ESTA ES SU CASA--DECEMBER 2010

ESTA ES SU CASA--DECEMBER 2010

A DAY IN THE LIFE

Victor, in his 50s, dropped dead of a heart attack. I was not sure who he was, but folks assured me that I had seen him often enough, an uncle of Dulis, 16, who keeps showing up from time to time after stints in the mountains. So I must have seen Victor when I’d say hi to Dulis, some time or other. Most of Victor’s family are evangelical, but his sister Teodora wanted to observe the Catholic custom of the novena of prayer. It’s a question I should be better informed on, no doubt, but I really don’t want to know if some Christians here discount the resurrection and hence scoff at prayers for the dead. We just did it, and somehow it all meant more than ever to me.

Against all odds, you might say, including Leon’s drunken intervention on Day Four. He’s the father of Pablo and Chepito, who were getting ready for their annual visit to Tegucigalpa with me. Chepito has been drawing more than ever, and such gorgeous tiles of color, like some magical palace over the rainbow. Here we are, at Victor’s novenario, myself preaching on Jesus’ words to love our enemies, and Leon wanders in, drunk as a skunk, and I just want to cry. But that’s my pain, my “sin,” if you will. More violent is the pain Pablo and Chepito suffer, to have not just some drunk for a father, but the TOWN drunk, always a display. Chepito’s answer to the ugliness of his family life is his art, transcendent in its detail and undiluted in its beauty.

Leon’s rant included the offense, “Hermano Miguel is taking my boys to Tegucigalpa and he didn’t even ask my permission.” True enough. But I did clear it with Irene, their mother, when she came to spend the night at my house, along with Pablo, afraid to go home to her drunken spouse. Chepito always goes home, and then works all night on one of his drawings. He is our John Lennon.

We had some fun in Tegucigalpa, though the boys did not seem real excited about anything. Mostly, we just ate. We arrived on Sunday, and ate at Chili’s before an evening Mass. We were all so tired, I thought, we’re not gonna make it to church. But I was Chepito himself who said, “Let’s go to Mass”--and he never goes in Las Vegas. So we went, and got back to the hotel, and without even taking a vote, we all just sat down and ate again, another whole supper, without missing a beat. The malls are all decorated for Christmas, but the enormous trees they put up are decorated with advertising! Somewhere, Santa is crying.

On November 2, I spent the whole day with the dead. It’s the Day of the Dead, or, more hopefully, the Feast of All Souls, and I just sat in the cemetery, listening to wonderful sermons I had downloaded from The Crossing Church in Columbia, MO, and halfway playing the role of a Wal-Mart greeter as folks came to trim their loved ones’ graves, place fresh flowers and “coronas” of artificial design, and maybe spread a little carpet of pine needles. Some of the graves are brand-new, like Nandito’s, the young man I mentioned last month who was murdered in Tegucigalpa when he would not be a gang-banger. Something extraordinary happened in the last days of his novenario; his grandmother Santos, where the prayers were being celebrated, listened to us delegados droning on and on about everything and everyone EXCEPT Nandito, and finally she just said, “I loved Nandito, and I forgive the boys who killed him.” She said more in 10 seconds than the rest of us had managed to “preach” in all week. She spoke so quietly I was not sure I heard right, but she said it again. “I hope they will be touched by God and their hearts changed.” There you have it; if you will pray for the dead, you will pray for the killers.



Suddenly my Internet went down, and it was a mystery. My plug-in modem worked in a couple neighbors’ machines, and conversely, their modem would not work in mine, suggesting the problem was precisely with my MacBook. I tried to intuit a solution, but soon decided I had to go back to Tegucigalpa to get the fix. I took Chemo, but I warned him we could not spend ANYTHING this time. In fact, I was down to my last twenty bucks, leaving very little wiggle room. I simply have to live within my budget, or all is lost. It has made me a monster, you could say, at least that’s how I feel as I turn my back on the poor. My “budget,” such as it is, is mainly committed to helping pay the grocery bills of Elvis and Dora, of Maricela’s family, of Chemo’s families (his brother Santos and Alba, his grandma Natalia), as well as frequent pick-me-ups for Pablo and Chepito, and Cristian and his wife and tiny baby girl. That absorbs all of my cash, and for all the poor who come down the mountains, I had been dipping into my “endowment,” that is, my savings. Well, that’s mostly gone now, and I had been burning the candle at both ends by credit-card charging whatever I could, supplies and such, in stores in Yoro or Tegucigalpa. So I’m Scrooge now.

The computer problem was quickly resolved, once the Tigo technician Carolina took a look. Chemo and I celebrated by going to the new “Harry Potter” movie. I don’t know how much you paid to see it, but it was “discount day” so we got in for about $2 apiece. I was enthralled--and scared; Chemo’s only comment was, “It was loud.” If it wasn’t Harry Potter, I could hardly justify spending a dime on myself; but, especially this part of the story, the end, really opens a chasm you either fall into or love your way out of. That final image of “Part 1”--Voldemort‘s seeming triumph as he casts his evil lightning into the sky--will haunt me till next July, when redemption gets a chance in “Part Two.”

Another expense I guess I should justify is the Beatles--“Now on iTunes!” I immediately downloaded “Sgt. Pepper.” A recent special issue of Rolling Stone magazine ranked the Beatles songs and judged “A Day in the Life” their “masterwork.” I think with all the stresses and strains right now, my emotions are closer to the surface, because I just burst into tears when I heard it again, as if for the first time. “I read the news today oh boy....”

Headlines in Honduras, all within 24 hours: a distinguished couple, an Italian expatriate and his Cuban wife who owned a motorcycle franchise, are shot to death, a dozen bullets apiece, in their Toyota HiLux on the streets of La Ceiba, apparently a case of mistaken identity by the hired killers, who were looking for a drug kingpin. We’ll go through La Ceiba next week to visit Chemo’s sister Rosa and his mother Rufina in Tocoa. Just outside Tocoa, landowners and “squatters” are at war over the African palms that abound there; at least 4 dead already, with reports of a “thousand” guns, including AK-47s, on hand. A dead teen is found tied into the fetal position and thrown in the river in Tegucigalpa in a cardboard box; shortly afterwards, two of his buddies are found dead in the riverbank weeds. Actual fetuses, 13 of them found around the city in trash cans and such in recent months, along with 36 other “cadaveres”--victims of violence or neglect never claimed by any family--will be buried in a big common grave, courtesy of the state, in a special section of the Divine Paradise Cemetery. That’s “how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall,” as John Lennon sang. For families that do mourn their dead, the city has begun a new program--Help to Go Home--to respond to the needs of the poor who cannot afford to transport their loved ones home for burial. If families can even be informed! Thieves tore down a mile of telephone wire--for the copper inside--in San Pedro Sula, where the dismayed police could only ask, “Didn’t anybody see this happening?” Some things you don’t want to see, even in your imagination, like the young worker who fell into the cement mixer at a concrete block company. At least we think he was young; the company is refusing all inquiries, no doubt because they have been cited repeatedly for safety violations. Back to La Ceiba, two brothers, murdered and stuffed in the trunk of their car. Now, this I did not have to imagine, I saw the TV report, as the family, summoned by the police, opened the trunk and leaped and spun in fear and dread as if stung by Voldemort’s lightning. “But I just had to look, having read the book.”

So Chemo and I spent Thanksgiving Day on the bus back to Las Vegas. Not a bad trip, until you realize it was a waste of time. As soon as we got back, I tried the Internet on my computer. Nothing. I wonder if “string theory” can explain this. It works in Tegus, it fires blanks in Las Vegas. The signal or the computer is just kooky enough that they are incompatible. But I had an out. Jeanette Sipp-White at Parkway South had given me a used MacBook in St. Louis to give away down here. I still had it, and, by golly, my modem worked just fine in it! (The computer seems to be a newer model.) So it is now my “home” computer. I mean, I know this is absurd, two laptops on my desk, one with everything (like my photos) and the other that works, with me bridging the gaps with a USB memory stick. I’m in the middle of nowhere and I’m hoarding computers! CRAAA-ZY! But thank you, Jeanette, and as soon as the signal straightens out, I’ll complete your donation....

Wouldn’t Thanksgiving be a lovely day for a graduation? Basically, that’s what happened here, on Friday, Nov. 26. Twenty-one ninth graders got their diplomas in a warm and happy gathering. I was invited as the “sponsor” of Milena, Maricela and Juan Blas’ second daughter--and second in her class, by the way. I had a heck of a time getting any good pictures, but she is a classic Audrey Hepburn beauty. As the kids came forward, accompanied by parents and then escorted back by their sponsors, their age, interests, and future plans were told. I loved Ronny’s “ambition”: he wants to be a “comediante.” And he’s not kidding! He’s our version of Gino (last name?) in my last years at Parkway North, an abundance of talent and showmanship and the perfect personality for entertaining. Gino’s specialty was these marathon performances of “Love Shack.” Here, Ronny was in every “show” the kids put on at school; in fact, he wrote most of them! Now, Milena has abundant talent, too, don’t get me wrong. But she is very serious; she’d love to be a doctor. Coming out of Las Vegas, who knows? She might as well try for astronaut. The expense would be, for her poor family, astronomical.

Speaking of infinity, did you see the WikiLeaks tsunami? Here, folks highlighted the “revelation” of exactly what I told you a year and a half ago: that the U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens turned a blind eye to Mel Zelaya’s president-for-life ambitions, indeed, encouraged him! Thus, the coup, the nuclear option, as it were, of desperate men came to pass. It contradicts Mel’s own wishful thinking, that the U.S. ordered the coup, always a popular victimology. Pepe Lobo, the current president, named by the ambassador as one of “conspirators” molesting Mel, just grinned: “No hard feelings. Heck, that’s just the way diplomats like to talk.” To his credit, he never takes the bait.

The coffee-picking season has begun, and trucks and pickups are daily loading with Las Vegans for Quebrada Amarilla. They’re paying 120 Lempiras a sack this year--that’s 100 pounds of coffee beans for about $6. Chemo’s brother Santos tells me he and the kids can fill about 7 a day, sometimes as many as 12 or even thirteen. Good money, I guess, and a Woodstock atmosphere to boot. They’ll be gone till classes start again in February.

And today they gave out final grades. I am so proud of Chemo, passing third grade, with an 84%, especially when I see some of his little companions falling behind and required to repeat, or drop out altogether. Chemo's "girls," his nieces Chila, Mirna, and Reina, in their first full year of school, passed, too, second and first grades. Oh boy!

The happiest of holidays to you all!

Love, Miguel

ESTA ES SU CASA--NOVEMBER 2010

ESTA ES SU CASA--NOVEMBER 2010

THE POOR ARE ALWAYS WITH YOU

Every time I gave a talk in St. Louis, I’d show pictures of Chemo and his heart surgeon and I’d say something like, “Imagine these doctors leaving their own children behind to come to Honduras and help my son--that is real love, don’t you think?” Then suddenly, at Wydown Junior High, I caught myself mid-sentence--I don’t know if the kids noticed my pause--and I thought, “O my God, that’s what I'M doing...!” That sounds pretty self-congratulatory, I know, but it cleared my mind. I was missing Chemo so much that I didn’t see the open hearts right in front of me, full of love.

Of course, it would be Wydown that tipped the balance--thanks to Debra Baker and other awesome teachers, the kids had had not one but two “Hat Days” (when students “pay” to wear a hat or cap); they collected a valise full of toys; and they just wouldn’t let me go. But it was the same everywhere. Tom Wehling’s eighth graders at MICDS had adopted Chemo almost as much as I did. Lisa Portell and Jeanette Sipp at Parkway South High had prepared my visit with World Cup precision, and eager, attentive students filled the theater during their “free time,” Academic Lab, and they are following up with special tee-shirts. And at Selvidge Middle School, Julia Buehler showed exactly why she was voted Teacher of the Year when she whipped up the troops in less than 24 hours for my “surprise” visit. Kim Hanan-West at Parkway North was in a class by herself. Her father had just died suddenly but she greeted me with a huge hug, “Oh, Miguel, how are your children?” She gave me money she had collected from hot chocolate sales in her classroom. “There’ll be more, when it gets colder,” she winked.

Maybe it helped this time that I began each presentation with a phone call, to Chemo or Pablo and Chepito, and had the audience shout “Hola!” all the way to Honduras. That brought things into perspective, how close we are, though far away.

Indeed, my biggest expense in St. Louis was calling Honduras at least twice a day. Well, first of all, I did miss Chemo, but I wanted Dora, who was taking care of Chemo, to know I was not taking her kindness for granted. So I’d call before and after school, along with frequent calls to Pablo and Chepito, Cristian, Santos and Alba, and Dionis, and others. At about a dollar a minute, the cost was high, but it did keep me focused.

Focused on friends and family. It was not just the “stadium” venues like schools that bespoke the power of love, but even more the intimate and individual relationships that make my visits so memorable. The gracious hospitality just overwhelms me. Teresa Jorgen was the constant companion, and more generous with her car than ever, if that’s even possible! If it was a “sacrifice” to leave Chemo behind, friends and family up in the States consoled me endlessly. You know, I probably ate more in a day than I’d eat in a week in Honduras, including a late-night run to “Five Guys Burgers and Fries.”

The whole world celebrated on my birthday October 12. Of course, most of the cheering was for the 33 miners getting rescued one by one in Chile. Like you, I bet, I watched it all night, till everybody was out. As someone said, it was a mirror-image of 9/11, the world’s attention riveted by a disaster in a tower BELOW the earth, where everyone got out alive this time.

But I have to say, it seemed as if a lot of folks were in even deeper holes. Every time you turned around, another gay teen, most notably Tyler Clementi at Rutgers University, had thrown himself to death like the jumpers in the Twin Towers. And the same question, how bad is it in schools where kids are killing themselves to stop the pain? Amidst the helpless feeling, a website emerged that promised some hope: It Gets Better, filled with video testimonies of survival (itgetsbetterproject.com). And maybe you saw the extraordinary video of Fort Worth councilman Joel Burns pleading for the rescue of our bullied children (joelburns.com). What if all politicians spoke this honestly, this compassionately, this briefly? For one thing, they’d stop torturing us with all their skunk ads.

I caught some things--besides my birthday--that I miss when I come in April. It’s usually just about impossible to get my family together, but we had built-in parties to bookend my visit, my niece Justyne’s 8th birthday just after I arrived and my niece Jaslyn’s first birthday just before I left. And Parkway North Homecoming. North beat Kirkwood, thanks to a gutsy 4th-and-goal play with about 5 minutes left in the game. (“We voted on it!” the coach said proudly.) I turned to principal Jenny Marquart and shouted, “I’m just as excited as the last time!” Speaking of Homecomings, Teresa’s challenged nephew Bryan, a junior at Lindbergh High School, dressed up and went to his Homecoming Dance in his wheelchair, and “danced” with the sweetest girl in the world, Lizzie, a friend since kindergarten. And Barb Kelley came in for a visit from France, just before the lock-down there with all the strikes protesting the End of the World, a little uptick in the retirement age from 60 to 62. Mark Williams snuck in, too, after two months abroad with his extended “family” in France.

Hoping for playoffs, I did manage to catch a Cardinals game, one day before they were mathematically eliminated. Father Carl Dehne took me to the early-morning Mass he says for the Missionaries of Charity (Mother Teresa’s nuns) in North St. Louis, where I could thank them for praying so faithfully and so fruitfully for Chemo. They loved seeing the photos of Chemo Before and After his operation. And since it had come time for Teresa’s little white dog Jo-Jo to go to Dog Heaven, we went very early one morning to Kirkwood Animal Hospital, where we shared a little prayer with the gentlest doctor you could wish for, Kathleen Hemler, and the staff, who had been caring for Jo-Jo for years.

Parkway North grads Randy and Jeff Vines, St. Louis fanatics, showed us their St. Louis Style shop on Cherokee St. (stl-style.com), where they were taking a logo tee-shirt order from Cam Mizell (North 1999) for his band in New York City. And another St. Louis booster, Tim McKernan, who heads “The Morning After” chat fest on AM 590 “The Fan,” invited me to call into the show; Tim is my second-cousin, but I like to say I’m his “uncle,” you know, ‘cause I’m so OLD, and he’s so young! It gave me a chance to boost my own love, Honduras, and compliment Tim for his admirable fairness with sensitive issues.

For my last supper, Rams treated me and Teresa and my sister Barb to Citizen Kane’s steakhouse in Kirkwood. But upstaging the fine cuts of meat was our server, Matt Krenz, who Teresa recognized from “American Streetballers,” the only film cast, shot, and scored wholly in St. Louis. Matt not only starred in the movie; he wrote, produced, and directed it! Maybe you saw it at the Tivoli last year. (Go to americanstreetballers.com to order the DVD.) It’s pretty ironic that my adios to St. Louis should so smoothly transition me back to Honduras. The theme of both the movie and our daily reality is the same: our common humanity despite the differences between us. Or, to put it another way, as Jesus said, “The poor are always with you.”

Coincidence welcomed me again in Tegucigalpa when I took my old Go-Phone to get re-tooled for use in Honduras. The technician and I started to chat, and I mentioned Chemo and his surgery, and he says, “That’s really something, my two-year-old niece just had open-heart surgery.” From the same doctors, it turns out, in town again for another brigada.

Big day for my return to Las Vegas. Dora had a delicious lunch, chop suey! Then we immediately went off to the Rosario Misionero, a daily visit during October to folks who cannot frequent church, but it includes prayers for every continent on the planet. I told them, this is what sustained me while I was in St. Louis. Then a final celebración of the novena for an 80-year-old woman who had died, which went on and on, but after a month away, I was OK, even though I had never known the woman. Then on to a wake for 26-year-old Nandito, shot by gang members in Tegucigalpa when he refused to join. Shot in the face; I took one very brief look. I did not recognize him (no one would!), though they assure me he was here last year during Holy Week, and I vaguely remember him at his grandparents' house in those days with all the other siblings from Tegus and San Pedro Sula. Then on to Maricela's, where I gave her baby clothes from Carol Stanton for little Mariana Teresa. And they looked at the photobook, they pored over it, which is appropriate, since they are featured in it so much! Then on to Natalia's house (Chemo's grandma), just to touch base, before eating supper at Alba's, picking up the routine as if we'd never left. Then back to the house (my house!) with Chemo and cousins Joel and Dionis, who I left to pick through boys clothes from Melissa Pomeranz and Laura Stanton, while I returned to Nandito’s wake, waiting for the prayer service led by the delegados. Funny thing: no delegados showed up. Finally, about 11:00 p.m., the crowd was getting restless, and the grandparents said, "Shouldn't we start?" It was so weird, I was the only one there, so I did the whole thing myself. And I didn't even know him! But I guess, fresh from a month in St. Louis, I knew what family is and what friends are, and what the love of God is. I just tried to think, what would Teresa say? What would Rams say? What would Barb say? What would any of you say?

So I guess you sent me back just in time.

Love, Miguel

ESTA ES SU CASA--OCTOBER 2010

ESTA ES SU CASA--OCTOBER 2010

I’M JUST SAYING...

I am in St. Louis (till October 20), and I will file a report on those adventures, but I thought I better keep my hand in, and remind us all of why I’m here.

Chemo finally got a report card! It took a month of teacher strikes to produce it (I guess SOMEBODY was feeling a little guilty...!). It was funny; at the parents meeting called by the principal Profe Flor when the unions signed a new agreement with the government, she explained that the kids would have classes on Saturdays to make up for the lost days, but, the good news was, their grade cards were ready. At that point, a few teachers raised their hands to say they didn’t have the grades ready quite yet. Like the joke about the Berlin Wall, guy takes his car to the shop and the wall goes up overnight and 30 years later wall comes down, goes to claim his car, mechanic says, “Right. Be ready Thursday.”

I’m smiling because Chemo’s teacher Juana Maria had his grades fresh and ready, and they were great! I was so proud of him. And he said, “Miguel, I’m going to fourth grade, and fifth grade, and sixth, and high school, and the university, too.” But it did make it easier to come up to St. Louis.

Chemo did not want to celebrate his birthday September 9, anticipating a big surprise when I return from St. Louis (which he refers to simply as “that”: Did you buy that yet?? he keeps asking when I call). But the sweeter side was his thought to share his day with Denis, an autistic boy in Paraiso turning 15 the same day; so we got a cake after all and traipsed across the river. Actually, I had told Nanda, Denis’ mother, that we would keep things very low-key, so as not to stress Denis, but when we got there she had all the little neighbors in the yard, ready for a party. Denis did stay inside and panicked some at the prospect of going public, so I tried to assure him he could be safe by himself.

Denis’ fear speaks for us all. You may have heard of the massacre in Tamaulipas, Mexico, of 72 would-be immigrants, gunned down in a barn by the “coyotes” who promised them safe passage into the USA. Thirty of them were Hondurans, and the news and returning dead (their coffins draped in flags, received by the president himself) threw the whole country into panic and despair. But it’s like what the firefighter said on 9/11 about the “jumpers”: “How bad are things inside the Towers that people are jumping out to certain death?” Because Hondurans don’t have to go to Mexico to die in droves. Just a few days after the massacre in Mexico, a gang beset a shoemaker business in Tegucigalpa and shot to death 18 out of 20 employees, marking their territory. The two who escaped helped police identify at least one of the killers who said it was “funny” how the victims just fell all over the place. Totally unrepentant--well, I guess you’d have to be! So, I’m sorry, America, but nothing will stop them, because they have nothing to lose.

But even in the whirlwind, there are carefree times. The Day of the Student was a lot of fun. Chemo at first did not want to go to the celebration (“I’m too big.”), but he had a good time anyway, especially when his little cousin Reina competed in the “modeling” show.

Then came Independence Day, September 15, with the raising of the flag at dawn. I could hardly believe it when Chemo jumped out of bed. But 20 or 30 points were at stake for attendance. The celebration was even more elaborate that the Day of the Student, including even a skit based on the Tamaulipas massacre. I hardly knew how to react.

The weight of such contradictions has dragged Maricela into depression, and we are all concerned. I suppose a full diagnosis would name her bi-polar, but we are hoping her appointment in El Progreso at the hospital clinic will yield some helpful treatment. Maricela is so dear to us all because she named her baby Mariana Teresa, for my sister Mary Anne and for Teresa Jorgen. When Teresa called recently and asked what she needed, Maricela said she would love a crib for the baby. We found Marcio and Chepe working on a gorgeous piece at their workshop. “It’s for a woman in Tegucigalpa, but we’ll sell it to you and make another one for her--she’ll never know the difference!”

Meanwhile, Chepito has been cranking out his own gorgeous art one drawing after another. The most beautiful is a cross of such delicacy that I call it Chepito’s Rose Window. The photograph does not do it justice.

I call Chemo twice a day, before and after school. He is thriving in Dora and Elvis’ care. I think I’m a little jealous!

Love, Miguel

ESTA ES SU CASA--SEPTEMBER 2010

ESTA ES SU CASA--SEPTEMBER 2010

SAINT-LOUIE-PALOOZA

Though it must surely pale in comparison with Ted Nugent’s current concert tour, “Trample the Weak, Hurdle the Dead,” I intend to make the most of my first-ever Fall visit to St. Louis, September 22-October 20. For one thing, it’s my birthday! Turning 62 on October 12 not only qualifies me for a little Social Security, but also means I will have outlived my father Michael Xavier Dulick, who died of a heart attack in 1976 (during Sunday Mass, no less, where the reading was from the book of Daniel, “Michael the Archangel will rise, the great Prince of your people”) at age 61. Regrets abound, I wish we had been closer; since he was a doctor, a general practitioner who made house calls his whole career, I have often wished I had followed his lead, for the help I could be in Honduras. But friends have celebrated my birthday in absentia for years; it’s time I joined them!

Speaking of angels, divine intervention may be required here in Honduras, just to get kids back to class. The teachers have been on strike for a month. Same old, same old. They march, the police beat their heads in, the media ignore the real issues. There is one new twist; parents are breaking into empty schools to give classes with “volunteers.” Mel Zelaya, the former president ousted in a coup in June of ‘09, is rooting on the striking teachers from his palatial exile in the Dominican Republic--anything to undermine what the government calls “law and order.” Word is, Mel is throwing cash around to keep things stirred up, but, hey! who is financing these “Back-to-School” folks? Under orders from the current president Pepe Lobo, the police are cutting the school locks off for them!

What are the real issues? First of all, the government has robbed the teachers’ pension fund--repeatedly. Mel did it himself, but it’s a non-partisan corruption. Then there’s the “minimum-wage” controversy. Public employees’ salaries are multiples of the minimum wage, which in Honduras means DAILY wage. Businesses want to change it to hourly, to short workers’ pay, hiring them by the hour instead of the day. So all the labor unions are marching, too. What are we talking about here? Crumbs! Fermin, practically at the top of the scale, makes about $500 a MONTH as a teacher. Some pimply-faced fryer at McDonald’s in Creve Coeur makes that in a week or so, just to stuff their iPod with more crap from Eminem. So you can imagine what some poor campesino turning the soil for a fat-cat landowner (or, as my mother, who by the way, lived to age 82, used to call them, “rich-bugs”) has to look forward to.

But the biggest issue is “privatization” of education. A law that the teachers already defeated twice--in 2004 and 2006--is back in Congress. It calls for, among other things, tuition in the “colegios” (or high schools) and university degrees for teachers. This is practically archeology! Thirty years ago, it was tuition that kept Wilfredo (who, by the way, turns 45 on October 12) out of high school till he was 25, because his family couldn’t afford it, when at last the law changed, and seventh, eighth, and ninth grades were “free” like kindergarten and primary school. Despite his age, Wil jumped at the chance to continue his education, and is now everyone’s favorite teacher at the colegio in Las Vegas. (A previous CASA talked about the Nationalist regime in Victoria trying to push him out of his job, because Wil’s a “Liberal.”)

As for university degrees for teachers, sounds reasonable, right? How far would an applicant get at Parkway with only a high-school diploma? But here, the need is so great, and the poverty so debilitating, that without teachers who had only the education they could get for free, thousands of tiny mountain villages would be utterly lost. Now, technically, the public university is “free,” but if you are from the campo, how do you get there? where do you live? how do you eat? Wilfredo is currently working on his degree, a class or two at a time, with costly trips to El Progreso every weekend.

Speaking of ancient history, when dear old Don Vicente Martinez died at the age of 80 a few weeks ago, it reminded me of my early years visiting Las Vegas. Don Vicente had the only car in town, a Jeep, and practically the only store. In those days, there were no buses, not to mention bridges, so every morning about 5:00 a.m. he’d take folks to Victoria for 50 cents apiece. We’d stand in the street in the pre-dawn light, listening for the motor--would it start today? Sometimes he’d crank and crank till it finally engaged and a sigh of relief would go up. Every now and then, after repeated failures, he’d come out into the street and call, “Gonna need a push today!” Of course, if it had been raining during the night, we’d hold our breath till word came if the river was too deep for the Jeep to cross. If it had gone up, maybe we could go later, once it had flowed downstream some. The store, emptied of its goods and shelves and display cases, etc., for the novena of prayer following his death, was full every day of mourners, my borrowed chairs providing only a portion of the necessary seating. Since then, it’s so strange to pass the place, the doors shut for the first time in anyone’s memory. His ancient truck, long ago abandoned to the weeds, still sits in the back yard.

Dionis (pronounced, believe or not, “Johnny’), we hope and pray, has a long life ahead of him I wanted to make his 14th birthday on August 17 a little extra special, to take away some of the sting of his brother Dago’s death in July. As nice as it was, with a big, luscious cake baked by Carolina, no one could forget Dago, least of all me. Every time I looked at Marcos, 23, I almost had to look away, so close does he resemble his brother Dago. But Marcos is married with two little kids. The littlest, Lindolfo, got so sick recently (poor thing, malnutrition more than anything) we had to get him to Dr. Wilmer in Victoria. But these little lives--who can put a price tag on it?

School may be out, but the doctor is in. Last Friday, a team of medics took blood samples of every kid under 15, looking for signs of “chinche” or “chagas,” an ugly little bug whose bite can lay dormant for up to 16 years--and then kill you, or reduce you to a paraplegic. Not too long ago, my friend Angel, who just turned 50, celebrated his amnesty from a bite he got 16 years ago. “I’m gonna be all right, now.” I was afraid I’d have to tie Chemo down like those dogs I talked about a few CASAs ago that got rabies shots, but he happily (?) submitted to the tiny prick in the forefinger, then squeezed out few drops on the little stamp of test paper. We kill a couple “chagas” in my house every week, but God only knows when results of the blood tests will come back.

Chemo got his teeth cleaned here, too. Travel to Tegucigalpa being a little chancy, what with teachers burning tires in the streets, rocks flying through the air, and rockslides from all the recent rains collapsing retaining walls and crushing cars, and underground torrents ripping sinkholes the size of a house in a boulevard, we took advantage of a “special” that Doctora Gabriela was running. Her drill wasn’t working, so she polished by hand, and gratified us further by declaring Chemo cavity-free. She’s so young, but I had to keep looking at her as she recalled the days when she was a little girl and she would play with the toys I used to bring down, especially the View-Masters. “That was my favorite!” You know, everybody loved them. Problem was, they’d wear out in a week or so of constant use. But, out of curiosity, I went online. They still exist, and, darn it, they’re still expensive. I thought by now they would at least have figured out how to mount the tiny pictures in something more durable than a flimsy disk of cardboard, and maybe make a viewer out of, shall we say, space-shuttle tiles. But I gotta pick up a few anyway, in St. Louis, especially since Gabriela herself has View-Master ready child.

Hey, I might as well go to St. Louis, since our pastor Chicho’s going to El Salvador! A couple of weeks ago, at the end of Sunday Mass, during which he preached a particularly passionate and heartfelt sermon about God’s love for the poor, he announced his transfer to what amounts to a desk job at the Jesuit Provincial’s office in San Salvador. That sermon, in effect, was his good-bye. Maybe the Jesuits are giving him a sort of vacation, after 12 years of two and three Masses a day, up hill and farther up hill, visiting a hundred villages at least twice a year, some places still accessible only on foot, an hour or two after you leave the car behind. And I was like a Dead fan, following him whenever I could if the village was within my access. What amazed me was, he always gave his all. I don’t care if the congregation was six women and eight kids and two old men, Chicho would preach like St. Peter on Pentecost, who was so excited people thought he was drunk! He is no doubt exhausted, but, desk job or not, they won’t be able to keep him in an office for long.

We did get one last chance to say good-bye to Chicho. A big event, already planned months before Chicho’s announcement, was held in Las Vegas just last Sunday, August 29. Padre Jaime, who is now the pastor, has been very actively promoting the so-called “Comunidades Eclesiales de Base” (C.E.B.s) since he became Chicho’s assistant a couple years ago. These are little neighborhood “churches,” seedlings, you might say, to foster the faith in a living community. Jaime wanted to get all the C.E.B.s together. “Expect f800 to 1000 people.”

O my God! He was way off. They just kept coming and coming. It was like Woodstock without the mud. At least 1500 folks swarmed in, doubling the population of the town. But somehow, we pulled it off. We gathered in Paraíso, just across the river, where there was coffee and rolls for everyone. Then we proceeded to Las Vegas, to the only place spacious enough for such a crowd, the grassy, shady yard of the school. (Thank God, we weren’t competing with classes--we used every bench and chair in the place, and half the classrooms.) A stage had been built and decorated like a Beyonce concert, Elvis and his band and the choir provided all the music, the kids dramatized the Gospel reading, the Bishop led the worship, using the occasion to formally announce Chicho’s new assignment and Jaime’s upgrade, along with Padre Sebastian, who will be the new assistant pastor. Chicho just beamed. He was looking out at the crowd, virtually everyone of whom he knows by name, taking pictures himself, and every now and then, burying his face in his hands, overcome, I guess, at the thought of leaving us.

After Mass, the food! Groups of women had cooked nacatamales for days, and their husbands carted them by the hundreds to the school early Sunday morning--in wheelbarrows! We thought, We’re gonna run out; but no, just like the multiplication of the loaves in the Gospel, “all ate and were satisfied.”

A more permanent departure was another young man about Dago’s age who died suddenly, Dixi, 23, recently deported from the United States. Dixi was staying with a couple brothers in San Pedro Sula, including Uvener, 20, who left home here in Las Vegas a month or so ago to look for work in the big city. Dago was electrocuted, you will recall. Dixi had a heart attack! At age 23, this should be impossible! Apparently, the doctors thought so, too. Uvener said they took Dixi to three different clinics after he collapsed in terrible pain. The first place gave him a shot. “He’ll be all right.” The second and third places, well, let’s just say the damage was done. They brought his body home to Las Vegas in an inexpensive casket he same night in a borrowed car. The family waked him in a torrential rainstorm, but friends managed to get the grave dug the next morning.

Unlike Dago’s death, there was not so much commotion, maybe because the family keeps to itself pretty much. But I had to think, How long had Dixi been sick? Was it a congenital disease, such as what eventually killed my father, or such as Chemo’s? Oh God! I prayed again in thanksgiving for Chemo’s operation. No one in Dixi’s family ever goes to church, but Reina, Dixi’s mother, after the delegados offered prayers before the burial, said, “You’ll come back for the novena, won’t you?” It’s a chance for Dixi to grow even in death, a seedling, as it were, for his own family’s “church.” We’re on Day Four right now, in case you would offer your own thoughts and prayers....

Included, one of Chepito’s latest drawings.

Love, Miguel

ESTA ES SU CASA--AUGUST 2010

ESTA ES SU CASA--AUGUST 2010

Nudges

Now I know how Martha felt. According to Luke’s Gospel, when Jesus came to her house for supper, Martha was flying around like crazy with all the chores; she even scolds Jesus for not chasing her sister Mary from his feet to help her. And Jesus so sweetly invites her--”Martha, Martha”--to sit with her sister and enjoy the feast Jesus has prepared for them. You might say, Jesus gave Martha a nudge.

After the whirligig six-week visitation of Chemo’s sister Rosa and her 2-two-old Tonito at our house, during which I had played the Martha role, Andy Kwok (Parkway North 2003) came to calm us, like Mary focused on “the one thing necessary,” the grace we can be for one another.

And he came with the perfect book, “Nudge,” by Cass Sunstein, now the controversial Information “czar” in the Obama administration; but this book is simply charming. Its theme is

better decisions prompted not by a law, a threat, or a slap, but just with a “nudge,” a little lift that respects and even enhances one’s freedom, like putting the salads and fruits first in the school cafeteria line. Andy hadn’t even finished the book, but he already knew his mission. In fact, he told me the group of friends from his church that were sponsoring his visit had the kindness and wisdom to suggest that he was going to Honduras as much for Miguel as for anyone else. A nudge.

As if Andy needed it! He has always had a heart for Honduras, ever since he formed the “Meat Club” at North to raise money for the malnourished poor of Honduras that I talked about in my classes all the time. As soon as he arrived, he started freeing us from our preoccupations. I told him he was like another Dago, Chemo’s teenaged cousin who just died so suddenly in a terrible accident, come to refresh our hope and faith.

The first folks Andy wanted to nudge were the kids, especially the ones not in school, like Pablito, Chepito, Laito, Fila, Reynieri, and a bunch of others. Now a teacher himself in a pretty hard-core high school in the San Francisco area, Andy started classes with the kids on my porch. And they loved it! The only discipline problem here was to keep the pencils sharpened for all their little “assignments.” One day we all went down to the river for a class in the shade of big trees before a swim.

When I could no longer hide the broken zippers on my backpack, Andy got me a new one, industrial-strength. When he saw my severely cluttered desktop, he brought out a handy external hard drive with a whopping 300 GB, already stocked with all four seasons of my favorite series “Battlestar Galactica” and a bunch of other goodies. In Tegucigalpa, he became immediate friends with Angelica and helped pay her heart and diabetes meds, and he invited Elio and Mema to Mirawa, their favorite restaurant--for Chinese! He graciously attended Mass with us, a true friend-without-borders. He’d loan his fancy Canon camera to the kids and they never broke it; in fact, they took some of Andy’s best pics. He played soccer with the kids, both up at the campo as well in back of our house with Elvis and Dora’s kids. He loved the food! Dora cooked our lunch (including chop suey!) and we’d go to Alba’s for supper, chicken and rice every night, but Andy even asked for the recipe, which left Alba scratching her head. “I just...well, what DO I do?”

And he never got sick, another miracle, not even from the zillion skeeter bites, in a country currently battling the worst epidemic of dengue fever in years. He gave all his clothes away! He brought some shirts and things to give away, but he gave away even the clothes he’d been wearing--he went home with practically nothing. And we talked daily about the Bible and Jesus. In fact, another item on my wish-list that Andy brought me was a “red-letter” Bible in Spanish, with all the words of Jesus in red.

Andy scheduled three major events for his visit--or at least it seemed so. For example, Pablito’s birthday. He was turning 16, despite his birth certificate that says he’s still 15. So, when Carolina called, “What name do you want on the cake--Pablito or Pablo?” a nudge from Andy was all it took. “Pablo,” said Pablo, Pablito no more. “Felicidades PABLO.” Pablo appreciated the change. He really is growing up, even more than Chemo. Besides, he’d just been bitten on the ankle by Doctora Rebeca’s little black dog. I sent him there to get some Phenobarbital for a poor soul with epilepsy who visits me every month from Terrero Blanco, and Pablo apparently took a misstep off the porch, just enough sudden movement to alert the little mutt to some imagined danger and it snatched at him. Rebeca immediately assured him the dog had had its shots and showered Pablo with antibiotics, ibuprofen, creams, and bandages; but he was still limping for his party.

Then came the Day of Lempira, the legendary indigenous hero who led that day’s version of the Resistencia against the invasion of the Spanish (who of course murdered him treacherously at a “peace conference”). This year, something unique--all the kids dressed up like Indians, the boys in a “taparabo,” a loincloth made of “chato” bark (banana plants), and the girls in skirts fashioned from those enormous banana leafs. Juana, our neighbor, was making a taparabo for her son Carlitos, so I asked her to make one for Chemo. I was so nervous, would they be the only ones going to school naked that day? But morning came and the streets were filled with the “undocumented.” Andy and I and half the town attended the festivities, which included performances of songs or ballads or dances or skits by every grade, as well as lots of tasty foods for sale. OK, it was a sort of Disneyfication of a bloody history, but it was better than last year--during the “coup”--when the day was totally ignored.

I asked Chemo why he didn’t perform with the other third-graders. “Teacher didn’t want me.” I suspect he probably hid under his desk when she was picking volunteers. Juana Maria is Chemo’s fifth teacher this year, fourth overall. First was Vitelio, then Regina, who it turns out was doing her practice teaching for six weeks, then Vitelio again, until his retirement papers came through and he was gone, then Danilo, till his retirement papers came through, now Juana Maria, who looks more like a school teacher than any of them, so I’m trying not to be scared of her. But so far she’s been very nice, quickly giving Chemo permissions for all our little excursions.

One excursion was the third big event Andy participated in, the 18th anniversary of the organic Coffee Cooperative, now serving an international clientele. For the first time in three years, they held the event at the “Beneficio,” where the coffee beans are processed way up in the mountains, so I told Andy we must not miss it. The view is just breathtaking, the mountains dressed in cloud, Las Vegas like a little cartoon way down below. Music, dancing, speeches, and great food, celebrating, as I told Andy, one of the few success stories we have to offer.

Speaking of success, Rosa’s condition is improving. When it came time for her to leave, as Andy was arriving, I thought, we have to get her a check-up. The brigada had to postpone their July visit because every hospital bed in the country is occupied by a dengue patient, so we went the private clinic route, to my cardiologist, Dr. Bayardo Pagoada. His diagnosis, “abdominal aortic aneurysm,” was a little different from Dr. Christian Gilbert of the brigada, but it amounts to the same thing. The “abdominal” part refers to the way it pressures the ovary, thus the ravage caused by her pregnancy with little Tonito. But, as I say, improving. A new echocardiogram showed the wide-open mithral valve is closing, thank God, little by little. So he kept her on all her medicines, changing only one for something a little stronger. She’s on no less than three diuretics, this because an x-ray showed an abnormally small, probably non-functioning, right kidney, never diagnosed before. Andy took us all to dinner, and the next morning Rosa and Tonito got on the bus for the nine-hour trip to Tocoa, and Chemo, Andy, and I took the bus to Victoria/Las Vegas, a seven-hour excursion.

When Andy left two weeks later, he still wasn’t done. He got a ton of books and notebooks and educational games at the mall in Tegucigalpa for us to take back to Las Vegas, as his legacy. So the nudges can continue....

There’s a saying here that I actually heard for the first time not too long ago. When the Legion of Mary hiked to the village of Zarzal to visit a little old lady, she greeted us with, “Dios me trajo!” (God brought you to me). That’s how we feel about Andy here. He reminded us that, despite the sins and setbacks that drain our faith, God provides a friendly universe.

Love, Miguel

Bernard Lonergan, “Method in Theology”: “Faith and progress have a common root in man’s cognitional and moral self-transcendence. To promote either is to promote the other indirectly. Faith places human efforts in a friendly universe; it reveals an ultimate significance in human achievement; it strengthens new undertakings with confidence. Most of all, faith has the power of undoing decline.”

ESTA ES SU CASA--JULY 2010

ESTA ES SU CASA--JULY 2010

Being still...

This would be the happy newsletter, I said, celebrating Honduras’ appearance in the World Cup for the first time in three decades. Win, lose, or draw--and they did all three, except the first one--it would be some fun. And I will report on that, lest this CASA overtest your patience.

But Dago, Chemo’s 19-year-old cousin, a really lovely kid, was electrocuted last week installing light in his mother Natalia’s house, a project I was paying for. He grabbed a high-tension wire and it killed him instantly. I was not an eye-witness, and the only way my own shock was spared was that I could not understand what folks rushing up to me were saying. I arrived just as they were pulling him into the back seat of the neighbor’s truck to get him to the doctor, and I didn’t get a good look at him till we got there a couple minutes later. Dr. Meme came running out, but as soon as they opened the car door and I saw Dago’s face, frozen in a look of terror, no hint of breath, and smelling burnt, my own heart all but stopped. Dr. Meme, to be kind, fiddled with his stethoscope, here and there, feeling for a pulse, pumping Dago’s chest a little, for about 10 minutes till he sensed we could accept the bad news. Dago’s brothers Marcos and Geovanny, who were cradling Dago, were shaking. I think we all were. I say “accept” but it was way too soon for that.

I just wouldn’t believe it. I kept staring at him, sure that the paralysis was only temporary; in another minute, he would start twitching or something, I was sure. But I was the one who was paralyzed. When we took him back home and folks started clearing out the one-room house for the wake, dressing Dago in nice clothes and laying him on clean sheets in his bed, I was just standing there like an idiot, unconscious, till finally a useful thought struck me: “Chairs!” I rounded up a few kids and we went to my house to bring over my 30 or so plastic chairs. Others hauled benches from an evangelical church even farther away. We needed them all. The longest night of our life. A wood shop is right next door, and we heard the saws buzzing and the hammering all night long, making Dago’s coffin. It had been raining every day for a week, but this night was clear, a big moon bathing all in silvery light.

Already “cooked,” Dago’s face bronzed even as we watched; he was tanning from the inside out. Watching him glow, I thought, Oh my God, is he even more beautiful now? A thought so scary I’m embarrassed to say it--unless perhaps the light was a sign he had already inherited eternal life. His face had assumed the burnished serenity of a Byzantine icon.

Or maybe such thoughts were just cover for my darker thoughts, namely, that I had killed him. I just wanted to upgrade the family, not tear a hole in it. Dago was helping Dennis the young electrician when he died. Dennis disappeared for days; when I finally caught up with him, he was practically a basket case. “I can’t go back there, Miguel.” He felt worse than I did. Meanwhile, Celeo, a more experienced electrician, offered to finish the job.

Helping. That’s who Dago was. When the family asked me to start the celebracion about 9:00 o’clock that night at the wake, I had my theme, even though I was trembling. Dago was a saint. I thought it even before he died. Nineteen years old, but not only did he not indulge any of the “vicios” (vices) common to his peers, such as drinking and smoking and cursing and playing cards and hanging out at the pool hall and jumping girls, but his humility was stunning. He just went to work every day, wherever it was, usually just mixing concrete for some one building a house. I barely knew how to behave around him. I’d visit him at work, taking along other kids to see Dago’s example, on the pretense we were bringing a big Coke to share with the workers on a hot day.

But he had a bad heart. I mean, heart disease. He’d play soccer with the little kids, like Chemo, and when I asked him once, Dago, why don’t you play soccer with the team your own age? he said, “I get tired too quick.” That and his sort of bulging eyes made me think he might have a heart condition like Chemo’s. I thought one day we’d take him to Tegucigalpa, though I didn’t know if we could impose on the brigada yet again. But if my diagnosis is right--and I can only imagine what an autopsy would show!--when he touched that wire, with a heart already weak, he never had a chance.

We buried Dago, and then sat and started praying for nine more days. It is a necessary cycle to smooth some of the jagged edges of the dagger plunged in our heart by Dago’s death.

But it’s even more than that.

The days leading up to Dago’s death had been really awful ones for our little household of Chemo, Rosa, Tonito, and me. Chemo and Rosa had been fighting, I was yelling at Chemo, I was even yelling at Rosa, and Tonito is a 22-pound Gulf Oil Spill. We were at the breaking point.

Then Dago was killed, and his death brought us all together, putting our differences and our indifferences behind us, as we grieve our noble loss. Who could fight or stand on principle when you saw Dago’s mother Natalia, whose ready wit and infectious smile I praised last month, shattered like a stack of dishes? That’s what love can do, to bind our wounds.

In fact, Rosa just told me that Dago had taken a little interest in her. Dago’s first girlfriend! You know, I had wondered why Dago was showing up every evening when we’d go over to Alba’s for supper. He wouldn’t eat or ask for anything. I’d chat and talk with him, like he was visiting ME! That’s how dumb I was. Now, let’s see, technically, Rosa and Dago were “family”--Dago was a younger brother of Alba, who is wife of Santos, who is the half-brother of Rosa (and of Chemo). Impediment? Whatever, Dago’s budding romance is now a legacy I hope we can live up to.

Before all the trouble came down, we had also managed to celebrate some birthdays, Rosa’s 24th, which coincided with little Helen’s 11th, and Mirna’s 12th, which coincided with her daddy Santos’ 36th. If Carolina’s cakes were diplomacy, the whole world would be at peace. In fact, I finally got a good picture of Tonito’s “shining,” a little “Sixth Sense” shock of pure blond hair emerging from a pale birthmark on his forehead. That should be a good sign, right?

In the run-up to the World Cup, Honduras went to Azerbaijan. There aren’t 3 people in Honduras who even know where Azerbaijan is! And I guess I’m one of them. I stared at a map for 15 minutes before I could locate it. The players were lost, too. Honduras did not score a goal in three games. I did better with finding South Africa--at least I wasn’t looking for it next to Argentina like the kids studying my wall map.

If you are watching any of the World Cup, you might know Honduras played three games and out. Which makes us just as good as Italy, the defending World Cup Champion, who also went three and out! And the U.S. played just one more game than we did before packing up. Honduras did not score a goal, true, but our goalie, Noel Valladares, embarrassed the competition by keeping us in every contest with many eye-popping stops. Spain, for example, was a particularly sore winner, asserting that their 2-0 victory should have been at least 8-0.

Here, the whole country came to a standstill for the broadcasts. I thought it was pretty exciting, but my friend Moncho, who coaches our Las Vegas team, was having none of it. He says the coach Reinaldo Rueda composed the team of name-players past their prime who couldn’t keep up with the younger guys they were playing against. “Rueda” is ‘wheel,’ so I made the joke, the team was playing in “sillas de Rueda,” or wheelchairs, a pun that later showed up in one of the newspapers! In fact, Moncho says that our local star Nahum, 19, could have “goaled” us at least into the second round.

Honduras did “earn” one point, from a scoreless tie with Switzerland. Any competition that tolerates a 0-0 final score seems a little unnatural, but not any stranger than those annoying vuvuzelas horns, which host South Africa defends as a “tradition,” you know, like ants at a picnic. So we’ll see how the whole thing ends. Guess it’s pretty much up to the referees, the last bastion of infallibility.

The one champion so far might be the World Cup music theme, K’Nann’s “Wavin’ Flags” that I guess you’ve seen in what’s called the “Coca-Cola mix.” (How could you miss it?) Here we see a Spanish version with K’Naan and David Bisbal. If you could score goals by just tapping your foot, we’d all be champions. I want everyone to be that happy.

June 28 was the first anniversary of the coup that ousted Mel Zelaya. The Resistencia took to the streets, ready with their list of the golpistas’ crimes, including death threats against some of our more activist Jesuit priests. Both sides are setting up Truth Commissions, as if truth could have two sides. It’s a tangled web of injustices, but it would be especially lovely--and here we could follow the standard set by Bishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa’s Truth Commission that shined the light on the evils of apartheid--if the golpistas confessed Micheletti’s crimes and the Resistencia repented Mel’s. Then we WOULD win a World Cup...for Peace.

It can start right here in Las Vegas. We are finishing the novena of prayer at Dago’s house. At least three different neighbors are baking breads for tomorrow’s finale. Celeo hooked up the electricity in a couple hours, without incident, just like that. We are almost back to “normal,” or what the Church calls Ordinary Time--whatever that means.

It should mean, in the words of Fr. Carl Dehne, “being still, standing with reverence, in silence, our hands over our open mouths, in awe at what the Triune God, the Creator of all, is doing for us.” (Trinity Sunday homily, College Church, St. Louis, May 30, 2010)

Love, Miguel

ESTA ES SU CASA--JUNE 2010

ESTA ES SU CASA--JUNE 2010

Everything That Rises Must Converge

With a triple murder, our feast of the Holy Cross in Las Vegas was more like a stake through the heart. The slayings occurred only hours after Padre Jaime, in the inaugural Mass, had urged us, “Please, don’t go to the fiesta [the dance]; that is not your place.” I heard the shots, about 1:00 in the morning; they were so loud they sounded like they were right outside my window, five or six quick ones and a final coup de grace. I thought (hoped!) they were firecrackers, but when the music stopped playing shortly afterwards, I knew something bad had happened. But I never even thought of venturing out.

In the morning, Cristian came by. “Tres muertos, Miguel.” His mother Berta had been selling enchiladas outside the dance hall and saw the whole thing. Apparently the woman, from Victoria, was shot first, enraged jealousy the motive. She’s got a husband in the States, they say, but was stepping out with some other guy, one of the other victims, also from Victoria. The other man, Ricardo from El Zapote, apparently tried to intervene, and was shot for his trouble. The killer escaped on a motorcycle.

As I got Chemo ready for school, I assumed the police had cleared everything away. But classes were canceled, due to the “tragedia,” and I finally wandered over there about 8:00 a.m. and was aghast at what I saw. The police were there all right, and the three bodies, messed in blood and dirt, lying in the street in the full morning sun, already bloating. What can I say? They looked so...dead. I thought, This is what I see on TV every night, and here it is “Live” right in front of me. I wanted to change the channel. I kept staring, to see if they would move--that’s how disoriented I was. They were as still as stones. It somehow didn’t seem real, or too real. “These are people,” I may have even said aloud. The police had strung a yellow rope to keep the crowd at a decent distance, and white-shirted folks in rubber gloves were taking pages of notes, obviously Forensics. Our little Las Vegas, a crime scene, a massacre scene! I pulled my gaze from the dead to study the crowd. Classes may have been canceled, but school was in session. The classroom, a side street; the teachers, tres muertos; the lesson “objective,” our indifference to the welfare of our children.

I stayed till they finally stuffed the three bodies in huge bright-yellow plastic bags and loaded them in the back of a pickup. I had to hurry, because Natalia’s four-year old grandson Markitos had been kicked in the head by a horse the day before, and he was getting his stitches. it was a very neat wound, shaped exactly like the hoof that made it, a flap of skin opened up but not cracking the skull. We went to Rebeca, who we all call Doctora, though I think she does not have an M.D., because Dr. Meme was not available. Rebeca put in 13 stitches, and I could hardly believe how neatly the wound healed up.

Because of the shootings, all festival events were canceled, except the daily religious celebraciones, which could then assume their rightful place. That is, until three days later, when tame things like a sack race for the kids and a “sweetheart” dance for the senior citizens finished out the week. In the last procession, the kids carried decorated crosses up to the little church--finally renovation after a “hurricane” blew down all but its facade three years ago--and something extraordinary occurred. We stopped at the soccer field and borrowed the microphone from the very same folks hawking beer and bad music. Four of the delegados preached like Ezequiels about the true meaning of this festival of the Cross. It sent chills up my spine, and I dreaded the chance they might ask me to speak, too. I was staring my cowardice right in the face; but fortunately nothing from me was required.

Some of us, to lessen our shame, clung to the fact that no Las Vegans were directly “involved” in the killings, but I was reading Flannery O’Connor, who explodes such distinctions. For her, everyone is “one of my babies,” as the Grandmother calls the Misfit in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Of course, the Misfit shoots her three times in the chest as soon as she touches him, so our reluctance to embrace the alien is understandable, I suppose. I had just finished a book called “The Reason for God,” which was as dull as it sounds--as I guess it would be (you know, like you’d read a book called “The Reason for Roses”). But, as if in recognition of his limitations, the author Timothy Heller kept referencing Flannery O’Connor, so I took down my Library of America edition of her Complete Works, and started reading, squirming all the time, even resisting her disturbing images of the divine. But when I saw those three dead human beings, I became one of her characters, howling for Grace. The title of this month’s CASA is from her final collection of stories, inspired by Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest-cosmologist-mystic (how’s that for a convergence of contradictions!).

I was kinda proud of Chemo, that he was not one of the gawkers; he’s had enough experience of dead bodies, including his own father; but it all must have affected him anyway, because about midnight he crawled into my bed for the first time in a year.

One of my “babies” must be Alba, 35, the wife of Chemo’s older half-brother Santos. I was sort of looking forward--a guilty pleasure, you may say--to a solo trip to Tegucigalpa, unencumbered by Chemo and his whims and demands. But when Alba fell ill and was bedridden for three days, and not for the first time in recent months, I decided, it’s time, we gotta get her to a doctor, specifically a cardiologist, MY cardiologist, Dr. Bayardo Pagoada, a world-class specialist, though I haven’t seen him myself in about three years. So I made her an appointment, and Santos came along, too, it would have been impossible to separate them, and we left their four kids--plus Chemo--in the care of grandmother Natalia, a living saint, AND she’s got a great sense of humor, rare perhaps in saints, indispensable in grandmothers. She’s Markitos’ grandmother, too, so you see....

I assumed it was Alba’s heart, but that was because she was already taking heart medicine! Something some clinic gave her in Quebrada Amarilla, where they were picking coffee last season. But when Dr. Bayardo examined her, he took a look at the pills, and said, “They gave her this because it’s cheap, not because it’s what she needs.” One thing Dr. Bayardo is NOT, is cheap. At one point, after four days of blood tests, X-Rays, the EKG, the sonogram, the poop test, he asked me, “Will you be able to afford these medicines, if I prescribe them? ”I think so,” I said, a little tentatively. But I had already decided that, right? when I brought her to Tegus. When the Mileydi Pharmacy had to call three other branches to get it all, with couriers on motorcycles, I did begin to doubt my resources. So I put it all on VISA!

It’s not her heart. It’s her liver, some strange variation of Hepatitis. “I’m not sure what’s causing it,” Dr. Bayardo said. But it’s serious, complicated by something even more alarming, a pulmonary embolism. “Normally, I’d put such a patient in the hospital--right now,” he said, and he advised us to stay in town till a follow-up appointment in 10 days. The thought of missing her children brought Alba to tears, and when she started to improve almost immediately with all the meds--enough Cipro for an Anthrax attack; Noxipar, a discoagulant (injected “subcutaneously” twice a day); and something called “Potenciator,” 3 vials a day mixed in water, for “insufficient protein intake due to vegetarian diets”; there ya go! Chemically, it’s Arginine-Aspartate. I looked it up on the Internet; sounds like something Mark McGwire was taking--Dr. Bayardo relented, and indeed, which was a bigger risk to her health, a couple 6-hour bus trips or a mother’s yearning for her young?

When we went back a couple weeks later, Dr. Bayardo was impressed, but still concerned, so he ordered a Pap Smear. “Can we get that here?” I asked, but I already had a plan in mind. Elio Flores’ son-in-law Carlos is a gynecologist in the very same clinic. So we marched on downstairs and Carlos took us in as soon as he could, performed the test, gave Alba some vaginal cream for a “slight infection,” and promised to follow up when the results came back--and he didn’t charge us a thing.

Then it was time for Alba’s teeth. She’s been suffering from a couple raging molars for weeks. Now, get this, the dentist wanted three appointments just to clean her teeth! And I lost track of how many cavities she counted up. I must have been crazy to think we could just walk in there and get a molar or two pulled. They showed me a menu mounting up to 9,000 Lempiras, and that’s with a 40% discount. We were looking at days and days of appointments, debt up the wazoo, and our families Lost like the TV show.

Then, suddenly, deus ex machina, a parachute opened and flew us away. As we left the dentist after the first cleaning, Chemo’s sister Rosa called. “We’re coming to Las Vegas! We’re on the bus! We just left Tocoa!” Omigod, omigod, omigod. Oh My God! “But, Rosa, we’re in Tegus.” “Oh, heck.” In Honduras, we literally could not be farther apart.

Santos came to the rescue. He quickly calculated that there was no way Rosa--and baby Tonito--could get all the way to Las Vegas TODAY, His idea, get to Ayapa, the town near Yoro where Rosa and Chemo were born and spend the night with family, Then head for Las Vegas tomorrow, and meanwhile we’ll head on home from the Tegus side and all get there about the same time. I gasped. Like Dorothy in Oz, I could hardly believe it--we were going home. Alba was especially thrilled. No more doctors! At least for a while.

But the parachute may turn out to be a noose. Rosa ditched husband Tonio! She ain’t going back. Can’t really blame her. I have to say, I never much liked them together. He drinks and smokes and cusses--and hits her.

In one stroke, our little family doubled, and so did the expenses. Be careful what you wish for! I kept telling them every time we made the endless trip to Tocoa, “You guys should move closer.” Can’t get any closer than this! But Rosa is cooking, she’s cleaning, she’s washing. Suddenly I’m Henry Higgins, the confirmed old bachelor undone by my own Eliza Doolittle. I’m buy Pampers! Worse, I’m disposing of Pampers, if you know what I mean....

Will Tonio come after Rosa, like with a gun or something, and me, too? Probably not. Good Lord, he’s twice her age! He’s got two kids in the States as old as Rosa! So he’s not done yet. Besides, he can’t get here anyway. “Agatha,” the first hurricane of the season, sneaking in from the Pacific, is flooding half the country, and the bridge into town is under water. Oh yeah, it was supposed to be a desert till June, the forecasters said. But the rains started two weeks ago and won’t quit. The kids get their thrills playing mud soccer. But we have especially foul mud, since the whole town is basically a cow pasture. Chemo’s cousin Dionis just pulled a one-inch worm out of a pussy boil on the back of Chemo’s thigh. I was frantically attacking the little bulge with iodine and Neobol from the outside and feeding Chemo antibiotics to kill it from the inside. But Dionis finally coaxed it out, and now we’re back-filling the hole.

I had a moment of convergence I guess you could say, when, at the lowest point--almost without hope, wondering if there was a way out--suddenly a swift flock of little white birds, a type I’ve never seen before, like paper cups with wings, flew silently right past me at eye level, where I was sitting alone at the little church, the highest point in town. Immediately, I said, “That’s my sign. We’re all right.”

The reason for God? More like, the reaching for God, with God doing most of the reaching.

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, "The Omega Point": "Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge."

Love, Miguel

ESTA ES SU CASA--MAY 2010

ESTA ES SU CASA--MAY 2010

[Note: If you want to see all the photos from this month's newsletter, write me at michaeldulick@yahoo.com]

Eyjafjallajokull-lite

I wondered what I’d’ve missed in Las Vegas if I’d gone to the States.

First of all, more wounds.

I stopped by the tiny kids Jefferson and Helen’s with their juices and chips, a hot morning. Ines, their grandmother, was a-tither; she’d just heard that old Pedro, her husband, had cut his hand with his machete, way up in the hills getting firewood. I don’t have any idea how she knew, but her son had gone to find him. Just then, here they come, Pedro’s hand--like Dulis’ hand in last month’s CASA--wrapped in some green leaves and a bloody rag. I couldn’t stand to look at Dulis’ wound, but I knew I had to see this; Pedro’s a wraith, but he’s a tough old bird. I knew if I didn’t look at it, he’d just shrug it off--which was exactly his attitude--till, when the last leaf came off and I gasped--it looked like he’d lunched with Hannibal Lector--he agreed he probably should go to the clinic. And this treatment would be “free,” because the doc would be on public time. So go, Pedro! And I sent him off with his teenage granddaughter Yolanda.

Half-hour later, Yolanda’s at my door. “They gave him a prescription.” Well, sure, I expected that, you know, some antibiotic or....what the heck? It was for No. 2 thread! “Are you kidding me?? They don’t have sutures at the clinic?” I repeated this about five times, in English, each time louder. “What kind of a country is this? The Big Creep Mel Zelaya--the ousted president--is suing Honduras for his back pay, and they don’t have sutures in the clinic!” The whole neighborhood heard me, two or three neighborhoods, in fact, as I marched over to Rebeca’s, where she has a small pharmacy, and got the damn thread; 100 Lempiras for a tiny package. “What do POOR people do?” A rhetorical question if there ever was one. EVERYBODY’ s poor. And Pedro? He was back at the house. “Yolanda!” I shout. She jumped three feet. She walked him back to the clinic. I guess he shoulda stuck with the leaves.

So I started another round of changing bandages every day. Pretty soon Pedro’s feeling so good he wants to get back to work, chopping that firewood. I tell him he has to rest, at least till he gets the stitches out! I asked him how old he was. “Ninety-eight.” Ines gently corrected him, “Seventy-eight.” I was going with a hundred and eight. But he’s a sweetie, keeps thanking me.

A couple days later, the next shoe dropped, filled with blood. I hear someone yelling in the street, “The Guato fainted! The Guato fainted!” This could not make any sense. The Guato, 23, the toughest soccer player in Las Vegas, does not faint. Unless he’s whipped his machete into his own foot. He was out in the field, cleaning it up for planting, and the machete slipped out of his hand. He wrapped his ankle himself in leaves and, yes, a bloody rag, and rode his bike back to the house, and fainted as he dismounted. But he’s pure steel. No sooner did we help him inside than he was fully alert while grandma Mina unwrapped the wound, the blood oozing into his sneaker. Here we go again! But, hey, this time I’m ready. While Guato rides himself over to the clinic on his bike, I get the sutures from Rebeca on the way! And I don’t even wonder what kind of a country this is.

“He’s going to need a couple shots,” says Dr. Meme, and looks at me. What? Another thing the clinic doesn’t have is syringes! I resist the temptation to grab him by the throat, and just send a kid off to the nearest store to get the stickers. Meanwhile, I ask him about t the leaves--do they really help? Because he really is a very nice man, and a good doctor; it’s not his fault the health care system in Honduras is one big death panel. “Good Lord, no! They contaminate the wound!” He went on to say some folks stuff a wound with coffee grounds, and even dirt. We got Guato back home, and I told him to rest and keep his leg elevated. A couple hours later he was tooling around town on his bike. I didn’t say a thing. I just got him a supply of gauzes and tape and iodine to change his bandages himself. As he said, “I’ve had worse.”

OK, the next one was a perfect stranger. “Dr. Meme said you’d buy me the sutures.” I didn’t know him, but I believed him. He was limping badly and he went to lift up his pants leg, and I saw the bloody rag--”That’s enough.” I gave him a note for Rebeca.

Next was Adonai from La Laguna. Him I know. But you probably wouldn’t recognize his hand, what he’d done to it with his machete. Off to the clinic, but he just missed the doctor, who told him to come his private office. I guess Meme knew this was no boating accident. “Deep, very deep,” he told me later, when I paid the 700 Lempiras (as opposed to 5 Lempiras at the clinic).

Not all wounds are bloody but still go deep. We were all so happy for Horacio, our school principal, when he got promoted to superintendent of the whole municipality of Victoria, which includes about 100 schools (most of them pretty small, from 50 students). But when he tried to move Wilfredo, everyone’s favorite teacher in Las Vegas, and everyone’s best friend, to Tegucigalpita, we were stunned. The move would have simply disappeared Wilfredo; Tegucigalpita (not to be confused with Tegucigalpa) is so far away in the mountains it’s practically in Morazan. Wil could never “commute”; he would have to spend the whole week there, and then he’s still taking graduate classes himself in Progreso every weekend. His wife Brenda would be a widow, their children orphans. Brenda told me, in tears, “Miguel, we are so hurt, Horacio and Wilfredo have been like brothers their whole life.”

Well, politics makes strange bedfellows, and sometimes unmakes them. Since the Nationals won the elections all over the country, Liberals like Wil are getting pushed out. Legally, you understand. The teacher Horacio wants to put in Wil’s place already has her “titulo” (degree), so has more “right” to the job.

A simple parent-teacher meeting turned into a rally for Wil. The tone was set when Brenda was elected president of the parents club. Flor, the current principal, led the charge herself. She had a letter of protest signed by every teacher in the school. And Wil had composed one too. Kako, the most experienced activist among us, offered to chain himself to the school gate if persuasion did not work. Imagine! The first strike of the year won’t be the teachers, it’ll be the parents!

The next day, two carloads of us (the “cars” were pick-ups, you know) went into Victoria to “dialog” with Horacio. I had no idea what to expect, but it really was dialog, and successful, too. Horacio received us graciously and listened to everyone. Kako himself set the tone this time. “Brother Horacio, you know we were all thrilled with your promotion, it was a promotion for Las Vegas itself, we all respect you and appreciate all you did for our school, you restored discipline and excellence, and that was not easy, we all love you and know you as our neighbor, so we appeal to these relations--and to the law, which requires that Wil’s contract be honored to teach in Las Vegas this year.” And everyone else said variations of the same. Things did get a little tense here and there, especially when Horacio referred to gossip he would hear at the soccer field that demeaned him, and poor Flor broke down in tears at Horacio’s “personal betrayal.” But when Horacio asked three times if any one else had something to say, I realized he wanted me to speak, and he finally said, “Miguel, what do you say?” He probably expected a conciliatory message, and that’s exactly what I offered, despite my initial sense of outrage. “Profe, I’ve known you and Wil since you were children and love you both so it pains me to see any rift between you, and we all depend on your position and your honor for a resolution.” Innocuous enough, but I meant it as a thank-you to all the folks present.

Horacio, despite what we all assumed was a lot of pressure from the new mayor to sweep the Liberals out, compromised. He said the new teacher would stay in Victoria, where she is already working, and Wil will stay in Las Vegas, for two years, by which time he should finish his own “titulo” and thus have full legal right to the job. The “dialog” took an hour, the writing of the “document” took two hours. But when it was done and signed, we all hugged Wil and Horacio, the latter a little gingerly since such PDA’s are “unprofessional.”

So I would have missed my day in the Resistencia if I’d gone to St. Louis.

I did go to Tegucigalpa, but not to get on a plane. We sat still the whole month of March, as Chemo got well settled into school. Once April started, I looked for a good chance to get away, figuring we’d go on a weekend, to minimize missed days at school. So we went Saturday, April 10, taking Chemo’s cousin Dionis along, for some big-city thrills. I asked Chemo’s teacher Regina for “permission” to miss Monday and Tuesday, and she gave him a little homework to tide him over.

We had fun, but when I called Elio and Mema to invite them to lunch, they tell me their daughter Chindy got rammed in a car accident in the morning, and her husband Alejandro got car-jacked in the afternoon. Two guys in masks burst into Alejandro’s car, guns drawn, and made him drive to a remote spot, where they put the guns to his head--and left him without pulling the trigger. What a laugh, huh? The car was found later, stripped of his little sons’ backpacks and toys, and other things. “It’s in the shop,” Elio said. And how soon will Alejandro recover? You know, Honduras is second only to Iraq for violence, per capita, or should I say, de-capita.

And I would have missed Cristian’s baby, if I’d gone to St. Louis! Cristian, you may recall, was shot in the gut back in December, and he’s got a foot-long scar from the “surgery” that saved his life. His girlfriend Maria was already pregnant then, and she delivered a healthy little 8-pound girl, Jenny Catalina, on April 23, not without falling near-victim to the caprices of Honduran health care. When the due date approached, they went to Victoria, and someone told them the “materno” (the free maternity clinic) was closed. “It’s a warehouse now.” So they came home and called Erlinda, the best midwife in Las Vegas. She sort of exploded. “The materno is NOT closed, it’s just moved!” So they went back to Victoria the next day, where they found the materno, but, they were told, “It’s twins, you gotta go to Yoro for this, to the hospital.” No ultrasound, you understand, just guesswork. So the next day they go to Yoro, where ONE baby appeared, and no more. They’re back home, now, and I had to laugh. Cristian has appeared in these reports so often, he’s one of the cantina kids--raised in a tavern, littered with vomiting, cursing drunks--and he says to me something I never imagined I’d hear from him. “Miguel, I spent most of the money you gave me on PAMPERS.” He’s 20 and now he’s a father changing diapers. And something else I’m not used to from him. “I prayed, Miguel, I prayed so hard, that everything would be all right.”

I told Cristian , that’s why your life was spared when you got shot, so your baby would not be born an orphan. God saved you to be a father to your child. God may have saved me for the same reason, because I have been giving him a good amount of money. I couldn’t live with myself if little Jenny Catalina was further endangered just for lack of a few bucks....

I cannot show you a picture, ‘cause my stupid camera won’t work! But I’ve got a gorgeous shot I took before it broke of little Helen, Maricela and Blas’s daughter with MS.

Speaking of Maricela, she named her baby Mariana after my sister Mary Anne, as I reported before. So when the first anniversary of Mary Anne’s death came round April 17, I went over to the house, just to sort of bask in baby Mariana’s glow. And glow she did; it’s as if she knew. I’ve never seen her more alert, just looking intently at me, her eyes wide and bright, her tiny hand raised like a gesture of blessing. It gave me the idea to do our own version of a novenario, 9 days of prayer for a departed loved one, including any anniversary of their passing. But I wasn’t sure how to proceed. “We’ll do it here, Miguel,” said Alba confidently, when Chemo and I went over for supper. Of course, they never knew Mary Anne, but they wanted to do this for her. So for 9 evenings, we said the Rosary before dinner, just so, each night another neighbor or two joining the group.

And when Chemo’s “nephew” Joel, Alba’s boy, had his 15th birthday, I don’t know, it just was the best party. A big cake, snacks, Cokes, the usual, but somehow just nicer. I think it was because the kids didn’t just eat and run. Folks hung around a while, listening to music and just having some fun. It’s the first time I can’t show you one of my famous “cake” photos, though, since my camera is on the fritz again. And I wanted to show you a BEFORE and AFTER of Joel and Chemo, BEFORE Chemo’s operation, when Joel would carry his tiny “uncle” on his back, and AFTER, now that they are the same age, and Chemo is a head taller...

One afternoon, 25 little kids came from Uracal, a mountain village about an hour’s hike away. They needed a photo, their teacher said, to claim some kind of “beca” (scholarship) from government funds. Oh man! “My camera...it doesn’t work.” But I had to try. I got them cool drinks from the fridge while I fidgeted with my camera, turning it off and on, tapping it on the cement sidewalk, thumping it, rubbing it, cursing it, blessing it--finally, just when I think I’ll have to send them away empty-handed, a flicker! “Line up, kids!” I got one shot, as the sun slipped behind the hills. I “view” it, hmm, a couple faces hidden by classmates. “One more!” Nope, that’s all she wrote, as the camera shuts off. So, you’ll never know any more about them than I do, but you gotta see this shot...

When they told us there’d be no classes for a week, Chemo and I went to Progreso. As we come into the city 5 hours later, Porfirio, the bus driver, announces “El Progreso!” and a bunch of folks get off, but I don’t rush, I get my gear together, I want to wait till the boulevard, the last stop. I look around, and no Chemo. Instant panic, like a nightmare closing around me. “He got off at the last stop.” What are you talking about?? Porfirio knows me, he knows Chemo, he knows he’s my son, I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t talk, except, “I’m getting off, I’m getting off!” I bound into the street and immediately start waving my arms like a semaphore, hoping Chemo will see me, wherever he is. I know it’s about 3 long blocks, and, indeed, I see this little form in the distance running, running, running desperately, and I know it’s Chemo. I assume he sees me, but he’s running so hard, so scared, it seems, I’m not sure, then he starts to dart across the street and I know, “My God! His eyes! His poor eyes! He CAN’T see me!” I swear I thought of Edgar in “King Lear,” stricken at the sight of his blinded, “parti-eyed” father Gloucester. I almost died of grief myself, it was all like slow-motion or something, and I finally had to tell myself, “Call him, you idiot!” I finally find my voice. “CHEMO! CHEMO! I’M HERE!” At last he knows. He slows down and I speed up. I grab him and hug him, he says nothing, like it’s all OK, but he’s shaking--or maybe it was me. “Were you scared, Chemo?” Shakes his head. “Are you all right?” Nods yes. “Couldn’t you see me?” A shrug. But I kept reassuring him (myself?) that I would never lose him again, and I told him (begged him?) never get off the bus without me right behind you. And inwardly I kept cursing Porfirio (myself?)--what carelessness, to let Chemo off by himself! And in El Progreso!

Then a visit to Morazan, trying to coincide with Fermincito’s 21st birthday. You may recall I previously reported that he had returned from about 8 months of misery on the U.S./Mexico border, hoping for a break--and all he got was a broken arm when a tractor he was trying to drive rolled over on him. Now he’s got another wound, the same kind that has punctuated this letter. He was helping his dad Fermin with the grates for the windows on their house; he was operating a grinder or a cutter or a polisher--something with a wheel--and it broke apart, the wheel shattering as it ripped off the top of his left hand, filling the wound with tiny shards. I saw the purple scar snaking across his hand like a glove, but I was not spared the sight of the butchery itself--Fermincito himself had videoed it on his cell phone! As the doctor (doctora, actually, as she picked out the pieces with a tweezers) worked for three hours, he just had recorded about 3 minutes, but that was more than enough. It looked more like a hand TRANSPLANT. Fermin, the dad, who saw it all happen, said, “Miguel, I thought he would lose his hand.” I thought I’d lose my lunch.

We get back to Las Vegas to hear the news that Will is back on the rack. Horacio is losing his position as superintendent--seems he wasn’t slurpy enough to suit the mayor, who’s trying to clear the district of liberals--so the deal is off. Wil, always the optimist, just says, If they fire me, I’ll do something else. But he was born to be a .teacher. It’s as if the mayor of Manchester told Gary Mazzola who to hire--and fire--at Parkway South. OK, bad example....

Hey, I just got a camera! In Morazan, Fermin loaned me his camera while he tries to repair mine. So take a look, including Cristian and family, and the BEFORE and AFTER of Chemo and Joel.

What did I miss in St. Louis this month, besides the Cardinals 20-inning game? Well, that you must tell me...and I wish I could be in two places at once. At least hold me in your heart, as I do you.

Meanwhile, the annual festival celebrating our church, named “Holy Cross,” starts today.

Love, Miguel