On Contradiction

This was written before the last election but bears repeating

On Contradiction 

(With All Due Apologies To Chairman Mao) 

 I was never comfortable when people attacked everything that Trump did, not just because it stretches the bounds of political decorum and rational discourse but, face it, some things he got right (even if you want to rationalize it as "the blind hog finding an acorn now and then" or "the stopped clock being right twice a day"). 

 More to the point, though, I had to shake my head when folks get upset about picayune things or went out of their way to stretch to manufacture drama for some imaginary infraction when there was such a long laundry list of things appropriately to be pissed off about. 

Dogmatic constancy is no virtue. Both sides of the political spectrum engage in contradictory behavior. Even Chairman Mao confessed that the best he could do sometimes was eliminate as many of the contradictions as he could and do the best he could with the rest. But, come on: Despite all the evidence to the contrary, you made Obama a foreign-born Muslim and a horrible despot but you weren't willing to actually apply the same code of conduct to this truly graceless boor; he, who by the way, was the main proponent of that gambit. 

In fact, you ignored all evidence to the contrary and made Obama the hapless victim of supposedly random and unwarranted attacks. Snowflakes my ass. You characterized this urbane, gentle, gracious and intellectual man as an ogre and vicious dictator but ignored or downplayed the sort of behavior you wouldn't tolerate from a 14 year old. 

Wait. No!??! You actually admire him still. Your conservativism is retrograde and reactionary and extends beyond the things you initially hated but now love; like the Beatles, Elvis, rock and roll, We watched you fight every Progressive innovation Civil Rights, Obamacare, even minor things like handicapped parking and accessibility from people with special needs. you fought all of those because supposedly they were going to hinder Economic Development. Now you try to own it. 

Hell, you even try to own history: Yes, the Klan was born in the Democratic Party and Yes Hugo black and Harry Byrd were Klansman at one point in their lives;  deny science; attack the news; the government; the fact checkers. Obama spent two years fiddle-fucking around trying to get the other side to play nice on Obamacare. Instead, all he got was obstruction and an openly declared war. (I blame him for not ramming that through when we had the opportunity. it's one of the things I've always admired about the Republicans.) 

Yet you dare talk about divisiveness? This man that you elected specifically because he was going to "break the mold" and has managed to violate every rule of political and social decorum? 

 Hillary was in your mind a murderer, a fraud, crook, and monster bitch, but, again, you refuse to apply the same standards - and we're not talking about political things, like political posturing and agenda driven spin, reasonable people can disagree - to truly monstrous behavior. 

 Your concern for Hillary and Bill's misogyny is interesting, given your support for a man who takes great pride in it. 

 You misidentify George Soros as a Nazi, which would be a terrible thing if it were true and not more drivel but this mutt is alt-right flea-bitten and somehow that raises not even one eyebrow. 

Acorn, a community-based organization, was this supposed national threat, but the idea of someone actually tampering with election results? Nothing about which we should be concerned? 

Saul Alinsky, a pretty esoteric political figure prior to the Obama candidacy, is about as centrist a leftist as there comes. His organizing principles are fairly consistently used by both sides. However, he was characterized as somehow a communist. (Or a fascist, you really don't know the difference do you?) 

You think the president's love affair with Putin is no big deal. We sat through countless investigations of things Clinton but collusion by our sworn enemy, no big deal? You don't even see any analogous behavior in Trump's attacks on our institutions like the intelligence agencies and the media. Are you "heightening the contradictions"? Are you a fellow Traveler? Hell, you fabricated an entire conspiracy around the horrible events in Benghazi and now you think the Deep State (you know the internecine liberal organizations like the CIA and the FBI, DNC & RNC) have taken over and are trying to corrupt this wonderful presidency that we finally have. 

Emails, another manufactured crisis. it went from that to an investigation and then all sorts of umbrage when she wasn't prosecuted. Remember? but wait, the new Administration has been caught in numerous instances of the same sort of conduct. Now it seems that he's discussing sensitive confidential matters on his unprotected iPhone. Who cares, right? 

And then there's the born-again Christians. God! there is a spot reserved in the deepest parts of hell for your hypocrisy. You have fly-specked, counter-spun, and mischaracterized just about everything Obama and Clinton has ever said or done, engaging in some of the more bizarre theories and, yet, this bozo - who does not hide what he's doing - gets a pass. The best explanation I can put on that is that you are engaging in a rearguard action as a defense mechanism for not having to explain yourself. You objected on every ostensible moral, legal, libertarian, and constitutional ground to just about everything proposed by the Obama Administration but now openly talk about shooting people at the border, taking away protester rights, infringing on personal liberties, and things that openly flirt with authoritarianism. 

You reject science and pervert history. Oh yes, indeed, you are surely the party of Lincoln. If only you knew what that meant. Your political actions speak volumes otherwise. When now faced with the evidence of gerrymandering, voter repression, the internment of children, and a whole laundry list of things that go against common, if not political, decency, all we get out of you is a big power politik spin (How can anyone oppose requiring an ID to vote? The separation of children from their families was previously happening.) or, worse yet, an indifferent yawn. 

You don't discriminate because you're for everyone. All lives matter, right? Bullshit. Your concern for veterans, minorities, native Americans, children, gays or women is, more often than not, opportunistic and certainly after-the-fact. it's just spin. You don't really give a shit about Jennifer Flowers - as a woman - any more than you want to save Blacks from that horrible plantation we be keeping them down on. 

You're incensed at the DNC's treatment of Bernie; are ya now? You rely for your alternative facts on folks that have openly declared that they have an axe to grind, folks who, even at the top of their barking chain, shouldn't even be trusted to bag your groceries. Voter id is not voter suppression. Quit conflating the two. you jump to conclusions that are not only far-fetched, they're antithetical. Someone sends a bomb; the Democrats, they must have sent the bombs to themselves. It's revealed that it's some Maniac Trump supporter, he must have been paid by the Democrats. An immigrant Caravan? who is putting that together? Where are they staying? Who is feeding them? they're marching here so that they can collectively steal the election. what planet do you live on? 

Most of us already live in the ideological enclaves our communities have become, but you've managed to cloister yourself even more, cocooned in little support groups, exacerbating ignorance by layering your comfort food of misinformation and hysteria on it. Yes, infect the matrix! That's why you see conspiracies everywhere. They're like the sharks in the ice cubes to you. Yet, you don't see the turd in the punchbowl.

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We Are In Deep State

We Are In Deep State

Trump's "Deep State" complaints are no mere fantasy. There really are people who aspire to be Puppet Masters. They pull the strings of political power and economic resources to get their way.

When you talk about the Deep State what you're really talking about are the people that are manifesting political power, often in a less than transparent manner, but not necessarily so. 

There's a Deep Blue State and there's a Deep Red state and, of course, they are part of the Political Ship of State. They work in, with, under, and around it. In turn, both of these elements are controlled and manipulated by the Money Class.

How Trump has managed to paint himself as somehow outside of that picture is a wonder.

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Trump is not the scary part.

Trump is not the scary part. I have faith in the electorate. I think he's toast. You can ascribe it to whatever you'd like but I'm pretty sure he's gone. If nothing else he will leave this earthly plane soon enough having made his mark as the epitome of political disaster. 

What is scary is that the good people that I know - the Law and Order folks, the folks that have been engaging in all sorts of fanciful beefs: how the justice department was being "weaponized" by Obama, who wanted to try Nancy Pelosi for "treason" or Hillary Clinton for how she handled Benghazi, Biden for graft, where countless Congressional hearings and internal investigations about any number of supposed transgressions... 

I could go on...but basically the folks that want to tear things down because they have all sorts of political and cultural grievances are now, presumption of innocence fully engaged,  standards of proof somehow much more stringent, willing to turn a blind eye to what this maniac has truly been doing (and has been promising to do). He is to them, somehow, the victim.

We've watched him misbehave, now in HD in a court of law. What he is doing is more of the same. It's what he did with the election results. He sets up chaos for his shenanigans by claiming everything is rigged. He is a man-child and the folks that keep being his willing accomplices are like the kids who are in the back seat looking out the side windows while daddy caroms down the highway recklessly.

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Run Rabbit Run

On a scale of 10, I would give the Democrats a four and a five for two stunts they pulled this week: bringing Robert De Niro to the New York trial; and getting their panties in a twist over a 3-year-old flag incident at a Supreme Court Justice's home. 

The first fell flat, chiefly because it was cheap theatrics and, well, embarrassing. It looked like imitation Trump. (You know the old saying about imitation being flattery.)

As for the flag, that dog not only didn't hunt, it was Dead on Arrival. You guys don't have enough good will to spend it frivolously. And, certainly, when you realize that it's a dead dog, quit beating it, it's not coming back to life. Cut your losses. Run.

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What A Kicker

Six or seven months ago I had given zero thoughts to professional football, much less the Chiefs. So little, in fact, that I would have had to guess that Kansas City went in front of the team's name, but that would have been just a guess. (I did recognize Mahomes from television commercials.) 

When I mentioned - for reasons that presently escape me, probably that I was caught up in her whirlwind - that Taylor Swift was dating "some football guy", I had my consciousness raised; he was a high profile celebrity, my truly-male friends told me. 

We all weathered the information orgy that followed. And, too, the reactionary energy it seemed to propagate from both haters and defenders.

Imagine how little I know about the Chief's place kicker. He's got to be a hell of an athlete if he's on a professional team. But I can't explain (and I guess if I was really interested I'd go look it up) why he would be giving a commencement speech. Is he from that school? Is he from that state? Is it because he's on Taylor Swift's team? Why would anyone care what he thinks? 

Whatever the reason, he's entitled to his opinion, no matter how goofy I might think it be. What does strike me though is that, again, the roles are reversed. The defenders are now the haters and vice versa. 

Excoriated and villainized, what he says has been exaggerated and extrapolated, characterized into something akin to his calling for women to wear a hijab. The folks that had their panties in a twist over all of the attention that Taylor Swift was getting can't shut their yap about him. He's a regular Albert Einstein. Hell, they're even buying the team shirt of a place kicker. 

Maybe it's just a much needed diversion from the real horrors that are before us, here, and there. Or, it's these pressures making us emotionally fatigued and less considerate of each other. Whatever the reason, the reality it that it's just three young people - Harrison, Taylor, and Travis - living their lives and making their mark while the rest of the world falls too easily into the cesspool of umbrage and bathos.

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Mother's Day

Once a year for Mother's Day I post things I've written about my mother. It's my way of celebrating her. It's unvarnished, somewhat tawdry, and unapologetic. And, even more than on her birthday or the day that she died - probably because it's the day where we're all talking about our mothers - I'm plunged into a bunch of maudlin reminiscences. I will spend the day neurotically rereading and reliving these memories and shedding more than a few tears. This year would have been no different, but for my nephew Scott's posting something about the passing of his mother, my dear sister and the second most important planet in my universe. 

He and his dad had gone to Red Lobster, something that the three of them had done on Mother's Day. That was for me also bittersweet. In one of the rare instances when my mother had come to visit me, I had taken her out to dinner. She wanted to go to the Red Lobster. But being the effete foodie, I took her to a really nice place and of course she proceeded to sabotage it and we had a fight about it. During that same trip, we went to New Orleans and she saw a garland of garlic that she wanted and I refused to buy it because it cost all of $45. 

I often beat myself up about that and all of the other times that I did or said things that I shouldn't have or times when my actions could have been more gracious. It makes me sad. But then I talk myself off the ledge because I know there wasn't a thing in the world that I could have done that would have made her stop loving me, a realization that I came to late in life after I had my own son. It helps me break out of my melancholy and celebrate the things we did together, the joyous times, the tremendous moments of love our family has shared. It brings me comfort.

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The Road Yet Traveled

Trial delays are part and parcel of a good criminal defense. But in the case of a guy who was President and is running for the office again, they will have done nothing more than cause further chaos and a foreseeable cataclysm.

Trump has standing indictments, both for crimes committed while he was president and ones after he left office. There may be some legal arguments about his pre- or post-office status or immunity, but those prosecutions will not disappear just because he becomes president. 

The sky will be dark with chickens coming home to roost. Whether he is president or not, these indictments will be litigated. That probably will not happen without ever more escalating petulant drama. 

Feel free to disagree that things are getting much better under Biden, but do think ahead about what are not just plausible implications but a looming gloomy reality. 

I hate doomsday scenarios but, given this man's history, his temperament - and what he has said he is going to do - think of the political turmoil Trump becoming President would cause and what you can easily imagine that he will feel empowered to do.

And that's only one side of the coin. What if he doesn't get elected? More of the same? In years to come this will be the defining attributes of his Administration's legacy.

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Why can't the anguished speak their minds?

Just saw that the governor of New York weighing in on "Palestinian Protests" as if they are categorically unlawful. Also last week, hearings on anti-semitism on college campuses. (Was there a hearing on Islamophobia?) I am, a supporter of Israel and have been so decades before this became - for some, certainly not all - a right wing/Christian Nationalist/Zionist campaign. Driven by the horrible Hamas genocide, it seems outrage and emotion has overpowered our sense of nuance, parity, and fairness.

Why can't the anguished speak their minds? "War is Hell" is no excuse for barbarity - from either side. Being Palestinian doesn't make you a member of Hamas (if you claim it, it's on you. So, too, If you chant Death to America) or disqualify you from being upset at what is happening in Gaza. It certainly doesn't justify blanket crack downs on speech.

Being pro-Israel doesn't blind me to the differences in its political spectrum or the history that has led some to the politics of exasperation and revenge. Nor to some of its failings. Because I support human rights for everyone, I am against movements that are driven by zealots, no matter to what "religion" they belong.

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LA FAMILIA MENDEZ

 LA FAMILIA MENDEZ

[this is a work-in-progress; updated 4/5/24]

Mario Méndez-Colón

Mario Méndez-Colón was born in Lares, Puerto Rico, province of Spain, to Marcelina Colón-Perez, age 13, and Bernardo Méndez-Cruz, age 26. In 1898, eighteen year old Mario, a native son of this central mountainous region that was the wellspring of the island’s revolt against Spain, would witness the invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States. He was now part of the spoils of war. 

There is no indication that Mario was in the least bit political or centered on anything but the survival of his family. But his spirit was unquestionably instilled in his offspring. In 1908, now living in Utuado, he would marry Maria Porfiria Velez-Montalvo, six years his junior. They would have thirteen children. Ten of them would survive; some of them would become part of the vast Puerto Rican migration to New York, all would remain doggedly proud of their heritage. Theirs was a pride borne of an amalgam of years of personal identification melded with political struggle, economic privation coupled with cultural identity. 

By 1910, Mario and Porfiria, along with their two infant children Virginia and Sixto, were living in Utuado’s barrio Angeles. A coffee farmer, Mario and his little family were somewhat better off than their peers. But a decade later, their situation had worsened. They now had eight kids and were living in Lares where he worked as a laborer and in another ten years, the family would grow even more so, now to include eleven kids and with no one but Mario working, now growing fruit. 

By 1935, everyone in the family was pitching in;  Mario,  an agricultor, worked on a tobacco farm, Porfiria and Virginia worked at home as seamstresses. Twenty five year old Sixto worked as a store clerk and Jose, Rosa and Gonzalo were laborers on a tobacco farm. The older children would soon leave. Of the four that remained at home,  Blanca and Celina worked as bordaderas in a textile workshop. Their world would collapse fully in 1942 with the death of Porfiria, the watershed moment that marks the beginning of their odyssey. 

On January 11, 1944,  preceding by only a few months the Allied invasion of Normandy, Celina, one of Mario’s younger daughters. along with her four-month-old infant, would board a seaplane at Isla Grande and head to NY. She would be the tip of the spear. On October 21, 1946, as seemingly a counterpoint to the European theater, Vina, his oldest, along with her husband and their teen, would also leave San Juan for the Big Apple. So, too, Irma, the youngest daughter; she with a baby forty days old. They were followed a short time later by Estrella, the wife of one of his sons. She would travel with baby Blanca, six-year-old Mario, and infant Jose to rendezvous with her husband Orestes. Sixto, the oldest male, had preceded them in getting to New York a few months earlier. Their siege of New York City had begun. They would ultimately merge with others and in the process forge a tightly knit vibrant tribe.

Virginia and Moises Perez

When Virginia “Viña” Mendez-Velez de Perez was born on June 11, 1909, in Utuado, Puerto Rico, her father, Mario, was 29, and her mother, Maria, was 22. She married Ramon Moisés Pérez-Montalvo on June 30, 1929, in Utuado, living there until their migration to New York in 1946.

The first born, she was by virtue of that status the matriarch. While her siblings were mercurial and histrionic, she was the wizened and stoic elder. She calmed turbulent waters, helped litigate tribal disputes or just pass along sage advice. She was the chairman of the board. She commanded respect, maintained a proper demeanor, and never engaged in the hysterics that characterized her sisters.

Moises, to whom she had always been married - from their early days in rural Puerto Rico where the young couple, now with two young children, struggled to eke out a hard scrabble living,  he on a tobacco farm and she in a sewing workshop, to their migration to the land where the streets are paved with gold - was her perfect counterfoil; quiet and meek.  She was the strong one in their family, as is true of every one of the Mendez women. Together, they raised, in addition to her three kids, her niece Lydia.

They lived for many years on New York’s West Side where Moises was the superintendent of a tenant building. Forced out by urban renewal, The moved to Rockaway Beach, and then back to the fatherland where they both now rest in peace. She died on October 29, 1993, at the age of 84.

Sixto and Angelina ("Chela") Rios

Sixto Mendez-Velez, born in Utuado in 1910, was Mario incarnate. He bore his father’s physical features of blonde hair and blue eyes - and also, his temperament. Like Virginia, he took seriously the responsibilities and demeanor expected of the elder children and, also by nature of his station, was given proper respect. Industrious, hard-working, and taciturn,  he was best left unbothered, lest you find that you had riled a hornet’s nest.

He and Angelina Rios-Montalvo, two years his junior, married in 1935. Also of  Utuado, “Chela” shared his childhood background, living at home while the males worked on farms and the women took in sewing. She eventually left the nest, living as a boarder while working in a sewing workshop in Utuado, and then almost immediately marrying Sixto. Daughters Porfiria and Narda, followed closely. Nephew Noel, born in 1941 and niece Iraida, 1937, also joined the family as full members. In February of 1947, Chela, now pregnant with Sixto Jr., shunted her nascent family to New York’s Spanish Harlem where Sixto Sr., having secured a “super” job,  awaited. The birth of Pedro, along with the inclusion of his sister-in-law Janda, completed their tidy little tribe.

They would eventually land in Newark where the kids spent their formative years and Sixto worked as a carpenter. Sara, the youngest of the brood was born in 1957. Their lives, fairly mundane, were upset in 1968 when Noel’s plane was shot down in a fight over Quang Tri province, Viet Nam. His status remained “killed, missing in action” until 2002 when his remains were identified and his status would be changed to “Remains Repatriated”.

In those intervening years, Sixto had retired, moved back to Puerto Rico and then again to Florida where his other siblings now lived. He died  in 1992 and while his death spared him the anguish of his youngest dying of cancer the following year, he never got closure concerning Noel’s death. So, also, Chela, who in death would follow him shortly. 

Rosa, “Pepin” and Ulisses

    Third born Rosa Maria would inhabit this earthly plane until the age of 22. There is some indication that she might have lived for a short while with a cousin in Guajataca, but primarily she lived at home, worked as a laborer on a tobacco farm and died single. 

    Next born, Jose “Pepin” Fabian, also would perish young. Having worked as a tobacco farmer for 8 years, he would die in 1939 at the age of 28, a victim of schistosomiasis, a disease that languished around the centrales, exploiting poverty through poor irrigation and lack of potable water. The death of nine-month-old Ulises had preceded them both.

Bernardino and Amalia Negron

As if these deaths had expurgated those tragedies, the siblings that followed embraced folly. And it would be the remaining males that perfected it as art, pushing life almost to its bacchanalian limits. Fifth-born "Berna"(1914) was, like the two brothers who would follow him, hard-living, joyous. A dedicated and responsible family man, he was characteristically given to a boundless mirth.  Raucous and tumultuous, the  brothers loved to drink to get drunk, tell bawdy stories and argue Independentista politics. 

They had Napoleonic complexes that manifested themselves, not in fighting, but in having a wild and crazy time like no giants before them. They were all  graced with a Mendez heart, which is to say they were loving and generous and full of joy, all qualities sometimes carried to a fault, but always genuine. 

    Bernardino was an itinerant merchant, traveling the country selling trivialities like shoe laces, gum, etc., and like a jester,  often injecting his hijinks into his family’s life lest they die of boredom. Candy for the kids, something pretty for my sister, and - for the old man - rum...what else?

    He would sojourn to the states, tipping his toe into the cultural maelstrom, but always returning to his beloved island. At the age of 24, setting up what would become his history of independent self-employment, “Berna” was living in Utuado with Amelia and infants Nelson Luis and Edna Emeli. A decade later, he had relocated his family, now with two more children - Luz, 10 and Mildred, 5 - to  Aguadilla where he lived until his death in 1986. His father, Mario, now married to the much younger Josefina Collazo Montalvo, lived nearby with their three-year-old Lidia Mendez-Collazo. 

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Tia Viña

 

Tia Viña

Tia Viña was the first born and by virtue of that status was the matriarch. While her siblings were mercurial and histrionic, she was the wizened and stoic elder. She calmed turbulent waters, helped litigate tribal disputes or just pass along sage advice. She was the  Dalai Lama-Mendez. She commanded respect, maintained a proper demeanor, and never engaged in the hysterics that characterized my mother or Tia Blanca. She was supposedly the most milquetoast of the bunch. 

But beneath that velvet glove...

Her husband Moises, to whom she had always been married - from their early days in rural Puerto Rico where the young couple, now with two young children, struggled to eke out a hard scrabble living, he on a tobacco farm and she in a sewing workshop, to their migration to the land where the streets are paved with gold - was her perfect counterfoil; quiet and meek.  She was the strong one in their family, as is true of every one of the Mendez women. Together, they raised, in addition to her three kids, my sister. 

They lived for many years on New York’s West Side where Moises was the superintendent of a large apartment building, moving later to Rockaway Beach, and then back to the fatherland where they both now rest in peace.

When we were kids the custom was that when a Tia/o arrived at the house we were expected to greet them and ask for the blessing. Now, the Mendez sisters all had differing veneers that hid their really strong personalities. About the only cross word I ever had with her was that she snitched me out by telling the rest of the family about me getting caught shoplifting. 

When she and Tio got to the house, I snubbed her. 

I made it a point to come to the welcome queue and then walked away. 

"What the hell is this?," she bellowed in an uncharacteristically aggressive manner. Tio, tried to cut her off. "Virginia, Dios santisimo...." 

"No!" She slapped him down. She was outraged and would not tolerate it. The die was cast. "What?", she demanded of me "is going on?" Where in the hell was her blessing request?

I looked at her, my mother, and Tio .........

I caved. 

"Bendición, Tia.""Bendición, mijo. Que Dios te cuide." 

And just as quickly, the storm passed.

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Memories of things future

(This originally appeared in a 1979 "Contacts" article I used to write for Azalea City News & Review) 

  

 We look at the present through a rear view mirror, looking at where we have just been instead of looking at where we are going, McLuhan’s Medium is the Message tells us. He, like the Tao pundits, can find cosmic messages betrayed in their mundane hiding places, but you can find them through a joy ride on our highways. 

Ride east from Mobile through the time warp of the old tunnel out over the Bayway to the Malbis exit and Highway 90. History is enmeshed here at this corner of the Malbis plantation and the restaurant. Riding through late 19th century Loxley toward Spanish Pensacola, your perception of time changes. A few years ago the Causeway was the only way to get to this corner of the old "Mobile Highway" now it is the Bayway. 

The Bayway, capped off by the Wallace tunnel, is symbolic of the New Engineering that has been overtaking our society. It marks its official arrival in Mobile, although it probably began with Mobile Greyhound Park and can be traced most recently to the new Hilton. Mobile is "growing up". New Money, with its innovation and daring is here. The old ways have outlived some of their usefulness, but life on the new mental interstates can be so fast we only catch a glimmer of them from our mirrors as they go by. 

The Bayway is sleek, an extension of the interstate mentality of getting from here to there, the fast road to some place else. Highways are concrete artifacts of our sentiments, our priorities, and history. The Bayway is not only the major artery now, it has imposed its reality on the Causeway by killing it. Survivor of so many natural catastrophes, it has merely been circumvented. The road goes on. 

The interstate used to be a mindless 70 mph jaunt. The only thing that’s changed is that it is now a nerve-racking 65 mph as we worry about gas shortages and state troopers. Back on these desolate miles between Malbis and Spanish Fort - the trees and woods, the straight-ahead two-lane blacktop, the timeless little cities - we get a reprieve from this imposition. We can enjoy the road for what it is. 

But at the end of the road where it hooks back onto the main artery there are the cosmic and real signs announcing the multi-million-dollar shopping complex. The woods give way to bulldozers as developers create the need for a mall out here in the wilderness that borders the pioneer Lake Forest complex. The stretch of road is a microcosm of the passage of time, the old forced to give way to the new. 

We’re on the road to Catch Up and it seems natural that we make our way - be it ethereal or tangible - as straight ahead, as clearly delineated, as powerful and as efficiently as possible. But let’s not forget the lesson of the Causeway, or this little loop of highway here at Malbis, or the intersection at Grand Bay or the beauty that once was a charming Fairhope. Let’s go down these highways with our face full forward, knowing where we have been and where we’re going. The mindset of future potential must not overshadow the debt we owe to the past or we will be doomed, as McLuhan says, to attach ourselves to the objects, to only the flavor of the most recent past as we march backwards into the future.

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Another Amazing Week (Noel)

Last week was another series of amazing (good) things about the internet. Here is a series of emails I received out of the blue:

Good morning, I am looking for my biological father. I believe you are closely related to him. Would you please contact me. XXXXXX

......

One more piece of information for you as I know you are taking a risk to reach out. I was adopted. My biological mother did not tell him that she was pregnant. They were both students at University of Arizona in Tucson. He was in the military. She described him as very intelligent, funny, serious and quiet. He loved sports and reading. He was 22, 5’6” and 150 pounds. Puerto Rican.

......

I don't have access to your dna profile. Have you looked at my family trees? I have two (screwup) Domingo Soto and Domingo Soto-Mendez. What year was it when he was 22? Was he in the military (branch?) while he was in college? I am not aware of any of my family members having lived in Arizona.

......

I will try to forward my DNA, not sure how to do that but will try. He was 22 in 1969. 5’6”, 150 lbs, blue eyes, dark brown hair. He was in the Air Force at Davis Monthan Air Force base in Tucson,AZ My closest match is Porfiria XXXXXX (managed by XXXXXX), however I don’t think she’s active on Ancestry

......

That sounds like my cousin Noel Rios Acevedo. Died in Viet Nam.

......

Oh my goodness, thank you!!!! I have a close dna match with XXXXXX on Ancestry. I noticed the name Narda in the pictures. Is that Noel’s sister? Thank you so much for sharing this. I really appreciate you.

......

Not Nardi, Narda

......

Good morning Domingo, it looks like (from the family tree) that I have a brother or a sister? Did Noel have a child before he went to Vietnam?

......

Narda, Porfiria, Peter (Pedro), and Sixto were raised together with (I think first Cousins) Noel and Iraida. Judging from their last names they were probably Chela's (Angelina) sibling's kids and went to live with Sixto and Chela while still in PR. Noel was MIA for a pretty long time. I will try to find some of the things I've written about it. I had a personal website and through it two of Noels kids showed up. I will try to find that out for you. Narda XXXXXX lives in Tampa. Porfiria just died.

Wall of Faces

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My Cousin Noel

Tio Sixto was, I think, the oldest male of the 13 siblings.

Our grandparents came from Utuado, Puerto Rico

Mendez Family Album

Mendez Famil 2

Mendez Family3

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APRIL 10

btw april 3 was his birthday

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XXXXXX

It’s been wonderful to look at all these photographs. What a beautiful family!!

I don’t have Facebook so I can’t access that information. My husband is on FB, his name is XXXXXX I’m so curious about what he was like, his personality.

Thank you Domingo! ------------

We have a family fb mario mendez feel free to join. Also, make sure you read the comments in the wall site, will make you proud. I'm on fb and blogger.

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XXXXXX

Very proud, thank you so much

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Joe Cain Redux

This is a picture of two biracial middle-aged males - strangers caught up in the moment - dancing in the graveyard while Martin Johnson, a local official with the social security administration speechifies, a White man dressed as The Chief in the background. If you know Mobile, you know the symbolism of that picture in the general sense and specifically as to the significance of Joe Cain Day.

Another picture - one of my fondest memories - is of my son Zack's first "real" Joe Cain day. We painted our faces; he rode on my back as we peddled through the procession. He couldn't contain himself.  He was so thrilled, he shook. He hugged me; "I love this daddy."

But that wasn't his first Joe Cain. That's him as a toddler. He's in his stroller with me playing ground control to our "dragon". We proudly trotted it out having spent the weekend with a bunch of friends making it. Nothing fancy or carefully thought out. Chicken wire and hula hoops. It was a hoot. Creative and chaotic and for no other purpose than to have fun. 

The Joe Cain Day I knew is so different from what it is today, changes wrought by its own success. Beginning with the move to protect the graveyard from its yearly mauling, to the imposition of controls over what once had been an unbridled contemporaneous ad-libbed people's party that grew too old for its britches. This event - now "structured" - is more like your father's old Mobile. Mardi Gras' character also changed when they took the parade route off Dauphin Street. Change can be colonic. That Joe Cain Day has somehow managed to maintain its quirky celebratory character is attributable to the advocacy of people like Wayne Dean.

Here's  link to my Flickr Mardi Gras photos

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Advent Calendar: Noche Buena

Noche Buena (the good night) is Christmas Eve night, our traditional family and party night. Noche Buena is also a "poinsettia", which is, of course, the Christmas flower. (Capicu.) It is usually kicked off with a traditional family dinner. In our Jersey days, the immediate families would have dinner at home and then trek off to Irvington to Tio Alfonso and Tia Celina's to party their asses off. But whether it was at Tia's or at home, the Christmas feast was probably keynoted by a Lechon ("Pernil" or Roast Pig) and Arroz (rice) con Gandules (pigeon peas) or rice and beans (and, in keeping with Tio's Cuban heritage they would be black beans), pasteles, morcilla, and, for dessert, arroz con dulce and a ton of other sweets.

THE HOLIDAY MEAL

"Jibaro" (Puerto Rico) and "Guajiro" (Cuba) are terms for the common Ever'man that can be both nostalgic reminiscences or, like "redneck", epithets. They romanticize our agrarian past (and sanitize more trying times. Peruse, for example the lyrics to "Lamento Borincano") So it's no wonder that wherever those members of our diaspora congregate - and my family is in every part of the United States, France, and Belgium - we try to recreate the shiny facets of our culture's past. We dance, we sing, we party, and we eat. And that includes pork, the mainstay of our diet. No Christmas would be complete without a pernil, preferably cooked over an open pit.

I miss my family. "The visit" was an at-least-once-weekly occurrence and, especially so during holidays. An ever-ubiquitous function was the sun around which our family orbited. So, during the holidays especially, I do a lot of reminiscing. We all do. And sometimes we go beyond nostalgia and try to recreate those times.

One year we traveled to Tampa where my cousins were busy digging a pit and preparing a pig - slow cooked over time - the way it was done in the old country. Luckily Carlos and I had to get back to Mobile before the party because they ended up poisoning just about everyone in the family.

My step-father was called The Old Man as both an epithet and term or endearment, a comment on his age and on his status as the head of the house. My mother was a seamstress who worked at home. For pretty much all of our lives, he was our contact with the real world.

He worked as a letter carrier and had some sort of posh route on Madison Avenue in New York. He probably got the nice route by virtue of his responsible nature. You could hear him rattling pots and pans at 4 am as he set out from Jersey City to make the trek to New York. Even in a blizzard he'd still get there. I bet he never missed more than four days in the many many years he worked for them and this only because of some sort of city shutdown.

He had a habit of bringing things home that he might run into while at work. Interesting things, like horse meat. Just to try it. He loved gadgets and electronics (I remember one year he bought home a thing to make your television a color television which was actually a piece of acetate that you pasted on the front of the tv.) and especially his cars, which you could find him shining on any Saturday morning.

One holiday - I'm not sure if it was to cuts costs or if someone gave it to him - he brought home a live duck or a goose. Whatever it was, it was a huge animal. The plan was that they would have a fresh-killed dinner like the ones in PR. I must have been about 4 or 5, making Papo 3 or 2, Eddie one year less, etc.

At any rate we were really little kids, living with our parents in this small New York City apartment and so we set out to watch the spectacle of the old man killing this thing he had just brought home.

He put it into the bathtub. And maybe it was because it was so huge you can't kill it like you kill a chicken, by wringing its neck, or maybe he just doesn't remember his campesino days. But, for whatever reason he takes an ax and whacks its head off.

All hell breaks loose. This thing starts jerking, squalling and shrieking so hard it surprises him and, in a panic, he let's go. It comes up out of the bathtub like some sort of Phoenix. My brother and I run away in terror, covering our heads as this thing flies around the apartment spewing blood, shit, and innards over everything, finally collapsing somewhere.

This is one of my favorite and earliest anecdotes. Not because it went so swimmingly, because, obviously, it didn't. But because it's another vibrant memory of the many characters with whom I share a past. Along the way we all screw up, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes not. But in the end, we're family and it's these memories, the good, the bad and the "MEH", that makes my family so special to me. 

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It Only Hurts When I Laugh

"I don't know how the physics of comedy works"  Drew Michael says  in his HBO special "Red Blue Green".  And you might wonder if in that moment that is a confessional disclaimer, him just sharing what has every semblance of a mental breakdown, or a deliciously complex and wonderfully intelligent routine. Even as the final credits roll, you won't know which one that is.

There's an undercurrent trend in comedy these days where really talented comedians break out of standup's conventional boxes. They are at the opposite end of the spectrum, far away from slapstick, crude poo and sex jokes, or the ham-fisted use of politics, profanity and outrage merely for their own sake. It's a trend that could easily be confused for a Brene Brown TED talk. Hannah Gadsby, Lliza Schlesinger, and Ali Wong leap immediately to mind. 

"We are always our most terrifying audience," he says at one point and you can see why that might be so. His schtick is centered around self-effacement and vulnerability. It is an entertainment that is at times both discomfiting and wondrous, like watching a car wreck video,  as he pushes his own buttons and at times your own.

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