A Ship of Fools
A ship of fools is adrift. The crew is filling the sails with lies, ignorance and innuendo – fueled by religiosity, ignorance, racism, resentment, misogyny, homophobia, hate speech, class discrimination, ethnicity, fear, distrust of government, disparagement of anyone and everyone not like them and, not the least, unbridled political ambition funded by billionaires. No person, no institution is safe from their depredations, not even the sitting president. Fear of truth also fuels this taxonomy of dysfunction, deception and destruction...
La Cabalgata
“We’re tired from the dancing, not the cabalgata,” one of the horsemen says. It’s Saturday morning, March 7 and I’m in the stockyards in Palomas, Mexico where dozens of Mexican riders—men, women and kids—are saddling their horses and preparing to cross the border, join American riders and parade into Columbus, New Mexico.
This is the sixteenth annual Cabalgata Binaciónal Villista or Binational Villa Cavalcade, a very different experience than that day ninety nine years ago when General Pancho Villa’s troops attacked members of the US Third Cavalry Regiment...
Oil and gas industry ‘run amok’ on New Mexico’s highways
Route 285, which runs near our home south of Eldorado near Santa Fe, is a big part of my life. Last week, my wife and I looked forward to traveling home on it from its southernmost point, a small Texas town called Sanderson, 20 miles from the Mexican border. We expected a beautiful drive through sparse cattle country. Instead, we found ourselves in a Western version of Mad Max meets Dante’s Inferno meets L.A. freeway at rush hour. The culprit: our oil and gas industry run amok...
Exploring Nicaragua, Part Two: Emerging from a brutal past
On a volcanic island in vast Lake Nicaragua, a team of oxen slowly trudges along a dirt road pulling a cart laden with large logs. Driving the cart is a young man with only part of his mind on his task. The rest of his attention is devoted to his conversation on a cell phone.
Hundreds of kilometers and a week later, a heavily set, elderly woman makes her way slowly and painfully through the cloud forest and up a dirt track in Parque Arenal high in the mountains in northern Nicaragua. She, too, is talking on a cell phone.
In the second largest hotel in the small city of Somoto, gateway to what is sometimes called the Grand Canyon of Central America, I am awakened before dawn by a rhythmic pounding...
Fool’s Gold: Time Crunch
Have you noticed lately how everyone but me shows up an hour early? It’s not like I was competing for any Mr. Punctual awards—one of the perks of being a writer is that folks expect such eccentricities as me arriving late, or on a unicycle, or not at all. But this latest trend really had me wondering whether I was the sole punctual person in an Early World.
So I did some research. And, yes, I am the only conscientious person in America today, outside of Hawaii and Arizona.
The Politics of Insanity
In the Politics Aristotle says, “ The mere establishment of a democracy is not the only or principle business of the legislator, or of those who wish to create such a state, for any state, however badly constituted, may last one, two, or three days; a far greater difficulty is the preservation of it.” Today we are confronted with the preservation of American democracy in the face of an ongoing political assault on behalf of oligarchs and assorted religious zealots. Something has gone terribly wrong in a society when elected representatives of the polity are hell-bent on destroying that polity’s social contract on behalf of sociopathic billionaires...
Fool’s Gold: Back to My Future
I have taken a real liking to myself. That’s why I am thankful for throwing out my back, despite depending on others to tie my shoes.
The pain is really not so horrible; it can’t be much worse than a shark bite, or getting run over by a garbage truck. It’ll get better. Either that, or it’ll kill me.
Just kidding! That’s what we back-pain survivors call “sciatic humor,” which is intentionally not at all funny because laughing sets our recovery back another two to ten years...
New Pullman Monument Helps Tell Our Nation’s Civil Rights Story
The wait for protection and national recognition for Chicago’s Pullman District is finally over, thanks to President Obama’s action on February 19. By using his authority under the Antiquities Act, as Presidents of both political parties have done before him, the President established Pullman Historic District National Monument. Through his action, and with bi-partisan support, the President has preserved an important, multi-faceted chapter of our nation’s history in perpetuity. The legacy of the Pullman workers resonates across class, across race, and across our country, including right here in New Mexico...
International Women’s Day 2015
Those who know me know that March 8th, International Women’s Day is, of all the year’s holidays, the one that most deeply claims my attention and my heart. This began in the 1970s, when I lived in Cuba and the date was widely celebrated. For years now, I’ve written an open letter—sent to the women I know, and also to the men I believe are truly concerned with women’s rights.
This year, as I sat down to compose my letter, I happened to glance at the front page of the International New York Times. Three headlines grabbed my attention...
Exploring Nicaragua, Part 1: A convoluted history
Few countries have been linked to the United Sates as long, as intimately and as painfully as Nicaragua. The relationship has always been complex, defying any generalities, and the odds are it is soon going to get a lot more complex.
As my wife and I are getting ready to depart for our first trip to Nicaragua, about which I will be writing on our return next month, I want to set the scene by discussing the peculiar, even unique, way the relationship between the countries has played out over the past century and a half...