The portrait appears on the plate,
unique
when ink is fresh
and brayer new.
Early discovery reveals
sharp lines in black-
the slick impression of you.
With the second pull,
unimaginable
details seep
from the void
as dark eyes stare back.
This image is not
what I expected.
The printer’s hands are
tainted
as paper is wrenched
from the block.
Pieces go missing:
an ear, the nose,
or the heart.
The paper now exposed-
Flat
with deckle edges
chewed by a grinder.
You will look handsome here,
in the post office gallery
of other killers.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
A Terminal Song
I wait and read in Terminal C,
while tourists drum pass with a
clack, click, click.
Voices rise to the top of the clef
In a wayfarer hymn while
light lyrics soar in tandem melody.
Wouldn’t it be nice to not fly alone?
At the airport bar sits a man
silently praying for someone
to join the refrain of his story.
As John Lennon croons:
Let It Be , Let It Be,
voices quiet to the holy words.
Couldn’t love happen in Terminal C?
When Yesterday drifts through the terminal,
pages of memories
open and close.
I have been told that
a good story
must have a moving finale.
Shouldn’t I try to write one myself?
I’d create a small cottage-
porches, azaleas, and maybe a cat.
I have yet to decide every detail, but
this thing’s for sure,
I would write in a lover
for a great conclusion.
Can’t I compose a storybook ending?
I skim the lines of passing people-
African, Asian, Hispanic, and White.
Flying words lift in rhythm:
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, life goes on, right?
The terminal song continues while
I wait and read.
Perhaps I should just Let It Be.
while tourists drum pass with a
clack, click, click.
Voices rise to the top of the clef
In a wayfarer hymn while
light lyrics soar in tandem melody.
Wouldn’t it be nice to not fly alone?
At the airport bar sits a man
silently praying for someone
to join the refrain of his story.
As John Lennon croons:
Let It Be , Let It Be,
voices quiet to the holy words.
Couldn’t love happen in Terminal C?
When Yesterday drifts through the terminal,
pages of memories
open and close.
I have been told that
a good story
must have a moving finale.
Shouldn’t I try to write one myself?
I’d create a small cottage-
porches, azaleas, and maybe a cat.
I have yet to decide every detail, but
this thing’s for sure,
I would write in a lover
for a great conclusion.
Can’t I compose a storybook ending?
I skim the lines of passing people-
African, Asian, Hispanic, and White.
Flying words lift in rhythm:
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, life goes on, right?
The terminal song continues while
I wait and read.
Perhaps I should just Let It Be.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Arriving in Burundi
Sometimes a travel adventure has nothing to do with climbing a mountain peak, with the scree, the winds, or the volcanic steam. Nor does a trip have to be to a pristine beach, with fig trees, conch shells and tumbling surf. Sometimes a journey is about the people, people who at first glance seem as curious as the images in a National Geographic Magazine, bearing baskets on their heads, and wearing colorful sarongs. These are the people I saw, when I stepped onto the red soil of Burundi.
Burundi is the tiny landlocked country in the heart of Africa, that even the most experienced adventurer would have trouble placing. Bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east, and the Congo to the west, the Burundian mountains with their fragrant, silver eucalyptus forests, roll down to the plains which sweep westward in a polka of clay and trees, to the dark blue waters of Lake Tanganyika. So distant, it was the last area of Africa to be colonized during the European expansion of the late eighteen hundreds.
Burundi is one of the poorest places on earth. Ranking at the bottom of the World Values Survey for happiness, and sadly claiming the shortest life expectancy of any people, 27 years for the Batwa tribe, there would seem to be little reason to visit there. Even the mountain gorillas are gone. Disease, poverty, corruption, and violence have isolated this heart shaped country from all but the heartiest of travelers.
Nearly nine thousand miles separate my home in the fir forests of Washington State, from the savannah grasslands of the Burundian highlands. There is no easy way to get there. I was part of an Episcopal mission team that flew from Washington, DC, to Rome, and on to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Kigali, Rwanda, before arriving in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi. Looking around the airport lounge in Ethiopia, I could see that a change had occurred. Only a small number of the people waiting to board the Seattle-made Boeing 767 were white, and we were dressed alike. We had heavy backpacks, trekking clothing, hiking boots, and t-shirts imprinted with the names of our individual organizations. No one was on vacation. No one was a tourist. We had come from England, America, and Canada to work in central Africa. We were engineers, missionaries, scientists, and educators, flying across the globe to install water and sewage systems, to build clinics and schools. On board our jet, in spite of the exhaustion of extended air travel, when days and nights merge, and time on a wrist watch becomes meaningless, strangers spoke with each other like old friends, grasping hands and smiling.
A woman across the aisle from me nodded and said, “I live in DC. I have family in the Congo. You must go there sometime, but only to the south. It’s not safe in the north.”
With a thick southern accent, the middle-aged man directly behind me introduced himself. “I am from Alabama, heading to Zambia with Water Missions. Here is my card.”
My traveling companion for the flight to Rwanda was a happy round-faced man with tortoise-shelled glasses. “I am an attorney,” he said. “Yes, originally I was from Burundi, but I won’t go back. I am not political.”
What my new attorney friend could not bring himself to tell me was that he was Hutu. I would learn later how to identify the three tribes that live in Burundi based on their physical features, and I would be instructed to never speak those names aloud. If we must, we could refer to Burundians as tall, shorter, or the shortest, but we should never refer to them as Hutu, Tutsi, or Batwa.
The current peace in Burundi is as fragile as a feathery Acacia blossom, and violence, although rarely mentioned in the US newspapers, happens weekly. The civil war that raged in Burundi from the early 1970’s and lasted for thirty years was a genocide that killed hundreds of thousands of people. My flying companion looked to be thirty or forty years old. He would have been in college during the worst of the atrocities. Like the people who could afford to do so, he left his home in Burundi for a better life. This day, he was returning to Rwanda from a shopping trip in Rome. Who could blame him? He wore a beautiful new red cashmere sweater with a matching checked shirt made in Italy.
He smiled, handed me his card, and said, “I wouldn’t worry about the grenade this week in Gitega. It was out of the way, in a neighborhood behind the marketplace. It only killed two.” I was heading to work in an orphanage in Gitega. I was traveling out of the way. I said nothing.
There are nine airports in Burundi, but only one has a paved runway, L’Aeroport International de Bujumbura. As I walked toward the terminal to have my visa, with its three shiny silver stickers, scrutinized by the authorities, I snapped a photo of the white metal domes that lined the tarmac. A police officer came running toward our group. The airport was a government building. No government buildings could be photographed. I hid my camera in the pocket of my long black missionary skirt. He grabbed the camera hanging from around the neck of our team leader, and looked through the digital images. There were no pictures of the white domes. My photo was safe. Welcome to Burundi.
On the opposite side of the airport, adjacent to the parking lot, where the red, green and white national flag flapped in the wind, and the Poinciana trees bloomed in crimson, our ramshackle bus waited to transport us to the King’s Conference Center for the night, to rest before church in the morning, and then to take us to the mountain town of Gitega. This would be our home for the next two weeks. The sun was hot in the afternoon, and the terracotta earth held fast to the heat like a brick baking in a kiln.
Instantly, I felt at home. I was born in North Carolina, a state famous for red brick. I laughed at my ease, because I was the most frightened of our team to go to Africa. I had spent hundreds of dollars for the latest survival gear from REI, and had thrown my dive knife in my suitcase at the last minute, just for good measure. I had brought enough medication to cure our entire team of an epidemic of dysentery. I was afraid of disease and parasites. If it existed, it originated in Burundi. Internet photos showed examples of local people inflicted with elephantiasis. There is no vaccine. I had been inoculated against yellow fever, typhoid fever, and polio. I was eating my malaria pills like candy. I could not afford the one thousand dollar rabies vaccination. Through the dusty bus window, I scanned the landscape for diseased dogs, as we bounced along the road to the capital, dodging pot holes, trenches, and large rocks. The springs beneath our seats squeaked with every bump. I saw no animals. I clutched the new REI water bottle in my lap.
Through the grimy glass of the bus window, the glaring sunlight unfolded a strange panorama before me. A young man in a blue striped shirt walked with buckling knees in the orange dirt, carrying five large foam mattresses on his head. His skull and hands disappeared into the foam under the weight of his load. A young boy walked beside his mother with a three-layered stack of egg cartons balanced on his head. She carried a straw basket filled with corn, which sloped forward at a fashionable angle, like an Easter bonnet. Her orange and green sarong was tied over one shoulder revealing a clashing pink shirt below. Everyone was walking. Everyone was carrying something on his or her heads. They turned and stopped to stare at our bus of white faces as we passed.
Deep channels edged the road, in anticipation of the rainy season that had yet to arrive. Vendors sat on blue traps, displaying used luggage, probably left behind by earlier missionaries. Small wooden tables shaded by large golf umbrellas displayed nuts and sodas for sale. Behind the merchants stretched stucco walls stained terracotta at the base from the clay earth, and topped with broken bottles or razor wire for security against crime. In the distance, a smoky haze coated the mountains and blurred the blue forests.
When we arrived at the Conference Center, it was dinnertime. Emelyne and Donavine greeted us with calla lilies and roses tied in white ribbons. A wedding reception had begun, and a crowd had gathered outside the entrance gate. The thunderous sound of wooden sticks against cowhide boomed in the background as the Burundian drummers pounded their beat in unison. Bosco came forward with an outstretched hand, and a broad toothy smile that extended from ear to ear.
“Amahoro,” he welcomed in Kirundi.
“Amahoro,” I responded. I had practiced my greeting from Seattle to Bujumbura.
Bosco and I gripped right hands together. I had been taught the proper way to meet someone in this foreign land. I took my left hand and placed it over my right forearm. He did the same. Through our actions, we conveyed without words that we were to be trusted, that our left hands would bear us no harm.
Kirundi is the native language of Burundi. Amahoro means peace. In a country where harmony is as precarious as a stack of eggs carried on top of a young child’s head, this is their greeting.
Over the next two weeks I would walk along the rutted roads behind the orphanage school, meeting strangers, arms outstretched, and greeting them with a loud and clear, Amahoro. Across from the school, by the edge of the road, was a kiln the size of a small house. Within those hot fires, clay blocks changed into bricks. I would change too. Bosco, Emelyne, and Donavine became my friends. They stand with calla lilies and roses under an Acacia tree, the red earth glowing in the sun, waiting for me to return to Burundi.
Burundi is the tiny landlocked country in the heart of Africa, that even the most experienced adventurer would have trouble placing. Bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east, and the Congo to the west, the Burundian mountains with their fragrant, silver eucalyptus forests, roll down to the plains which sweep westward in a polka of clay and trees, to the dark blue waters of Lake Tanganyika. So distant, it was the last area of Africa to be colonized during the European expansion of the late eighteen hundreds.
Burundi is one of the poorest places on earth. Ranking at the bottom of the World Values Survey for happiness, and sadly claiming the shortest life expectancy of any people, 27 years for the Batwa tribe, there would seem to be little reason to visit there. Even the mountain gorillas are gone. Disease, poverty, corruption, and violence have isolated this heart shaped country from all but the heartiest of travelers.
Nearly nine thousand miles separate my home in the fir forests of Washington State, from the savannah grasslands of the Burundian highlands. There is no easy way to get there. I was part of an Episcopal mission team that flew from Washington, DC, to Rome, and on to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Kigali, Rwanda, before arriving in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi. Looking around the airport lounge in Ethiopia, I could see that a change had occurred. Only a small number of the people waiting to board the Seattle-made Boeing 767 were white, and we were dressed alike. We had heavy backpacks, trekking clothing, hiking boots, and t-shirts imprinted with the names of our individual organizations. No one was on vacation. No one was a tourist. We had come from England, America, and Canada to work in central Africa. We were engineers, missionaries, scientists, and educators, flying across the globe to install water and sewage systems, to build clinics and schools. On board our jet, in spite of the exhaustion of extended air travel, when days and nights merge, and time on a wrist watch becomes meaningless, strangers spoke with each other like old friends, grasping hands and smiling.
A woman across the aisle from me nodded and said, “I live in DC. I have family in the Congo. You must go there sometime, but only to the south. It’s not safe in the north.”
With a thick southern accent, the middle-aged man directly behind me introduced himself. “I am from Alabama, heading to Zambia with Water Missions. Here is my card.”
My traveling companion for the flight to Rwanda was a happy round-faced man with tortoise-shelled glasses. “I am an attorney,” he said. “Yes, originally I was from Burundi, but I won’t go back. I am not political.”
What my new attorney friend could not bring himself to tell me was that he was Hutu. I would learn later how to identify the three tribes that live in Burundi based on their physical features, and I would be instructed to never speak those names aloud. If we must, we could refer to Burundians as tall, shorter, or the shortest, but we should never refer to them as Hutu, Tutsi, or Batwa.
The current peace in Burundi is as fragile as a feathery Acacia blossom, and violence, although rarely mentioned in the US newspapers, happens weekly. The civil war that raged in Burundi from the early 1970’s and lasted for thirty years was a genocide that killed hundreds of thousands of people. My flying companion looked to be thirty or forty years old. He would have been in college during the worst of the atrocities. Like the people who could afford to do so, he left his home in Burundi for a better life. This day, he was returning to Rwanda from a shopping trip in Rome. Who could blame him? He wore a beautiful new red cashmere sweater with a matching checked shirt made in Italy.
He smiled, handed me his card, and said, “I wouldn’t worry about the grenade this week in Gitega. It was out of the way, in a neighborhood behind the marketplace. It only killed two.” I was heading to work in an orphanage in Gitega. I was traveling out of the way. I said nothing.
There are nine airports in Burundi, but only one has a paved runway, L’Aeroport International de Bujumbura. As I walked toward the terminal to have my visa, with its three shiny silver stickers, scrutinized by the authorities, I snapped a photo of the white metal domes that lined the tarmac. A police officer came running toward our group. The airport was a government building. No government buildings could be photographed. I hid my camera in the pocket of my long black missionary skirt. He grabbed the camera hanging from around the neck of our team leader, and looked through the digital images. There were no pictures of the white domes. My photo was safe. Welcome to Burundi.
On the opposite side of the airport, adjacent to the parking lot, where the red, green and white national flag flapped in the wind, and the Poinciana trees bloomed in crimson, our ramshackle bus waited to transport us to the King’s Conference Center for the night, to rest before church in the morning, and then to take us to the mountain town of Gitega. This would be our home for the next two weeks. The sun was hot in the afternoon, and the terracotta earth held fast to the heat like a brick baking in a kiln.
Instantly, I felt at home. I was born in North Carolina, a state famous for red brick. I laughed at my ease, because I was the most frightened of our team to go to Africa. I had spent hundreds of dollars for the latest survival gear from REI, and had thrown my dive knife in my suitcase at the last minute, just for good measure. I had brought enough medication to cure our entire team of an epidemic of dysentery. I was afraid of disease and parasites. If it existed, it originated in Burundi. Internet photos showed examples of local people inflicted with elephantiasis. There is no vaccine. I had been inoculated against yellow fever, typhoid fever, and polio. I was eating my malaria pills like candy. I could not afford the one thousand dollar rabies vaccination. Through the dusty bus window, I scanned the landscape for diseased dogs, as we bounced along the road to the capital, dodging pot holes, trenches, and large rocks. The springs beneath our seats squeaked with every bump. I saw no animals. I clutched the new REI water bottle in my lap.
Through the grimy glass of the bus window, the glaring sunlight unfolded a strange panorama before me. A young man in a blue striped shirt walked with buckling knees in the orange dirt, carrying five large foam mattresses on his head. His skull and hands disappeared into the foam under the weight of his load. A young boy walked beside his mother with a three-layered stack of egg cartons balanced on his head. She carried a straw basket filled with corn, which sloped forward at a fashionable angle, like an Easter bonnet. Her orange and green sarong was tied over one shoulder revealing a clashing pink shirt below. Everyone was walking. Everyone was carrying something on his or her heads. They turned and stopped to stare at our bus of white faces as we passed.
Deep channels edged the road, in anticipation of the rainy season that had yet to arrive. Vendors sat on blue traps, displaying used luggage, probably left behind by earlier missionaries. Small wooden tables shaded by large golf umbrellas displayed nuts and sodas for sale. Behind the merchants stretched stucco walls stained terracotta at the base from the clay earth, and topped with broken bottles or razor wire for security against crime. In the distance, a smoky haze coated the mountains and blurred the blue forests.
When we arrived at the Conference Center, it was dinnertime. Emelyne and Donavine greeted us with calla lilies and roses tied in white ribbons. A wedding reception had begun, and a crowd had gathered outside the entrance gate. The thunderous sound of wooden sticks against cowhide boomed in the background as the Burundian drummers pounded their beat in unison. Bosco came forward with an outstretched hand, and a broad toothy smile that extended from ear to ear.
“Amahoro,” he welcomed in Kirundi.
“Amahoro,” I responded. I had practiced my greeting from Seattle to Bujumbura.
Bosco and I gripped right hands together. I had been taught the proper way to meet someone in this foreign land. I took my left hand and placed it over my right forearm. He did the same. Through our actions, we conveyed without words that we were to be trusted, that our left hands would bear us no harm.
Kirundi is the native language of Burundi. Amahoro means peace. In a country where harmony is as precarious as a stack of eggs carried on top of a young child’s head, this is their greeting.
Over the next two weeks I would walk along the rutted roads behind the orphanage school, meeting strangers, arms outstretched, and greeting them with a loud and clear, Amahoro. Across from the school, by the edge of the road, was a kiln the size of a small house. Within those hot fires, clay blocks changed into bricks. I would change too. Bosco, Emelyne, and Donavine became my friends. They stand with calla lilies and roses under an Acacia tree, the red earth glowing in the sun, waiting for me to return to Burundi.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
An Appreciation of The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
The reader, who travels with Peter Matthiessen through his powerful prose on his harrowing trek through some of the harshest terrain on earth, is not disappointed. However, The Snow Leopard is more. To follow this scientific expedition in order to study the rutting behavior of the blue sheep, and to delight in the detailed descriptions of the flora and fauna of Nepal that most readers will never see, justifies the slow intense read that this book deserves. However, The Snow Leopard is more. Matthiessen, with his alluring alliterations and spot on similes, takes the reader with him on a more important journey, a journey of the soul. The underlying theme of man’s search for meaning transforms this travel adventure into great literature.
Following the death of his wife, Deborah, Matthiessen accepts an invitation to hike through the Himalayas. He exposes himself to the reader by acknowledging his failings as a husband. By stripping away his ego, like the bare peak of his Zen koan, his words are filled with the validity of awareness. He seeks self-forgiveness in the incomparable mountain landscape.
On his northward trek to the Crystal Monastery, Matthiessen describes his pilgrimage as an attempt to “penetrate the secrets of the mountain in search of something” as illusive as the mythical yeti or elusive as the snow leopard. The reader is never convinced that environmental extremes will lead Matthiessen to the high ledge necessary to transcend his ego or encounter the secretive snow leopard.
As Matthiessen’s physical journey continues, he describes in detail his spiritual wanderings through the beliefs of Buddhism and Taoism, which shape his philosophy. The esoteric concepts of the Tao are given solidity through metaphors and similes. The soul is as transient as a gust of snow, and a snow mountain is the mirror reflecting his true being. The memories of past existence are the glints of light, gone before they can be grasped, “like the passage of that silver bird.“
On every page, his descriptions read like poetry, filled with parallel constructions that add a musical rhythm to his prose. When Matthiessen paints the image of a feather on a silver path, his words pour across our minds in the “ sun and wind, and the rush of river, in a landscape without past or future time.” The landscape reverberates with life, whether a mountain forges through the blue sky like a sail from a ship, or “golden birds fall from the morning sun like blowing sparks that drop away and are extinguished in the dark.”
When Matthiessen describes children, he is especially tender. A little girl, dragging herself uphill like a broken cricket, retains her dignity with no resentment. A ragged child near the Crystal Mountain looks like a “smiling potato given life.” Matthiessen has left his young son behind to make his journey. The foreboding fear that, accompanying the yen of the clarion air and shimmering sunlight, will be the yang of shadows and the impeding snows of winter, and he will be trapped in the Inner Dolpo, unable to return home as promised by Thanksgiving.
Matthiessen’s journey is a gift to the reader as unique as the ancient bowl he purchased for his wife in Switzerland. The bowl symbolized a new beginning for his marriage; a beginning that was realized through the process of his wife’s death. The reader hopes that Matthiessen will be freed from his haunting fear of death, which follows him as a specter on the high mountain paths. We long for enlightenment to descend upon him like the snap of a prayer flag blown by the wind.
Following the death of his wife, Deborah, Matthiessen accepts an invitation to hike through the Himalayas. He exposes himself to the reader by acknowledging his failings as a husband. By stripping away his ego, like the bare peak of his Zen koan, his words are filled with the validity of awareness. He seeks self-forgiveness in the incomparable mountain landscape.
On his northward trek to the Crystal Monastery, Matthiessen describes his pilgrimage as an attempt to “penetrate the secrets of the mountain in search of something” as illusive as the mythical yeti or elusive as the snow leopard. The reader is never convinced that environmental extremes will lead Matthiessen to the high ledge necessary to transcend his ego or encounter the secretive snow leopard.
As Matthiessen’s physical journey continues, he describes in detail his spiritual wanderings through the beliefs of Buddhism and Taoism, which shape his philosophy. The esoteric concepts of the Tao are given solidity through metaphors and similes. The soul is as transient as a gust of snow, and a snow mountain is the mirror reflecting his true being. The memories of past existence are the glints of light, gone before they can be grasped, “like the passage of that silver bird.“
On every page, his descriptions read like poetry, filled with parallel constructions that add a musical rhythm to his prose. When Matthiessen paints the image of a feather on a silver path, his words pour across our minds in the “ sun and wind, and the rush of river, in a landscape without past or future time.” The landscape reverberates with life, whether a mountain forges through the blue sky like a sail from a ship, or “golden birds fall from the morning sun like blowing sparks that drop away and are extinguished in the dark.”
When Matthiessen describes children, he is especially tender. A little girl, dragging herself uphill like a broken cricket, retains her dignity with no resentment. A ragged child near the Crystal Mountain looks like a “smiling potato given life.” Matthiessen has left his young son behind to make his journey. The foreboding fear that, accompanying the yen of the clarion air and shimmering sunlight, will be the yang of shadows and the impeding snows of winter, and he will be trapped in the Inner Dolpo, unable to return home as promised by Thanksgiving.
Matthiessen’s journey is a gift to the reader as unique as the ancient bowl he purchased for his wife in Switzerland. The bowl symbolized a new beginning for his marriage; a beginning that was realized through the process of his wife’s death. The reader hopes that Matthiessen will be freed from his haunting fear of death, which follows him as a specter on the high mountain paths. We long for enlightenment to descend upon him like the snap of a prayer flag blown by the wind.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Nuts to You
Unless you are at least a half a hundred years old, you have never tasted the greatest nuts in the world, those of the Shah of Iran. Only the wealthiest in Iran were able to savor his Persian nuts. Do you wonder how this has any relevance to today’s political mess in the Middle East? It goes back through history, to the meddling of the CIA, to the US Military, and to several of our presidents meddling with my favorite snack food, the pistachio.
Each December, I longed for the arrival of a huge carton to arrive in the mail from the Shah of Iran’s pistachio company. This box was as anticipated as eagerly as the appearance of Santa himself. My family would purchase a case of Iranian pistachios as holiday gifts for their deserving friends. The twelve-inch bags of nuts cost ten dollars in 1967. I was the delivery girl. Those on the gift list watched by their doors for me to arrive, holding the Shah’s nuts in my hands. Everyone loved the Shah’s nuts. He had the tastiest nuts on the globe, and thanks to the great-grandson of a president, we could put them in our mouths anytime we pleased.
You see, two years after I was born, in 1953, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr, yes, his name was Kermit, completed the CIA’s first overthrow of a foreign government. Code-named, Operation Ajax, it worked just like a toilet bowl cleanser. The newly elected president of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq, was scrubbed away like a scum ring. Mosaddeq had upset the US and Britain, because he had nationalized the oil companies of Iran. Even though the oil did not belong to the West, we had controlled it for years. We did not enjoy playing fair. Kermit and his pals orchestrated a coup d’état that began the 26-year dictatorship of the Shah. The Shah loved his western buddies and exported his oil, carpets, and pistachios to them. Sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? It was nuts to Mosaddeq, and lots of nuts for me.
These happy days for the Shah and his secret police force, not dissimilar to the SS, lasted until 1979, when very much like today, the people took to the streets. In Tehran, they demonstrated against the ten percent unemployment in their country, the nasty police, the Shah, and us, the US. When the crowds got too much to handle, the Shah left on a sudden vacation and never returned. The Ayatollah Khamenei swooped in wearing a flowing white, Shiite Islamic robe, and the good times ended. Thanks to Jimmy Carter’s southern hospitality, the Shah was given asylum in the Untied States. They had a lot in common. They were both nut farmers.
This camaraderie pissed off the Ayatollah. Everyone in Iran remembered what Kermit had done to their beloved Mosaddeq. Iranian students stormed the American embassy and took hostages. The US countered with another operation called, Eagle Claw. Unfortunately, the eagle turned out to be more of a wounded pigeon, and for 444 days, Americans were glued to their televisions watching their impotent government held hostage. Nuts to Carter. His career was over. The Shiites were in control of Iran. From 1979, the power of that region remained in a delicate pyramidal balance between Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq. That same year, an embargo was placed on goods from Iran, which not only included oil, but my beloved pistachios as well.
Now as a college graduate, I had become completely addicted to yummy nuts. I only cared about the oil, because sleeping in my car with my husband, in the long gas lines in the summer of 1979, was not particularly fun. There were no Iranian nuts which to pass the time. The embargo had seen to that. However, with Hollywood’s Ronald Reagan at the helm, the California farmers began growing pistachios. As a Middle East nut aficionado, I find the California pistachio as bland as a mashed banana. Nuts to Iran, to the Ayatollah, and to me.
After many years, things began to change for Iran. That fateful attack by the Taliban on September 11th caused the US jumped in again. They ousted the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq. Whoops, gone now were Iran’s two biggest regional enemies, the ones who had held them in check for twenty-five years.
In 2010, the pro-Iranian Hezbollah party forced the collapse of the pro-US government in Lebanon. And the beginning of this year, we saw Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, friend of the US, leave for a sudden vacation after only eighteen days of protests and demonstrations by his people. At this moment, Syria and Iran, who were unusual bedfellows in their hatred of Saddam Hussein, are discussing their plans for the future of Egypt over a big fat bowl of pistachios. The people of Libya, Bahrain, Morocco, Jordan, and Yemen have gone to the streets to protest their governments. The powers in the Middle East are currently spinning. Qatar and Oman are reported by the media, as tilting toward Iran like the moons that circle Jupiter.
It appears to me that the US and her allies in the West will have to take action again. We failed with Operation Ajax and Operation Eagle Claw. Operation Iraqi Freedom has lasted for eight years. I propose a new strategy - Operation Pistachio. We need to liberate the Iranian pistachio trees for the world. Since President Reagan’s rule, California has had its chance to earn money by growing pistachios. Their state is as bankrupt as a Donald Trump casino. It’s nuts to California now. We need to improve foreign relations with Iran by importing their nuts again. In doing so, Iran would be bound to us in a symbiotic relationship, not unlike that of Anna Nicole Smith and her octogenarian oil magnate, not for our thirst for oil, but rather for our pistachio consumption.
We need to march in the streets from Hershey, Pennsylvania to Orange County, California, holding our banners high for Iranian pistachios in all of our ice cream flavors. Ben and Jerry, are you listening? We need to replace popcorn in the movie theaters with those delicious little nuts. Make a pledge now, to never order cashew chicken for a take out dinner. Here’s to pistachio chicken instead. Our new war cry for Peace in the Middle East will be: Nuts to Us!
Each December, I longed for the arrival of a huge carton to arrive in the mail from the Shah of Iran’s pistachio company. This box was as anticipated as eagerly as the appearance of Santa himself. My family would purchase a case of Iranian pistachios as holiday gifts for their deserving friends. The twelve-inch bags of nuts cost ten dollars in 1967. I was the delivery girl. Those on the gift list watched by their doors for me to arrive, holding the Shah’s nuts in my hands. Everyone loved the Shah’s nuts. He had the tastiest nuts on the globe, and thanks to the great-grandson of a president, we could put them in our mouths anytime we pleased.
You see, two years after I was born, in 1953, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr, yes, his name was Kermit, completed the CIA’s first overthrow of a foreign government. Code-named, Operation Ajax, it worked just like a toilet bowl cleanser. The newly elected president of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq, was scrubbed away like a scum ring. Mosaddeq had upset the US and Britain, because he had nationalized the oil companies of Iran. Even though the oil did not belong to the West, we had controlled it for years. We did not enjoy playing fair. Kermit and his pals orchestrated a coup d’état that began the 26-year dictatorship of the Shah. The Shah loved his western buddies and exported his oil, carpets, and pistachios to them. Sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? It was nuts to Mosaddeq, and lots of nuts for me.
These happy days for the Shah and his secret police force, not dissimilar to the SS, lasted until 1979, when very much like today, the people took to the streets. In Tehran, they demonstrated against the ten percent unemployment in their country, the nasty police, the Shah, and us, the US. When the crowds got too much to handle, the Shah left on a sudden vacation and never returned. The Ayatollah Khamenei swooped in wearing a flowing white, Shiite Islamic robe, and the good times ended. Thanks to Jimmy Carter’s southern hospitality, the Shah was given asylum in the Untied States. They had a lot in common. They were both nut farmers.
This camaraderie pissed off the Ayatollah. Everyone in Iran remembered what Kermit had done to their beloved Mosaddeq. Iranian students stormed the American embassy and took hostages. The US countered with another operation called, Eagle Claw. Unfortunately, the eagle turned out to be more of a wounded pigeon, and for 444 days, Americans were glued to their televisions watching their impotent government held hostage. Nuts to Carter. His career was over. The Shiites were in control of Iran. From 1979, the power of that region remained in a delicate pyramidal balance between Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq. That same year, an embargo was placed on goods from Iran, which not only included oil, but my beloved pistachios as well.
Now as a college graduate, I had become completely addicted to yummy nuts. I only cared about the oil, because sleeping in my car with my husband, in the long gas lines in the summer of 1979, was not particularly fun. There were no Iranian nuts which to pass the time. The embargo had seen to that. However, with Hollywood’s Ronald Reagan at the helm, the California farmers began growing pistachios. As a Middle East nut aficionado, I find the California pistachio as bland as a mashed banana. Nuts to Iran, to the Ayatollah, and to me.
After many years, things began to change for Iran. That fateful attack by the Taliban on September 11th caused the US jumped in again. They ousted the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq. Whoops, gone now were Iran’s two biggest regional enemies, the ones who had held them in check for twenty-five years.
In 2010, the pro-Iranian Hezbollah party forced the collapse of the pro-US government in Lebanon. And the beginning of this year, we saw Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, friend of the US, leave for a sudden vacation after only eighteen days of protests and demonstrations by his people. At this moment, Syria and Iran, who were unusual bedfellows in their hatred of Saddam Hussein, are discussing their plans for the future of Egypt over a big fat bowl of pistachios. The people of Libya, Bahrain, Morocco, Jordan, and Yemen have gone to the streets to protest their governments. The powers in the Middle East are currently spinning. Qatar and Oman are reported by the media, as tilting toward Iran like the moons that circle Jupiter.
It appears to me that the US and her allies in the West will have to take action again. We failed with Operation Ajax and Operation Eagle Claw. Operation Iraqi Freedom has lasted for eight years. I propose a new strategy - Operation Pistachio. We need to liberate the Iranian pistachio trees for the world. Since President Reagan’s rule, California has had its chance to earn money by growing pistachios. Their state is as bankrupt as a Donald Trump casino. It’s nuts to California now. We need to improve foreign relations with Iran by importing their nuts again. In doing so, Iran would be bound to us in a symbiotic relationship, not unlike that of Anna Nicole Smith and her octogenarian oil magnate, not for our thirst for oil, but rather for our pistachio consumption.
We need to march in the streets from Hershey, Pennsylvania to Orange County, California, holding our banners high for Iranian pistachios in all of our ice cream flavors. Ben and Jerry, are you listening? We need to replace popcorn in the movie theaters with those delicious little nuts. Make a pledge now, to never order cashew chicken for a take out dinner. Here’s to pistachio chicken instead. Our new war cry for Peace in the Middle East will be: Nuts to Us!
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Water in the Valley of Clay
Not in a wide rush like the Columbia,
rather in dribbles from a palm-sized pipe,
protruding out of the hillside,
the rusty liquid spills.
Pulsing with invisible flatworms,
the precious fluid pools and lazily crosses
sparse fields of rice, which shelter
mosquitoes and malaria.
Silent children stoop to fill discarded bottles-
drop by drop. This is what they do each day.
I use their water to flush waste down my toilet,
or rinse off the dinner I was too full to eat.
My clothing is named for that great
Northwest River, which flows down from the Rockies,
but hid in my pocket are snapshots of children
who bear heavy burdens in the Valley of Clay.
rather in dribbles from a palm-sized pipe,
protruding out of the hillside,
the rusty liquid spills.
Pulsing with invisible flatworms,
the precious fluid pools and lazily crosses
sparse fields of rice, which shelter
mosquitoes and malaria.
Silent children stoop to fill discarded bottles-
drop by drop. This is what they do each day.
I use their water to flush waste down my toilet,
or rinse off the dinner I was too full to eat.
My clothing is named for that great
Northwest River, which flows down from the Rockies,
but hid in my pocket are snapshots of children
who bear heavy burdens in the Valley of Clay.
Friday, February 11, 2011
The Mink Brigade
Linda made me promise to behave. My reward would be a placemat sized, engraved invitation for the Inauguration of George H W Bush. I would be attending the biggest Texas party since Lyndon Johnson propped his boots on the Oval Office desk. I packed my Stetson and shredded my Democratic Party ID card. I was on my way to Washington with Linda.
I met Linda at Girls Raised In The South meeting held in Seattle. We stood around the buffet complaining about the Northwest, while we stuffed deviled eggs into our mouths. We became fast friends. Linda was from Texas and had big blond hair. At SMU, she was the head majorette. It earned her a gold sequined outfit that accentuated her Texas sized boobs. Even though I had no big hair, I had lived in Dallas. I knew how to say, “Shit howdy,” with the best of them. My favorite line from a jukebox was, “Don’t cry down my back, baby, you might rust my spurs.” My twang was twanging up like a banjo in anticipation of the Inauguration. I could hardly wait to be in DC with the Texans.
We packed our chiffon evening gowns, curling irons, and a Brinks truck full of jewelry. We arrived at the posh, private University Club. We were knee deep in velvet, polished mahogany and American flags. Our first stop was Linda’s friend’s suite. They had personally seen that Bush had crushed Dukakis in every state but ten. Shit howdy. They were pleased as punch to see us.
They handed us our inauguration tickets, and explained that we had responsibilities. We were to work the event. We would seat the diplomats right below the presidential podium.
The next morning, we dressed in our knit suits with the fancy buttons and cloaked ourselves in mink. Linda took the command. She would stand in the center aisle and personally guide the guests to their seats. I would wait at the left side of the grand marble steps that led to podium. I held in my hands the list of all diplomats allowed entrance into our secure area. We were very important. We were the mink barricade.
I was drawling out, “Welcome to Bush’s Inauguration,” to a silver haired man with glasses and his aide.
“May I see ya’ll’s invitation please?” The embarrassed aide stated that he had forgotten their invitations.
“I’m sorry. This area is reserved for diplomats. Ya’ll can find seating in the public area.” I pointed to the tiny dots of people, about a mile back, standing behind the television trucks. Both men looked perturbed.
“Madam, this is Javier Perez de Cuellar.”
“Why that’s nice.” I smiled at the older man. “But rules are rules, and you must have an invitation. I can’t let just anybody in.” I stood firm in my fur coat.
“Madam, this is Javier Perez de Cuellar, the Secretary Gen-er-al of the United Nations.” He stressed the word general by slowly pronouncing every syllable.
Cuellar? I had never heard of this guy. What happened to U Thant?
I looked at my list. There he was. In my best southern Spanish accent., I said, “I am ever so sorry Seen-yors.” I pointed them to Linda who was staring in our direction.
Later, I noticed there were papers on the marble steps blowing in the breeze. I snatched them up and stuffed them into the trashcan by the center aisle. There was a man standing near the trashcan.
“Excuse me sir, you’ll have to move.” He did not speak, so I continued, “You’re blocking the view.” I pointed behind me to Cuellar.
“I’m CIA,” he said with no expression.
“I can’t help that. You’ll simply have to move.” It’s impossible to argue with a lady in a mink coat. “Do you see that man there? That’s Javier Perez de Cuellar, the Secretary Gen-er-al of the UN. He cannot see because of you!” Everyone knows that in Texas Hold Em, a general trumps an agent. As he slid off to the side, Linda charged up.
“What do you think you are doing?”
“What do you mean? That guy was in front of our area.”
“No. You let someone in without an invitation.”
“That was the…”
“Nobody gets in without an invitation.”
“But, he was on my list.”
I looked at my hands. I was holding no list. I had lost my list! I remembered the trashcan and picking up papers off the steps. Had I thrown it out? Maybe that CIA guy did a sleight of hand and stole it. He was pissed off that I made him move.
“Forget the list,” she said,” Just make sure that, from now on, everyone has an invitation.”
That’s when a man with twinkling eyes walked up to me.
“Welcome to the Inauguration. May I see your invitation?”
With a deep voice and a smile, he said, “I don’t have an invitation.” His thick black eyebrows and matching mustache made him look like Groucho Marx without the cigar. He was obviously a gatecrasher.
I went through my rehearsed dialogue, pointing to the tiny crowd of people in the distance.
“I’m on the list. I am Saddam Hussein.” The twinkle in his eyes became knife sharp.
“I’m sorry, Mr.-Whose Sane?”
“President Hussein. I am the President of Iraq.”
No, no. Hussein was a king from Jordan. I knew that. Did he think I was stupid?
“That’s nice,” I said, “but you must have an invitation.” I bristled my mink.
“Let me see your guest list,” and he grabbed hard at my coat. I heard the stitches pop in the seam of my sleeve. He had ripped my mink! This was war.
He began to shout in a weird language. The CIA man rushed over. He threw himself between Hussein and me.
“What’s the problem?”
“This man was not invited, then he assaulted my coat! ” I stared at Saddam.
“I’m leaving. You’ve not heard the last from me!” Saddam shot me a glare.
“Oh, go hide in a hole,” I muttered under my breath.
I thanked Mr. CIA, who was whispering into his lapel pin.
Linda came running up. I told her about the gatecrasher and being saved by the CIA. We seated ourselves on the front row and watched Ronald Reagan hand George Bush the reins of power. Ronny’s neck was wrapped in a good guy white scarf, and George sported a silver tie. I turned to Cuellar behind me and gave him a big thumbs up.
Later that afternoon, while we looking for ourselves on television and getting gussied up for the Black Tie and Boots Ball, we heard Dan Rather talking about an Arab man at the Inauguration. Apparently he felt snubbed and had stormed back to Iraq in his private jet. Could that have been same the man who claimed to have forgotten his invite? What a pissy guy.
Saddam Hussein was like a toddler begging for attention. After the Inauguration, President Bush gave him attention. He blasted the hell out of him in Desert Storm. Perhaps if Saddam had been a bit more responsible and held on to his invitation, he could have danced the Texas two-step like the rest of us.
I met Linda at Girls Raised In The South meeting held in Seattle. We stood around the buffet complaining about the Northwest, while we stuffed deviled eggs into our mouths. We became fast friends. Linda was from Texas and had big blond hair. At SMU, she was the head majorette. It earned her a gold sequined outfit that accentuated her Texas sized boobs. Even though I had no big hair, I had lived in Dallas. I knew how to say, “Shit howdy,” with the best of them. My favorite line from a jukebox was, “Don’t cry down my back, baby, you might rust my spurs.” My twang was twanging up like a banjo in anticipation of the Inauguration. I could hardly wait to be in DC with the Texans.
We packed our chiffon evening gowns, curling irons, and a Brinks truck full of jewelry. We arrived at the posh, private University Club. We were knee deep in velvet, polished mahogany and American flags. Our first stop was Linda’s friend’s suite. They had personally seen that Bush had crushed Dukakis in every state but ten. Shit howdy. They were pleased as punch to see us.
They handed us our inauguration tickets, and explained that we had responsibilities. We were to work the event. We would seat the diplomats right below the presidential podium.
The next morning, we dressed in our knit suits with the fancy buttons and cloaked ourselves in mink. Linda took the command. She would stand in the center aisle and personally guide the guests to their seats. I would wait at the left side of the grand marble steps that led to podium. I held in my hands the list of all diplomats allowed entrance into our secure area. We were very important. We were the mink barricade.
I was drawling out, “Welcome to Bush’s Inauguration,” to a silver haired man with glasses and his aide.
“May I see ya’ll’s invitation please?” The embarrassed aide stated that he had forgotten their invitations.
“I’m sorry. This area is reserved for diplomats. Ya’ll can find seating in the public area.” I pointed to the tiny dots of people, about a mile back, standing behind the television trucks. Both men looked perturbed.
“Madam, this is Javier Perez de Cuellar.”
“Why that’s nice.” I smiled at the older man. “But rules are rules, and you must have an invitation. I can’t let just anybody in.” I stood firm in my fur coat.
“Madam, this is Javier Perez de Cuellar, the Secretary Gen-er-al of the United Nations.” He stressed the word general by slowly pronouncing every syllable.
Cuellar? I had never heard of this guy. What happened to U Thant?
I looked at my list. There he was. In my best southern Spanish accent., I said, “I am ever so sorry Seen-yors.” I pointed them to Linda who was staring in our direction.
Later, I noticed there were papers on the marble steps blowing in the breeze. I snatched them up and stuffed them into the trashcan by the center aisle. There was a man standing near the trashcan.
“Excuse me sir, you’ll have to move.” He did not speak, so I continued, “You’re blocking the view.” I pointed behind me to Cuellar.
“I’m CIA,” he said with no expression.
“I can’t help that. You’ll simply have to move.” It’s impossible to argue with a lady in a mink coat. “Do you see that man there? That’s Javier Perez de Cuellar, the Secretary Gen-er-al of the UN. He cannot see because of you!” Everyone knows that in Texas Hold Em, a general trumps an agent. As he slid off to the side, Linda charged up.
“What do you think you are doing?”
“What do you mean? That guy was in front of our area.”
“No. You let someone in without an invitation.”
“That was the…”
“Nobody gets in without an invitation.”
“But, he was on my list.”
I looked at my hands. I was holding no list. I had lost my list! I remembered the trashcan and picking up papers off the steps. Had I thrown it out? Maybe that CIA guy did a sleight of hand and stole it. He was pissed off that I made him move.
“Forget the list,” she said,” Just make sure that, from now on, everyone has an invitation.”
That’s when a man with twinkling eyes walked up to me.
“Welcome to the Inauguration. May I see your invitation?”
With a deep voice and a smile, he said, “I don’t have an invitation.” His thick black eyebrows and matching mustache made him look like Groucho Marx without the cigar. He was obviously a gatecrasher.
I went through my rehearsed dialogue, pointing to the tiny crowd of people in the distance.
“I’m on the list. I am Saddam Hussein.” The twinkle in his eyes became knife sharp.
“I’m sorry, Mr.-Whose Sane?”
“President Hussein. I am the President of Iraq.”
No, no. Hussein was a king from Jordan. I knew that. Did he think I was stupid?
“That’s nice,” I said, “but you must have an invitation.” I bristled my mink.
“Let me see your guest list,” and he grabbed hard at my coat. I heard the stitches pop in the seam of my sleeve. He had ripped my mink! This was war.
He began to shout in a weird language. The CIA man rushed over. He threw himself between Hussein and me.
“What’s the problem?”
“This man was not invited, then he assaulted my coat! ” I stared at Saddam.
“I’m leaving. You’ve not heard the last from me!” Saddam shot me a glare.
“Oh, go hide in a hole,” I muttered under my breath.
I thanked Mr. CIA, who was whispering into his lapel pin.
Linda came running up. I told her about the gatecrasher and being saved by the CIA. We seated ourselves on the front row and watched Ronald Reagan hand George Bush the reins of power. Ronny’s neck was wrapped in a good guy white scarf, and George sported a silver tie. I turned to Cuellar behind me and gave him a big thumbs up.
Later that afternoon, while we looking for ourselves on television and getting gussied up for the Black Tie and Boots Ball, we heard Dan Rather talking about an Arab man at the Inauguration. Apparently he felt snubbed and had stormed back to Iraq in his private jet. Could that have been same the man who claimed to have forgotten his invite? What a pissy guy.
Saddam Hussein was like a toddler begging for attention. After the Inauguration, President Bush gave him attention. He blasted the hell out of him in Desert Storm. Perhaps if Saddam had been a bit more responsible and held on to his invitation, he could have danced the Texas two-step like the rest of us.
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