Mexico: Made for the Food Addict and the Shut-In

"I'm hungry," I thought to myself in Mexico, never.

Last Sunday, some friends and I went to eat comida casera, home made dishes complete with made-to-order corn tortillas, slap-slapped to round perfection by the side of the road by three generations of women and dropped into the basket on your table every three minutes or so in San Juan Cosalá. You use a half of the tortilla to scoop up little pockets of beans, tomatillo salsa, pieces of a chile relleno and bistek a la tomate, and deftly (if possible) deposit the whole thing in your mouth. The men use their tortillas as napkins. Each tortilla, placed on the comal heated by small pieces of mequite, goes down, gets flipped, blows up like a pufferfish, and gets tossed in your basket. You eat 10-15 during a meal. You're really, really not hungry when you leave. 

You're even less hungry when you stop at Pedro's on the way back, order a half kilo of carnitas (shaved pig meat that's been deep fried in giant chunks in vats of lard) and a piece of flan, an egg and cream cake with a topping of burnt sugar. The carnitas arrive with six different salsas, all hot. You begin to leak tears and sweat. The struggle to finish begins to seem like a kind of Iron Man of eating.

By the time you end up at your destination, a weekly family gathering of 54 immediate family members, it's just before comida, about 4pm. You can hear the taco meat sizzling before you even get through the door. Your stomach feels like a pufferfish's. The grandparents, their nine children, their nine children's spouses, their nine children's 31 children and their 3 grandchildren all greet you with cheers. "Sit down!" they say. "How many tacos do you want?" A rigorous game of poker continues. The grandparents clean house. The tequila arrives in a pop bottle from someone's back yard agave plantation. The kids run around screaming. A storm on the opposite side of the lake sends wind that knocks the flip flops and kids' socks across the lawn like confetti. There are 1940's Mexican movies playing on the giant screen TV. The vat of meat is the size of a beer fridge. Arm waving doesn't work; you can't refuse what they offer. "Only three tacos?" they ask in shock. "Are you sick?"

Later, when the various brothers and sisters are dragging one another across the lawn, one by one, and throwing one another in the pool, you think that when they finally turn on you, like a pack of happy wolves, and throw you in, fully clothed, you might actually sink. That thought is proven a reality at about 8pm. When you struggle to the surface, a little girl is staring at you, a green inflated tube sits around her waist. You look down. You have the same inflated tube around your waist. Except yours isn't made of air. "How old are you?" she asks. "One hundred and fifty-two," you answer. You're not sure if you mean years or pounds.

Of course, if you stay home, it's no better. Today, from my front door, I've been offered mangos, papayas, pinapples, apples, guavas, flour tortillas, corn tortillas, elotes, cacahuates, tamales, water, pop, tortas and cuts from a pig. If I wanted to, I could stay here all day and everything I need, including the knife-sharpener with his high-low whistle, would arrive pretty much as soon as I thought of needing it. Last week, someone offered me a clock and a hallway chandelier. The week before, electrical tape and a load of firewood.

Some of them ring the bell, but mostly they just scream or play a recording of themselves screaming as they come down the street. "Llévate para mangos, mangos, mangos, llévate, piñas!" "Eloooootes, cacahuaaaaaaates," croons the sombrero-wearing, bicycle-riding elote and cacahuate seller, in a baritone that sends thrills of pleasure down my spine. I take the two floors of stairs two at a time for the flan seller. Sometimes I miss him and a chill of almost hunger pangs me. It's such an unfamiliar feeling that I wonder if I might be ill. Then the ice cream bicycle turns the corner.

Axixic Life

"México, me dices cosas bonitas, y otras cosas no tan bonitas."

Yesterday evening, while a dog covered in confetti nosed up to me in the plaza while varying numbers of friends and I were listening to the live, free Cumbia band begin, at about 10:30pm, for all the kids and adults milling around playing with coloured, hollow eggs (which contain the confetti), eating tacos, promenading around the square, drinking tequila or cerveza, dancing or gossiping, I was trying to think how I would describe this life to people not living in Mexico. Like how you know when you leave the house on a Sunday, everyone’s (and my) day off, you can’t be sure where you’ll end up. Comida casera by the side of the road with four generations of women tortillerando turns into a visit to Kim’s house, who takes you to her husband’s daughter’s husband’s family for a second comida, at which point you feel like you may indeed be pregnant with taquitos, after eating so many tortillas, and the discussions around the table--while the kids are running around and following the grandmother back and forth to the kitchen – range from Franco to Obama to pardon rules for Mexicans trying to enter the US after being wrongfully convicted of crimes by the US justice system to the paintings that Jeanne has made over the last 20 years, many of them depicting the Mexican revolution in colours that defy your ability to categorize them. Then, someone she knows stops by the side of the road and gives you a ride from San Juan Cosalá, even though he’s going in the opposite direction, and you end up with the confetti dog at your feet, laughing about a dozen things at the same time, and it’s midnight and 22 degrees and the pool hall around the corner is waiting, as is the taco stand, and the lake at night, and the poem in your book not yet translated into the digital world, and all your readings for the PhD that seem to be leading toward a synthesis of body and ground and lyric and world.

The night after I wrote this first paragraph, however, the country gave me some gentle instruction on the art of not living in a dream world of pleasure without recognizing the hardship also in evidence on a daily basis. Standing in the square that same night that I described, my friend Max, out of work for the third time that spring, saw his three daughters pass by, whom he had recently relinquished to an American/Guadalajaran couple so that they would have a chance at a better life. Broke and heartbroken, the next night he went on an overnight drunk at our friend’s house and told me he was going to accept an offer to join the Sinaloa cartel. Three men had taken him to dinners in Guadalajara earlier this year. They paid for everything. They promised him $8000 pesos a week. Sinaloa is currently trying to protect its holdings as the Nueva Generacion Jalisco, Mexico’s newest cartel, tries to enlarge its territory. They prey on vulnerable members of a community. If he took the offer (he didn't), he would have likely received closer to $100 pesos a week to act as a halcon, or village lookout, or would have been used as a mule, ferrying cocaine, marijuana and meth over the border in a car.

In our friends’ inner patio he swayed along with the guitar players, singing off key and trying to fill everyone’s glasses with more tequila, an act badly seen in more educated circles. We were driven home in courteous silence. A request arrived through a friend the next week that he not attend their music events again. In the street that night, he fingered his cell phone, swearing that I’d never see him again if he made the call. He had less than 50 pesos to his name. I let him in, gave him a tranquilizer – the first he’d ever taken – and left him to sleep. The next morning he was a shell, but he walked out into the sun and found work building a kitchen for the man who had ferried us home the night before. Poverty here is immediate, and immediately reversible, if one knows the right people. Most of my friends live within days of destitution. In the ten years Max spent working in the United States as an ilegal he sent every penny home to his parents. He arrived home with less than $500 to his name.

Alcoholism is rampant. The week before I arrived to Ajijic in May, Fernando, Max’s brother, didn’t stop drinking on a Saturday night. He stumbled and cajoled in the street, asking his wife Ana for money to buy meth, which has found its way to this town through the cartels. The police arrived after Ana called them. Eventually, they took him away and he was gone for nearly two months, staying in a government centre for drug and alcohol abuse with its own psychiatrist, three outdoor toilets for 90 men and thirty bunks to a room with no fan. Don’t bring me money, he told us, his eyes wet, when we visited him in mid May. But I’d like some face cream. We were eating the roadside chicken we'd brought him, using tortillas as utensils, sitting on a fiberglass-roofed patio as a thunderstorm let loose around us. When the lightning and thunder were simultaneous, the men in the centre cheered and whistled from the doors of their bunkrooms. On the way home, Ana, Max, Angel and his wife Isa and I sat five to the cab up the dirt road to Santa Cruz, and used our legs to brace when we went over the topes so we wouldn’t crush the laps of the boys. We stopped at Suriana and bought a crib for Angel and Isa’s baby, who was born in July. The parents are 18; the crib is a quarter the size of their room.

It may be incidents with alcohol like these that spur the racism I’ve found in this town, by the white visitors (whether they are permanent residents or simply snowbirds) toward the Mexican population. Or it may simply be the differences in culture and way of life, or it may be the poverty. Or it may simply be the entitlement I feel radiating from so many foreigners, even when they profess to be open-minded. One couple from Canada I contacted told me I was welcome to stay as long as I didn’t let any of the local neighbours or their children enter the property. Their double house is the largest on the block. I was delighted to find out that when the Canadians leave for their six months in the north, the property’s pool is renamed the Community Pool.

Still, despite so many foreigners living in such close proximity to locals, the separation of gardener or housecleaner from friend seems mostly absolute. One American woman who lives with her husband in a spacious oasis of garden and ranch-style house in West Ajijic, holds parties for the locals, but only outside. A bathroom is available, as is the kitchen, but the rest of the house is never entered by people not of her race. Everyone, it seems, knows their place. Through it all, the Mexicans maintain a grace and equanimity I doubt Americans or Canadians could manage for more than five minutes. Working for four dollars an hour cleaning miradors and pools, they learn enough English to make their employers happy, and then go home to two pantry-sized rooms, shared sometimes by multiple families.

And so I try to navigate the unspoken rules and regulations of behaviour and relationships, and sometimes I fail and sometimes it goes well. The only thing I know for sure here is that no culture is a Disneyland of kindness and perfection. But neither is it acceptable for my race to arrive in another country, look around and say (true story), “this place is perfect, except for the Mexicans.”

Axixic

There is a rumour amongst my friends here that PRI, one of the national political parties, are offering televisions to those families who agree to vote for them on June 7. After a week of election madness in the squares, each party giving its all to show the village a good time, complete with banda music, manic dancing, free food (or sometimes just a water container full of jugo de jamaica) I'm tempted to believe the talk. When each person in a family only has three t-shirts, the offer of a fourth, emblazoned with the party's slogans and candidate, can be deeply appealing. Wouldn't I wear a new t-shirt, if I only had three others? Of course I would. Meanwhile, the PRD, the party to the left, gets very little attention in the town - only 30 people or so showed up to its turn at madness. Is it because they don't have anything to give? Is the legacy of PAN and PRI too strong? My friend in the north of Mexico writes that people in his village are being offered food and promises of continued help for a poverty stricken area, in exchange for agreeing to vote a certain way. Meanwhile, the shootout which resulted in over 40 dead - the Mexican government claiming they are narco traficantes - is now being questioned as a possible massacre of civilians. The paradoxes of the country continue.

I am in Axixic (the traditional spelling of Ajijic, as it's now known) for the summer, trying valiantly to become fully fluent in Spanish and creating the list and then reading the list for my PhD comprehensive exams in geography and poetics. Outside, right now, the banda horns are gritando. The small park in front of the malecon has become a centre of festivities for the beginning of the weekend. They try to outdo one another in noise levels. I play boleros on the stereo of the house I'm sitting and try my hand at salsa-making, and wait for the light to lower so that it's cool enough to walk by the lake and write for an hour before the darkness sets in. My friend Antonio is probably wearing down the batteries of his giant speakers, a few minutes walk from the park, trying to educate the masses in the glories of Gil Biberto y Miles Davis, his car doors open, his saxophone in his hands. 

This choice, to spend extended time here, is one of the best I have ever made. I read and write by day; I walk to different taco stands at night. I know by name the entire street full of people that I used to live on, back in December, and to which I will return in July. I wait for the rains to begin in earnest. The temperature climbs to 30, the clouds move in, the lake rises and folds with wind, then smooths to glass in the morning. Adios, say the people I pass on the street, in a greeting, rather than a goodbye. 

Nueve años despues

As nine years ago, so I again spend my first morning in la Habana in front of the exhibits in the Museo de la revolución, weeping. Every quote by Fidel tunnels into the heart and stomps its foot with gentleness, perseverance and intelligence. Every photo, with hope written across the faces, smacks me down.

I know it's easy to say from a place of freedom, where I can buy what I want and eat what I want and travel where I want, but I would gladly take the powdered milk Cubans are offered as part of their rations in exchange for the silence that fills a world without advertisements. I would stay home, for the privilege of a nearly empty storefront, and things as they are gathering dust behind the glass. Choice makes me crazy. The multiplication of desire, until it becomes a sickness. I came back to Cuba to find again the sadness that is things not working, and the beauty that is things not working, but still working better (I really believe this) than capitalism.

Some small notes from my days follow below.

Two ten year old boys who stopped playing baseball with a stick and a bottle cap any time someone walked between them on the street. They waited patiently, then continued.

The cream light of crumbling buildings, combined with that distinct, heavy dust that diesel fuel leaves, together covering everything and infusing the air with a colour like frangipani, so that everything, under dust, seems to glow.

Anibel, the architecture restorationist, who was offered an ipad in exchange for two boxes of cigars by an American tourist, and had no money or way of getting the cigars, and so had to let the offer go. He gave me a ration booklet, filled with small notes on how much oil, sugar, meat, beans and soap he was allotted each month, and how much he had used. Small strokes of the ball point pen, marking down his time and his hunger.

Anibel's nephew, who talks to me for an hour on Prado, at 2 in the morning, about how he does think it can work. How there are many like him who still believe in the thought and the conviction in the Revolución.

Pedro, the driver, who stops in the middle of the night, on the way back from Viñales, so that I can record the sound of a million crickets and cicadas singing through the dark of the tobacco fields and the casava plantations and the mango trees.

Pablo Milanés, after the recorded music had been turned off, getting out his guitar at El Gato Puerto, and singing to a crowd who knew every word of every song, and sang with him.

Rumba from the window of a house in Centro, at 11am the morning after New Years. Slow instrumental, slow drums, slow bells.

Music. Music. Music.

The crumbling Malecón, where I stood nine years ago in a rainstorm.

Walking at night, anywhere, in complete safety.

Walking at night.

Three Korean boys on a trip around the world. One of them left their diary and address book on the wall of the Malecón, and a tourist gave it to me because I said that I would find them and return it. And in all the city, with the help of a dozen kind Cubans, luck and the only address in the book that was written in Spanish, I did.

Sleeping through the morning after music all night, with the waves drowning even the traffic noise out and the wind from the sea coming in the window.

Cuba has changed. The convertible peso has introduced another double economy, which has raised prices for Cubans and made the tourists pay thirty times what they once did for food and drinks. There is greater sense of dissatisfaction; there is even more restlessness. The internet has arrived, though it is impossible to access for many. There are jineteras y jineteros, men and women who attach themselves to foreigners in order to get taken out for meals, to get money, to exchange sex or company for what they need. There were so many white men walking around with young Cuban women on their arms. I stared at the men, and they often looked away, embarrassed. And beggars have finally appeared. Much of the time now, the talk turns to selling cigars, or to a request for money. I don't remember that happening even once, nine years ago. Nor do I remember tinted windows, car alarms.

But it's still quiet enough to leave room for music, for amiable talk on the street with whomever passes by. For Danzón in the squares on the last thursday of each month, all the old men and old women paseando, the women flicking their fans, then stopping, and turning to their partner, to dance with beaming smiles while the six piece band plays on.

Te amo por siempre.

Foto Ruta, Not Your Everyday City Tour, Or: Why Buenos Aires Just Might Be the Best City in the World

Perched over an abandoned Ford Falcon on a side street in Villa Crespa, I shoot a close-up photo of the drifts of dried Tipo tree blossoms that have fallen onto the car’s cracked windshield. I’m trying to remember the rules of composition, colour, form and texture that Foto Ruta’s short workshop covered before my group set out for a Buenos Aires photo tour unlike any other.

BA’s rich and troubled history, incredible restaurant and nightlight scene and stunning architecture has created an ambiance that rivals that of New York, Madrid or Paris. A taxi driver told me that Porteños are Italians who speak Spanish and live like the French. The city an undeniable flair, but it can also be challenging to get to know. As with other fantastic metropolises, the best barrios lie outside the tourist track and can’t easily be distinguished by visitors. Stick to the guide books and you’ll find yourself in Micro Centro, staring up at the Obalisco, or traipsing the narrow cobblestone streets of La Boca. Though they may be necessary elements, they don’t give a sense of how and where most Porteños live their lives.

Enter Foto-Ruta, operated by ex-pats Jocelyn Mandrake and Becky Hayes. This afternoon tour provides a superb guiding force, sharing the best places for parilla, the best street for leather goods and the most interesting places to photograph the city’s fabulous graffiti art. Billed as an “urban photo experience” for both Porteños and travellers alike, Foto-Ruta is a low-fi tour for anyone with a camera and an eye for metaphor.

The tour itself operates like a treasure hunt. The photo I take of the Ford Falcon becomes our group’s response to Foto Ruta’s first of ten ‘clues,’ which serve as prompts for images we are to create during our two hour trek around the neighbourhood. Clues such as “Zen and the art of cocktails” and “Mi casa NO es su casa” are deliberately vague, giving the participants greater latitude for artistic response.

Thanks to Foto-Ruta’s clues, things I first loved about this charmed city—the cobblestone streets, bouganvilla draping a wall, the leafy interiors of courtyards—faded into the background, and smaller things took on a new shine. In an attempt to interpret each clue, the twisted roots of a palm caught my eye (All tied up); the open butterfly shape of a streetside barbeque’d chorizo (It has wings); or the brilliant rust and yellow paint of a garage door (Sugar and spice). “It can be hard to wander the streets here and take shots that haven’t already been done a million times,” said Mandryk from her ultra-modern apartment in the relaxed barrio of Belgrano. “By providing clues, we hope people will look at the city with a new eye. And by encouraging participants to work in groups, there’s a lot of support if you need to take time for a shot.”

Later, back in the café, we sip wine and nibble while going through each group’s selected images. The result? A sheaf of photos that people back home will actually want to look at. We all agreed that the day’s work is more beautiful than most of our shots taken so far, in San Telmo’s sprawling market or the Casa Rosada. We’d slowed down, we’d had time to really see where we were; it was an instantaneous and magical way of participating in the minutia of this often forgotten but thriving corner of the world.

Together Mandryk and Hayes are putting BA on the map; their company has only been in operation for two months and already it’s received press from the Guardian and the New York Times. Participation costs $100 pesos (about $25 US) and includes the lesson, tour and wine during the photo show. Mandryk also holds small group multi-day photo tours through her adjacent company, Fuera Foto, including five day all-inclusive tours of both Buenos Aires and Habana, Cuba. For more information, visit www.foto-ruta.com or www.fuerafoto.com.

Confiteria Ideal

Dos medialunas y un cortado.

Tres medilunas con queso y jamon y un cortado.

A cortado is a wonderful, short expresso with just a dollop of foamy milk dropped on top. A media luna is a thin, wispy looking croissant, covered at times in a sheer of sugar, at others, bare and buttery. The one this morning, or what I am currently calling morning after coming home at 5:45am last night and sleeping until almost noon, is crispy and perfect, from Mamma Rosa's cafe and wine and ham shop on the fringes of Palermo. It's 27 degrees out in the shade. I've never seen so many beautiful people in one place in my life.

I also haven't had so much caffeinated coffee since Cuba. Perhaps that explains the events of yesterday, which seemed to keep unrolling around me in a strange dance.

The photography session with the Prince of Pakistan and his family took place before the lunch they served us, at the residence for the Ambassador, in an old colonial building near Puerto Madero. The sounds of car horns and traffic faded into the background as Jocelyn and I were taken upstairs in an old, cage elevator and introduced to the Prince's parents and brother. The floors are covered in Persian rugs and the walls with the ambassador's art, strong, direct women gazing out of each painting, surrounded by colour. She was dressed in a sari of salmon silk and gold thread, and the sons posed with practiced smiles as I held the light reflector and Jocelyn directed them and shot. I had walked there from the outskirts of Recoleta, winding through the leafy, narrow streets and pausing every half hour for more coffee. After the photo shoot we had a four course lunch of traditional Pakistani food, served while the father discussed poetry and the sons told us about their international finance jobs. They teased one another. They were lovely. Choukri to the family for their generosity.

On the walk back to Plaza Mayo, we passed Confiteria Ideal and dropped in to ask the prices for tango classes. On a whim, I left Jocelyn in the square--her meetings with a co-worker begin at 8pm every week and last until midnight, when they go to dinner--and walked back for a lesson. The ceiling of Confiteria is carved wood filigree. Marble stairs lead to the second floor dance hall. Giant fans mounted on posts loom down from the plaster walls between antique mirrors. The space has been a traditional tango gathering spot since 1912.

Travelling at 36 is so much better than at 21. I will do anything. I will show up to a class sin pareja and not feel lonely or shy. I thought I would end up practicing alone, but at the last minute, an Argentine from Patagonia, a geologist with a one night layover in the city, showed up and took me through first the class, then the entire evening of milonga, until 1am. It was only in the last hour that he revealed himself as one of four teachers of tango in his hometown. When he goes back, he's putting on the town's tango festival. Suffice to say I was in good hands.

I watched while we talked about Patagonia and the oil and gas industry in the country. Picture one hundred Renes and Hildas (my gorgeous Argentine tango teachers at home); picture two things becoming one and gliding around the floor, some with constant flarings of heels, some with barely perceptible turns. Men in their eighties. Women with bellies, their breasts pressed against the man's chest, their heads turned to the side and their faces simultaneously nostalgic, bored, impassioned and intense with concentration. Men in suits with spats. Women with heels three inches high. I knew I wasn't supposed to be grinning when the geologist could coax me onto the floor, but I couldn't help myself. Argentina. Outside, the city darkened and people began thinking about taking a nap before a midnight dinner. The room was stifling with heat; the Oswaldo the geologist dripped; the fat dancer, who had so much grace when on the floor, fanned himself; the Australian couple who had taken their first lesson that evening watched from their table, the woman longingly, the man with slight panic. Poor men who are learning. So much depends on them knowing the moves. Though our teacher said the most helpful thing that I have heard thus far; tango is improvisation and style, not steps--he purposefully taught us six beats of an eight beat move so that it could be finished as one liked, with a front ocho, with a traditional close, with a molineta; como quieres.

I am a terrible dancer, but I left feeling as if I had been wrung out and filled again with amber. My friend Garth--from Canada--appeared at midnight and after the dancing ended Garth and I found a bar on Avenida de Mayo that was still open and talked about poetry until the sun rose. Minutes before we sat down, two men high on meth tried to mug me. I pushed his hands from my throat and we continued walking to the bar. It didn't even arouse a feeling of panic. The paradoxes of the city seem just like the ones I have learned to live with and love in Mexico City, in Sevilla, in Bangkok, in Barcelona or New York. I am glad, and realize I am lucky, however, to still have my computer (which I was carrying at the time) on which to write all of this.

Seis Cortados

Warm, smoky, humid wind in LA, as I changed planes at LAX, and a bar staff at the airport who joked in Spanish as they changed shift. Then the long, sardine flight across the equator to first Lima, then Buenos Aires, city of Jacarundas in high bloom, traffic, curly haired taxi drivers and lovely Jocelyn and her fabulous apartment in the heart of Belgrano, a leafy neighbourhood near the centre of the city.

For a scant two weeks, I am here to drink as much red wine in brown bars as I can, tag along in Jocelyn's vida cotidiana (on Tuesday I will act as her assistant while she photographs the Ambassador of Pakistan's family (her son is a prince with two palaces), and hopefully complete a final edit of the Garry Oak book for New Star Press. Days of half work, half play.

In the meantime, the light is perfect, the temperature is a perfect 22 degrees at 7pm and I have memories of the first Argentine I saw in the airport who walked past me as I exited the security gates; he was carrying six shots of expresso in tiny dixie cups for his friends--cortados. Then there was also the sand and snow hills of the Andes and their drifts of cascading colour, the small lights of Mexican towns far below and the lovely American Customs man (who would have thought those words would go together) who let me through with four giant bottles of sunscreen in my carry-on as gifts for Jocelyn. When the city wakes again, we're going grocery shopping for ingredients for my first asada and for wine. It's nice to leap into someone else's life. It's nice to feel mine moving and find such friendliness already on the other side of the world.

Image courtesy of vtveen. www.flickr.com

Wags

My lovely, lovely dog, swimming this August in the clear depths of Ross Lake, near Cat Island.

Men Die for Lack of It

Last weekend I attended a day long conference at the University of Victoria put on by the Center for Religion and Culture Studies. Featuring four of our country's best known writer: Jan Zwicky, Alisa Kirk, Anne Michaels and Don Domanski, the free seminar brought to the fore some of the best thinking on poetry and contemplation that is on offer these days. Needless to say, it was a full house.

The conference was divided in two, with readings and hour long discussions divided by lunch. The morning session was the most interesting, with Tim Lilburn moderating a panel discussion with Zwicky and Michaels. A visiting prof from the French department provided a reader's perspective. Zwicky's talk could easily be transcribed directly and published, so spare, exact and sharp were her comments. Michaels, though more verbose, was equally as astute. And Lilburn, as always, was the perfect host--gentle, probing, full of humility, but with great passion for the great thoughts.

I have a recording of the session, a snippet of which I'll post here.

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When I was sitting, listening to Zwicky, Lilburn and Michaels talk, I kept seeing the image of a giant boulder, resting in the air above and behind them. It rocked and spun slowly, held up by their words. If the daily, quotidian life is the rock we keep pushing up the hill, their words were the magic that keep that stone in the air, never falling. A necessary shadow, reminding us of our fragility, of the work that contemplation and poetry takes. Of the joy in the keeping-in-air of its particular and peculiar thought. It's November, but there is still hope in the world.

Mary Lake: Grassroots Caring + Social Media = A Clever Campaign

We're all familiar with the parcels of land around the south island, and around the world, that need our assistance. From the Amazon rain forests to the Boreal forest in Northern Alberta, from Sandcut Beach on the Juan de Fuca West Coast to Madrona Farm, there's always an ecosystem or a parcel of land that needs saving. It can be difficult not only to choose which one to support, but also to get the word out to the wider world. Sometimes, however, a different twist is all that's needed to inject some new life into a campaign. Take for example the recently launched grassroots social media campaign to protect and save Mary Lake, in the Highlands District of Southern Vancouver Island.

The Mary Lake property, which includes the whole of the lake, is located on Millstream Road in the Highlands. The dry coastal Douglas fir forest, one of our south island's most threatened ecosystems, surrounds a pristine lake festooned with water lilies and lined with mossy rock outcrops, wetlands and trails. The 107 acre parcel is a prime example of native plant and animal life and is one of the last undeveloped lakes in the area.

So what makes this campaign special? For one: social media. Though the campaign has a website, organizers are using Twitter and Facebook to spread the word about the property. Retweets and Facebook "likes" get the word out, and drive people to the site, where a series of short videos on the property and a simple paypal donation system allow people to easily contribute.

Secondly, donations are given an interesting twist through the "purchase" of one or more square metres of land. You can get a square forest metre for $10; a square lakeside metre costs $40. Put your name to as many parcels as you like, and see the tangible results of your purchase on the interactive map created specially for the campaign. Giving people a bird's eye view of the protected portions (and watching that patchwork grow, daily) is a great way of showing the impact we can have through grassroots donations. Similar to micro-credit loans systems, this system uses a large number of people and a low donation threshold to create a big impact.

The campaign to save Mary Lake deserves the attention it's getting; it may also be the mark of a new generation of environmentally concerned citizens who want to see immediate tangible results for their contributions.

Panel on Energy, SEJ Afternoon Plenary, 2010

Kieran Suckling, Executive Director of the Center for Biological Diversity, sits third in a row of four guests during the final lunch Plenary at the SEJ conference on Sunday, October 16, and his dire view of the energy situation in the US causes my table mates to give one another surprised looks. “Obama has failed,” he says, in a laconic but vehement voice. He’s judged as crabby, but probably right. In a few short minutes, during his first opportunity to talk, he lambastes the Obama administration for its lack of initiative and failure to act during what has been an historic time in American presidential history.

“The Obama administration was given an unprecedented opportunity, and it has not stepped up.” He leans back in his chair and continues. “Are we going to remove the massive subsidization of fossil fuels? Are we going to say, ‘Today we begin the ramp down of offshore oil drilling.’ There is no possibility of being able to clean up a spill of any magnitude in the Arctic, and yet the Obama administration continues to go forward with this.” His listing of the failures of the current government is refreshing, jolting and drops a sobering pall over the tables of journalists.

Energy issues are a huge topic today and for good reason. As Randy Udall, Independent Energy Consultant and former Director for the Community Office for Resource Efficiency and Co-Founder, Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas-USA says, “We have been born into the oil tribe. We consume our body weight in petroleum every seven days. Half the fossil fuel on the planet has been burned in the last twenty years. This is why we have a climate change problem. It’s a problem of abundance.” What we are most missing, he argues, is an appreciation, even a love, an acknowledgement of what these fossil fuel resources have meant to us, and how important they’ve been. At the same time that we understand this, we need to accelerate a move away from them.

It’s a holistic view, but one that may not be forceful enough, given the current situation with oil reserves, greenhouse gas emissions and a rapidly warming planet. But don’t say the words global warming to Karen Harbert.

Harbert is the Director of the Institute of 21st Century Energy, US Chamber of Commerce. “We say we want alternative energy,” she says, “but it can take 18 years to get a permit for renewable energy projects in this country. Is this really furthering our desire for a low carbon future, or standing in the way of it?”

Harbert ends up in hot water during the question period of the Plenary. A journalist asks her why her Institute supports Republican candidates who have questioned, or even disputed, the idea of climate change. “The problem with this debate is that you are supposed to be for or against. I want to look at the solutions, not the problems.” The problem with this is that it discounts the science.

If we look only forward we are no better, as the journalist also points out, than the Institute for 21st Century Energy’s Index of US Energy Security Risk, which fails to mention the link between carbon dioxide and global warming. Harbert’s answer? “We are not going to go down the science route.”

Kieran and Udall are the only two panel members who speak with clarity on the issue of energy during this panel. Nancy Sutley, of the Obama Administration, also demurs and hesitates. It will take time to find energy alternatives to replace fossil fuels, she says. She will not commit to yes or no on the issue and shifts the blame when pointedly questioned. “The lack of broad action on energy,” she says, “is due to congressional inaction, not executive indecision.”

Suckling's reason again comes to the fore. “Why does industry get to determine where to do alternative energy on public lands? If you want to avoid environmental litigation, you have to have the government lead, and the government is not leading.” That’s why, he says, we have these battles between environmentalists and industry over placement of wind turbines, over solar panels, over natural gas exploration.

What there seems to be is a basic disagreement in how to move forward. Harbert is interested in the future, but it’s unclear how she plans to get there when her center supports Republican candidates who question the scientific validity of global warming. To some on the panel, namely Herbert, there seems to be a questioning of the science. For others, such as Udall and Suckling, the science is unquestionable, but again, they differ in how best to use this science in order to fix the problem of energy issues. Suckling's critique asks if it is really too late. Where Udall sees opportunity, he sees pure failure.

Udall also posits that if we simply redirected some of our spending on military, we could shut down every coal plant in the country. Why not do this? Because of the massive machinery of fear which has gathered such momentum in this country. Diverting money away from attempts to catch 50 Al Khaida in Afghanistan would be to admit that the threat is not so great as we think. It would be to admit that there are more pressing problems. Setting aside military spending as a separate topic, everyone on the panel would agree that energy is a very pressing issue. But when it comes to finding solutions, and finding fool proof ways of putting those solutions into practice, trouble arises, and it isn’t going away any time soon.

SEJ Indian Country Field Trip Video, October 14, 2010

Flathead Tribes Bison Reserve, SEJ Conference, 2010



Shot and edited by Maleea Acker

The Tar Sands Mini Showdown at SEJ

On Thursday, October 15, a panel gathered in Missoula, Montana during the Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual conference to discuss the Tar Sands development in Northern Alberta. Present were Preston McEachern, Section Head of Science and Research, Alberta Environment, Peter Hodson, Department of Biology and School of Environmental Studies, Queen's University, Andrew Logan, Director of the Oil and Gas program, CERES, and Janet Annesley, Vice President, Communications, for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. The moderator was Hanneke Brooymans, a seasoned tar sands reporter based in Edmonton.

If fully developed, the tar sands will directly impact more than 2,000 square kilometres of northern Alberta. From the ducks that died in the tailings pond near Fort McMurray to questions now being asked about human health and safety for those living near the developments, the sands are an indisputably difficult and controversial way to extract oil from the earth. Estimates are that two barrels of water are used for each barrel of oil extracted. And the polluting effects of fracking, drilling and disposing of used water are well documented.

Andrew Logan admits to standing in the grey area of a very black and white fight, and states his case in a quiet but persuasive voice. “The economics of the tar sands are somewhat tenuous at best. Our concern is, once you begin to layer in other costs: carbon, water scarcity, cleaning tailings ponds and rehabilitating land, then the scale of the liability and the full cost of the development is too much. Our investors want to see the tar sands project looked at more holistically.”

Is it only money that will change people’s minds? The Beaver Lake Cree are in process of  launching a Constitutional challenge against the Canadian government for violation of their treaty enshrined right to hunt, fish and gather on their traditional lands. With the advent of the tar sands, caribou herd numbers in the area have plummeted. Rather than make do with environmental protests or boycotts, the Beaver Lake Cree have decided, using famed Woodward and Company Law firm, to fight the tar sands using the Canadian Constitution.

Logan continues with a list of statistics. Only a quarter of the projects have any plan for water use. Pollution in the Athabaska River may be the direct result of nearby oil industry operations and not a naturally occurring source. “What we’re looking for is a frank discussion of the problems and the possible solutions for these projects.” It’s a case of ‘show me’ versus ‘trust me,’ and despite assurances from Preston McEachern, there isn’t necessarily a reason to be greatly optimistic. What we’re seeing right now in the tar sands development, says Logan, does not give anyone huge confidence that we’ll get the answers we’re looking for.

Janet Annesley is a practiced and cool speaker, at least at first. Half the remaining investable oil in the world lies in the tar sands, she says, we need to realize we’re all in this together. “The world needs energy. And the reality is that only a small percentage of our energy needs can be supplied by alternative energy sources.” She quotes James Cameron, who while visiting the sands recently apparently said, “this resource could be a blessing or a curse.” It becomes obvious very quickly which side of this quote she’s trying to work.

What’s surprising is that the panel is comprised of two tar sands proponents, the CERES representative and only one scientist. In the US, I can’t help thinking that we must look a little like a bumbling, unconcerned populace. There are many scientific studies that show the sands are not doing harm to the environment. The trouble is, many of these studies are paid for by the petroleum producers themselves, or by the Alberta government, whose hands are so deep in the oil pot that they cannot possibly be called an impartial body. And studies that show an opposing view are reluctant to say, definitively, that there are links between the tar sands and wide spread pollution or health concerns. Better disclosure, as the Logan says, will help bring opposing studies greater validity. As well as better planning and longer term thinking. He’s right. How can the government simultaneously guard the environment while supporting the tar sands development?

The panel talk concludes on an uncertain note, and I hope that questions from the conference participants will bring more to light. “Our science,” says Peter Hodson, “may not be capable of producing the answers that we need at the present moment.”

The first question from the audience concerns an article in the local Missoula paper this morning. Giant rakes needed for the tar sands projects are being shipped up small highways from the Western United States up to Alberta. This backyard concern takes up almost a third of the question period. There are no questions about caribou habitat or tailings ponds and there is only one about health effects for people living near the tar sands.

So I stand up, state my name, and ask for thoughts on the Beaver Lake Cree’s case and the destruction of caribou habitat. The only person who comments is Janet Annesley. Who says exactly what one would expect. Who says the law suit concerns the government, not the companies she represents. Who says that she has ongoing discussions with First Nations in the area and greatly respects the fact that treaties are enshrined in the constitution. But who avoids talk of the case itself, or of the caribou. 

So I lean down to Marty Cobenais, Pipeline Organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, who has just beckoned me across the room to whisper the real answers in my ear. We’re nodding and whispering, and the next thing I know, Janet is calling to me from her microphone. “Excuse me. I’m answering your question but it doesn’t even look like you’re listening to my answer. Are you even listening to me? I’m putting a lot of effort into my response.” The moderator blushes. An electric charge goes through the room. A woman in the audience has my back before I can respond, “Why, is there going to be a quiz?” Everyone laughs. “I’m putting a lot of effort into trying to understand you,” I counter, lamely, but with more than a little pleasure. Janet Annesley’s face sets, and she wraps up.

No one else addresses the question of the caribou, or the three hundred Cree who have been brave enough to face off against oil giants such as Suncor and Shell Oil. Afterward, I am inundated by smiling conference attendees, who assure me Janet has shown her true colours. True, perhaps, but until we get this issue out to the entire world, a not just to a few supporters in England and across our own country, I’m just a shit disturber facing off against a single representative for the giants.

Seattle Missoula: Where is Fall?

The winding forested tracts of the Cascades outside of Seattle gave way more quickly than I had anticipated, right after Snoqualmie Pass. At 10 am I was in Pike street market, grabbing cheese, coffee and breakfast sandwiches for Drew and I while he circled the block; by 11am I was doing almost 100 miles an hour on the straight, wind farm covered rises and golden grazing land that surround the i90. And all around me, the warm wind that felt so strange for this time of year. I stepped out of the car near Moses Lake and the dry grass scent of late summer hit me like a sauna. Where was Fall? I wondered.

Idaho, as well, was not what I expected. As we crossed the border, clouds and rain hemmed in the road and the pines gave way to cedar, a carpet of moss and tamarack. The forest continued all the way through the top end of the state. No potato fields, no wheat, no chasing the harvest up the continent, as that beautiful article in Harper's told of, years ago. After I crossed over the pass near Coeur d'Alene, cedars changed to black spruce and then back to high mountain pine--untouched, as far as I could see, by mountain pine beetle. Sage brush and cactus reappeared.

My friends Meera Subramanian and Rusty, who I have met met here for two days of hiking and, hopefully, raptor banding, before the Society for Environmental Journalists' annual conference begins, explained to me that Missoula County's lack of topsoil is due to the glacier movement and melting that occured during the last ice ages. As the ice melted, it took the sediment with it down into the Walla Walla region of Washington, where the topsoil is eight feet deep in some areas.

Lucky them; hardscrabble but beautiful Missoula. As I drove into town, the first thing that greeted me was a giant "350" pinned or placed onto a hillside above town. Yesterday was 10-10-10, the grand culmination of the 350 parts (of carbon) per million movement. 350 is the number over which we cannot go, if we expect the world to survive and look anything like what we know it to be at present. Beyond this level of carbon in the atmosphere, mass extinction and the extreme effects of global warming may render the world uninhabitable. I joined Rusty and Meera on the B&B by the river that we're staying in for the next two nights. We drank wine and ate cheese on the wide wooden porch; the warm wind continued into late evening and made the river flow both ways.

Feast Days

Suspiciously unaffected by jetlag, perhaps due to late nights watching good movies and rambling the streets of Barcelona's Gracia district for the last six nights of my journey, I am now back home, safe, fairly sound, and very well-fed. Barcelona is a wonderful city. I left the mountains on the 25th of April to spend a few nights as a guest at friends of Cesca and Lluís, Matthew and his son Tijiane. They live in a barrio just north of the centre of the city, filled with stained glass apartment buildings from the art deco era, wonderful markets and fresh bread and cheese at practically every corner. I saw much Gaudí, many museums, and walked from morning until night each day through the city. Barcelonians are a lovely, curious sort. The women in the markets call you 'guapa,' as in 'qué más quieres, guapa?' and helped me find just the things I couldn´t leave without. Let the gods that shuffle paper and guard like sphinxes not seize upon my head for the publication of this photo.

Thank you for reading, everyone. It´s been a pleasure to write this series over the last few months. Love to you all.

Farrera, mi amor

I am back again. It's very funny. This time, I was packed up, sitting in the library, playing with the computer at 1pm. My bus was scheduled for 2:45 down in the town of Llavorsí. Twelve rich women from Barcelona were due in two hours, to take the entire centre over for a three day painting workshop. I was gazing out at the lump, which is what I´ve affectionately called the hill opposite--we gaze at one another all day, every day, and I'm absolutely in love with it--when in walked Lluís with a look on his face that made me feel like somebody, somewhere, had done something wrong, and perhaps it was me. Perhaps I had left a stain on the floor of my room. Perhaps the balcony was coming unhinged from my standing on it every afternoon, after a previous evenings of Cesca´s chocolate cake and avocado mousse. But then, 12 Barcelona women magically turned into 10 Barcelona women. He said, "You have the option of returning to your room, your same room, if you like. We would certainly like you to." I took it in very slowly, which may have made him say, "And if you need a reorientation, to say, 'you are still in Farrera, you are not currently on a bus to Barcelona' I can do that as well." I took him up on both offers. So that day, I packed up, they cleaned my room, I unpacked again. It was superb. Now I get to stay as long as I like (until near the end of April) and I am free to admire the lump, read, pace, go for walks and bother cuckoos, and generally fall even more in love. Imagine if the call from the missing women had come two hours later! So fortunate!

Other than that, there are only more nature stories of greening pasture, small flowers in the forest, brimming village fountains and sheep sent down to the crossroads to munch on the high grass in the lowlands while waiting for the summer pastures to climb slowly out of hibernation. I'm writing consistantly, and staying has made sense for the work as well as the heart.

That, and I found out tonight over dinner that the small pool in the river that I found, with a hand carved wooden spout that leads water down its small channel to cascade into the pool like a shower, was made by Cisco, the man I spend a day in the orchard with, learning how to graft fruit trees and, eventually, wild rose bushes with cultivated stock roses. (Whose house is a never ending work of art, a story I told last entry.) It makes perfect sense. Cesca said the pool is their version of going to the beach. Today as I was walking along a path to Alendo, the next village over, I came across one of the ubiquitous black water pipes, sticking out of the ground in the middle of nowhere and streaming water from its mouth. The irrigation complexities here are truly amazing. Beside the pipe, resting in the crook of two rocks, was a water glass, ready for use.

Bordes de Burg

Today I went walking with Cesca and Lluís and Lluís´ brother and Axel, the Finn. We walked up over 1000 feet, to 1800 metres through pine woods, across old fields, through scrub, and into a series of old houses used by Shepherds and before by the children of families who took the livestock up to summer on the pastures higher up in the mountains. The houses are stone, build for summer comfort, with chimneys that have turned the insides shiny black with soot, and barns for the animals at night. They would leave the children up there with the older ones for the whole summer, and they would run down, two together, if someone broke a leg. Beautiful high pastures that you would never know existed from looking up from the town. Then past them, even higher, to a long ago lake, that is now a swamp or a bog that has many frogs in the summer. We walked across the lake to a patch of earth underneath the pines, ate apples and olives and cheese and almonds and jamon, and then flew down the snowy slopes (there was 2 to 3 feet of snow for the last 200 metres or so) by jumping into the drifts. It was beautiful. The view from the top is spectacular, so much more of the actual Pyrenees visible, their shiny snow surfaces gleaming in the sun. I woke up this morning to the first pure clear day in ages, and it was warm enough that we hiked up in t-shirts. The water was running in all the streams. Some of the old barns and cottages are caved in, but some have been redone recently, and are very cozy looking summer protection places. And the light is spectacular. We saw tracks of a bear, skunk, tons of birds, and deer, as well as the ploughed up parts of the pastures where the wild pigs had been digging in the night.

Once down, we were invited into Cisco and La La's house, which is directly above Cesca and Lluís'. He has rosemary fresh drying in the rafters, and each stone from his house has a story, literally. he started pointing them out, telling how this one came from a river near here, this one from Farrera valley, this one when he saw it from his car and pulled over. Cesca told stories of an extremely slow Reneau lugging itself up the hillside one day--of course it was Cisco's, and it was filled with rocks. His stairs are pieces of wood inset into the walls of the house itself by 18 inches, and have no supporting rail on the outside. Very beautiful. The only room that is finished is the bathroom, which looks like a display suite, and was done because his wife kept asking for an indoor toilet. Otherwise, the house is a work of art in progress, and his attention keeps getting diverted by pieces of wood that look like something, and that he must carve into full being with his knife. I swear sometimes this village feels very much like living in the gulf islands. He fed us wine out of a carafe that you tip quickly into your mouth, using a tiny spout, and pour and swallow until you're satisfied (the spout never touching your mouth) and tip it back, quickly, so as not to spill, and pass it on. He fed his cats the remains of the anchovies he was eating for lunch, and refused to come to dinner unless it was at at least 8:30pm. No earlier, please, for any self respecting Catalan. The normal hour, at this time of year, is more like around 9:30.

And now I am back and very tired, and will rest and read in bed. Happy Semana Santa, everyone.

Farrera, de nuevo

I am back in the mountains. Can Serrat was a disaster, and fortunately I kept my head just enough to be able to flee, as fast as I could. I am here until the 14th of April, at which point I'll descend into Barcelona for the last two weeks before I return to the island. It feels both a very long and very short time since I've been home. But in the meeantime, I am very happy to be out of that place and back in La Bastida, with view of fields and sound of river, rather than view of enlarged culvert and sound of freeway. The extra cost is worth the sanity, which is returning.

Farrera, Dusk

I think perhaps that I have never been anywhere that so thoroughly integrates the human and the natural world, and where their seemingly opposing ways of living come to some sort of understanding. Farrera defies history--despite its thousand year ago history as an iron smelting town, which made barren the hillsides--and its present day life is more and more beautiful to me.

Oppen and Anna keep a flock of sheep in the town. Oppen, short for Oppenheimer, was born here, his father a Jewish German refugee from the war. His mother still mourns the fact that, as the smartest of six children, he became a shepherd. He´s very happy. He takes pictures of the water in streams high up in the mountains, way above the village, and will have an exhibition of his work--beautiful, strangely coloured photos of the rocks, currents and air pockets in alpine streams--near Barcelona next month. He brought over his laptop the other night, and showed us a bundle of them. Anna has blue eyes and gazes far into the distance, even when she looks at you. She´s spent a lot of time concentrating on wilderness. It´s the deepest stare I´ve ever seen. They are both coming for dinner tonight, with their 10 year old son, for my final night at the centre.

If the mountains surrounding the village were completely covered in trees, and not partially fields, leading down to the streams, I would not be so aware of the sluicing, rocking topography. There is one set of fields in particular that seems to be caught in the act of a wave--as if a giant glass were waving them around to test their clarity. The terraced fields lead down to lower paddocks for horses, and the grain growing fields, and then the gardens, each villager to his or her plot. Lluís and Cesca´s, our hosts, have "hort" written in bright paint on the fence of theirs. The garlic is a foot high, and daffodils and anenomes are blooming despite the frequent snow. This morning we woke to about three inches, and it all melted by noon in the sun. Everywhere are paths, hundreds of years old, which link the valley´s villages in the old way--with slate and dirt tracks, rather than roads. I walked to Mallolis the other day and found completely different birds, fig trees, a friendly dog (of course) and one young couple. They are the only inhabitants of the village.

So, just as I begin to figure things out (the paths leading upriver, the lost lambs that call from the wrong side of the stream but don´t need saving, the strange pull such a hemmed in, but incredibly coloured winter landscape has for me, I am leaving, tomorrow on the 2:45 bus to the next residency. More time here I think I will need to spend at some point. Deciduous trees which are not in leaf have almost as much colour as those which are. You wouldn´t think it, but it´s true. I can tell the birch by their red tones, the poplar by their golden ones.

The lambs that didn´t need saving were on the far side of Farrera stream, lost from their mothers, who I saw on the village side. Oppen saw me as soon as I left the house, far before I had even glimpsed the lambs, and wondered to himself whether I would try to catch them and bring them home. (I already have a reputation here, from getting behind one ewe at 1:30 in the morning nights before, and pushing her in the direction of her barn, as she had separated from the flock and was munching the grass in the middle of the village. She moved, eventually, and I got to scratch her head while she trotted along.) Of course, I did try. And he had to yell at me to stop, from the other side, where he was watching with his sheep, an hour later. I settled for standing guard to make sure they didn´t run in the wrong direction. Oppen was very amiable about the whole thing, when I walked to meet him that evening in the village. "The one thing you can be sure of in a place like this is that you are seen by someone, somewhere, no matter how alone you feel." Small village life. Twenty people and still there´s always a lookout. I should know. But I had a secret fantasy of showing up with a lamb under each arm, the third trotting behind, having earned my stripes as a shepherd (my secret fantasy profession). I settled for making a long strand of handspun wool from the bits I gathered off rosebushes on the way home.

Canvas in Snow

Em, in ferocious wind, putting down an onsite installation of a painting, in 25 pieces, by Krista, a fellow resident. After chasing squares of canvas up the two feet of snow snowy hill a few times, I finally´"nailed" them down with snow pegs. The piece is a blown-up, pixelated version of a golf course, which is more than a little ironic around here. The picture was taken from the other side of the valley, where Krista was waiting on the balcony with a camera and an orange sweater (to wave, once photos had been taken).


The snow continues to fall and stay, and then melt a little in the hot afternoon sun. I´m going to go for a walk in it now. Tomorrow, they may even let the sheep out of their concrete tanker barn for a while to graze, if this warmth keeps up.