My Travels in Argentina...

I've begun working on a mystery graphic novel set in Buenos Aires, where I recently spent four months doing, among other things, some travel writing. Since my protagonist is a travel writer & sports blogger, this excerpt seemed especially apt.

Super Sunday (Argentina-Style) & the Meaning of Home

February 7, 2011. It wasn’t easy finding a sports bar in Buenos Aires that would be broadcasting the Big Game. Mention “Super Bowl” to most porteños, as the denizens of Buenos Aires call themselves, and you’re likely to elicit a blank stare or a yawn (accompanied by that most Latin of gestures, the dismissive air-swat). The biggest excitement I encountered was amazement that a thirty-second commercial could actually cost $3 million (dollars no less, not pesos) – ¡puta de dios!

However, I did locate a venue, a club called Sugar, in a very lively, bustling area called Palermo Soho. Sugar, run by an American if his accent could be believed, was deep, dark, excessively noisy and I would venture to guess that nearly every norteamericano in BA, in particular those younger than 30, was there. I had taken a willing but utterly baffled new amiga with me, and we ended up sitting at a table with two American women from San Francisco, Lydia and Clara. Clara had just finished a three-month apprenticeship with a protégé of Buenos Aires’s (perhaps) most famous chef, Francis Mallmann, whose cookbook Seven Fires is considered by many to be one of the best guides to all things grilled. Lydia, her friend, had come to visit for the final two weeks of Clara’s stay.

The game was broadcast on two large screens, one at the very back of the very narrow back room, and one near the entrance. Diana and I had arrived early in order to get a seat and perhaps (at least in my mind – Diana never did have a clue about what was going on) watch some of the pre-game show. Our screen, which rippled gaily in the breeze from the open front door, was partially blocked by a large brick column and a group of boisterous young Americans who continually jumped up and over the backrest of the booth in front of us to get mas y mas cervesas. We could barely see what was going on. The possibility of hearing anything in the din was non-existent, and, in any case, the commentary was in Spanish. Instead of the usual pre-game sampling of interviews, musical performances, and prognostications, what seemed primarily on offer were clips from recent soccer matches featuring the team Boca Juniors. (A friend here, a native porteño, a cultured, erudite man, in utter seriousness informed me that one particular game between Boca Juniors and their deadly rival River Plate was simply the most important game ever played in the history of sport. In the history of sport! The most important!) The commercials were all Argentinian – none of the most expensive ads in the world made it this far down.

Sugar is renowned, at least in the ex-pat community, for its reasonably authentic buffalo wings and when ours finally arrived (the handful of waiters were run off their feet so our food showed up during the half-time show) we were able to confirm that we might easily be in any American city if cuisine were the only distinguisher (well, maybe not Pittsburgh since the majority of Sugar’s patrons were cheering for Green Bay). The most prominent brand of cervesa was Stella Artois. Everyone spoke the universal language of burgers and French fries. But clearly we were not in Kansas any more.

I’ve been reading Pico Iyer’s remarkable book The Global Soul in which he examines exiles and immigrants, fractured identity, the transformation of cities, the rise of a new tribalism, and the eternal, human search for home. (The book, which is deeply optimistic about the ultimate value of multiculturalism, was published in 2000 – it’s hard not to wonder how differently he might have viewed his subject if through the lens of 9/11 and its aftermath.) In the barrio surrounding Sugar there were far more people outside than in: enjoying their cafes con leche, their conversations (on and off cellphones, occasionally both together), their early dinners (or late lunches since dinner in BA usually beging around 10:30), oblivious to something designated “super” unfolding nearby. English was discernable in the ambient roar of the club but the prevailing rhythm was Castellano.

When one is a traveler in a foreign land and not just a tourist (as defined by the degree of time and solitude), one begins to understand what ‘home’ is and what it’s not – at least a little. I have ‘home’ in the form of my bank account (which, god willing, is sufficient to see me through my visit), my facility with the world’s most dominant language, the Internet and Skype so family and friends can be present at least in some electronic form, the airline ticket that in three months will return me to my familiar life. I’m lucky to have made a few friends here and I’m learning enough Spanish to get by and even, sometimes, communicate. The local economy is benefiting from my presence and I’m enjoying pleasant encounters with shopkeepers and the women in my dance class. I’m not an exile or a refugee or even someone seeking a better life in a place far away (and willing not just to pay but also to abandon whatever I must to get there). My being here for an extended stay isn’t tinged with loss, except for the temporary deprivation of the comfort of understanding the unspoken rules, of having a place within the community. You might even say that on some basic level, I’m experiencing what it’s like to be a stranger in a strange land.

Perhaps, as the heated, often vicious and simplistic, debate about immigration policy rages on in the United States, we need to remember that most immigrants bring something to give, and not just come for what they can take. As Iyer notes, immigrants hold our dream of the promise of America and in believing, they help realize it. Maybe we need to examine the view through their eyes. We need to know what it’s like to be on the far side of the glass. That’s one reason I’m here – to engage in that conscious act. At Sugar, I was watching the Super Bowl but in fact I was, like so many people in so many alien places, on the outside looking in.

Don't Be Mean to the Girl: Gender, Power and the Politics of Pretty

When Christine O'Donnell upset the Republican applecart in Delaware on Tuesday, Karl Rove called her, among other things, "nutty." Oh Karl. That's just not nice. One thing that seems to be true in these through-the-looking-glass days of American politics is that you can't be mean to the (Republican) girl.

It's difficult to evaluate the candidacy of O'Donnell without the calculus of gender. In a day-is-night kind of way, O'Donnell would seem to benefit from the fact of being a woman in the way that her flaws and missteps are apparently tolerated. For example, last year O'Donnell's financial disclosure statement for last year indicated an income of $5,800 (although later she said she made "more" but refused to say how much). Would a man in those circumstances be considered anything other than fiscally questionable? Probably not. Perhaps unfairly, we equate masculine power with material substance. But how do most people define feminine power? This is an overstatement, but in O'Donnell's case it seems to less about having things than getting away with them.

The Weekly Standard recently unearthed new details about a nearly $7M gender-discrimination lawsuit O'Donnell filed in 2005 against the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a conservative not-for-profit think-tank. The claims she makes in the lawsuit are revelatory, of her character and modus operandi. In it, she asserts that she was fired due to the organization's policy that women were not allowed to be in leadership positions (a charge the company denies). She insists that she suffered such pain and mental anguish that she lost her ability to make a living and enjoy life (poor baby). Her career was thwarted, she proclaims, since the organization reneged on its promise to pay the tuition for her master's degree at Princeton, tuition, by the way, that would likely cost the organization about as much as O'Donnell's yearly salary (a statement from Princeton noted that she was never enrolled in a master's program there). Ultimately O'Donnell dropped the lawsuit; however, to read the text is to see emerge the portrait of an unstable, histrionic, incompetent and whiny woman on the warpath for someone to blame.

When I was coming of age, in those heady days of "women's liberation," what mattered was strength: of character, of action, of ideas and ideals -- the willingness to fight not just the traditional forces of oppression and reaction arrayed against us but also the secret traitor within.

As Simone de Beauvoir aruges in her seminal work of feminism and existentialism, The Second Sex, women are too often party to our own enslavement. In accepting traditional roles with their trade-off -- the chilly landscape of autonomy for the promise of refuge -- we are choosing security over risk, status over disenfranchisement, the known (however limiting) for the unknown (however exhilarating). To be self-governing is to accept responsibility: for our choices and decisions, for our successes as well as the many mistakes we will make. It can be a tough and perilous road -- far less daunting to let others make the rules.

Christine O'Donnell and her fellow Grizzly-ettes turn all of that on their well-coiffed heads. The female power they wield is less a matter of integrity than wiley-ness, but it certainly comes in a pretty package. Good looks with its currency of sexuality apparently are a requirement of this particular sorority. As one commenter said in response to an article about Rove's dismissal of O'Connell's chances, a lot of Delawarians might vote for her anyway because she's "attractive and gorgeous." Subvert female sexuality and you have female compliance -- and a kind of collaboration that ultimately is nothing more than betrayal.

The image of woman that O'Donnell embodies is one that most of us fought fiercely to repudiate: manipulative, amoral and fragile. We are not to mind the inconsistencies, the emotional lash-outs, the prevarications, the glib oversimplifications of issues. When she plays the woman card, O'Donnell is asking for indulgence, not respect. Don't be hard on me, she says -- don't be mean to the girl. And even an old misanthrope like Rove ultimately caves.

(First published in www.care2.com in September 2010)

Natural Rejection: Texas Judge Dismisses Creationism Degree Lawsuit

In a decision that’s bound to further rile the advocates of creationism-as-science, Austin federal judge Sam Sparks has dismissed a suit filed by the Dallas-based Institute for Creation Research. Its graduate school (ICRGS) had petitioned the court for the right to offer a master’s degree in science education from a biblical perspective. To use a distinctly non-evolutionary metaphor, in his rejection of the suit the judge tore the ICRGS a new one.

First, a little background: in 2008, the ICRGS applied to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board for the right to offer master’s degrees in science education grounded in a literal interpretation of the biblical version of creation and the vigorous repudiation of evolutionary theory. The application was rejected due to the strong bias toward creationism; the ICRGS then sued, claiming that the board violated the institute’s first amendment rights of the free exercise of religion and freedom of speech.

Part of Sparks’s opinion states, “Having addressed this primary issue, the Court will proceed to address each of ICRGS’s causes of action in turn, to the extent it is able to understand them. It appears that although the Court has twice required Plaintiff to re-plead and set forth a short and plain statement of the relief requested, Plaintiff is entirely unable to file a complaint which is not overly verbose, disjointed, incoherent, maundering, and full of irrelevant information.” (Thanks to Care2’s Scott Pasch for pointing out this out.)

One irony here (of so many) is that California, where the ICR graduate school is based, has allowed the degree to be conferred since 1981. In California, the graduate school is accredited by something called the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS – their acronym, not mine), a body not recognized by Texas. According to their website, TRACS “was established in 1971 to promote the welfare, interests, and development of postsecondary institutions, whose mission is characterized by a distinctly Christian purpose….” (Oddly enough, I visited both the ICR and TRACS websites but found no mention, not in the “Updates” or “Daily News” sections of either, any mention of the suit dismissal. Could this inexplicable absence be an example of unnatural selection? Holy moley!)

Why did California, with its reputation for being open to all manner of unorthodox ideologies, permit the ICRGS to teach creationism as a scientific methodology, with the prize of recognized masters degrees in the offing? If California views creationism as just another iteration of “you say tomatoes and I say tomahtoes,” well, I beg to disagree. Creationism is much more of the “my way or the highway” school of thought. And what’s up with Texas, whose school boards rewrite US history with apparent impunity? One can only marvel. Apparently, the thinking of both Judge Sparks and the Texas Board of Education was that while theology might infuse and inform many disciplines, science isn’t one of them.

For many people, especially those who rely on fundamentalist doctrines as the foundation for belief, science and religion coexist uneasily if at all. In this Weltanschauung, the primary religious text is literally the only vessel of truth, and ‘literal’ is the operative word: any view that allows for interpretation or (gasp!) an evolving understanding of the tenets is unacceptable. Thus, the role of science is to confirm, not to challenge.

I take no issue with religion as a way of acknowledging and making peace with the great mysteries of life. I heartily support the moral and ethical guidelines that underlie most of the world’s great belief systems. However, I believe that science and religion lay out two different paths to truth. As Texas Commissioner of Higher Education Raymund Paredes said, “Religious belief is not science. Science and religious belief are surely reconcilable, but they are not the same thing.”

I balk at the imposition of a narrative of uncertain authorship and provenance (a narrative I consider to be part historical record, part literature, part mythology and part spiritual longing) – one whose fundamental principle is that faith needs no proof – upon our inspired (divinely or otherwise) human ability to comprehend the miraculous workings of our miraculous universe.

Creationism, for me, is a pale, feeble construction compared with the majesty of evolution and all that evolution implies: deep time, a vastly rich and complex system, purpose in seeming randomness, and the moral imperatives of emergence and extinction. That might not be the underlying cause of the Texas decision, but, as with evolution, I'll take what I can get.

(first published on www.care2.com in July 2010)

Reverse the Curse

Why do they hate us? The Football Gods (TFGs), I mean. They seem to have a malign and perverse interest in knees and in yesterday’s TexMess smote yet another brilliant player with their evil touch. Oh, Wes, say it ain’t so!

Last week I mentioned significant injury as worst-case scenario, and that nearly happened. Welker, considered by many to be the Pats’ season MVP and a key to playoff success, much less that elusive fourth Super Bowl win, is a huge loss, irreplaceable despite the apparent channeling of WR Julian Edelman who had 10 carries for over 100 yards.

Why do I contend that Welker’s injury is nearly worst-case? Two words: Darryl Stingley. Welker’s accident, possibly the result of a cleat tangle with the stadium turf, did not leave him paralyzed. It might have ended his season but if there is justice in this world, it won’t end his career. It was not, as in the case of Jack Tatum’s assault on Stingley, tainted by the reprehensible suspicion of malicious intent (except perhaps from TFGs). Tatum’s churlish behavior in the aftermath of Stingley’s devastating injury – he never apologized, never visited, never called (whoa, that sounds like a relationship) – only fuels the flames of blame.

So, what now? The odds, already dubious, are set against them. The Pats rolled into Reliant Stadium on, well, a roll: peaking at the perfect time, a playoff berth guaranteed, the game meaningless except for keeping everybody sharp. Instead TFGs landed a stunning blow. The mettle of this season’s team is about to be tested like never before. The story waits to be written.

Every heroic tale has its dark before the dawn. Every hero faces the worst kind of setback before stumbling to his feat and pulling off a miracle. The sidelining of Welker is dreadful and demoralizing but it doesn’t have to be fatal.

Perhaps it’s not likely that one or more of the players will find a way to transcend their own limitations and truly step up – when that scenario plays out on the heroic stage it never is the likely thing. But when, oh so rarely, it does happen it’s the stuff of legend. In local lore, it’s Kurt Schilling’s bloody sock. Would that 2004 World Championship, as great as it was, been the mythic event it became had the Sox, just days earlier, not stared into the abyss?

So I say, let’s reverse TFG’s curse. Let’s face the darkness with courage and resolve and dare the abyss to look back. Let’s have the audacity to still seek the Ring -- in spite of, or maybe even because of, the nearly impossible odds. I challenge this team to show us all that football, like any noble quest, can be so much more than a game.

--first published on Ballhype.com

Willful Ignorance: Should Students Be Allowed to Choose What Not to Study?

Jack Summers, a Newton, MA, tenth-grader, might not know everything but he definitely knows what he doesn’t want to know. Jack, a self-proclaimed atheist, objected to an assignment in his mandatory English class: to read a section of the Bible as an example of literature. Initially school administrators baulked; eventually, as one of the local papers described, they ‘caved’ and while Jack still was forced to read the Bible assignment (meaning, presumably, that he would have failed the class otherwise) he was exempted from taking two related quizzes and completing a paper about the reading. (Of course, the first thing that comes to my mind is: how do we know that Jack did indeed read the assigned portion of the Bible? Did the atheist code of conduct prevent him from simply saying he’d done so since he was not required to demonstrate any knowledge or reflection?)

A further oddity (in my mind) is that Jack’s mother, Majorie Summers, in supporting her son, questioned in a letter to the editor why her son wasn’t given the chance (apparently the original accommodation) to read a secularized summary of the Biblical passage and respond to that: “Jack did indeed have to read the Bible after the school failed to provide him with a secular analysis of the biblical assignments, as had been agreed at our meeting with the Newton South team. We were also surprised when Jack was told by his teacher that his two quiz grades would be dropped, instead of retaken after a review of the secular material.”

The assignment was to explore the Bible as a piece of literature. Is Summers advocating a sort of Cliff Notes of the Bible, in which all of its literary qualities, everything that makes it literature – use of language and imagery, rhythm, poetic construction, character description, narrative power – are eliminated and only the religious message remain? Isn’t that exactly what the Summerses say they want to avoid?

It’s far too simplistic to deny that we choose every day what we want to learn and what we (regrettably or with relief) forgo. While some new learning is mandatory (revised procedures at work, changes in the tax code, relevant current events, etc.) much is discretionary due to the fact that we can process only so much information at any given time. In my case, the list of languages unexamined, places unvisited, software uninstalled, books unread, disciplines unexplored is full to overflowing. The only reason I can think of for wanting to prolong my lifespan is so that I’ll have time to learn Italian and the techniques of Chinese cooking. However, this incident brings up a larger question: What does it mean, especially for a kid, to choose willful ignorance about something with the kind of historical and cultural impact as the Bible?

The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1963, in the case of School District of Abington Township v. Schempp, that schools can include the Bible and other religious texts as examples of literature and in cultural studies – they just cannot use those works in a religious context, for proselytizing or promoting a particular religious viewpoint. The decision reads in part: “[It] might well be said that one's education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization. It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities…as part of a secular program of education.”

A few of Jack’s comments about his position are unintentionally funny. In an interview with the press, he referred to the Bible as “the word of God” and a “holy text.” I fear that Jack hasn’t quite grasped the concept of atheism – simply put, an atheist does not believe in the existence of deities. Clearly Jack does believe that God and holiness exist – he just doesn’t want to be confronted with them.

Herein, for me lies the rub: the fear that new knowledge, especially knowledge that might challenge comfortable assumptions or beliefs, is somehow contagious, able to transform attitudes against the person’s will. Debates about such diverse subjects as evolution, climate change and homosexuality often have this fear as subtext: if I learn about Judaism, I might change my mind about it – OMG!

The most fundamental point of education is to provide the framework for more choices, not fewer. The central premise of education is that knowledge expands and frees, not constricts and restricts.

It’s fully appropriate that no religious text – the Bible, the Qu’ran, the Bhagavad Gita nor any other – be taught in a public school as religious ‘truth.’ However, for students to explore these masterworks as literature, as hallmarks of culture, as intrinsic aspects of the development of civilization is not only a good idea: it’s a necessary one. And if in the process, a student discovers something that feels truthful, then that becomes a choice for that student to make, a choice that a willful stance of ignorance can’t offer.

first published on 12-20-09 on www.Care2.com/causes/education

NEW FEATURE!

Some of the following posts will be reprints from my Care2 education blog and my Patriots football blog. I'll also be posting new political blogs. Hope you keep reading and commenting!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

We'll be back with exciting news on Monday January 11. Have a joyful season.