkin.com/Immigration/
OTHERS
www.dfrie.org
www.alipac.us
www.fairus.org
WeNeedAFence.com
www.theamericanresistance.com
www.numbersusa.com
grassfire.com
REALLY Anti Immigration
KKK
www.kkk.com
www.k-k-k-.com
WHITE ARYAN RESISTANCE
www.resist.com
SHOOT A MEXICAN COMPUTER GAME
www.nothingtoxic.com/media/1147260264/shoot_the_illegal_immigrants
Violence Against Women
THE JUAREZ KILLINGS
www.amnestyusa.org/women/actions.do
www.savejuarez.org
www.pbs.pov/pov2002/senoritaextraviada/
www.wola.org/Mexico/hr/ciudad_juarez/juarez.htm
latinalista.com
www.cfomaquiladoras.org/mujeresjuarez.com
BORDER RAPE
www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_n9_v60/ai_18610915
VIDEO
www.witness.org/index.php?option=com_rightsalert&Itemid=178&task=links&alert_id=40
Drugs, Etc.
NARCO
www.narconews.com
DEA
www.dea.gov
FBI
www.fbi.gov
Border Deaths
(See: DEATHS DATABASE in “Numbers” section.)
www.derechoshumanosaz.net/deaths.htm
www.tolerance.org
www.uh.edu/cir/death/htm
www.fas.org
9/05/2007
A couple of things.
Our blog-pal, JANNA, who posts messages on Immigration Monday, has a fine immigration blog of her own. You can click on it on her postings. Yo, Janna--why don't you write a guet editorial for us here?
SECOND: The Warrior and I were cyber-chatting about how fed up and depressed and angry I have been about the immigration debacle. Witness my last post. Blech! However, he must be an Oprah viewer, too, because he mentioned what I've been thinking about. Part of the solution? I think so.
That's www.Kiva.org. Did you see it? Kiva is the way in which you can micro-invest in any part of the world. People needing help in, say, Guadalajara (Ceylon, Delhi, Mombassa, you name it) post their business plan on Kiva. They might only need $500 to get a business started. But you help give them the loan. $25 is all you can give. And they have to pay you back.
You communicate with them and find out how they're doing. You can help save the world--or at least save the hideous immigrant crisis with your money. WQarrior points out that's, what, four large coffees at Starbuck's.
We are giving each of our kids $100 and helping them invest in four businesses. They can watch their investment make someone's dream come true. Then, they re-invest their $25 when they get paid back. Four times four times four...on and on. Sounds good, doesn't it?
THIRD: I don't mean to say I told you so, but I told you so.
Check the front page of the New York Times this morning. (Wed. Sep. 5, 2007--you can go to their website and get it.) Article by the ever-reliable Julia Preston: "Short on Labor, Farmers in U.S. Shift to Mexico." Uh-huh. What'd I tell ya? Remember my constant blathering about work force troubles here? How the "illegals" are staying home more and more? How the new beefier interdiction policies are scaring folks away, and at the same time, making hiring more difficult for farmers? Since...no offense...good urban Americanos don't intend to ever, EVER, stoop to pick lettuce or tomatoes, strawberries or cotton. They won't even pick apples. I know, I'm a stuck record.
Oh, wait--we don't have records anymore.
So farmers are utsourcing themselves! Check it and see. Farmers are going to Mexico to raise their American lettuce there on rented farmsland. Legal workers. Cheap costs. No immigration raids. No protesters. No draconian hiring laws and improvised local immigration laws. Nothing but Mexicans on Mexican soil growing American food for Americans.
IUs this the solution? I don't know. It's a solution. Do we like it?
Is Farmer John going to be Farmer Juan from now on? Is Mr. Greenjeans going to be Senor Huaraches? It's totally fascinating. As this trend continues, you will see fewer workers coming...again.
Now, in a few years, when your favorite talk radio show is bellowing that the American farm is in danger, you can remember that Luis "Mr. Sunshine" Urrea kept trying to tell this story on his li'l blog.
The coffee's on. There's a great horned owl haunting our trees at night. And this morning, the wild turkey is lurking out under my forsythia, making weird little fretful noises. Chickadees and cardinals at the feeder. This is middle America. We don' got no stinkin problems here.
Wish you were here...
Luis
Late Night IMMIGRATION MONDAY Blues
Our blog-pal, JANNA, who posts messages on Immigration Monday, has a fine immigration blog of her own. You can click on it on her postings. Yo, Janna--why don't you write a guet editorial for us here?
SECOND: The Warrior and I were cyber-chatting about how fed up and depressed and angry I have been about the immigration debacle. Witness my last post. Blech! However, he must be an Oprah viewer, too, because he mentioned what I've been thinking about. Part of the solution? I think so.
That's www.Kiva.org. Did you see it? Kiva is the way in which you can micro-invest in any part of the world. People needing help in, say, Guadalajara (Ceylon, Delhi, Mombassa, you name it) post their business plan on Kiva. They might only need $500 to get a business started. But you help give them the loan. $25 is all you can give. And they have to pay you back.
You communicate with them and find out how they're doing. You can help save the world--or at least save the hideous immigrant crisis with your money. WQarrior points out that's, what, four large coffees at Starbuck's.
We are giving each of our kids $100 and helping them invest in four businesses. They can watch their investment make someone's dream come true. Then, they re-invest their $25 when they get paid back. Four times four times four...on and on. Sounds good, doesn't it?
THIRD: I don't mean to say I told you so, but I told you so.
Check the front page of the New York Times this morning. (Wed. Sep. 5, 2007--you can go to their website and get it.) Article by the ever-reliable Julia Preston: "Short on Labor, Farmers in U.S. Shift to Mexico." Uh-huh. What'd I tell ya? Remember my constant blathering about work force troubles here? How the "illegals" are staying home more and more? How the new beefier interdiction policies are scaring folks away, and at the same time, making hiring more difficult for farmers? Since...no offense...good urban Americanos don't intend to ever, EVER, stoop to pick lettuce or tomatoes, strawberries or cotton. They won't even pick apples. I know, I'm a stuck record.
Oh, wait--we don't have records anymore.
So farmers are utsourcing themselves! Check it and see. Farmers are going to Mexico to raise their American lettuce there on rented farmsland. Legal workers. Cheap costs. No immigration raids. No protesters. No draconian hiring laws and improvised local immigration laws. Nothing but Mexicans on Mexican soil growing American food for Americans.
IUs this the solution? I don't know. It's a solution. Do we like it?
Is Farmer John going to be Farmer Juan from now on? Is Mr. Greenjeans going to be Senor Huaraches? It's totally fascinating. As this trend continues, you will see fewer workers coming...again.
Now, in a few years, when your favorite talk radio show is bellowing that the American farm is in danger, you can remember that Luis "Mr. Sunshine" Urrea kept trying to tell this story on his li'l blog.
The coffee's on. There's a great horned owl haunting our trees at night. And this morning, the wild turkey is lurking out under my forsythia, making weird little fretful noises. Chickadees and cardinals at the feeder. This is middle America. We don' got no stinkin problems here.
Wish you were here...
Luis
9/03/2007
The crickets are singing outside. It's late. We just walked in. Our boy was home for college, and we drove him back down to U of Illinois. I thought we'd get back before supper time--plenty of time to post IMMIGRATION MONDAY for y'all. But the highway (I 55, Old Route 66) was shut down. Dead. We were caught in the traffic for hours, trying to get outof town. When we got close enough to the cops to think we'd see the wreck, we found the entire highway closed down and nothing in sight as far as you could see. Hourse later, we made it through a maze of side streets into the country and back onto the road. Hours of driving, and then, on the way back, I hear on the radio: "A van carrying twelve crashed on I 55 this afternoon." And I heard, "The driver did not have a license." You know as well as I do who crashed in that van. Whenever you hear about a vehicular slaughter where a van full of humans is scattered across a freeway, you know it is my sad constituency. Los paisanos. The slavery-class, sneaking to another secret payday in middle America. And sure enough, the driver was also, in the delicate words of the newsman on the radio, "without immigration documentation." Two dead...so far. Awful, awful, but as Stephen King says in his books: Same Shit, Different Day. Do you pray? Pray that is stops. Pray that it changes. To hell with prayer--do something. Act. Stop the horror show. The filth of it. The endless repetitive nightmare of it. The squalid bloody fates of the invisible men and women. The blood. How much of it must spill?
Tomorrow, then. I'll put up the blog tomorrow. S.S., D.D.
L
Labor Day Writing Meditation
Tomorrow, then. I'll put up the blog tomorrow. S.S., D.D.
L
9/02/2007
What I'm Listening To: Rickie Lee Jones, Justice, Lee Michaels.
What I'm Reading: The World Without Us; Donald Hall's collected poems.
What I'm Writing: The best novel, ever, Nayeli's Seven; and I'm working on the introduction to Rane Arroyo's collected poems.
Your meditation for today (harkening back to one of our first meditations, from Basho)--Walter Savage Landor says:
Clear waters, like clear fountains, do not
seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most
profound.
Clarify, amigos. See the stones at the bottom of the river.
Wish you were here--the small birds are at the feeders and the sunflower is turning its big face to the light. Me too.
XXX, L
What I'm Reading: The World Without Us; Donald Hall's collected poems.
What I'm Writing: The best novel, ever, Nayeli's Seven; and I'm working on the introduction to Rane Arroyo's collected poems.
Your meditation for today (harkening back to one of our first meditations, from Basho)--Walter Savage Landor says:
Clear waters, like clear fountains, do not
seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most
profound.
Clarify, amigos. See the stones at the bottom of the river.
Wish you were here--the small birds are at the feeders and the sunflower is turning its big face to the light. Me too.
XXX, L
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