Benevolent Improv

Blue.

2011-10-19T19:41:00.003-05:00

Though a little outdated, I stumbled upon an audio-recording I'd made of this piece today, and, nearly three years later, still find it poignant.

“Blue”

I used to believe I wasn’t naïve.

But falling in love with a 28 year old Republican has somehow proven me wrong.

My father tells me I think the world is kinder than it really is, and that sometimes I need to respect its danger.

My independence tells me that I shouldn’t be afraid of walking down the street my whole life. If something bad is going to happen to me, it won’t happen under my pretense.

But my independence has begun to fail; I used to spend Sunday afternoons on a whimsical jaunt through campus or along the river road, finding whatever I might find in old buildings and in river-muck. No one to keep time, I’d drop schedules and deadlines aside for a while and turn to my shuttered craft of focal length and light. But those other kinds of Sundays were years ago, and Sundays now mean the couch. We sit curled, vegged, and wedged. Between his chest and the furniture's brown, leather skin I pass time without a thought.

•••

The light this morning is shut out by a gray filter; clouds and dotted precipitation slow traffic as I dive through a hole in it toward the Hennepin and Uptown. I don’t usually turn here from 394, but the hunt for breakfast and wi-fi has my stomach pulled in several directions. After a meandering drive through the morning’s dimness, I park both my Corolla and myself at the Longfellow Grill. An americano and a breakfast of oatmeal pancakes and fruit wait while I write here in a pensive calm as rain patters outside the window. As the earth cleanses itself, I’ve found my own moment to breathe.

The question was posed to me yesterday: “Have you found that you’re missing the weekend?” Though missing the weekend doesn’t mean I was so drunk I don’t remember it, I’ve begun to book myself with events that would normally take place during the week. I schedule them in and around my work schedule because the week brings my thesis and midterms and essays, and I feel like my blue papermate pen will never leave my hand.

It follows me to work where I take orders in its script; it’s responsible for filling my calendar; it writes assignments and my to-do lists that rival the length of a library catalog. Yet I cannot seem to separate myself from it. It is my favorite thing, this blue pen. Sometimes, when I write with it, all slows for my thoughts to collect, but usually its ballpoint can’t scribble fast enough. I have a box of 64—which reminds me—I started to write this because I fell in love with a 28-year-old who thinks I’m naïve.

After dating a week, he had wrapped that box of pens in brown paper. “Happy Knowing for a week,” he said, handing me the smallish box as I sat across from him on the couch. As I tore the sturdy wrapping, I realized he’d paid attention and noticed my favorite and only kind of pen and I had sort of melted right there. Well, I would have melted save for the fact that his apartment—a drafty, converted stable house with its original 1911 windows—was particularly cold that November evening. Playing dumb and pretending he hadn’t intentionally turned down the heat, we made a fire in its space and spent the evening as close to its flame as we could get without burning ourselves. The pens watched us from the coffee table.

It was yesterday afternoon we’d fought. Not in a screaming and yelling sense, but a frustrated confusion. He called me naïve for buying a solo ticket to Atlanta that landed at 10:00 PM. I didn’t understand the problem. “You don’t wear a bullet proof vest you know,” he said and furiously ended the call.

Naïve?

With wet eyes and my defenses alert, I demanded a second opinion on the matter.
And after no one else picked up, I called my father—a 54-year-old Republican—to find that he sort of agreed.

He was laughing when he answered, knowing the question’s premise before I could even pose it to him. “You know you’re not supposed to call your father when these things happen,” he chuckled. I defiantly asked him not to get too excited, reporting that he was the only one in the moment who’d answered the phone.

But the truth is I call my father for advice a lot. As the old saying goes, your parents become your friends as you age, and so far I’m fitting the bill like every other twenty-something on the planet. Allowing the other man in my life to do so, my father doesn’t take me on dates to dinner and the theater like he used to when I was in my teens, and our relationships has taken on another kind of form. He’s removed much of the say-so and control he once had… allowing me to figure out my own agenda, and call on him when I need a little support in my endeavors.

Nevertheless, he will always be the person I seek for gentle reassurance, and all the right words when I’m upset or discouraged or in a general disarray with my life’s plan. He speaks softly when he explains matters to me—the words come almost under his breath, as if he’s reserved them only for my ears. But as his own ears age, I’ve found that my own volume requires increase. It's nice, though, to have the option to speak up, to own up, and to explore my own words as they exists in the lives of those who surround me. And so I turn the volume up when ears become deaf or I must match the volume presented to me. But when it comes to my father, I tend to turn my own volume to a bare minimum—catching the bumbles and mutters of his speech. He is not an old man, but as he ages, I realize just how carefully and intently I must place myself within his life and his advice.

But as the volume of my naivety has become lowered, it has not disappeared.

I used to think I wasn’t naïve at all.

But I also used to think I knew everything at 13.
Once I hit 16, of course, then I knew better.
And then, there was 18 and college.

And at 22? I used to think I’d be past all that.

March 8, 2009

Just a Note...

2011-07-10T22:37:00.003-05:00

For the moment I'm blogging with my students on another site. So if you'd like to keep up, click here.

Cheers!

Observations.

2011-04-27T18:49:00.001-05:00

Frankly, this piece of writing is long overdue, and to be truthful, it has been sitting in my draft box for quite some time now. However, the time has really come to catch up with you. The difficult part is that I feel we've been out of touch for so long I'm not really sure where to start.

Currently, I am teaching American literature at Colegio Internacional de Guatemala. To say the least, the job has really been an eye-opener in terms of understanding just how profound the divide between the wealthy and poor here really is. Getting blackberry-obsessed sixteen year olds remotely interested in English literature has been a challenge to say the least. Perhaps it's just that they are sixteen, but more often, these sixteen year olds have never been exposed to their own countryside--the one in which infant mortality and respiratory diseases are among the highest in the Central America and the rest of the world, because open cooking fires pollute homes. Certainly, my students have seen the beaches, tourist attractions and grandiose Mayan ruins located in Tikal. (If you're interested, this is the incredible jungle where Episode VI of Star Wars was filmed with the Ewoks). But understanding just how cyclic the poverty in their country remains, or how desperately lacking the access is to healthcare in the highlands, is another concept entirely.

I have had the opportunity to enlighten a few of my 150 students by chaperoning their chance to work as medical translators with HELPS International--the nonprofit I have always been a part of with here. In March, I completed my 14th medical team, the last three of which were accompanied by my students. It is encouraging to sit back and allow them to experience their people in an entirely new way. They return to school enlivened, and determined to create change. They make me hopeful for Guatemala, knowing that they, quite literally, are the future. While adolescents now, they will become the country's stakeholders--those who eventually take over the family business and control the circles of money among the elite.

Really, my school has a variety of families; some kids are picked up in Toyota Corollas with the hub caps missing, others jump into Escalades with their armed body guards following behind in a Volkswagen Jetta. Fortunately, none of the kids at my school are sent there with body guards during the day, but it is not an uncommon practice at many other schools with other families. What most homes and schools do have, however, are small armies of housekeepers, gardeners or janitors. Experiencing the country's lower class serve the elite in friends homes still makes me uncomfortable. I suppose the discomfort comes from either my midwestern work ethic or my inevitable and unavoidable theories of the American dream, but it is different than having a cleaning lady come to help once a week. My boyfriend has a housekeep who came from the area in which their coffee farm is located, and who lives in the house with them. Sabina has her own room, but it is a humble space. She laughs and feels like the grandmother of the family, but having someone tell me "my breakfast was served" while I was living with them for the first month or so was strange. It is a constant reminder of the class divide here. And, of course, I am a de facto member of the upper class because I am both American and in a relationship with someone who comes from a wealthy family.

I can understand, however, just how easy it is to forget the realities of the country's poor. Aside from the dingy, dirty and dangerous half, the portion of Guatemala City in which I live is filled with restaurants and coffee shops and many of the houses mimic the beauty of Spanish architecture. I live in a fully furnished apartment with its own parking space. But the difference between my neighborhood and, say, Uptown Minneapolis is that I use three separate keys to enter my apartment, and its door lies behind two, tall security gates. Oh, and I can't walk to any coffee shops nor would I ever imagine biking or taking the city bus. The only time I walk anywhere is in the morning on my way to the school bus stop around six (that's right, I take the school bus with my students to school). Even then, there isn't a morning that I don't hear more than one car horn or that I am unaware of just who is walking within my vicinity. I don't have a fancy cell phone, nor do I wear jewelry that even appears expensive on my way to school. And this is the nicest part of town.

I love to escape to what I call "my Guatemala"--the highlands. I relate to those in the highlands in a simple, but more human way. There, people are more concerned about tortillas and firewood than the latest deal on iPods and Blackberrys; though frustrating and tragic, the simplicity is also refreshing. These experiences remind me to maintain my humility and remember where I come from. While I am sometimes discouraged by my students apparent lack of interest in my class, I go the highlands to remember that my life isn't so terrible. I don't plant corn by hand. I don't pick coffee for a living. Working as a medical translator makes my effort feel worthwhile and like I am part of a true change.

Morning Stroll.

2011-04-26T10:53:00.002-05:00

During my seven minute walk to the school bus stop this morning, I was honked at by a truck-full (and I mean overflowing) of men, a pickup filled with vegetables, three cars spitting black smoke, and two motorcycles. I was "shht"-ed by three other men waiting for the city bus, and solicited for chocolate by a woman with missing teeth.

With the sheer quantity of men in the back of the pickup, that's nearly six men a minute.

Gross.

Clock(s).

2011-01-16T12:02:00.018-06:00

While in Spain over New Years, Daniel and I made enough traveling plans to las us a decade. We also spent time deciding on an object we can look for in every country to which we travel. Something, a commemorative object of sorts, that we can hang in our someday home that we can tell our someday children about...

"That clock is from this beautiful artisan market outside the Royal Palace in Madrid," we might say to them someday.

"...See the green one with the swinging ticker?"
That's from Brazil when we went to watch the World Cup Soccer tournament. Or from Poland or Portugal or wherever it is we end up next.

But amidst the sickeningly-sweet, lovey-dovey planning of our new traveling collection, I've only been able to think one thing:
"Oh. No. We've become a clock collecting couple. We are now officially that cheesy couple that appears so in love it sort of makes everyone else around them a little queasy from all the love juices oozing between the two like goo." And I can't seem to get over the idea.

My God. We've started a clock collection.

A collection to show our grandkids.
A collection to fill a special wall when we have a house.

Yikes.

But even still, amidst all of that, the idea of our clock sort of enlivens me. I can't quite ignore the fact that I am completely embracing the idea that we, as a couple, have become clock collectors over these last weeks, commencing the hunt for a new clock with every new trip we take. That it is absolutely cheesy and I love it.

That we did find an incredible little ticker made of clay and fired in a kiln not unlike my grandmother's. That clocks, in themselves are representative of it all: the timespan of beginnings and endings, of certain eras in our lives, of live and death- of endlessness and the cyclical nature of all things.

While the analytical portion of my literary mind would perhaps like to continue with these muses, the socially conscious side of me knows quite well the threshold that an audience has for such things. So I'll stop there with the clock metaphors, but do brace yourself, because there's more.

"Think of the clock like our relationship. So, if it breaks on our way home, we know now that we're not going to make it. You just have to trust that I've packed it well enough."

That's what Daniel said to me as we entered the airport in Madrid.

I laughed and shook my head; as if we are uncertain of where we're going or wether we'll end up together.

But through this realization that we are now proud owners of a 25€ clock, it was hardly shocking or frightening in an "I don't want to be married anymore"/Eat Pray Love kind of way. If anything, it made me embrace the solidity of my relationship even more than the six months and various weeks we have spent apart from one another.

However, it did, for some reason seem more of a committed gesture than an engagement ring. In today's era, jewelry comes and goes and is significant only in the representation of a marriage or an engagement; and it seems that so many fall apart. A clock collection, however, is something you add to over time, that changes the landscape of your walls. It moves, not only circularly as the collection's ticking hands, but also outward as the collection grows, creeping along the walls of our eventual house. Though we bought the clock in a covered artisan booth in a row of similar shops, near a statue of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, it was somehow intimate and romantic and significant. Though it wasn't a ring, it interestingly felt like we took some kind of unspoken oath, or made some sort of silent promise to each other as our clock was being bound in brown packing tape and bubble wrap. Covered safely in red paper and stored carefully in Danny's computer bag for the flight home, it feels like we made some other kind of journey over the last ten days.

From my drunken crying on New Years Eve, to the patience it took my dear boyfriend to trudge up and down the streets of Bilbao searching for the perfect New Year's getup because the dresses I brought were still packed away somewhere in my suitcase that remained somewhere between the airports of New York, Madrid and Bilbao.

If taking four hours with your (for the moment) vain, crazed girlfriend to go shopping while your friends polish off four bottles of wine and several rounds of beer along the ocean isn't love, then I'm not quite sure what is.

There are some days, like the morning of New Years Eve, where I am positively sure Daniel loves me more than I could possibly love him back, and sometimes, I think he loves me more than I even love myself.

But he does this, because he knows that I'll eventually come to my senses several hours later, and I'll apologize over cappuccinos for the selfishness that usurped what was supposed to be a lofty, sweetly drunken afternoon. We'll join our friends in our new clothes, and drink Calimochos to ring in the new year until the sun comes up around seven o'clock and we ride the metro home in the clouds.

And then, after several days, several drinks and twenty-some hours of travel, we'll go home and hang the clock in the stairwell of my apartment. It's burnt, brown, clay face will clash with the rest of the vintage decor already posted around the place, but it will stand proudly as a swirling reminder of what we believe in and why we believe in one another.

And certainly, the who idea remains a cheesy scheme, but it's really of no importance to us.

A Letter to my family on Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T17:53:00.000-06:00

The clock in Danny’s Dad’s car says it’s 6:47, but I’ve already been awake for two hours. Luckily, Danny was the one to get up at 4:15 to turn the water heater on this morning for a shower. A little old fashioned, the device takes half an hour at a minimum for our water to be lukewarm, but forty minutes is optimal for the production of a steamy stream from the showerhead.

Early as always in HELPS good fashion, we were slated to leave the office on a construction project today at 6:00. Of course in Guatemalan good fashion, we left at 6:40 and then stopped to fill the coaster, trucks, and our car with diesel at the gas station adjacent to the office. It’s now 7:08 and we finally hit the winding road to Antigua. As the four lane mountain highway twists upward, I’m bracing my computer into my knees to prevent it from slipping into the lap of Danny’s sister who is next to me beneath a blanket and a pillow and waking up just enough to worry about the stray dogs darting from the dusty ditch and into the road.

As this morning’s story goes, there are 120 families participating in HELPS’ preventative health program in Santa Clara this year. The idea is to combine all aspects of HELPS work together, and track the tangible differences made. So each family combines ONIL products (stoves and heat retaining cookers and water filters) with access to a monthly medical clinic (run by Danny), basic health and nutrition courses (to teach treatments for the common cold, flu, dehydration, etc.), and referrals to the larger medical teams if hernia surgery, etc. is required. Each family has made a Q200, or $25 contribution for their stove, and makes a Q10 ($1.25) contribution for every medical consult made. The money garnered in the clinic, then, is used to purchase medication for the patients who are working to keep their blood-pressure, diabetes, and so forth under control. In this way, Danny is able to manage many of the chronic problems the regular medical teams encounter. It’s really incredible to see the difference made when people are saving money, saving their lungs with a clean stove, and learning how to keep themselves healthy by washing their vegetables and hands.

The year is ending, and ten families in the program remain stove-less. To solve the problem, Richard Grinnell, HELPS Vice President, suggested the members of the office go and install the remaining stoves themselves. He also requested they also invite their families to come along.

The beautiful part of it is that everyone volunteered, which explains the caravan of people—mothers, sisters, in-laws and children—we’re following this morning. There are 30 people packed into the HELPS coaster and three other SUVs are in line with the bus. Normally a stove takes four people to construct and a team of 12 people usually completes 10 stoves in a day, but this is sort of a special opportunity for those who work in the office to share their work with their families.

With the number of people coming along, each group will have the chance to install one stove, but this will also give us the opportunity to spend time with the families receiving the stoves. We plan to have lunch with them, and take some time to understand the way they live in their drafty, usually dirt-floored dwellings. I always say your life changes when you’re invited into a family’s home in the highlands.

Mario, Danny’s dad volunteered for the project right away, and is this morning’s driver. The picking season at the coffee farm is in full swing, and so he is accustomed to traveling into the mountains twice a month. As I write here and the others two are curled up in sleep together, Danny and his dad are collapsing in laughter.

What’s astonishing to me, though, is that we were able to coerce Danny’s diva-sister, Adriana, and her docile boyfriend, Sebas, to come along. For me, who was introduced to the highlands at an early age—this trip is old hat, but it’s interesting to hear Danny explain to his little sister where we are, and to Sebas, what difference stove makes for the people and the environment.

Both at nineteen, they’re the kind of kids who rarely get out of the city and into the highlands. When you don’t take time to leave the comforts of the waiter-filled VIP movie theater where we saw Harry Potter last night, or the beautiful restaurants and comfortable western-like homes in the city, it’s easy to forget the humbling means of the people across the larger part of this country. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

Of course, the other beautiful part about today is that it is Thanksgiving.

And it is a beautiful day. The rainy season ended a month ago, and the countryside is blooming. As we pass hillsides of pines and periwinkle flowers, this morning’s sun is streaming gold and casting shadows in incredible patterns across the limestone walls of the highway. Many of these walls have collapsed and spilled into the road as mudslides that have dried and now cast extra dust into the air when the wind picks up. Sun flowers, daisies and black-eyed susans are sweeping yellow flames between a patchwork of crops cut into the mountainside. If you look carefully enough, coffee plants sometimes peek through the cover of shade that blankets their careful growth and now, their berries will soon ripen red, lining their branches like the cranberry garland of a Christmas tree. The sky is absolutely blue, and volcanoes peak above the tree line of corn on the road ahead as a chicken bus cuts out in front of us and whizzes by.

But as I gaze across this terrain the never ceases to amaze, my heart is with all of you at home.

It seems to me that I could be spending today in no better way than I would be at home; because working on the stove project in the highlands is a way I can give of myself. Though family surrounds me here and we are stopping on our way home for a proper Thanksgiving dinner in Antigua, I miss all of you—you humor and your smiles and your jokes—because there really is nothing like our family.

But I have a much to be grateful for today. In addition to a proper and competitive education, I’m bilingual, have managed to secure a good job with higher pay than I thought I would originally earn, and I get to take high school kids into the highlands as translators with that job. Geeking out as an American Literature teacher and letting kids experience the highlands as I did when I was seventeen? The way I figure it, I’ve got the best of both worlds.

I have a beautiful apartment, have been able to navigate the unintelligible twists and turns of Guatemala City, and will be dressing up like a prom date—huge dress, hair, nails and all—at a fancy wedding this weekend. Not to mention the fact that I get to attend that wedding with my best friend instead of an awkward classmate who asked me to the dance because “I am nice.”

It is wonderful to spend my time every day with the one person I connect with on all levels, and who loves me for exactly who I am, and the way that I am. Danny has been an incredible blessing to me. He is a gentleman always. He holds himself at high esteem and expects the same from the people who surround him. He encourages me, and pushes me to be better, and is unafraid to tell me when I’m in a funk or being selfish. He keeps me grounded, and as I’m sure you all know, I need that sometimes. And sometimes I need that a lot.

I won’t pretend like these three months of adjustment have been easy. There have been breakdowns—one of which just happened to fall on the week that Gram and Mom arrived in the country. For me, there is sometimes a lot of self-induced pressure to fit in… to wear and say the right thing, to cook the right kind of food the right way. There are protocols in the social circles here to which I am still adjusting: what color ties are appropriate for a daytime suit or a nighttime suit and so on and so forth. “But it matches my dress,” is my argument, and his response is, “but you can’t wear a black tie for lunch, and cuff links are only appropriate if I’m wearing a tuxedo.” Guatemalan slang is like learning another language, and in a loud club it’s impossible to follow conversations—especially of the women. Also, I’ve finally been healthy in the last three weeks after battling giardia for the same amount of time. I’ll just say it was miserable and leave out all the pukey details.

But the other day, Danny asked that I stop comparing the way things are here to what is familiar at home; and I think he’s right. The onset of Thanksgiving, and his lack of empathy or understanding for the holiday had put me out of sorts. I had been trying to think of how to share the holiday with his family, but knowing we had this trip planned, had no idea how to cook a turkey and simultaneously work on stoves in Santa Clara. I had the idea to make Thanksgiving tomorrow, but no one would have been home to spend time experiencing the day. As a result, I was sort of feeling forgotten and like my boyfriend was making little effort to make the holiday significant. I felt like he forgot I was far away from the people I love on one of the most important days of the year.

However, after a short stint with my journal I realized that none of you would want me to feel that way today, and that you, as my family have taught me more than that. You expect me recognize and understand what I have in my life, and to share both my blessings and customs with those around me. You wouldn’t want me to be soured by my absence at dinner today.

But if I am really honest with myself, the only things currently missing in my life here—aside from fall weather and the change of the seasons—are all of you.

I have this great memory of the Sunday before I left for Guatemala in September. We were all standing around the kitchen like we usually do on family gatherings, and Thomas was being passed from person to person. Food was laid out, and the carrot cake was to be cut in a little while. I hooked up my computer to the boose radio in the kitchen and fired up the play list I had been feeding on in the weeks before I left.

So Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours,” rings into the background, and I turn up the volume. And suddenly I look over at Nick and he’s singing.
All the lyrics.
Though Lori is shocked at her son, Anna chimes in with the lyrics and there we were—together, singing and dancing in the kitchen like I used to do when I was kid.

And it was just a beautiful moment. Simple and pure, like our family and the way we treat one another. Full of joy and laughter and an embrace of our ever-changing paths. I’ve thought a lot about that moment since I’ve left, and it floods my mind each time the song comes on and I hear,

“ … I’ll be giving it my bestest, and nothing’s going to stop me but divine intervention,
I recon it’s again my turn to win some or learn some,
But I won’t hesitate no more, no more, it cannot wait, I’m yours….

Well open up your mind and see like me,
Open up your plans and damn your free,
Look into your heart and you’ll find love, love, love, love, love,

Listen to the music of the moment, people dance and sing,
We’re just one big family,
And it’s our Godforsaken right to be, loved, loved, loved, loved, loved…”

And if there is one thing I am absolutely sure of, it is that I am loved by all of you, even though we are what sometimes feels like worlds apart.

I recently watched a pirated version (bought in the best market in Guate) of Julia Robert’s new movie Eat, Pray Love. The story is Robert’s quest to find herself after a failed marriage, but foremost how to navigate a relationship with herself. There is a scene, where after four months in Italy, she arrives in India for another stretch of time, and is discussing her past with a Texan who has also arrived to meditate and practice yoga there.

In her moment of loneliness he says to her, “I know you feel awful, but your life’s changing… That’s not a bad thing, and you’re in a perfect place for it—surrounded by grace.” She replies, “But I really miss him,” and he says, “So miss him. Send him some light and love every time you think of him, and then drop it.” What he’s implying is that you’re never going to keep your life moving if your mind dwells in another place than where you are. And I decided I needed to stop dwelling in my own loneliness, and recognize my blessings instead. Because missing all of you is wasted energy; I would rather send you my love.

Texas man continues on, saying, “You know, if you could clear out all that space in your mind that you’re using to obsess over this, you’d have a vacuum and a doorway. And you know what the universe would do with that doorway?

He answers his own question.
“FROOM! Rush in,” he says. “God would rush in… fill you with more love than you ever dreamed of. I think you have the capacity, someday, to love the whole world.

But you have to do the work.
Meditate.”

So that’s what I’m doing now. From day to day, I’m doing the work: throwing myself into conversations and situations outside of even my own comfort level. Outside of the Guatemala that I already know. I have an incredible partner to help me along, but I’m trying not to rely on him too much because I know I need to do the work of adjusting on my own. Foremost, though, I really am sending all of you my light and love at a constant. When any of you come to mind, when I wake up in the morning, when I am folded into the highlands of this beautiful country, but especially today, when I know you are celebrating together and full of joy.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Love,
Kelsey

Mornings on NE Main

2010-11-24T05:11:00.011-06:00

It's 5:00AM and I'm awake.

Of course this was not by choice. But as my boyfriend left for the gym at 4:45 and set two alarms with two snooze buttons, there wasn't much getting around it. So, here I am at my computer in limbo between conventional night and day.

At this hour of the morning, when dawn hasn't yet turned the corner into my neighborhood, the whole world is quiet aside from the gentle hum of the refrigerator's cooling element. As a kid, I spent countless summer weekends at my grandparent's house in Minneapolis. But it was at this particular hour, between four and five o' clock, that I would hear Count Bassie and Benny Goodman jiving on the puce linoleum of the kitchen at 311 NE Main Street. Something, bacon or sausage usually, would be popping in time from a skillet, and if I snuck quietly enough around the corner to the kitchen, I could catch a glimpse of Teedy at his vintage range stove, dancing and singing and unaware of his audience. He never sang the words of song--only a "lie di die" sort of version, and while I'm certain he knew the lyrics, I mostly believed the habit of creating his own was simply old hat.

At 5'4" or 5", he stood in either zubas or his cut off scrubs from North Memorial Hospital, and wore a heather grey sweatshirt with the sleeves likewise cut to his forearm. Though Grandpa was a retired butcher by trade, my uncle had swiped the scrubs from the hospital where he runs cardiac machines during surgeries. In front of the tiny kitchen's wire legged table, Grandpa wore navy blue nikes and tube socks on his feet. His thinning hair was typically covered by a trucker's hat announcing he was "Proud to be Polish," or reporting latest record for the pierogi festival at St. Hedwig's Catholic Church. But this morning, he donned the white Windsor hat he had probably received at Mayslacks--a North East Minneapolis bar named for its owner and known for its roast beef.

While Grandpa stood in the kitchen listening to AM radio, beating eggs and pouring them over fresh ham in a skillet, I'd brace myself for the moment he saw me. But instead of a "What are you doing up?! Go back to bed!" from Grandpa, more often a gentle "Pssst," would ring down the hall and across the brown shag carpet in the living room. Rosie was calling for a cuddle from the set of twin beds that resided on the hard wood floor in my grandparent's bedroom. I'd pad down the hall past the wall-length rosary hung over white paint, and poke my head through the doorway.

"Hi," always escaped my lips in a whisper.

"Well 'morning Baby," she would respond.

Grandma slept in the bed farthest from the door, and I made my way there by light of the old analog clock that rested on the oak veneer of her nightstand. On her head she wore ancient curlers under a net, and I fiddled with them as she lifted the covers up to let me slide between the rose floral sheets. Soon, her 60s silk nightgown would be covered by a corresponding robe when light finally seeped through the shades and grandpa turned up the tunes in the kitchen. Once up, her curlers would be removed in the bathroom and with brushes and hairspray and picks, the woman would weave her poodle-curly hair into a half beehive.

But here in her bed she always asked, "Did you sleep okay?" and I would always answer affirmative even though the old stuffed animals in my father's childhood bedroom gave me the heebie-jeebies in the middle of the night. At six I could handle it. I wasn't a baby after all. We would chat until the sun had risen as it is now, and eventually Grandpa would call from the kitchen for breakfast. The table would be set with Rosie's homemade cherry jam, and a pottery crock of butter. Orange juice was filled in tiny vintage glasses, and our plates were arranged with the iron-skillet flavor of my grandfather's morning dance.

"Kelsey Delsey, do you want toast?"

Copperline

2010-09-01T23:16:00.005-05:00

It's just after 11:00pm and as James Taylor's "Copperline" seeps into the relative silence of my parent's quite house in Saint Cloud, I'm filled with a particular nostalgia tonight.

You see, James Taylor is both reminiscent and significant in my life. There were trips to the family cabin, where he came through the tape deck of my dad's old Mazda pickup. Then there were the family vacations; roadtrips to the Black Hills when my then three-year-old brother wouldn't smile for a single photo. After my father finally bribed him with skittles and a few bucks, we clambored into our white Voyaguer mini-van toward Colorado. In later days as our vehicles upgraded and held CD players, we each had the chance on family trips to choose our own music: After Weird Al Yancovick, Brent introduced us to Dave Matthews Band, Mom had an infinite love for Celine Dion and George Winston, and I, for a while was all over the pop charts. But Dad--whether real or just inflated in my memory--always represented James Taylor.

Then, slowly, as Anna joined the family, we heard "Sweet Baby James" play live in St. Paul. Brent bought a fifty-dollar concert t-shirt he never wore, and we've always mocked him for it. Tonight, I plugged "October Road" into Dad's 4-Runner as he, my mother and I took a trip to Barnes and Noble for a cup of coffee. Opening the window, transitional fall air feathered my face as I closed my eyes and let my nose become stuffy. Not only is this particular bookstore where I was first employed, it represents a whole world for me: the one in which I write. Where I become inspired by new prose and old friends between pages. And frankly, at few other times than now, have I been as compelled to write: living on the threshold of a huge change.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I never quite imagined it'd be this hard to pick up and leave my family again for the country and the person I fell in love with.

Moving anew is thrilling, but it's terrifying too. But that's where James Taylor comes in. I'll just have to fall backward toward my childhood in these next weeks and, "Shower the people I love with love; Show them the way that I feel." Because, "Things are going to turn out fine if I only will, shower the people I love with love."

Corny, but true.

Thinking Thesis

2009-10-06T17:26:00.005-05:00

In beginning (and hopefully finishing) the brunt of my thesis writing, I thought I'd toast myself with a commemmorating wordle. This particular wordle is comprised of my first seven pages.

Looking forward to the completion of 60 pages and six days of my life. Ten pages a day can't be so bad, right?

...Right?

Cheers to writing again.

Personal Percolation: Seeking the from Story Seed to Cup

2009-07-21T16:15:00.012-05:00

“What’s up, lady? You have too much working today?”

The farmer calls to me through the gate of the cooperative in Jacaltenango. Wearing a felt cowboy hat of beige, greenish slacks and boots, he sits atop his chestnut horse, grinning. We had become friendly over the last few days. I chuckle and set my rake down on the cool cement of the patio. Responding in Spanish I explain that I feel wonderful because where I’m from, the sun doesn’t shine like this in January.

In reality, my body is in shock. My back spasms in cycles and my hands have broken open with small blisters. My small, flat feet are slimy in the rubber boots I was given while washing coffee this morning. Their black nylon sops up the afternoon heat, and though Guatemalans are typically small, the boots are too large and scrape the cement when I walk. When I put them on this morning, I discovered all too late that the left one held a hole; cool spring water covered my Minnesotan toes the moment I had jumped into the fermentation tank with my washing paddle.

Working the system of canals at a wet mill is remarkable. The gravity of the operation and its circular flow of water have simultaneously left a lasting mark on my memory and body alike. After washing, wading and pushing waves of beans through the system, I was handed another rake made of dense wood that was so worn and smooth from years of use that it might have otherwise been intentionally polished to a gleam. While I was careful to turn the washed coffee in its appropriate rows, the rest of the men working at the cooperative raked circles around me, managing to turn the breadth of the patio by the time I finished two plots.

Days before, a member of the cooperative had explained that coffee was all he knew. He had not had time or the money to be educated, he said, and this mountain was his livelihood. He toyed with a fresh cherry as he spoke, wishing a conventional education for his children. Yet as I worked with him on the patios that afternoon, I realized he had received a different kind of education. He would know more about coffee than I could ever hope to garner in all of my research.

During a lecture at the SCAA conference in April, I heard Mark Pendergrast, author of Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World, mention that he felt he was sort of a mascot for the Specialty Industry. He couldn’t possibly know as much about coffee as the people who surrounded him then, but they were happy to let him come along and ask questions.
Sometimes I think I’m a mascot too. The individuals I’ve met while working on my seed-to-cup project have aptly offered their knowledge, connected me with their friends, and fielded my endless inquiries with graciousness and a spirit I’ve only seen by those who work in the Specialty industry themselves.

I’ve often been asked about my project and its intent. While I’m not in search of the “right” version of the supply chain and its antics, I am in search of a good one, one that honestly portrays the real work involved in the coffee harvest. Then, there is the plight of exporters, brokers and the constant ebb of prices and a customer’s personal palate. The art of roasting, and a roaster’s goal to bring clever notes to the brew…

In the least, I seek to offer my own historía de café—to give those who will never see the sun come up over Guatemalan mountains or pick a coffee cherry for themselves, a little of the sounds that surround these scenes and an understanding for the personal stories that touch each bean. For coffee is, a will remain at its best, a hand-picked crop and had picked cup. It’s delicate and requires humanity to proliferate, and eventually percolate. (That is, if your palate prefers that kind of bunt brew). Though I know toggle the line between the authentic and the cliché, I feel that is how we are, too. Not mascots for cheering, but percolators or French presses, simmering until something new comes to the surface.

While we all know a percolator isn’t the best device for brewing coffee, it is familiar in the social structures it represents. Societal and global stories have been embedded into the beans it requires to produce our brew. In turn, these beans create the coffee surrounding endless conversations and occasions. Certainly, they are an integral commodity. But as I continue to write, discuss and research further, I realize coffee is not merely commodity, but a fulcrum of human exchange.

As Featured in the December Issue of the Specialty Coffee Chronicle

From Origin to the Disconcerted Consumer

2008-12-06T19:19:00.012-06:00

As Published in the Specialty Coffee Chronicle, October 2008

The previous day's sunburn was causing my nose to peel as I climbed the hill behind the William Botnan Learning Center in Santa Avelina, Quiche (Key-ché). I’d lived in Guatemala before, but my skin, white and snowy from the Minnesota winter, has always burned in highlands of the country. It was January, and as I reached the hill’s plateau, I met an Ixil (e-sheel) woman raking coffee beans in the sun.

Though only the size of Tennessee, Guatemala’s diversity is remarkable. Twenty-eight languages are spoken among its ancient Mayan peoples; women wear hand-woven blouses and skirts according to the region in which they reside. The topography ranges from western mountain ranges to southern beaches and eastern jungle where ancient pyramids in Tikal
still stand from the fourth century BCE.

Santa Avelina is located near Nebaj in the Ixil triangle of Guatemala. It was in this mountainous area that some of the gravest atrocities occurred during a 36-year civil war that officially ended just a decade ago. The area on the hill in which I stood was roughly the size of a soccer field, and half of the space was filled with tarps of beige beans. Children from the school giggled and scattered as I crossed the field’s drying, brown grass.

Surprised as I greeted and approached her, the woman put down her rake. She told me the beans were compiled between her and her neighbors and that she received seven quetzales per pound of green coffee. I converted the price to dollars and realized she was earning roughly 90 cents for her work.

Her clothing was rumpled and she wore a faded blouse. Its lavender color matched the purple in her plainly woven skirt. She was barefoot. She smiled as she handed me a fistful of green-gray beans, peeling away their tissue paper skin. “Smell them,” she said through crooked teeth. Unroasted, the aroma was faint but marvelous.

I return often and the country is always familiar, but this woman and her beans remain a vivid memory among the colorful, amicable people of Guatemala’s countryside. But this scene is mundane for those who travel regularly to origin—an ordinary business trip in the specialty coffee industry. You who work at the top of this industry understand coffee’s standing as the world’s second most traded commodity. You see that matters of sustainability are entwined with the production of a quality bean and product. You know fair trade to be one option, but not necessarily the perfect or only option to remedy poverty among coffee farmers. Understanding these ideas is essential to the successes of your businesses. Yet the stronger issue is that the consumer rarely understands anything at all.

Last weekend, a friend of my father’s—a Peet’s coffee devotee—was astonished to learn her beans begin as fruit on a tree. A round, fervent woman with stylish glasses and an asymmetrical haircut, Geri organizes charity benefits and travels annually on medical missions.

“You’re kidding,” she said, and urged me to tell her more.

As I continued, she interrupted, saying, “You mean you can actually eat the cherry?”

An eavesdropper then entered the conversation.

“You know, I love a good cup of coffee, but it’s those flavored coffees that just aren’t quality.” It was of no use to explain that a bean’s flavor actually varies according to its tree, growing conditions and origin.

I’ve had such a conversation before, and most who regularly drink coffee know nothing about it. Often, a habitual coffee consumer is genuinely confused and, when prompted, cannot explain how coffee certifications like Rainforest Alliance or Fair Trade function to provide a more sustainable product.

This is the problem I see: While those involved in the business of specialty coffee understand the intricate network of coffee supply, consumers rarely have enough information to make purchases based upon their own beliefs about farming and sustainability. Because of this, they often look at the price of a pound of coffee and take whatever seems less expensive without understanding that their purchase has a direct effect on the farmer. Either that, or they cannot decide between
the coffee that claims to help an endangered hamster in Tanzania or the other that is marked with a photo of diminishing rainforest. They think, “Is one better than the other, or is it an advertising game?” Stores sell bags of coffee labeled according to regions in distant places a customer cannot often locate on a map. Origins are far away from storefronts and colorful displays, and such places are an incomprehensible part of the world to the majority of coffee consumers.

I consider myself lucky to have happened upon the Guatemalan woman I met in January. Because of her, I have sought conversations about quality, cupping and certifications with individuals directly involved in the specialty coffee industry; I see more than precise packaging and keen advertising when I ask for a pound of coffee. I see the woman’s bare feet and remember how dusty my feet had become in my own sandals that afternoon. She wasn’t just another indigenous woman fighting to stay afloat. She was my connection to origin, and somehow, not such an unfamiliar stranger.

In a city like Minneapolis—where neighborhood communities have distinct presences—frequenting local mom and pop coffee shops is easy to do. Whether known as an artsy hiatus or for its local produce, each neighborhood has its correlating cafés, and while common chains also spatter the sidewalks, I am able to make my own choices about the coffee I drink. But I am able to make these choices because I understand that purchasing coffee is more complex than laying two dollars down on the
counter.

In frequenting new places, knowing the right questions to ask is essential: Where are these beans from? Do you know the farm? The farmer? What is their quality, and how much was paid for them? Even if they are not certified Fair Trade, what can you tell me about the condition in which they were grown? Unless the owner of the shop is present, though, the area is usually gray.

I’ve also found that firing any number of these questions at a barista can be particularly overwhelming—especially for the one who got the gig as a summer job and is just learning to pull a shot of espresso. Because of this—that many of these baristas do not know about the beans they are preparing—I find myself clinging only to fair trade or others that are advertised with a certification in cafés. There are other, unmarked options for sustainable coffee, but if a barista lacks knowledge about the shop’s practices, I have no other option than to choose the brew that is certified and labeled.

It seems, then, one solution for the confused consumer relies in part on the barista who prepares his or her coffee. If baristas are well versed in the espresso they pull and can engage a customer in a conversation about it, we have found a way to both incite a consumer’s personal interest in his or her coffee and bring light to the system itself.

Kelsey Kudak is a senior at the University of Minnesota pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English and dance with minors in photography and journalism. She grew up in St. Cloud Minn., and moved to Minneapolis in 2005 to begin her successful undergraduate career. After moving to the Guatemalan highlands to volunteer as a medical translator in 2007, she realized her interest in the coffee industry was intimately tied to her time there. She is currently focusing on the education of the coffee consumer while writing her undergraduate thesis, “Exposing Cherries: An Examination of the Coffee Supply Chain in Light of the Fair Trade Industry.”

A bridge anew.

2008-09-22T01:32:00.004-05:00

It was quiet. Punctual.

The gathering on the sidewalk on Thursday morning was small: a cluster of media, students in sweatshirts on foot. Bleary-eyed bikers perched on pedals and frames as their taillights blinked in unison with those of the adjacent dump trucks at the intersection. As a MN DOT worker clad in neon climbed into his dump truck, a sign above his rig read, “Stay back. Stay alive.”

State troopers removed their cars from a makeshift barricade, and turned their headlights north to the river. Moments later, a simple progression of vehicles rolled down a ramp from University Avenue. The morning was cool, and streaks of dawn were somewhere in time’s impending distance. A slope of tripods dotted the hill toward the interstate; shutters clicked. Camera phones were held in the air.

From the ramp, traffic flowed to form five lanes streaming southbound that were met halfway by others heading opposite. As they passed waving markers lit by LEDs, those in vehicles were suspended on a white concrete cloud above the Mississippi.

And then they had crossed the bridge.

The general stillness had broken by bleats of horns in the moments before—some short blasts, others long and blaring. Helicopters chopped at the air suspending them above the river. A few cheered as if we’d conquered something.

We’d built a bridge in record time. But it was a bridge that required no groundbreaking ceremony because its ground had already been broken. There was no unveiling because the project hadn’t ever had a covering to keep its progression a surprise.

But since its reinception after the I-35W bridge crumpled and fell, passersby have paused on 10th Avenue to gaze over the gap at what was wrecked in the river. First it was gawkers who “came to see for themselves,” and then locals began to watch its progress as workers embarked on a round-the-clock regimen. Ceremonies had surrounded the bridge’s tragedy and anniversary while renewing the strength of the city of Minneapolis. Commemorative artwork had been commissioned and realized in brushstrokes that depicted the “Thirteen Flowers” lost when the first bridge collapsed in a matter of moments.

What is it that draws the city of Minneapolis to this new bridge, and the memory of the other? Bikers on the 10th Avenue Bridge are perpetually stopped in contemplative states along the wired fence that held the new bridge plans. The community had voted on the design of the bridge: its efficient LED lighting system and, sound, protective technologies. Families have crossed the path to take photographs and portraits along each part of the building process. Observing the bridge, and the research surrounding its failure has been the city’s greatest spectator sport for the last year.

We continue to ask ourselves, “How does a bridge fall down?” and “What prevents any other bridge from doing the same?”

The new bridge has superb technology, and was carefully created in spite of 24-hour work and daily glitches. Three hundred twenty-three sensors have been installed in the bridge; some reside inside its concrete. According the Minnesota Public Radio, these will examine changes over time, and measure how much and how quickly the bridge moves as traffic travels across it. Other sensors keep track of temperature and corrosion. MPR continues to note that one of the only other bridges with such technology is the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, but the sensors on our St. Anthony Falls bridge outnumber the Golden Gate’s by 150 or so. Additionally, the Golden Gate spans 1.7 miles, whereas our bridge is just 504 feet.

The information gathered by these sensors doesn’t have far to travel as specialists at our own university will be examining the data for the Minnesota Department of Transportation. Mn DOT will be able to monitor early problems immediately, making the new bridge one of the safest and most closely monitored bridges in the nation.

The bridge was built with a higher strength, higher performance concrete. Its plans say it should last a hundred years. Gusset plates were replaced with steel tendons, making the bridge more human in some way. Its redundancy is sound.

We can tell ourselves the technology will keep us safe. But regardless of these advances, it is because this tragedy happened within such normality that it remains so fervently haunting: a beautiful August day with hints of fall in its air. The end of the workday had come, and many were traveling home with dinner in mind. At the interfaith service at the Basilica of St. Mary on the anniversary of the collapse Methodist Bishop Sally Dyck, President of the Minnesota Council of Churches, spoke to this. “We cross bridges every day,” she said. “And I’m not speaking in metaphor.”

For those in the proximity of this bridge, for those who have heard the sounds of pounding planks and poured concrete for the last year, the neighborhood suddenly seems quiet. The noises of its progression, and fighting traffic on alternative routes have become the background of daily life.

Though traffic remained sparse at 5:20 on Thursday morning, the quiet of a regained normalcy resounds more loudly than cars that cross the sweeping width of a new bridge.

Missing Roses

2008-07-20T00:38:00.012-05:00

So I've been on a bit of hiatus. Not from writing, but from writing here. I could offer up my excuses and say that I've been pursuing credits toward my B.A. in Dance for the last three weeks (which is true). Or I could note that I've been taking notes as a reporter and photographer for a couple of local bi-monthly papers (also true).

But to be honest, I just haven't written--haven't known what to write (perhaps untrue).

I still don't, but I do have something to share. It's a piece of writing I tinkered with over Spring semester of last year, a piece about my grandmother Rose who passed away this week. The piece remains unfinished, but since its beginning, it has functioned as a lens with which to view what was happening to my grandmother's deteriorating health. To consider how I might write the scene I was living was my way of getting beyond what was really happening.

And even in the quiet of Thursday's dawn, as she lay in lavender pajamas, breathing shallowly beneath a hand-stitched quilt, I was writing. Taking notes, remembering times, smells and the way the light shone on her quiet face. I was writing from a fragile necessity that morning.

But the piece. It was edited some for a space constraint and I haven't refilled in the spaces I cinched together for class. But I'll stop with the explanations and excuses.

From "The Destrcutors"

Last Christmas Eve, the house had been filled with family and friends who appeared annually for the holiday. From my seat at the bar I spotted my grandmother and my uncle’s mother in a corner where both women seemed younger versions of themselves.

Lois and Grandma were perched on the couch, their arms entwined. I watched as they laughed; their heads of grandmother curls doubled over and the women came up with wet cheeks. She looked different from the way I remember her as a kid; she looked different from the way I had thought of her lately. Her wrinkles and frailty had recently overwhelmed me. And she had finally succumbed to the idea of Chandler place.

Jan walked to the center of the room and tinkled the glass containing her own drink, “Rosie has a little something to say to everyone.”

The men in the room began to shout obnoxiously: “SPEECH! SPEECH!”

“OOkay, Shutchyour damn mouths.” Grandma spoke from the back of her throat and ambled to her feet before laughing and then letting tears fill her eyes as she looked around the room. Her lips pursed and her face smushed in creating the kind of silence that exists before a child cries after he falls.

She sniffed and her words came in spurts. “I just… want to… wish everyone a Merry Christmas… and… thank… you all for… coming.” She’d had a speech prepared, but faltered. “You all know what you mean and you all have the memories so I don’t need to bring them up.” Looking small and frail, she raised her drink in the middle of basement. Her clothing was rumpled as much as her face, and the tears trickled down before her last sentence came out in one breath. “You all have a good time,” she said and eased slowly toward the couch before collapsing onto its cushions. Lois patted her on the back. Her voice sounded naturally congested.

“You did great Rose.”

That was to be the last Christmas Eve at 3511 NE Main.

I sighed and rubbed a finger through the dust on the horn-rimmed glasses pinned to the bar by a thumbtack. They had brought on the memory and their joints had been crudely repaired with stiffened hot glue. The hardened material held them open as if Grandpa had removed them for a moment to chew on the edges while he mixed a drink. They remained the glasses Paul Auster’s father left behind: “scattered throughout the house: on kitchen counters, on tabletops, on the edge of the bathroom sink—always open, lying there like some strange, classified form of animal.”

“There is a poignancy to it, and also a kind of horror. In themselves, the things mean nothing, like the cooking utensils of some vanished civilization. And yet they say something to us, standing there not as objects but as remnants of thought, of consciousness of the solitude in which a man comes to make decisions about himself: whether to color his hair, whether to wear this or that shirt, whether to live, whether to die. And the futility of it all once there is death.”

I read these lines only a day after my aunt’s voice pulled me from the place where the glasses hung near the bar. I climbed the carpeted stairs to the kitchen.

“Grandma wants to know if you want her china,” she asked. The kitchen was filled with boxes and the cupboards were wide open, their gutted insides spread over the countertop. Newspaper and old towels were intermittent with vases and candy dishes.

“Sure, but you’ll have to send it with my parents. I have no room for it in my apartment.”

As Grandma pushed on the table’s surface to stand, her navy corduroys fell back around her ankles and re-covered her bony legs. She carefully started in the direction of the adjacent living room, clinging to the walls and its doorway for support.

I said, “Thanks Rosie,” and she turned to me.

“Oh you’re welcome.”

“How’re you doing?” I asked, rubbing her back.

She answered with a singsong, “Oh I’m fine.” But as she turned on the TV, I can only presume how she really felt. Perhaps that she missed my grandfather more than I’d ever understand. Perhaps that she was giving up, surrendering to the move. Feeling obligated after such a stroke.

She’d be giving up her car, no longer trusted to drive. Giving up her house, where she’d raised two children and buried and third, days after her birth. Where she’d washed dishes and forced my father to eat beets at the kitchen table after they’d gone cold. She was always cold now, wearing sweatshirts year round. There was a time when climbing the stairs was not an event and she made kool-aid in a crystal pitcher on summer afternoons for her kids.

As she looked up from the television, she might have remembered a time when she could see for miles from the front window, before someone from train yard across the street had built up the earth and created a man made hill to deafen the sounds of trains at night. But the freight cars on their tracks were still audible during the early hours of the morning, even though it was decades ago their whistles stopped registering in her ears.

• • •

The huge prints of Grandma and Grandpa on their birthdays’ were framed in the basement and hung above the end table holding an old rotary telephone. On her head of curls, my grandmother had a birthday crown made of tin foil. In his, Grandpa was wearing an enormous sombrero and grinning. Though the photograph is noisy and soft, the black frames of the glasses on his face seemed to jump out of the relatively gray scene.

I twisted the screwdriver to the left, loosening the lower corner of Grandpa’s frame on the wall. The rough wood poked a sliver into my palm and I held the frame steady. It left a growing red spot as I ignored it and continued to dismantle the frame, detaching it from the wood paneled wall.

Screw after screw, I loosened and removed, until I could no longer reach the tip of the Phillips flush into its screw.

I dismantled the frame in a methodic nature that reminded me of Graham Greene and Mr. Karn’s tenth grade AP lit class. We’d read ‘The Destructors” during the term, and I would recall it six years later when I was dismantling my grandmother’s house. Though my father and I had not been destroying the floorboards of an old man’s beautiful house, new paint covered cigarette-stained walls and the year-round tinsel and Christmas lights in the basement has been thrown in the trash.

“Dad, will you help me with these last screws? I’m not tall enough.”

• • •

“I went down to dinner today,” Grandma told me over the phone. “But it wasn’t so great.” She’d taken to eating dinner with a new group of women. They flock down to the ornate social room for happy hour, but Grandma turns her nose up at the fact she’s only allowed two vodka cokes.

“How are your new lady friends?”

She giggled, “Oh they’re fine. Just fine.” Even though she was in her apartment alone, her voice dropped, indicating gossip. “But there’s the one lady… oh she bugs me. She’s just a little bit… slow, you know. And I know I shouldn’t say that, but every time I see her I just get so upset. She’s completely senile…”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “Did you go down to happy hour today?”

“No, that’s only on Friday. So tomorrow the Helen and I will go. We like to get together and… toss the air. So what are you up to tonight, Kels?”

I briefly recount the relentless details of my semester’s end and three jobs.

“Goodness. Don’t get yourself all tired out now. You’re so busy, I just worry about you sometimes.”

And they say it's not just a trend.

2008-06-12T18:20:00.009-05:00

I found this in Wednesday's edition of the New York Times.

UPDATE: Yesterday, (meaning Friday) I mentioned this to my coworkers at the restaurant in which I work. One particular coworker seemed he would defend the organic vodka to his grave - that it not only greatly differed from other vodkas, but that even after the distilling process it was more fresh. (Though when I think of vodka in general, I have to say that fresh isn't among the first descriptors that come to mind). It's too bad I prefer rum, otherwise I'd challenge his theory. Well, that, and the fact that drinking alone implies certain social shortcomings from which I'd prefer to stay dissociated.

2008-06-02T20:10:00.002-05:00

eavesdropping in the waiting room

2008-05-29T19:51:00.006-05:00

"I bought a great vintage frame in a rummage sale a few weeks ago, and my husband needs to finish building my new commuter bike. But in the meantime, I'm riding this heinous dog-walking mountain bike."

And then I looked at the cover: the yellow margins, the date.

2008-05-24T11:04:00.018-05:00

I've just begun reading Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent: Travels through small town America.

After what is a standard beginning for most books--acknowledgements, publication, dedication and title (each prescribed with a miniscule roman numeral)--Bryson's prose begins on page three. By page seven he has managed to successfully coerce an audible laugh from me (which, when you're reading amidst a group of people in a crowded shop is a commendable feat in itself), and bring me to a place it seems all young kids avouch for early recognition of the larger world around them: National Geographic.

Though Elizabeth Bishop certainly published this notion years ago, its validity remains universal without epic or further publication; I am writing here, in an untrafficked place, with my own modest memory of the magazine.

I played piano from the age of six until I was a sophomore in high school, and practicing the keyed instrument was my least favorite part of the day. I'd tinker with Bach's Minuet in G, and thereafter avoid my Suzuki book entirely. Instead, I supplemented the classics with rags or jazz I'd memorized months or years before, and afterward, would slip from the corduroy cushion on its bench to the storage cupboards next to the piano. In addition to old photo albums from my parents' college years, the cupboards housed an archive of National Geographics aligned by date. Their spines created an overwhelming rectangle of gold when I climbed atop the bar's counter to open the narrow door next to the windows of the wine cabinet.

One afternoon, as I avoided Vivaldi and went to the cupboard, a Kayan woman with golden rings around her neck stared at me through the golden frame of the cover. As a child of probably six or seven, I was astonished. The necks of her and the other women were "wound round and round with wire like the necks of light bulbs". Sitting cross-legged on the carpet and devouring other photos of the giraffe woman, I didn't understand the physics or the medical nightmares that occurred when the clavicles of the woman were crushed and the apparatus rendered her neck muscles so weak they could no longer support her head without the device. This beauty was painful, but I only imagined the place in which she resided. It was so far removed from anything I'd ever seen, its actual existence was unfathomable.

When I asked my mother about it, I'm sure her reply was something about other cultures having different perceptions of beauty--which is why even the small children in the magazine had pierced ears and I had to wait until my eighth birthday to have my lobes punctured. But I considered myself lucky because my best friend Karen was waiting until thirteen, an age tardy by both her standards and mine.

When my time came, I discovered my allergy to nickel and other inexpensive metals and the healing process had been a mess. My ears became pussy, bloody and painful when I exchanged my original stainless steel studs with golden ballerinas, and, from then on, I was forced to don the plain jewels reserved by the "sensitive ears" section of Claire's.

But I've digressed from the point.

The floundering magazine that was created in 1888 to increase the "diffusion of geographic knowledge" was supported by Alexander Graham-Bell's father-in-law, and originally read like a textbook. It wasn't until photographs were a haphazard addition to an edition in 1905 that our country, from Bill Bryson and Elizabeth Bishop, became and remained entranced by the worlds in its pages they would have otherwise never been able to see. And that's where Bryson left off when I bookmarked page fourteen to write this: with his desire to leave his hometown of Des Moines, Iowa and move to England. And he did. But his following pages are not of the places he discovered in his years abroad; they are a rediscovery of our own and his own small town escapades.

But perhaps I'm making a grandiose statement prematurely. Giving a book fourteen pages is like judging its cover, even though I'm looking forward to giving Bryson a few more days.

" I began to read--no, I began to consume--National Geographics, with their pictures of glowing Lapps and mist-shrouded castles and ancient cities of infinite charm. From that moment, I wanted to be a European boy. I wanted to live in an apartment across from a park in the heart of a city, and from my bedroom window look out on a crowded vista of hills and rooftops. I wanted to ride trams and understand strange languages. I wanted friends named Werner and Marco who wore short pants and played soccer in the street and owned toys made of wood. I wanted my mother to send me out to buy long loaves of break from a shop with a wooden pretzel hanging above the entrance. I wanted to step outside my front door and be somewhere."

a comment on impossibility

2008-05-22T11:11:00.009-05:00

Paul: Does he know who you are? Then the feeling's mutual.
Me: What do you mean does he know who I am?
Paul: If he knows you by name, then the feeling's mutual is what I'm getting at.
Paul: Maybe that was a stretch. You know, I don't know, I just live in China.
Me: That doesn't make any sense.
Paul: Yes it does!!
Me: How?
Paul: To know you is to fall madly in love with you.
Me: You are ridiculous.
Paul: C'mon. Think with that brain of yours and understand me.
Me: Well you're writing in complete sentences, and those I understand. But your theory is seriously flawed.
Paul: It might not be true. But as a hypothesis, I think it's solid.

This happened back in March, but I found it in the small pile of school things on my desk during my scuffle to shorten it this morning.

apples to apples

2008-05-17T10:28:00.029-05:00

Recently, I have taken to buying yellow apples from the grocery store. Even though I prefer Fiji or Braeburn, these golden friends have been the least expensive denominator as of late. And, because I generally eat a ton of fruit, that's a good thing.

Every time I bite into one, I think of Beth Lehman, my childhood best friend. As a kid, I found it particularly special that Beth's full name was both my middle name and the name of my godmother in Wisconsin. We both had blonde, bobbed hair and blue eyes and were confused for sisters whenever we spent any amount of time together (that time being every possible moment between the ages of two and eleven). Though Madison Elementary and Sts. Peter, Paul and Michael Primary separated us only by a city block and two playground sets, I attribute our high tolerance for one another to the fact that we went to different elementary schools. We spent long weekends in the woods at her cabin with her dog. We played dress-up with her old skating costumes and my sequined-lined leotards and tutus. We watched hockey games and swam in her pool when she moved to a new house after we turned eight. Our fathers were colleagues in the same dental practice and we'd never had cavities. Before I was in preschool, I spent afternoons with her mother, Kris, while my own mother worked part-time as a dental hygienist with our fathers.

Though her favorite color is yellow, my mother only bought red and green apples and grapes; yellow fruit only came from the Lehman kitchen. Beth and I would be called into the house after running through sprinklers in matching hula skirts and bikinis on summer afternoons, leis askew, the fabric flowers in our hair matted and frayed. We spent hours gyrating our hips, practicing the perfect hula, and I'm certain the afternoon humidity bore down like it does during all Minnesota summers: so thick that it's hard to breathe. But kids, tuned only into their work of play, never notice these inconveniences and surely we cared more about the dandelion butter we rubbed on our wrists than the soppy air of afternoons.

So we'd run inside, stepping on old towels with our wet and grassy feet in the entry way of the kitchen, which, as I remember it, was a replica of the kitchen in my parents' first house. Kris would be standing at the counter with a knife, slicing yellow apples as MPR murmured Reagan policies the background. The linoleum was a muted mustard with a pattern from the seventies and the oak country table fit the country kitchen well, its chairs cut in a synonymous design. But we always snacked at a playskool table instead its proper relative. Its plastic legs and crayon-yellow miniature chairs sat in the adjacent living room, just near enough to fake a semblance of belonging amidst the dining room set. We'd engulf our plate of apples and cheddar cheese before racing into the heat once more.

But while I'm still eating yellow fruit, the best friend to whom I'd promised a spot in my wedding, and who had told me the truth about Santa Claus in the pop-up back seat of my mother's wood paneled station wagon, seems to only exist among the semi-fabricated vignettes of my childhood memories. It's been more than ten years since we've spoken, and while our fathers still reside in the same office on Northway Drive and Kris makes it to office functions and smiles and says it's so good to see you, Kelsey, and I still have the Lehman's home phone number memorized, I didn't even think to ask of Beth when I ran into her older sister in Barnes and Noble on Thursday. Perhaps I was merely preoccupied and trying to avoid the former co-workers and managers with whom the place was crawling. But more likely, as ten years implies and as a wedding for which I'll wear white is currently and thankfully unforeseeable, we've just become too old to run through the sprinklers in grass skirts.

Fair Trade or Fairly Traded?

2008-05-07T00:16:00.008-05:00

Fair Trade ensures consumers a proactive stamp of approval, but it is not the only solution to issues of coffee origin.
• • •
“It’s extraordinary to think that dozens, maybe even hundreds of hands, touch every coffee bean that is in your cup of coffee,” said Ric Rhinehart, Executive Director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. We spoke during the annual conference for the SCAA—the world’s largest gathering of coffee connoisseurs, technically perfect baristas and coffee growers. Last weekend, Minneapolis was not only home to the conference, but also to discussion of sustainability and quality within the market of great coffee.

While those directly involved in the specialty coffee industry understand the lengthy chain of supply that ensures a quality cup of coffee, the average consumer thinks little of this. Yet whether we drink our morning coffee at Dunn Bros. or at home, a significant number of individuals have cared for it before we even take a sip.

The production of coffee beans often begins several years before reaching the consumer. On average, coffee trees take five years to begin producing marketable cherries—a grape-like fruit from which coffee beans are extracted. At the point of maturity, often during our winter months of January and February, harvesters are paid not only for the amount of cherries they can handpick in a day, but for the quality of the cherries they harvest. These cherries are then sold to a processor who extracts the pit of the fruit—our coffee bean—and ensures that beans are washed, dried and exportable. He then will sell these green beans to an exporter, who sells them to an importer in the United States, who sells them to a roaster, and then to a retailer who either sells the coffee by the pound or brewed cup. Though the chain exists in variations with omitted links, this basic model is the way coffee has been sold for hundreds of years.

A current trend that works to decrease the numbers involved in this incessant game of hot-potato is the Fair Trade industry. Through Fair Trade, direct cooperatives are formed between roasters and individual farmers, thus eliminating the middleman and ensuring a better profit for the farmer. Fair Trade beans are purchased at a fixed price above the ever-changing market, and the Fair Trade logo is typically well advertised by the roaster. After organizing cooperatives in Nicaragua for 11 years, Paul Rice became the CEO of TransFair USA with the belief that Fair Trade is a testament to the power the awakening consumer has through a simple cup of coffee. “We’re turning a daily act that is not conscious into an act of goodwill, and that’s a compelling notion in a nation where people care, but that don’t have time,” he said. “We don’t have time to go to the PTA meeting, or write a letter to the editor—half our nation doesn’t have time to vote. But we all eat, and that means most of us shop. So if the act of shopping and the act of consumption can become an act of reaching out, that is a powerful thing.”

Peace Coffee in Minneapolis functions in this way. Selling all Fair Trade, Organic beans, the local roasting company works with Cooperative Coffees to receive beans directly from farms around the world. After roasting and packaging, pounds of Peace Coffee are delivered to their respective retailers by bike through the humid summers and biting winters of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Full time roaster Megan O’Brian spoke of the relationship: “We put a lot of emphasis on knowing from where our beans come and who grows them. After a year at Peace Coffee, all staff members are able to go to origin. Though business does get done on these trips, we have an opportunity to see our beans grown and say to the grower, ‘This is where your beans are going. This is what people think of your coffee.’ Those direct relationships are central to what we do.”

Fair Trade ensures consumers a recognizable stamp of approval when they purchase coffee. With the confusion of emerging certifications today, a customer can see the Fair Trade logo and be certain the product he or she purchases is supporting a proactive practice. But Fair Trade is not the solve-all solution to the issue of sustainable practices at origin. Currently, there are more certified beans produced than demanded annually in the market. In reality, about one third of the Fair Trade certified beans are actually sold to roasters. As the demand for Fair Trade has not risen to 100%, the other two thirds of the beans are sold at market price. Additionally, Fair Trade certification is only granted to smaller farms, and therefore excludes larger farms with similar practices.

In the specialty industry, the market price for beans is always the lowest common denominator. This is the price at which canned, commercial coffee is purchased, but never the price of specialty beans. The price of quality coffee is always higher than market and often higher than Fair Trade; each coffee differs in value. It is the cupper—the professional who determines its characteristics and value—who is given the most power within a particular chain of coffee supply. If a farmer does not know the quality of the bean he is producing or does not trust the person who tells him its value, he may be losing significant profit.

Traditionally, cupping has occurred higher up the chain, at the export or import level. But Ted Lingle, Executive Director of the Quality Coffee Institute, is working to return cupping to origin so that farmers are able to make their own business decisions about the prices at which they sell their beans. “The benefit,” he said, “is for a producing country. If you teach farmers how to separate their coffees for the market in advance, they have a greater opportunity to catch to coffees that are sold at premium prices. Because farmers had no idea what happened to their product once it left their farm, it was placing them at a big disadvantage in the marketplace.” The Institute, which has worked throughout Central America and is currently working in Kenya, Ethiopia, Colombia, and Indonesia, certifies cuppers from each of the respective countries so they are able to work with their own farmers. “This ensures a grower the ability to have one of his own countrymen, someone in whom he has confidence, to cup his coffee and give him an independent report on its quality,” said Lingle. If a farmer is able to independently access a qualified cupper, he is less likely to sell his coffee at an underrated price. Lingle’s system directly empowers farmers because the bean determines its own price, instead of an organization like TransFair.

It is often stated within the specialty coffee industry that the quality of coffee is directly tied to the quality of life of the farmer. One cannot be raised without raising the other. If farmers are able to produce less coffee at a higher value, then we have found a beginning.

disastrous manipulation

2008-05-06T18:07:00.019-05:00

I know this blog has already been featured as a blog of note on blogger, but because I couldn't tear my eyes away from it, I simply couldn't help myself. This is for my friends in photography, and this is why I don't manipulate my photos other than simple tricks of noise and color balance.

Enjoy.

one day like this a year would see me right...

2008-05-05T20:07:00.028-05:00

Highlights from tonight's ride:

• My 1991 magenta Murray.
• A clashing red bike helmet.

• Scents of barbeque.
• Downhills.
• Soft air.
• Finally putting my new point and shoot to work.
• Its full manual option.

• My ipod on shuffle.
• Ben Lee, Benny Goodman, Ani DiFranco and Duncan Sheik.
• A glance at some spectacular graffiti beneath the Franklin Avenue Bridge--only visible to those on the river road.

• Waving back at two small girls in a second story window.
• Noticing gas was $3.49 at bp, then subsequently noticing my speed was 22mph without gas.
• The Murray's chain disengaging on University Ave.
• My resulting blackened fingers.
• My no longer white brakes.

• Making my way to the house on 3511 NE Main, but not actually passing it.
• Climbing the fence and sitting instead, on the turtle fountain in the empty wading pool in Hi-view park, where Grandpa used to take me as a kid.

• Seeing my grandparents' old deck chairs from my perch in the park, and avoiding nostalgia knowing I've couched enough of it in my writing lately.

• Elbow on my way home.
• Racing beneath the old train bridge on NE Main.

• Orange-Banana-Pineapple juice after 16.62 miles.

More photos here.

Generation gap.

2008-05-01T23:20:00.009-05:00

Though my grandmother is one of my best friends, we can't talk about politics.

A few weeks ago our usual pleasantries were exchanged with a furious altercation when she maintained that, "Mr. Bush is a very nice man. We just have to wait for time to tell his legacy," and proceeded to scold me about my own political disposition. It obviously goes without saying that the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States would thereafter induce a crazed socialist regime in our nation. How could I consider voting for him with any other result?

Don't get me wrong, she's an incredibly educated seventy-something. And though we both enjoy painting porcelain and a good margarita on the rocks, we favor different news stations, and of course my generation never had to walk to school barefoot. Through a field in Marshall, Minnesota. Uphill. In the snow.

23 Indications you have an old(er) soul.

2008-04-27T08:22:00.014-05:00

1. When you got in the elevator at 4:31 yesterday afternoon, the drunk girls who had fallen over inside apologize for having such low tolerance and call you 'mam in the process.

2. You are incapable of participating in a conversation with the guys in the elevator at 10:12 about what time you started drinking because you haven't started drinking yet.

3. Fishbowls gross you out. You got over grape kool-aid at fifteen. You think of your mother and how much she hates artifical grape flavoring.

4. You loathe places like the Library and Blarney's where they mix the drinks strong and you can't hear a thing above all the damn noise.

5. All the damn noise being shoddy live covers of "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Bennie and the Jets" with too much static and atonal vocals.

6. You yawn at 10:37.

7. The girls in the bathroom are discussing whose tabs on which to place their next drinks.

8. The guy who walks from the bar as you leave the loo leaps at you like a leech. He initiates conversation by complementing your cute hair cut.

9. He wants to introduce you to his friends, who are silent clones of their ring leader.

10. He, a 22 year-old International business major who, wearing an all too tight t-shirt and faux army hat, introduces himself as Anton doesn't impress you when he said he wanted to travel with his degree.

11. In fact, you don't believe him at all, though you're certain he uses his latin complexion to claim he is bilingually impressive in an attempt to impress women like yourself.

12. Except he hasn't been privy to the fact you speak Spanish fluently which therefore places you outside the category of women like yourself.

13. You yawn again at 11:46.

14. Your civility causes you to refrain from punching his face when he puts a hand on the back of your neck to yell over the racket into your ear.

15. You don't offer you are a writer and especially not a dance major because you know his eyes will bug out at the prospect and he'll immediately picture things with you you'd rather he not be picturing with you.

16. These things being the kinds of things that would make you ralph your Blue Moon if you pictured with him.

17. He realizes the possibility you might like books and quickly vacates, saying maybe I'll see you here Thursday night or something.

18. You thank the gods for setting you free and providing shitty music to fill in the gaps of your un-conversation with said Anton.

19. But you still CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING ABOVE THE DAMN MUSIC! as you attempt to recount the sleaze-bucket story to Sharkey.

20. NO, YOU SAID YOU WISH YOU COULD HEAR YOURSELF TALKING ABOVE THE MUSIC!

21. You yawn at 12:32.

22. You drop Bill and Sharkey off at their respective apartments and drive home knowing you would score an A+ on a sobriety test given by any of the five squad cars in your neighborhood.

23. You get up at 8:00 the next morning to write this.

Dame Hillary Clinton: The Black Knight

2008-04-24T17:07:00.012-05:00

Today, I received an early morning e-mail from my older brother. "Thought you might be interested in an incredibly accurate, fresh spin on the election..." he wrote.

He then hyperlinked me to this remarkable blog at the Huffington Post. And yes, I just used hyperlink as a verb.

Cheezus Crust

2008-04-19T13:50:00.007-05:00

I love NPR. As I don't own a TV, I turn it on in the morning and listen to some of the best reporting in the nation. Additionally, I'm privy to things like this when I make lunch on a Saturday afternoon.

Perhaps I'll have to create my own Gorgonzola Mind Controlla.Though I'm not sure I can induce a Hyper Cheese Brain Freeze like Linda Williamson, and it looks like I'll have to wait until next year to compete, I do have a squash in the fruit basket in my kitchen.

Adventures in Skateville

2008-04-12T19:37:00.027-05:00

So, I've been putting off writing this because it's such great material.

I'd planned to allude pieces of my own roller skating adventures with excerpts from Mary Karr's Cherry, which I'm currently reading and love.

However, my life is pretty crazed and aside from organized outings to coffee shops to write manuscripts and papers that refuse to write themselves, I've had few organized outings since my trip to Skateville two weeks ago. Skateville being a dive equivallent to the roller skating rink in which I spent my own childhood and tenth birthday. Being ten and dressed in elastic waisted jeans and my favorite tye-dyed t-shirt (the one I'd actually dyed myself), I toted my purple and electric lime rollerblades to the Skatin' Place where I'd invited ten girls to my party. But when a couple of girls ended up in tears because I apparently didn't skate enough with them, Mom gave me the "I told you ten was too many kids" look. Though I might be manufacturing this detail, I pacified them by opening my birthday presents and cutting the Cinderella cake my mother made. Kids are such jerks, but Cinderella trumped the party anyway. She was standing up and her gown was comprised of marble cake covered in baby blue frosting.

Exacting in detail to the Skatin' Place, Skateville is equipped with enough wheeled shoes for entire populace of Burnsville. Their leather is exactly as you would picture it: far too broken in and containing the essences of the hundreds of feet they had blistered before your own. But you lace up nonetheless and are on your way to the Snack Shack where they sell fun dip for a quarter and blue raspberry slushies that give your friends brain freeze.

You teeter on the immaculately waxed maple floor, praying you don't fall as zillions of prepubescent kids zip by you on skates. One girl who has actually hit puberty seems to be chasing a boy years ahead of her with her midriff. You watch as she skates ahead of him, and glances back letting him pass. She does this repeatedly though he remains in oblivion. Even the forty-something Mom whose teased hair and pants from the 90s flies by you--pom-poms catching the wind with her speed. You push off and recall the side-to-side movement required for momentum, contrary to the forward-backward motion the task would otherwise imply. The swirling disco-ball does nothing to aid your balance.

But when the tubby DJ introduces himself as Mike and floods the speakers with MC Hammer's "Can't Touch This," the tots get bored and head for the snack shack and you and your friends leap for joy (though not literally as you're aware the result would be a heap of orange wheels all over the floor). You spend the rest of the night beneath the ceiling's bulbous, flashing lights and wait for your New Kids On the Block request that never comes. Maybe if you'd tried to write it six times in a row like the kids who wanted to hear "Cyclone" did, you'd have gotten what you wanted. After all, it was repeated twice in a three hour period, each time inducing the kind of shrilly noise from them that NKOTB would have done for you and your friends.

You catch yourself wondering if they really understand the song's raunchy lyrics, and suddenly feel like your mother when she would say, "That's terrible" when Meredith Brooks's "Bitch" came on the radio in the car after school. You begrudgingly changed 104.7 KCLD to another station that didn't play Ace of Base and the like.

There was one time, however, when your older brother permitted you to hang out in his room to listen to the new Matchbox Twenty album. Unlike the kids and "Cyclone" you dared to ask your brother what Rob Thomas meant when he sang about "the hand that touched me" in "Push." Though he could explain the mechanics of any kind of computer and take an entire toaster apart only to immaculately reassemble it, he turned red in the face and said he wasn't going to explain that to you before kicking you out of his room. You didn't understand what the big deal was all about.

Now, as the print of the inline skates on the fluorescent carpet threatens nausea, you realize these kids will eventually figure it out. Though it'll probably happen after T-Pain goes out of style and someone else is coming up with the pop euphemisms for sex, it's safe to say natural disasters spell adolescence more than pop music.

And though I've written an ode to Marry Karr in the second person instead of quoting Cherry, I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Photos by Katherine Lung and Julia Pevan

It's raining again in Minneapolis today.

2008-04-10T16:13:00.004-05:00

But this time with vigor.

And guess who forgot her umbrella altogether.

Umbrellas have existed in nearly the same form since 1000 B.C.

2008-04-06T12:23:00.007-05:00

It's raining today in Minneapolis.

I've been writing all morning, and have gotten the desire to come down from my fifth floor apartment and go for a walk. I dive into bowels of my closet to search for my umbrella. It doesn't take long for me to emerge from its bottommost corner with the black, compacted device in my hands. The tags from TJ Maxx are still attached and I remove them before opening it's ribcage beneath the airy ceiling of the studio. I've never really been superstitious.

Back in February, Susan Orlean wrote a piece for the New Yorker about the umbrella and its prevailingly faulty design. I think of it as the smell of newly waterproofed nylon invades my nostrils. I collapse the device and hope the wind isn't strong this afternoon. Orlean is right, after all. Everyone knows the slightest wind can knock an umbrella inside out and even if it doesn't, there exists an updraft that wets the front of the thighs making anyone uncomfortable upon reaching his or her destination. And this afternoon, because I have no particular destination, should be especially damp.

Alexander in Art

2008-04-03T22:16:00.014-05:00

"So he's a prisoner?" my Dad replied. "You don't eat meat for that reason, but you're going to cage him up anyway." I bought a betta last month, and this was my father's reaction.

"Dad, it was more like I saved him from Petsmart. He came in a container. It made me want to buy them all."
"That's my tree hugger..."
"Aren't you the one who always says, 'Fish are peaceful... Sometimes all you want to do when you're a college student is sit and look at fish'?"
"Well they are..." He paused. "So is he green?"
"Red."
"Does he have spots?"
"I wasn't so much into the speckled ones. They looked sort of ill."
"So now you're discriminating..."
"Dad!" I was exasperated.

Later on, as I sat down in the three and a half hour art class to which I'm obligated to attend on Wednesday nights, the Semi-Attractive Guy Who I Have Sat Next to for an entire month But Still Has No Name, said hello.

"How are you?"
"I'm well. I bought a fish today."

The beginning of class interrupted our conversation.

At its end, the Semi-Attractive Guy Who I Have Sat Next to for an entire month But Still Has No Name asked, "Goldfish?"
"Betta."
"Blue?"
"Red. I'm rather partial to the color."
"Well good luck with that, and have a good week," he replied before vacating the oversized classroom.

The following week, SAGWIHSNTBSHNN asked, "How's your fish?" before taking a sip of black tea. He always has black tea in class - and now that I consider it, often wears black.

"He's well - was sick yesterday morning, but is okay now."
"Does he have a name yet?" asked SAGWIHSNTBSHNN.
"No, but I was thinking about Liam Finn, who I've been listening to lately. But I can't so much appropriate a name. He kind of needs his own. I was then thinking Emerson or Wallace, but I'm not so fond of those either."
"Well now you're getting literary," said SAGWIHSNTBSHNN.
I opened my mouth to object in offense - and then realized he wouldn't know that about me. I mean, I still don't know his name nor have I figured out if he's gay. He's older and rather androgynous - not that those two are synonymous.

SAGWIHSNTBSHNN interrupted my thoughts. "There are a lot of British names there."
"Yeah, and I am pretty literary, but I was just thinking you wouldn't know that about me."
"All I know is that you have a a fish." SAGWIHSNTBSHNN continued, "But I think it's too late to name him now. He'll just have to be Fish."

I became slightly horrified by this idea, and then caught myself. My largest fear in adding a fish to the other live things in my apartment (e.g. my plants), was that I was going to become one of those crazy pet owners who get their dogs ready for bed as if they were their children and chastise them like they would understand the consequences of their actions. Though I don't know how you could do so with a fish, I'm sure those kind of people would find a loophole and sprint through it in record speed.

Class began, and our delightfully spacey professor dimmed the lights and fumbled with the apple laptop on the podium to start a video.

SAGWIHSNTBSHNN leaned over, "I always thought I'd choose John Vonnegut as an alter ego, you know, if I ever have to flee and change my name."
"Are you planning on fleeing anytime soon?" I asked, leaning over while keeping my eyes glued to the projector screen.
"Not unless I steal a lot of art." he said.
I whispered, "I've never considered a new name. I'll have to get back to you on that."

"So your fish..."
"My fish. I also thought about naming him Kitty, because I've always wanted a cat. Somehow that seemed wrong. He's kind of ridiculous actually. He lives in a one gallon fishbowl, but he thinks he's king of the world. He puffs up his fins and darts around. I mean, he attacks his food as if its not already dead. I put my face up to the bowl and he looks like he's ready to fight me. But I'm pretty sure I'd win. He's, only what, two inches long."
"Then how about Alexander?" answered SAGWIHSNTBSHNN. "I mean, if he thinks he's king of the world."

This wise man's not so wise.

2008-04-03T11:00:00.002-05:00

I just found out I missed Liam Finn when he was here in Minneapolis in March.

Pisser.

2008-04-02T22:15:00.006-05:00

So my literary nonfiction professor assigned a few blogs for our reading tomorrow, and, in addition, wanted us to bring a few postings from blogs we currently read. I figured that on the off chance any of the people in my class would somehow end up here, they should have something to read other than the rehashings of my newspaper column I occasionally post.

But after such an image, that I yes, constructed and shot with my own camera, they'll probably never return and/or think me some other kind of unmentionable crazy.

Seeing these outcomes are rather unfortunate for both my readers and me, perhaps I'll admit the entire event was an insouciant escapade and that I'd forgotten how heavy wet snow is.

The piano lady is no longer Mrs. Anderson

2008-03-26T22:57:00.014-05:00

So after grocery shopping for the first time in three weeks, I came home to a typical e-mail from my mother.

As I'm a lucky kid whose parents still feed her, and because my so-called permanent residences typically change annually, my bills are send to my parents' address. Mom's always great about letting me know what kind of money I've spent.

It went something like this:

Hi Kelsey,

How was your day? I'm paying bills.

She then interjects that $24.99 is due to my credit card account.

And closes with:

Love,
Mom

But, it was her post script that prompted me to write:

The piano lady says hi! She's not Mrs. Anderson anymore.

My mother must have seen her in the dental office. With a father as a dentist and a mother a hygienist, I typically both brush and floss and receive greetings through the grapevine. But if she's not Mrs. Anderson, who is she?

Such a statement aptly jogs the memory: the soft hearted woman in whose basement I'd spent nearly all my childhood Monday afternoons is no longer the same. Unlike my mother's former teacher, she never hit my knuckles when I stuck a G instead of a C, and never reprimanded me when I'd blunder through a piece of music I'd obviously not practiced. When I started at six, I played by ear and learned staff lines and key signatures as an afterthought. I memorized and performed competition pieces and played a duet on Northrop's stage in an honors concert at eight. But by sixteen, I was enjoying her company during my hour long lessons more than I wanted to learn Bach's piceces in my Suzuki classics. She'd adjust her glasses beneath her salt and pepper hair as I painstakingly picked through a piece, before gently indicating it could use some work. But she never squirmed or stopped me; her patience was probably a direct gift from God. She drank warm, red juice from coffee mugs and loved her cats and her baby grand. She encouraged me to play more jazz and embellish the pieces on which I was working. And I did. I'd add new syncopation in a rift of eighth notes, fermatas as the bass line plunked away... It was the only thing I ever practiced in those last few years of lessons.

But it's amazing the kind of bubble that surrounds you as a child. You learn piano theories, while theories of love aren't holding true. Not that love has ever been scientific. As it turns out, gentle Mrs. Anderson had been verbally abused by her husband for years and finally broke away during the last. How do you enter someone's home 52 times in a year for ten years and have an indication of her pain? Perhaps you're allowed naivete when you're sixteen, but why should that be an excuse for tunnel vision?

From a work still in the works.

2008-03-14T16:15:00.008-05:00

I just thought I would share a scene from a larger piece I'm currently working on about growing up Catholic.

From "Of Catechism and Crosses"

As a kid in the church, my involvement began with the children’s choir and vacation bible school, culminating in the fifth grade, when I was allowed to begin altar serving. For years I’d watched older kids bring the chalice and water and wine to the right place at the right time, and I was itching to climb the stairs and sit next to Fr. Ed on the altar. Even more, I was anticipating a look into the “back room” – the sacristy – where only servers, lectors and priests were privy.

The first mass I served was a cool morning in September, and like any other event in my life, the whole family – grandma included – had come. She warbled when she sang, and throughout my childhood managed enjoyably to bring her volume above everyone else in the church. I was pleased that I would hear her praises from a distance. The mass began like any other; five minutes before, I lit the candles and after the lector welcomed everyone and invited the congregation to “stand and greet those” around them, I pretentiously took the church’s steel cross out of its stand for the opening procession. I banged it on the doorframe of the sacristy and turned red, grateful that everyone was standing and only a few could see the scene. The song continued and I struggled to carry the cross up the aisle. At twenty-one I tower just past five feet, and as an eleven year old I was wrestling a giant with spaghetti for arms. The cross teetered forward and backward and I grit my teeth as I staggered up the stairs at the end of the song.

Placing the cross in its stand was like threading a needle. Its post was round but scarcely an inch in diameter. To support the rest of its heavy shape, its stand – a round tube just larger than the diameter of the cross – rose nearly a foot off the ground. With the cross's top towering over my head I stabbed at the stand and missed to the left, then clanked it too far forward. I had broken a sweat by the time I wiggled the cross back and forth and the friction of steel on steel met its post with support. The service began and I flawlessly held the gigantic book for the opening prayer; the lector read and the choir sang the responsorial psalm.

While my success had been limited up to this point, I had made a cardinal mistake as an altar server. The morning had been cool and I’d chosen a wool sweater to wear beneath my cassock. As the mass continued on, my insulating layers cooked like a crock pot. The intensity of the heat came in waves, and waves of nausea came with its intensity. My face was a lobster and my hands clams. I ran their sweaty surfaces down my thighs and slowed my breathing. Just relax, Kelsey. Get through the mass and you’ll be fine. You’re just nervous.

And then I was swept with the feeling you get just before you vomit. Your muscles drain themselves of power and you tend to shake like you’ve just run a marathon. Your mouth goes dry like you’ve swallowed soda crackers without water.

Was I going to ruin my years of anticipation as an altar server? Not if I could help it. I stood my ground and swallowed gingerly. And swallowed again. And closed my eyes.

As I perched on the bench next to Fr. Ed’s ornate chair and he delivered his homily, I kneaded my palms and then clenched my fists while the congregation took no apparent notice of my struggle that went something like this: The crackers, the marathon. The crackers, the marathon. Lobster face. Clams. Lobster face. Crackers. Clams. Marathon. Face. Clams. Crackers.

I couldn’t swallow.

But I couldn’t leave my post and abandon my responsibility. I was only eleven, and what was this going to say about slacking off and its relation to the rest of my life? Somebody still needed to symbolically pour the water over Fr. Ed’s hands before the consecration. And I knew how to do it and wasn’t going to leave him out to dry.

But I had a marathon in my muscles and clams in my hands and…

I lost the battle as my breakfast hit my shoes.

I ran to the Sacristy. My mother met me there as tears of stress from both vomiting and sadness squeezed between my eyelids. “I’ve ruined the mass!” I sobbed, “And there’s puke all over the carpet up there!”

Mom took me home and Dad stayed after mass to apply vinegar and water to the soiled, gray carpet of the altar. We dry-cleaned my white cassock, and I could never figure out how my mother was allowed to come back to the sacristy without permission.

But you've gotta love perspective.

2008-02-29T08:58:00.003-06:00

So, remember that little incident with the newspaper I was griping about yesterday?

Well, it hardly makes an impact after you go to work and an elderly gentleman looks you in the face with blank eyes and convulses slightly before he collapses at table 14.

He woke up slightly to tell me to not trouble him and that he'd be fine; in those intermittent seconds I managed to fire off enough questions to know he wasn't. And even though he didn't want trouble or an ambulance, he got one anyway. It only was after a paramedic pointed to me and said, "thank you," rather forcefully as I began to bus the table that I felt okay and the shakes I had acquired subsided.

So I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing. That is, until I saw the paper this morning.

2008-02-28T11:39:00.006-06:00

I am not a person of great embarrassment.

I flush if a professor puts me on the spot, and might become flustered in that "ahh shit" moment when I stumble around my mouth for an answer. But things like falling? Hardly. After a backward tumble down the stairs on Christmas in a pencil skirt with my camera in hand, I popped up unscathed while the rest of my family reeled in panic. They claim I fell on my neck, but I interpret the event as a backward, downhill summersault after I made the choice to fall. And because of a pair of brown, suede boots, I spilled across the West Bank a couple of weeks ago. I had finally used the gift card I'd gotten for DSW last Christmas; I love them. But I might have reconsidered my decision had I known the heels were going to cause me to careen, avoiding the splits every time I walked from point A to B. Yet I wear them nearly every day. This time, I was carrying my computer. Controlled falling, though, is one of great those skills I've acquired as a dance major. That, and frequently lying on the floor.

But today, too, I scarcely looked like an imbecile when the last three paragraphs of the column I wrote two weeks ago was tagged on the end of today's paper. Of course the Exxon oil spill of 1989 caused the rise in soldier suicides in the last year. Somehow I guess the copy desk wasn't among the 50,000 readers of the paper.

Of Soldiers and Suicide.

2008-02-13T23:25:00.005-06:00

The second occasion on which Harper's saved my life this week was in writing my column. Until I opened to the Index of the month, I had begun to research a topic entirely unbeguiling: U.S. Customs and the recent rise in the confiscation of laptops at the borders.

Of Soldiers and Suicide
Published by the Minnesota Daily
14 February 2008

I was thumbing through this month’s Harper’s and on my way to the David Foster Wallace piece on page 17 when I detoured through the “Index,” and spotted a few noteworthy statistics among the usual collage. (e.g. 79 percent of 152,000 Greenpeace votes wished to name a humpback whale in the South Pacific, “Mr. Splashy Pants.” Or perhaps more appropriately for the holiday the, “Number of states where a court has held that women must return engagement rings if the wedding doesn’t happen: 18.”)

Juxtaposing these was the, “Chance that an Iraq war veteran who has served two or more tours now has post-traumatic stress disorder: 1 in 4.” And lines beneath this read: “Number of confirmed suicides in the U.S. Army in 2006: 102.” Let’s just say I haven’t made it to David Foster Wallace yet.

Harper’s Index goes on to cite that since accurate record keeping began in 1981, the numbers have never been as high.

And the numbers are rising.

On Tuesday, the Associated Press exclusively published government data on the suicide rates of the National Guard and Reserve troops who have left the army. From 2001-2005, these troops comprised 53 percent of the suicides in that time period. Because the leaders of the military have leaned so heavily on the Guard and Reserves in these last years, many individuals have done several tours away from home – removing them from their families and careers for often 18 months at a time.

But when troops do come home, they are expected to carry on with their lives as if they have never left and the war does not exist. Let’s face it, for much of the general population, while we may oppose Bush’s decision to send troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, it is an event that occurs outside of our world. Like poverty and deficits in education in Africa or the Americas, it’s that thing that’s happening somewhere else. Unless we are witnesses, we remain unmoved. Unless our relationships are personally invested, we often let an event run its course. But if you’ve ever spent that semester abroad or that summer in the wilderness you may have only begun to understand a soldier’s dissociation to the rest of our nation upon his or her return to the States. Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iran and Afghanistan Veterans for America notes that soldiers are, “literally in Baghdad one week and in Brooklyn the next,” and that, “a more long term, comprehensive approach is needed, especially in the first six months a soldier is home.”

In November, President Bush signed the Suicide Prevention Act that directed the V.A. to improve the mental health training of its staff and to heighten levels of screening and the treatment illnesses like PTSD and Depression. As part of the Act the V.A. created its first suicide hotline last year, and according to the article from the Associated Press, one in five veterans have visited a V.A. facility. The trouble is getting suicidal veterans to utilize the line.

But the government’s study fails to involve suicide that happens in war zones, or those who remained in the military after returning home. What, then, of those who remain deployed? Those numbers are also rising.

Chris Scheuerman, a retired master sergeant, spoke of his son Jason’s suicide on National Public Radio last month. The event happened while Jason was deployed in Iraq, and eventually Chris was told his son had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. But the army was unwilling to provide details of the incident and Chris was forced to file requests for the Freedom of Information Act for two years before requesting help from his local congressman.

Through the documents he finally received, he discovered that his son had been feeling suicidal. Months before his death, Jason had seen both a chaplain and a military psychologist; both had rule Jason unhealthy. The Army chaplain had noted he was obsessed with suicide, but the psychologist ruled that he was capable of “feigning illness in order to manipulate his command.” Less than six months later, he had used his firearm to kill himself.

Jason Scheurman was 19. And according to a publication on January 31st on army.mil most of the suicides that happen are among the youngest of the deployed: 18-24 year olds. The army rates reflect those of the Guard and Reserves with a 17.3% increase per 100,000 troops last year.

Ironically, the election buzz seems to be focusing away from the war. In December, the Iraq war wasn’t even on the agenda for the final Democratic and Republican debates sponsored by the Des Moines Register. Maybe, because the American public has something new on which to focus in the election, this new focus is usurping trends of war discussion in these last years. But we cannot forget the individuals whose absences are remembered by their families.

Stressed relationships and access to loaded firearms are two of the largest factors in successful suicides. Our troops are tired; we cannot simply bring them home, change their oil and expect them to run as if they are a brand new vehicle. But as they remain in Iraq, they must know our support regardless of our political standings. We must not allow these individuals to merely exist in another part of the world while we continue our lives here. It was not their decision to begin the war in 2001, nor is it their choice to end it.

Of this, Chris Scheurman said, “It is horrible that we lost the soldiers we have to. It is a tragedy when we lose a soldier that we shouldn’t have.”

In praise of the Harper's gods.

2008-02-13T06:15:00.008-06:00

This month's edition of Harper's has now saved my life twice in the last twenty four hours. Please note my Mass Comm 1001 assignment below. (As you may have read a few weeks ago, my loathing for the class remains. James Frey and A Million Little Pieces was cited for the zillionth time in a classroom as unethical. However, this time a bright student raised his hand and said, "It was so popular because it was so graphic, and helped so many people, and Oprah loved him, and then it was like, what the hell?" But in redeeming light of this, I got to defend the status of the published word in society this week. Admittedly, it's rather melodramatic.)

As an English major considering the decline of physical books, my instincts are to cringe and quell the concept entirely. Call me a fan of the old fashioned; I prefer a pen and paper to digital media and I don’t even own a television. However, as a technical savvy individual, my older brother keeps his e-books on his iphone and praises its capability and accessibility. “Staying Awake, Notes on the alleged decline of reading,” was published in Harper’s this month and speaks directly to the subject. In her first paragraphs, Ursula K. LeGuin writes, “In 2004, a National Endowment for the Arts survey revealed that 43 percent of Americans polled hadn’t read a book all year, and last November, in its report, ‘To Read or Not to Read,’ the NEA lamented the decline of reading, warning that non-readers do less well in the job market and are less useful citizens in general.” She continues her discourse to discuss the social qualities of literature. While she criticizes the written quality of published books, citing Harry Potter as an anomaly to the situation, she notes the “social quality of literature is still visible in the popularity of best-sellers.” Though we are reading less on a whole, books are not obsolete. It is the publishers who are getting away with “making baloney-mill novels” popular. So, physical books remain a commodity, even if by publishing standards a “good book” is merely something that will sell instead of a creation of prose with substance.

But concerning the e-book. Companies like Google that have recently placed scanned versions of rare books online are properly taking advantage of what digital media can offer a reader. It aids research and yields access to works that would otherwise be left unutilized by the ordinary person in society. Having used Google’s collection of books myself, I can attest that I would not have found a copy of Rhetoric and Wonder in English Travel Writing, 1560-1613 by Jonathan Sell in any other library. This volume selects the exact time period that John Donne was composing much of his literature, and specifically a poem titled: “Good Friday 1613. Riding Westward.” Donne’s wonder of God as a traveler was exactly the premise of the essay I was writing. It was like I had struck gold.

We gaze at LCD screens and the glow of our computers and Blackberrys for hours on end to check e-mail and read articles, and in my case, write them. The radio is even streaming online. I’d prefer give my eyes a rest and read several hundred pages of text in a chair and in physical form. There is something to be said about holding a physical copy of a book in one’s hands; I believe physical books to be a large element of Intellectual Property. Because the Internet remains so accessible, and books like Jonathan Sell’s are not only available but copyrighted, pirated materials are ubiquitous. As a writer, there is something to be said about having a physical copy of your work in your hands. While publishing online makes one’s work accessible, it also give the author a less tangible sense of accomplishment.

The nation still flocks to the National Archives in Washington D.C. to gaze at the original copy of the Declaration of Independence. While we can look at a replica or photograph of this document’s brittle page over the Internet, it will not suffice for the actual document itself. We are not creating icons like the Declaration with the use of the Internet, as what is published only online does not manifest physically. If we continue to rely upon an abyss of invisible networks we will lose a tangible sense of creation within society.

The Best Part of Waking Up... Or is it?

2008-02-01T07:08:00.001-06:00

Two weeks ago, in the town of Santa Avelina in the mountains of Quiche (Key-che), Guatemala I met Josefa, as she turned her coffee beans in the sun. I was in the country translating with a medical team, and as the others were eating their lunch, I walked up the hill behind the school and struck a conversation. The beans were laid on tarps to dry in the sun; there was roughly a quarter of a football field in small, beige pellets. She explained to me the process of coffee trade as she ran her rastrillo, or rake, over the beans and lifted handfuls in various stages for my examination. “It takes roughly four days to dehydrate coffee,” she said in Spanish. “See, these have been out for two, and these have been out for three. Look at the difference in the skin.” Her family picks coffee cherries from the plants on their land, and their neighbors combined their crops in a joint drying effort. Several families in the area had procured the quarter football field on which I was gazing, and these families would have to peel the shells from the beans before selling them. The coffee is purchased from the grower by the pound. “Do you get a good price for your coffee?” I asked. Though puzzled by my inquiry, she replied, “Yes, seven Quetzales per bag.” In Guatemala, seven Quetzales is the equivalent of 90 cents. The latest Guatemalan coffee from Starbucks, called Casi Cielo, translates to “Close to Heaven” and costs $12.95 per pound. It comes from farms near Antigua, a beautifully ancient, colonial city. Though I am bias, most Starbucks employees couldn’t name the town nor explain where Guatemala is on a map.

The worst part is that Josefa is right when she says she gets a good price for her coffee. “Black Gold,” a documentary directed by Marc and Nick Francis from the United Kingdom, reports coffee growers in Ethiopia receive, at best, 23 cents per kilo or 12 cents per pound. Last month, the film was made one of Guardian’s top 10 Non-fiction films of 2007 in the UK and has been successful in generating conversation about Ethiopia and the coffee market as a whole. Ethiopia, the birthplace of the coffee bean, is the largest producer of coffee in Africa and represents nearly 67% of the country’s export revenue. In other words, more than fifteen million people in Ethiopia depend on coffee farms for income, but 50 cents per pound on a good day is hardly dependable. It is not to be overlooked that these numbers are only representative of Ethiopia and fail to mention the rest of the coffee growing world.

Tadesse Meskela, managers a union of farmers in Ethiopia and was featured in the film. In an interview with NPR he spoke of his farmers and a particular conversation they’d had. “Ethiopia grows the best coffee in the world, but farmers need to live a decent life,” he said; his farmers couldn’t guess the cost of a cup of coffee in the Western world. “Eighty cups of coffee are made from one kilogram of coffee. One cup of coffee costs roughly 25 birr ($2.90).” Therefore, a retailer makes $230 per kilo. Converting this to pounds, 160 cups of espresso in a coffee shop is more than $500. The farmers are paid a fraction of one percent of this revenue. But the farmers have no leverage to their sales. A trader will come to them and say, “I’ll buy your coffee for this much today,” and if they don’t sell their produce they earn nothing. The trader will not increase his price if the farmer decides not to sell his coffee because the trader is also invested in his own salary.

The trader’s price is based on the market price of beans. Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world and the national value of trade is roughly 140 billion dollars. Before its collapse in 1989, the International Coffee Agreement was a relative regulator of the world market. Since then, according PBS’s Frontline World, retails sales of coffee have risen 30-80 billion dollars per year since 1990. Because the prices are based on trade, the international price of coffee is established in New York and London, places that are driven toward profit. The retailers that buy coffee want ensure the earning of a certain profit after distribution and sales. Therefore they set the price of coffee according to their financial budget, and mostly ignore the budget of those who procure their product. This is where the largest problem lies. It does not matter whether Folgers or Caribou wakes you in the morning when price is concerned.

But what of fair trade coffee? The concept here is to cut out the middleman so the coffee passes through fewer hands before reaching the roaster and retailer. If growers follow fair trade regulations, they are guaranteed $1.26 for every pound of coffee procured. This helps, but farmers are still making less on one pound of coffee than 12 ounces of drip coffee costs a consumer. Additionally, fair trade coffee falls into the genre of a market of “specialty” coffee like Starbuck’s Casi Cielo and, according to PBS, only comprises two percent of this market.

So, if we stop drinking coffee altogether and boycott the major chains our problem would be solved, right? Hardly. In addition to unpleasant people everywhere, we would be adding more coffee to the world’s surplus. But it’s still a double bind. Though Starbucks and Caribou are the reasons these farmers have jobs, the coffee industry is also what keeps people like Josefa and her family in poverty in Guatemala, and leaves the growers in Etiopia struggling to send their children to school.

Presidential Paintball

2008-01-26T08:47:00.001-06:00

So the beginning of the semester was a slight shock. That is, a shock in a cultural sense as well as a shock to the weather and to my body (Thank you Carl Flink), and to my cognitive skills. I did, however, sit down in my Mass Communications 1001 course yesterday to this.

Presidential Paintball

Hillary, Obama, Giuliani & more play paintball for the USA Presidency!

Play this free game now!!

My professor, TK Chang, a bubbly Chinese man in jeans and a navy blazer, didn't claim to be very good as he (as Barack Obama) was pelleted by Hillary Clinton. It was more apparent that his giggles were obscuring his aim. The freshman behind me was muttering, "f-this" and "f-that" under his breath in the lecture hall of 150 people and I began to remember how I'm not cut out for lecture classes with people who don't care. It could be a long semester.

From "Four Quartets"

2008-01-24T16:59:00.001-06:00

Burnt Norton

II

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.

Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time is time conquered.

(64-92)

T.S. Eliot

Double Stuffed?

2008-01-07T15:47:00.002-06:00

I have this theory that if I keep sweet things in my apartment I won't be prone to eating them. My other option of course is to buy sugar only occasionally - though this usually results in a swift ingestion of their entirety. So I bought oreos the other day, and so far so good. This, along with the fact that I'll be leaving the country for a good ten days on Saturday, makes me feel sort of home free.

I am returning, however, to the land of brown faces, fresh tortillas and taquitos, helados y crema: the place where I gained an extra few pounds last spring. And I cannot wait.

I cannot wait for deteriorated roads, and stalls in traffic where people wait without question for the construction workers to reopen the roads. To see fellow Americans who have never been in the country scream as rock falls from construction around the busses, or to believe we are going to fall directly off the unguarded sides of CA-1 as we switchback into the mountains.

More still I cannot wait to travel through Chichicastenango on a Sunday - the largest day for market in the country and the largest market in its borders.

I can't wait to be mobbed by small children who call me gringa and hug me with runny noses as I read them El Arbol Generoso - The Giving Tree. They usually crawl into my lap and latch around my legs as I walk through the hospital. The last time this happened they wanted to take apart my glasses and wear them. I had to convince the kids that I wouldn't be able to see or do my job without their lenses. But they didn't seem to believe it would be a problem.

It is my idea of vacation - translating in the middle of nowhere, and I often forget how normal such an idea is for me. And because Guatemala has been in my family for so long, I sometimes forget that medical missions, traveling for purposes other than tourism or studying makes me sort of an anomaly. But the whole thing makes me feel less self absorbed, espeically in the midst of studying and a new semester. By nature to be in school is to be selfish. Hell, just yesterday I was wrapped up in an A- that affects my GPA and my potential as high honors graduate. I forget that being at a University makes me privilieged. I'm worried about the oreos in my cupboard. So what does that make me?

Pistachios and Public Speaking.

2008-01-06T21:59:00.001-06:00

Back in July, my grandmother called me and asked me - as I was still afresh from Guatemala - if I would like to be the January speaker for the St. Cloud Reading Room Society. Being that Gram is one of my best friends and she is head of the Speakers Committee, I obliged and only learned later I would receieve a stipend for my efforts. But as it turns out, this women's society has been around for some 100 years and made some big changes in the history of the little town in which I grew up. They began with a book collection for women near the end of the Civil War. While most would now consider St. Cloud the size of a suburb (and to this there may be relevance as it's almost entirely filled with things like Barnes and Noble and Starbucks), the local grocery chains prevail. Still, the downtown area is a far cry from the booming place it was back in the 20s. The origianl 44 women promoted literature among themselves, and Andrew Carnegie donated some $25,000 to the buildling of the St. Cloud public library that housed even a Shakespeare club in the late 19th century. While the original buildling was replaced in 1979, these women are responsible for the fact that I had a library in which to read when I was a kid. Reading, and well, old apple computers with word munchers.

A few weeks ago, I receieved an official letter signed, "Sincerely Yours, Helen Catton" in the mail. It cordially thanked me and breifly explained the meeting. The trouble now, is that January 10th is Thursday, and I'm alloted 45 minutes to speak and answer questions. And I'm the granddaugther of one of the leading ladies.

And I don't know what the hell I want to talk about.

I tend to let public speaking events fly slightly off the cuff - to write a "speech" for myself would be an excruciatingly long endeavor. And I supposed my casual attitude toward speaking events is probably the remnants of the speechie I was in High School. (I guess least 4th place in the State meet still does something for me, right?) This time - due to the duration of the talk - I feel like I should have some kind of direction. At the moment, though, I seem to have only directed my pacing between my desk and my kitchen counter, where I've opened a bag of pistachios - hoping the salt will do something more than make me thirsty.

But once I'm down to the nubby shells that I couldn't possibly pry open with my bare hands I'll have no other choice than to drink my water or go back to my book.

I'd like to be effective in my speaking as Tracy Kidder is writing. I'm reading Mountains Beyond Mountains, and while it's about Tuberculosis in Haiti, I feel like it's also about Guatemala. Kidder has the cabaility to infuse a reader with the feeling of traveling in a packed pickup through the mountains and their desolate, desperate confines. Babies living in shacks with TB are babies in Guatemala, malnourished and surviving on coffee because a mother won't lactate. Kidder underwhelms the nature of what he writes to effectively allow the reader to meet his text with his or her own sentiment. He is fantastic - and does well, what I seem to garble about Guatemala in my own writing.

Mostly I want to tell stories to these women. I guess it's time to begin scouring the journals again. I'm not out to hound some kind of message, but to talk about another place I tend to call home.

Brimnes and Bill Holm

2007-12-21T08:51:00.001-06:00

Bill Holm makes me want to move to Iceland. Really.

On my first of three errands to West Photo yesterday, (Three, because the "printing technichian" thought I wouldn't know the difference if they cropped the foreground, sideground, background - basically anything other than the subject in my photo - in order to cram the frame uncomfortably into an 8x10 that makes me look terribly inept as a photographer. All I wanted was an 8x12 - but I had to bring them back of course. Thank God its only a five minute drive.) I was listening to MPR - and the entire morning was a discourse about fetal alcohol systematic disorders. Long story short - there hasn't been a minimal safe tolerance of alcohol established for pregnancy. Bottom line: don't drink while you're pregnant. But one snipt did jingle my ear - Bill Holm was to be on at noon.

My solace in his writing came from his collection of essays, Coming Home Crazy. It was recommended to me after I went crazy, too, during a little period of readjustment back in June. The book is a series about a year long endeavor teaching English in China, and it was a comfort to know I wasn't an anomaly and that Guatemalan banks aren't the only places that change their rules from day to day. Perhaps I love him a little.

I love being read to, and I've always wondered why we quit reading to one another after we gain the skill on our own. Why is reading silently such a big deal in elementary school? Why did I get pissed when the kid next to me wasn't really reading silently, but muttering the words under his breath?

But I do remember the seventh grade. Mrs. Johnson was my English teacher and she opened every class with a few pages or a chapter from The Outsiders. It was one of the best times - and one of the only times in English class in junior high that I remember. The buildling was old - most Catholic schools are - and we sat at hexagonal tables in the room, four or so to a table. Mrs. Johnson, a middle-aged woman with gray-blonde hair, sat in her directors chair when she read - mostly because she was scarcely five feet and it was more comfortable than the slate backed, pastel seats of the room. Her voice matched her stature, and I'd sit and gaze up at the cork board borders of the room, considering Ponyboy and his gang. And she frustratingly stopped at the most inopportune moments. But that was, of course, intnetional on her part.

So I opend my ibook and tuned in and stopped answering my phone. For an entire hour. And a 65 year old author with a raspy, velvet voice read poetry about small town patriotism and Walt Whitman's Brooklyn Ferry. And he told me about Iceland. Which, as it happens is the subject of his latest work, Windows of Brimnes. He spoke of its intricate and beatiful language and its cake-frosting houses by the sea. "Almost everything in the country is within spitting distance of it," he said.

He spoke of not having an address - but living in a place where people can find you if they ask. Where windows are open to the evening tide and houses hold old Steinways and conversation. His home sits quietly in a crag and he keeps computers away from it.

And he read of his mother, and Icelandic woman from America who spoke the language well. He putters through sentences.

But in English, he made me wish for travel again.

Weather Report.

2007-11-09T10:07:00.001-06:00

There's nothing like a romp in the leaves to make you feel like you're six again. While shooting engagment photographs for Mallory and Traivis last week, we came upon a jackpot of oak leaves. This was the kind of pile you dream about when you're a kid - one you could take a running leap into, and forget about the ground that was beneath it all. It produced a most satisfying crunch. Playing professional with my camera, I didn't have enough time to utilize this pile of bliss entirely, and so that evening I talked with my friend Kelli and convinced her that she needed experience it with me. It's a good thing I was an Original Orator for high school speech. My skills were necessary in persuasion, because the idea was to get up at 7:30 on a freezing Tuesday morning, after her three hours of sleep and before her 8:15 midterm.

She must trust me or something, becuase she came. Bundled in jackets next to Edy Hall on campus, we made our way to the pile - just in time to see the man scheduled to clean it up head into a building to warm himself. He didn't return for another twenty minutes, which was ample time to have our fun. People passed by and cranned their necks, and some laughed but it scarcely mattered.

I've also realized that I don't remember what cold weather is like. You see, I skipped winter last year and spent it in Central America. But when my reading was interrupted by flurries of snow out of the picture window in my apartment this morning, I sort of felt like I wasn't cut out to be a Minnestoan anymore. Don't get me wrong, leave piles and oranging trees are spectacular, but this gray, drab stuff is a little scary. And I only know it is going to bluster harder and the temperatures are going to drop into the subzero category. It wouldn't be winter otherwise.

Al's at Eight

2007-10-21T10:12:00.001-05:00

With my failure to note my neighborhood's famed breakfast niche's opening hour, I stopped for a cup of joe before entering the line at Al's this morning. As I was alone, I pretended to read Conrad's Heart of Darkness as I eavesdropped, sandwhiched between conversations. The robust man to my right was speaking rather loudly into his cell phone. Clad in a quilted flannel jacket and large leather boots, his beige plastic rimmed glasses reminded me of Milton and his stapler. To my left, a couple from Santa Barbara, California were freezing in the 55 degree morning. It was quite the juxtaposition.

"There's some kind of goulash already prepared," the Milton Man reported to the unknown on the other line. "No, GOULASH," he more loudly retorted. "Yeah, the neighbor lady made it and is bringing it over this afternoon for the party." "Yeah, it was real nice of her to prepare the goulash."

"I hear there are only 14 stools in the entire place," her husband said as he counted the ten heads ahead in line. "I think we're just squeezing in."

"Some people just want to talk and talk," Milton Man yammered to his friend. He tucked the gray plastic into his breast pocket. As he buttoned it, the anntena poked out of the corner.

"That man is wearing flip flops!" the woman said. Her long aburn hair flitted in the breeze and her shoulders shurgged toward her ears beneath her black wool coat. It was 8:40 or so, and we had another twenty minutes before the original Al opened the diner.

At this point I looked up from my monotonous text and felt the need to comment on the mild October morning. "This is nothing," I said, as they laughed in reply. Our conversation settled on traveling to Minneapolis and local coffee chains both here and in their original Seattle. California couple inquired and desired one more sight before their flight home and I recommended the bridges neare St. Anthony Main, or a soft sunny walk around Calhoun.

As Al, a man in 50s black rimmed glasses and a black windbreaker from the 80s, opened the door and the fourteen fire engine stools were filled, coffee cups were turned up toward full pots of steaming liquid. I was the only of the fourteen who chose orange juice. My breakfast mates and I quickly settled and ordered and bodies filled into the narrow spaces behind the stools. California couple ordered an abundance of food, and Milton Man had the eggs and peppers titled "huevos". I set down with Bill Holm's vignettes of his year in China and two pumpkin pancakes.

Successfully meaningless conversation settled across the yellowing counter, and Milton Man suggested the addition of black beans to the Menu.

"I've been coming here since 1970," he told me, "and the menu hasn't changed, let alone added beans."

It perplexed me that this man from Minnesota seemed to understand my sentiment for legumes. Since my return from Guatemala, I've always felt breakfasts without beans seemed sorely lacking.

"If I were to bring black beans, would you cook them for me?" I wondered aloud to the waitress. It seemed every time I entered the breakfast spot (which is perhaps once a month) she happened to be the individual adding my tab.

"... Probably." She laughed.

Photos and Flashbacks.

2007-06-07T20:44:00.001-05:00

Greetings! I know it's been a few weeks. Forgive me, I've been transitioning.. though unfortunately I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean anymore. I'm posting a few links to photo albums I've put up on facebook. Please let me know if there is any trouble accessing them.

http://minnesota.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2297261&l=5c641&id=13923075
http://minnesota.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2297350&l=6e708&id=13923075
http://minnesota.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2297425&l=78920&id=13923075
http://minnesota.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2297470&l=65184&id=13923075
http://minnesota.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2297150&l=4dfe3&id=13923075
http://minnesota.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2235468&l=41822&id=13923075

--- And back to your regularily scheduled blog ----

I swear the toilet paper thing still gets me. Each time I change location, whether restaurant, apartment or my since graduated high school, I find myself looking for a trash can with which to despose of my used toilet paper.
... and then I catch myself and remember I'm not in Guate anymore. It's my daily reminder, that small thorn that digs into my skin.

Or there's the latin individual that I cross paths with in grocery stores, shoe stores, and on the sidewalks of Minneapolis. As I nearly crash into them turning my body around a corner, my first reaction to their dark feature is to say "perdon," or "permisso" (excuse me), but I catch myself again and realize I have no idea whether spanish is a language that they know nor whether they are actually of recent latin decent. Thus I avoid offense and say nothing, regardless of the chance that I might have offered warmth in a gesture.

I feel trivial in explaining myself to my peers, especially when questions like, "How much fun did you have your your... trip?" "What was the best part?" or "What is the biggest difference between Guatemala and the United States?" are my icebreakers to conversation. But I can't blame them for not having a context with which to relate.

I'm going back to it all: work, school etc., and sometimes it feels okay. But then there are moments where I feel as if I'll never be able to connect and function between my two worlds as they are so far estranged and so far have estranged me as a kind of no-mad to the human race. Everything is usually fuzzy, and lately I don't realloy know what I'm doing other than turning circles. And of course these circles will continue because as of yet, I haven't come up with what it is I have to do to feel normal again. Though, normal in the context of my life in the United States before these last five months is something of which I have no interest. Rather, I'm searching for a normal I'd found these last months among the real and devestating and joyful.

I can't begin to explain or say how much I miss the country of Guatemala. It frequently floods back to me and I can't often help but feel a little lost here. I can listen to Maná and I'm suddenly back in the recovery room in Uspantan with Juan or on the road up from Antigua with Alexa's mom in her blue Odessy minivan. Or I'm on the roof in Tejutla, my feet a dangle as my vendor friends discover me and from below and wave their love and greeting.

I recieved photos from a climb up Pacaya (an active Volcano in Guate) and it only took seconds to feel soaking wet and freezing all over again as we climbed it in the pouring rain. I can feel the knives my resulting cold laced into my throat. But we flew down that mountain's side, regardless of the mere plastic my camera was housed in and the slippery terrain. I kept trust in my own feet to keep me from the grounded rock and taunting mud. Yelling, "Caballo!" I screamed my falling fears into the misty distance before me and see my comrades ahead. They have already danced upon the mud slickened streams and I smile. Yet my description is faulty for its failure to convey a reality of pelting of rain on my face and its ability to keep my hair sticking to my neck and eyes.

Though my dampness followed me back to the town of Antigua and musty smells filled the old school bus's windows and blanketed air, I rested. And though I'd melted and ruined my shoes and knives laced my throat for weeks thereafter, I'd seen lava. And I will never live this as a repeated refrain.

Dazed Turning Left.

2007-05-18T21:19:00.002-05:00

So my time at home has had its ups and downs. Frequently I am overwhelmed by the reality of our lives here and by the drastic change in terrain I am experiencing. Often I find myself wishing I could jump in my car and instead of driving along our luscious highway system, drive up the road from Guatemala City to Antigua and hide away in my favorite cafe instead of booting to Cariobou because its the only place in my hometown that's open past nine o'clock in the evening.

I spent the last 24 hours in Minneapolis, attempting to organize my life. It's working, but slowly. I've discovered that I still have a job at Barnes and Noble in the downtown area, and am interviewing tomorrow for a second job. I'm still homeless - but only for the summer. I was able to see my apartment for the fall and begin to organize myself and my decorating. I have options for a place to live this summer as well.. it's only a matter of choice at this point. But in reporting all of this to you, I'm realizing just how easily I've become to get caught up in our culture again. It's how I grew up, but in my return there are distinct actions I want to take differently. What a wonder this "culture shock" can be.

Yet, I'm sitting here in Caribou with my green tea and honey and my 14" ibookG4 and my journal and calander and all my ... stuff. And that in itself makes me remarkably and additionally sickeningly American. It matters not my nostalgia for the Spanish language and for fresh corn tortillas and black beans and eggs. My omellettes are back to egg beaters instead of real eggs, and my pan is greased with pam instead of real butter. While it feels wonderful to eat real vegetarian food again... it sometimes sickens me how many options we are allowed to have. Life would yeild significantly greater simplicity if we weren't to make so many choices daily. I don't want just a latte.. I'd like a triple, grande, sugar-free vanilla, soy latte. That was my phrase. And now I've returned and its not even good. Just give me black coffee please.

I believe one of the greatest moments that exemplified my new ignorance and awe at my own culture was driving today. However, I forewarn you that explaining this seems to make no impact or sense to anyone I've encountered thus far. I was getting off the freeway, waiting to make a left hand turn into the outlet mall today at around two. The turn light turned green and the silver Honda Accord ahead of me proceeded to wait another twenty seconds or so. Not wanting to miss the light, I politely tapped my horn for her attention. Apparently that's not an okay thing to do here. Following her through the intersection, she turned right into the next driveway, but slowed her car enough to let me pass her before making her turn. Looking to my right, she flicked her middle finger into the air and while I couldn't hear her, her mouth proceeded to make the words "fuck" and "you."

Taken aback by her intense anger, I was confused and not sure how to react. Though an angered response never stirred in me, I was left perplexed by this individual's ability to curse a complete stranger.

Forgive me, though, I should have prefaced this with the use of the horn in Guatemala. It's a liberal kind of idea, and never intended to insult. It offers an alert if someone is pulling up a little too close or not particularily paying great attention to the flow of traffic. A little toot into the air is accurate and normal and often just says hello. And a longer blast implies "Hello!" "Pay attention!" But never Fuck you. Ever.

Perhaps I was wrong in my transitionary state to have used my horn, but was it necessary for this complete stranger to go the extent to which she did to let me know I had pissed her off? Maybe she was having a bad day, but I couldn't break the urge to leave a note on her car, apologizing or explaining that I was in culture shock and had no intent of stirring anger or rudeness and so on and so forth. Additionally I had wanted to talk to her. But she had completely disappeared after I emerged from the gap a half an hour later.

In the long run of this story, my feelings have nothing to do with this peer of mine and her car. I feel more apalled by the ignorance this event has implied.

Perhaps I'm making blank assumptions, and yes I know the rhyme. However, if and individual is driving a shiny Honda, chances are you're doing alright. We were both headed for the outlet mall. Regardless of whether you are running an errand or out for an afternoon, you're still on a joy ride (myself included). And whether assumed or not, this deduction can generally be accepted because the majority of the United States is comprised hard working, educated, middle classed individuals who can afford to buy clothing at the gap. We're educated. In fact, we're required to be so by our government. We should kiss our constitution for that. We have to go to school as small children and never have the chance to work for our family's keep as a young person. It's forbidden by law to put young rigor to physical labor. We gripe about road construction, but we are not in a place where our roads are closed without reason for hours at a time. We are able to travel 70 miles and back in a couple of hours instead of a day. I am amazed, still, at the efficiency of our country. We are not in a place where a trip to the bank can easily last two hours, and often an individual does not accomplish all they need to in a visit. Usually their answers are given to them without logical reasons. I remain marveling at all the things a person can flush down a toilet here. We throw our paper and it just goes away, it dissaparates. No one sees the waste it actually produces each time you use the bathroom.

So try to worry less, because there are so many pieces of life that we will never be able to call hard in the scheme of the world. Breathe a little more and take more time. We're all rushing, rushing to get ahead, to finish school that semester early. But of what are we getting ahead? We're all stressed and disastisfied, but look around. Please.

Twenty four hours from now I'll be in the United States.

2007-05-12T16:59:00.001-05:00

Home tomorrow.

Holy cow.

More thoughts to come.

martes. el 24 de Abril. 20:26

2007-04-26T10:06:00.001-05:00

I see the realities of this country's poverty daily. Diario, one of the newspapers is sure to report the latest gang killing in zones one or three of the capital. Report it does with as varied vocabulary for gunshot, massacre, murder, victim, dead, and gunman as one can find within the Spanish language. It is a practiced habit among reporters here.

Rising early in the morning of any city in the country, any rural road, an individual encounters bundles of people - sleeping or passed out under old archways or waiting along a desolate path for a bus... or someone from whom to hitch a ride.

Women are whistled at and if one turns the right corner, it is easy to find the local whorehouse. In Cimaltenango, I have passed it may times as it lies along the main highway: CA-1. Such a highway that runs from the United States, through Mexico and thus further south. Among gallo signs are women's backsides in flourescent thongs. Their bodies are pinned to the cervezeria's side streeted doors and walls. Dusted and gaunt individuals stare from their plastic wicker chairs to the street, which often offers less entertainment than the strip club I pass on my way home every day. Gunshots lull children to sleep in my part of the city. But it seems a better situation than that of the capital city's Zone one - a place where entering will get you shot. Or, if you're lucky, only robbed.

Small villages along Atitlan's coast have been destroyed with the introduction of Marijuana and other sorts of coke and dope. Other places have been lucky to find streams of alcoholics... if you call permanently scaring your family and having other women lucky. Making your children work dirtily in the streets for money. Money used to supply your irresponsible and uncontrollable urge for the depressant that is the catalyst causing your rage to float to the surface. Meanwhile, your son's young, dolled face is growing up and he brings home less and less to you everyday. But he is working longer and harder, forgetting about school so as not to thicken his scars of anger and pain, of both the physical and the heart. A child should complain about homework and beg for an ice cream as he walks the cobblestone of Pana on a hot day.

Often a girl is lucky to be married early as she is out of the grasp of a father. Perhaps she will be given into a worse situation. But perhaps with a little grace, her husband helps her to escape the pain she's grown with.

It's a gamble, a toss up here. And while all are not so drastically troubled with abused situation, suffering is common to nearly all.

For it exists in other forms. It exists in hernias that result from years of wood's haul. Women and men trace paths walked along highways years of lives, by minute, hour or day. And the cycle continues as fathers teach sons. As they wear the same rubber boots, the work of the land is learned with a hoe in hand, made to fit such a small frame. Technologies of sprinklers irrigate families while women weave and spin and grind corn. While a stove is manned that requires a husband to bring literal tons of wod to its tiled sides, this carbon monoxide producting beast enduces burns to small hands. Yet tortillas and beans must be made so they might fuel the cycle with energy renewed. To let rest fall upon beds of lice and scabies, a coffee made with wormed water will comfort bodies that ache. Welcomed sleep will take heavy eyelids and greets souls of seven and seventy until stretches of dawn stream to fill the sky at five.

As I will remian forever an outsider, regardless of my linguistic capabilities and the length I might live among the places of this country, it is easy for an individual to desensitize themselves to such a reality. But I pray it doesn't ever become such a perspecitve. Two and a half weeks from now I return to that of the compfortable United States. Hell, even here I have my own room with a desk and fresh oranges and dried manogoes. I was called a mango the other day. In Guatemala, that's slang for beauty. I have Q100 to spend on this private room of mine. Q100 ($13) per night.

And this is without mention of any life I might lead in my own country.

Apparent most is my relationship with my friends here- those who are doing better than many. Friends who own cars, are putting family memebers through school, raising children, loving their grandaparents.

But really, they still struggle to get by every day. They cannot affort to have inconveniences and accidents. But regardless of what they might or may not be able to handle, their worlds still fall apaprt.

To see my friends: grown men with families and decent jobs sob and cry into each other's arms because there is nowhere else to turn, no money to borrow and broken hearted, their cries turn to God. This is an an aching my twenty years and college student brains do not have the the status to understand. I understand tears. I understand how to hug someone experiencing tears, but I have no capacity to comprehend money and what any individual feels when it runs out, or when someone you trust and love crashes and totals your car and does not have any money with which to pay you back. But nor can you pay for the damage as your son is grows, asking why you won't come home from weeks of work. Your wife is trying to finish school, and you're already working to pay off yet another car accident among the stresses and fear of losing this new and significantly more stable job.

I have no comprehension of cousins who refuse to help your grandmother stand and bring a bowl to her, while you're expected to bread win for the remainder of your family. Especially when they have scarce appreciation for the work you do and they care little for your presence among them. I have no power to understand why someone would wish they were dead so they wouldn't have to worry about money anymore. I have no comprehension for the weeks spent with HELPS teams being the only weeks you find happiness in your life.

Real tears from grown men, so desperate and with single chances within their lives. Single changes that when lost mean the loss of not only plans, but partial stability and hope for an upward stint. Yet never have I seen Alex nor Chori give up. Becuase they know they can't. Many nights, however, with our upcoming leave for the States and with the loss of companionship these months have built, have I seen sullen heads and tears without the prevail of a cheerer's laughter. It's not the kind of sadness that a best friend can turn to giggles with insults to an imbisul boyfriend or with the immature suggestion of a bodily function. It's a deeper kind of sorrow, a kind that whishes for better for their children, the kind of chance both of these men are trying to make in their lives.

This kind of suffering they have chosen to endure with hope.

There is an equal suffering it takes for a father to leave his country for another, where all is foreign and his language isn't spoken and a pig farm provides a tin roof and broken down home for comfort. This is the kind of suffering I will never have the capacity to grasp, nor never will have to endure.

This other suffering is the kind of suffering this man's son feels when he feels he's failed the opportunity his father suffered to give him. The pain he will feel to look into his eyes knowing he's lied and broken others, but experiencing the love his father has without regard for his faults.

I might continue this broken soliliquy, yet this exemplified cycle will require that I continue long on until morning with the determination and exemplified vigor these people have for their suffering. They suffer with the hope that a moment in their lives might come when they won't be worried and hurt and suffer to get by. Even if the relief begins for seconds and disappears, they suffer with this hope.

This kind of situation is unlike the strife of many because most others, especially in my country, have options. There are options for food, health, school. But when these are removed, spirits begin to break and cycles offer no option but to incite broken paths.

I could take pictures to bring to you and to show you, but they are only images. Images that may have been scalded onto my heart, but remain that of an image to you. Perhaps it will move you.. but how far? How far have I been moved?

Breathe. Just once for me.

2007-04-22T11:49:00.001-05:00

With the end of this week came more than a great relief for me. It was likely the least pleasant upon my arrival in this country. But with that said, and the fact that I was PR photographer for the week, it is over, I have taken enough pictures of Ronald McDonald and I can move on.

What never ceases to amaze me, however, is the ability for one's life to be changed by the work an individual can do in this country. With the intent to come and do and be, often we end up changed beyond what we could ever give in a physical manner to the people I encounter.

Without divulging ridiculous detail of my woe, I will say that my entire day was changed by an eleven year old boy this week. Walking camera in hand to the clinic, I had a mind to rid myself of all the stickers and stuffed animals and pencils I have been carting around in my bags for these last four months. Gosh, has it really been that long?

Walking toward the clinic, I heard... "Good. Morn. Ing. How. Are. You?" and I see this kid giggling at me as I grin and respond. Sitting next to him and inquiring the other English he knows, we strike up a conversation (as he continues to laugh at the fact that I look weird and can speak spanish). Poco a Poco (little by little), our little circle grows to encompass nearly every kid in the area and their mothers. Using Spanish as a transitive, we began to swap language. My English for their Katchiquel- a Mayan language comprised of clicking and deep throated kinds of words, which is transitively nearly impossible to pronounce. Mind you English and Spanish have a similar makeup and tonal quality. Most Mayan languages do not even have a written alphabet and pass the language on generationally. Thus, there I was, the awkward blonde girl surrounded by natives from Solola laughing nearly so hard they are crying as, I nor the others can pronounce either language.

But it isn't so much the fact that I only remember two words in Katchiquel meaning donkey and cat. It's the sentiment and the guts (in Guate we say Huevos - eggs) that this eleven year old had to just say hi in my own language. There is little more to be said than that. The entirety of my day and ultimately my week was drastically changed by someone I will never see again.

It's about taking time and I believe that is the only secret. Take time to feel crappy and take time to laugh. Don't let life get so caught up that you can't even breathe. It is amazing how often we must forget and relearn such things in our lives. But ultimately when we rediscover the satisfaction and peace this pace injects into ourselves, I realize how these people live to be 90 years old and continue to work their land until they end in rest. They've got it figured out far more significantly than our society of things does. I've been robbed twice since I've been here. Things are replaceable, but the serenity of the air in the morning is gone every time the sun passes to its full rise.

Taxi Rides and Celine Dion.

2007-04-06T19:39:00.002-05:00

Story to come soon. Transportation in Guatemala.

Lady in Red.

2007-04-06T19:14:00.001-05:00

So after waking at four thirty this morning to photograph traditional easter parades in Antigua, avoiding and being trampled by crowds all day with my camera fastened to my hand, my body decided it wanted nothing to do with a nap. Blech. So instead of delightfully finding myself in the varied stages of sleep, I thus am fastened to the computer of my hostel very much in a daze.

I thought I might touch on something of a lighter subject than that which has been lately previous. Cat calls from Guatemalan boys. As a kind of disclaimer, I will say that getting whistled at on an hourly basis in the street is less than pleasant and I've learned to tune out the kind of clicking, shushing sound males make. However, sometimes these events prove to be particularily funny.

I'm not entirely sure where these boys think they're going to get using broken English to hit on us. Especially when it involves, "Hey Baby, or Pretty Lady, Barbie or Canchita (blondie).. etc. etc." I'm not sure how it would be deemed impressive to talk to someone, or how they might believe they are going to get anywhere with that kind of manner. Show me some intellect from less than a block away and a little eye contact and you MIGHT get aconversation out of me. Additionally, I'm sure you're more of a poet in your own language, whether it be Spanish, Quiche, Pokemchi etc. However, if you're between the ages of 12 and 17 as is frequent, kiss your hopes goodbye. But to note a particualrily humorous instance, Laurie and I were walking down the streets of Antigua three or four weeks ago, looking for a hostel to say in during Semana Santa (Holy Week). As we avoided eye contact from a pickup filled with teenaged boys, whistles here and there provoked a mere "...BYEEEE.." from one of its cargoed bodies. That was all the high pitched, toady voice had to offer. Something tells me he meant to say "hi," but we giggled and continued down the road.

Additionally, when we were in Panajachel last week, we were walking down to the water front, and a 13 or 14 year old tuk tuk driver (which is a small go-cart like taxi) leaned out his window and said, "Hi Barbie.. I like your underwear." Both on the verge of rage, Laurie and I decided it was better to burst into rampant laughter at the absurdity of the sentence. Not only were we sure that no one could see our underwear, we were also particularily sure that he had no idea what he had just said to us. Not to mention the fact he was probably 14.

Yesterday, while wearing my gap product red shirt walking down the road I was called Lady In Red. No allusion to the song of course. The word Red was written on my shirt as such: INSPI(RED).

Usually though, when they realize I too can speak their language, they toot a different horn. Aside from the suave, "free translation.com" usage, cat calling women is an actual problem in this country. What's startling is at such a young age men are taught the macho motiff and taught often by their fathers how to treat (or all too frequently mistreat) women. They are sometimes sent to "become men" as soon as they enter teenage years. What's socks the wind out of me even more, is that women are taught to be passive about this abuse. No one ever fights back, regardless of a situation of a drunken husband or endangered children. Often, the fear of not surviving is too great. And thus whistling and the maltreatment of women continues. It lies in the conditioning of children as young boys are not taught that this kind of manner is a disrespect to women and their own mothers in turn. I know that if my younger brother would think of treating any kind of female in that manner, he would be pummeled personally to the ground by his older sister. The kind of education toward opposite gendered relations is so drastically different here. It is not that nothing is taught to young boys and they don't know any better, but rather they are shown what to do and how to treat women. And because I am a woman living here in Guatemala, I too, continue to walk down the street and ignore the honks, hoots and hollers, knowing there is little I can do right now to change the cycle.

Update.

2007-03-30T19:04:00.001-05:00

After reading my last few entries, my father suggested I give you an update on the woman who had trouble during our outreach last Friday. She was stable within the first 24 hours of the incident and upon her daughter's arrival several hours later is doing fine. She was transfered to the Guatemalan hospital in Tejutla and was still doing well upon our leave on Sunday morning.

Things like this, however, cause a person to realize the fragility of one's life. Aside from the Carpe Diem cliche, don't forget to tell those who give you energy and reason their vitality to you. Irreplaceable experience and skies, though often brevities, are integral to our moments.

So it's already published..

2007-03-29T20:30:00.002-05:00

There is little I can do, now that I've posted that poem...
But it's really terrible.

I guess you own the good and the bad, right?

Dust as catalyst.

2007-03-29T20:10:00.001-05:00

So all of you know that I'm more of a non-fiction writer than I ever have been a poet. Actually, I'm admittedly a terrible poet and thus am not entirely sure why I even believe this post will be of any kind of merit. But I'll cease my blubbering and get on with the show. I just cared to be sure there was a proper disclaimer before you read any further.

It has no title, and is barely legible in my moleskine as I wrote it traveling through the mountains from Tejutla. Criticsm is welcome.

There are paths along the highways
that I've never noticed before

Others who have walked the stretch
I ride

Men, women carry worn wood
along the equally etched trail
barely able to stand
with their back's load

I wonder,
if there are churches everywhere
why God seems sometimes to lack Grace

It's hard when you're on the inside
- but then I feel the wind,
or whitness the
brilliance
of the sun's show of color
behind the largest volcano I've ever seen

Those loved are at my side:
those who have been far away for months,

And those who will too soon be far

But put your worry aside
and live your life,

show love
-empathy
-energy.

For there exists a spirit in which
partaking guarantees that which is human

I'm surrounded by dust,
covered actually,
as all my belongings

A coating of brown
mud for my toes
onces the rain washes over my nakedness

Have you ever noticed
how the dust settles on everything
but the flowers?

... or the way shadows play on walls
in morning?

So I'll stay here in my happiness,
and let other things drift away

For now I'll see in me,
faces that,
eventually,
will no longer be clear
as time envelops

and we, as elipses,
move along..

A Mayan Morning.

2007-03-27T13:58:00.001-05:00

So after hearing complaints that I hadn't written in quite some time via email and a phone call from my mother, I've decided it was time once again. I apologize that I have made very little effort to write to all of you in the past few weeks. Adequete writing time simply evaded my life for a short while. I've just returned from a medical team in Tejutla, San Marcos. We had a great week and an indescribeable vew of Tajumulco (Ta-hu-mool-koo), the highest volcano in Central America. Waking up to breakfast outside with such a skyline makes a person truly believe they are among the luckiest in the world. It makes me wonder if the people who live there realize just how beautiful their land is. However, I imagine that perhaps, too, people are all alike. Just as in the States some know this kind of beauty and some just let it pass them by like scenery on the highway. These mountains were cold at night, and I understand at 45-50 degrees a night, all at home in Minnesota were surpassing me in warmth. Ironic, is it not?

Another added perk of the week was the addition of my dad to the mix. A long time veteran of HELPS, he made his thirteenth trip with me. Translating for him and two of his dental classmates for the week, we ran into very little trouble until a woman had a panic attack while outreaching on Friday. We've had time to catch up and catch coffee, catch dinner and shop a little in these last few days in Antigua. Yesterday, we took a trip to Lake Atitlan off of the coastal town of Panajachel (Pan-a-ha-chel). Brilliant blue waters and the surrounding of three other volcanoes kept us company in our boat for the day. What is interesting about the lake however, is at approximately the size of Lake Millacs in Minnesota, there are several small communities that have developed around its shores. Each village has their own dress and traditions, wholly different from their neighbors. Warm spots emerge in various places around the lake from the volcanic faults in the area and many bathe in it's clarity. It's magestic. I could take the entirety the afternoon to tell about these places, but if you google Lake Atitlan, you're likely to come up with great photos.

Dad and I have had fun, too, with out photo competition. It's fair game as we own exactly the same camera. So one evening this last week we climbed to the roof of the hospital to shoot the fire of the sunset. Perhaps I'm just biased, but though I won that night, he definitely out shot me yesterday at the lake. Where I had two or three frameable shots, his were fantasic. He caught a fisherman's wooden boat in the shadow of the Volcano yesterday morning that I just couldn't surpass.

Tomorrow, I leave with the other four staff members to spend a few days in Panajachel again. We have a few days off between now, Semana Santa (Holy Week), and the next medical team. It will be good to spend time together as drastically our time here becomes more limited, and we begin to realize the reality of home is merely a few weeks in the future. All of us have become overwhelmed with melancholy in the last week. Within the next two weeks we, the staff, will be four, then two weeks after, three.. and so on and so forth. We're beginning to realize that our life here is not forever and light is beginning to shed upon our lives in the States once more. It's not been a joyus dawning to know we will never be together in the same manner again.

I relize many of you cannot wait to hear my stories and see my pictures. But I realize that I can. I love you all, and do miss you, but there are certain pieces about life here, that are simply more rich than I've ever found in the United States. Home is not a place of volcanoes and cool mornings, sunny afternoons. I've come into myself here, and more into the realities of humanity than I could have ever found in the protected falsity of the "American Dream." This dream is one, to which all have a right, but few in the scheme of the world ever have the opportunity to experience.

I mentioned earlier that while outreaching Friday, a woman began to panic from the feeling of the anesthetic in her mouth. With severe periodontal disease, we were going to remove all of her teeth so she might have a denture made. She was 50 years old with a weathered face of 85. As a consequence of her panic, her heart condition (that she was not taking her medicine for) emerged and caused more than severe palpatations. Increaing difficulty in her breath and a racing pulse caused panic in us all. Twenty minutes away from the hospital, my Dad helped the woman to the truck and jumped in next to her. He left me and his assistant to take care of the instruments and tell the other 20 people waiting in line that the days was over.

Sensing my panic, and knowing the face that my dad held (which was the kind of face I've only seen when his parents had been rushed to the hospital), I handed toothbrushes out to the rest of the people around, feeling helpless as a mere translator. The small gym we were working in cleared... for a few minutes. At the sensation of a tap upon my shoulder, I found all the mothers who had evaded the line and headed for home. They'd returned to say thank you, and one by one, children and their parents hugged me and asked that God bless me, my father and the work we had done. These were people who had not been treated that morning. They told me they would wait for the next medical jornada (journey) and wait to see me there. Bending down to let small children hug my neck, I was given their gift of calm. They understood that what will be, will be.

This kindship toward those strange is something infrequently found.

Such a remarkably simple idea it is, to stop worrying. It is easy to forget just how little control we actually have over the course of our own lives. I was not put into a family of blessings by my choice, nor was I not born to a farm here in Guatemala by my power. I make series of decisions, but have very small influence in the scheme of their outcome.

I was told this week that the Mayan people's dwelling places was one room beacuase their lives took place outside. When the Spaniards came with their "civilized ideas" of property and God having a house within that property, the Mayan people thought the Spaniards were crazy. Just as incense sticks to the ceiling of God's house, prayer gets stuck among the rafters with the stale perfume. God, was instead outside, in the mountains. Space among sky and air was the mecca for their prayer. God is outside of a dwelling, of a holding place, of the comfort of normal. God is in that which is beyond us. As wood and limestone churches are created by that of man, how can we believe this thing called a church can contain all that he desires for our lives? Naive and silly, I feel this people of 4,000 years past fancies a more sensible idea than our younger, "educated" race could have begin to foster as of yet. I understand these Mayan people, and the face of God that dwells outside of a catechism. To leave and to surround oneself with what is uncontained and unfamiliar, is more of a God than I've ever found in the walls of even the most beautiful and ancient churches.

Apologies for My Brevity

2007-03-07T09:42:00.001-06:00

So after procrastinating entirely for two weeks, I decided the only way for me to catch up with all of you was to merely open a new blog entry and write. However it's a thing that is significantly easier said than done. As I spend more time here and my life becomes normal, I find myself writing less and less and forget that all of you have no idea what I am doing. Thankfully, after four medical teams back to back, I have a week long break. I decided to spend it mostly on my own to make a short trip to a town spoken highly of. I've been in need of a break for a while and have a newfound respect la Jefa (the boss), Megan Albertson. She's been doing this for nearly three years now and keeps going with stamina I've seen in few people. I thought I had a high tolerance level for a rapid lifestyle, but I must admit I was tired after four trips. It is refreshing to be away from everything HELPS for a week and have time to just be and spend time in a new place.

I arrived in Xela (Shela) or Quetzaltenango (kate-saul-ten-an-go) on Sunday and was taken to la casa de Doña Hilda, a woman in her seventies who reminds me much of my Grandma Rosie. Her decor (sp?), mannerisms, even the aging radio in the kitchen are uncannily similar. She travels the ten or twelve blocks to church by foot in the mornings and uses a gas stove to make sure I always have too much food on my plate. Though Doña Hilda's house is her own, it is always filled with a bustle. Aside from myself, she takes other students from the school and has two young tenants as well. Additionally her children and gradnchildren are constantly dropping by for meals. It's bustling and she alway comments that I haven't eaten much (especially because I don't eat meat), asks whether am going to church with her in the morning, and how quickly I need to leave for my next endeavor. She never lets me touch the dishes and makes cauliflower much like my mother's.

It's good to see the middle class of Guatemala as well. In contrast to an earlier entry, ít does exist, though in a significantly smaller quota. I've now had the opportunity to talk with people spanning from the villages to the ritzy part of the country and am beginning to develop a much larger scope of the life here.

We spent our last medical jornada in Solola, approximately three hours from the city and a half an hour away from Atitlan, a beautiful lake for which the country is known. My father and I will be there for a day while he's here. However, not to travel a tangent, the team from Oregon who stationed themselves in the city of Solola also manned what we call a stove team. This stove was developed by a man who previously traveled as a McGyver (mechanic) on medical teams and was searching for a solution to prevent so many of the chronic eye and lung conditions and burn cases the plastic surgeons see. Often children burn themselves in fires while their mothers are cooking and find their hands or arms fused shut and disfunctioning. This stove however, costs the family 23 dollars to purchase, and our teams come in to install them with the people.

I was able to go out on a stove team one day last week and work with four middle aged men not so unlike my father. Within twenty minutes of our day, they were already concerned for the kind of man I might love and marry. It's nice to know someone is always watching out for you. A couple of them shared my enthusiasm for cameras and gave me a few pointers as well. These men and I had the rare chance to actually go into the homes of families and know them well. Out of 14 cinder blocks, a few pieces of aluminum, gravel and limestone we create two stoves that cost significantly less to use. On average, these stoves save the woman of the house seven years per year worth of time they would have spent gathering wood or manning a stove. The ONIL stove burns on sigificantly less fuel than a typical house stove and therefore gives the head of the household more time to spend on other endeavors. Most families in the villages live on approximately three to seven dollars a week, and this stove saves much of the money the might have spent on wood.

The smiles on the faces of people recieving the stove are undescribeable. We joke and attempt to speak a few words of Kachiquel, the local dialect with them. The children are excited and giggle and wrestle for the gringoes (white foreigners) in their house and their mother beams with excitement and care for her new appliance that burns cleaner air through a chimney out the roof and relieves the family from smoke in the kitchen. It is beautiful work.

I've also been translating more frequently and have found a new love of words in the Spanish language.

Se quiero ustedes mucho.

Yellow Balloons.

2007-02-21T10:19:00.001-06:00

Thursday morning brought market day in Uspantan with my friends and I. Walking the few blocks into town and into the hazy maze of blue tarps overhead and bags of chile powder, sixteen cent calalillies and live chickens everywhere, we were covered in confetti by children within minutes of our entrance. Running into a peace corps member, he said he´d been in the town nearly a year and still ended up with colorful paper in his pants in the market. All would consider the giggles and joy a happy event, but no one noticed the man sleeping facedown in the cement of the sidewalk that morning.

Opened mouthed and breathing heavily, he seemed to be sleeping deeply as if he´d done so in the very same spot most of his life. His pants were torn and falling off his legs, which were rivals of the Holocaust survivors of 1945. His black hair, matted and greasy was an unkempt mop above his guant face and tattered, purple exucuse for a sweatshirt on his back.

Hours later, after a local breakfast of eggs, beans and fresh coffee for as little as three dollars, he appeared again. Awake this time, I could see his mentally handicapped state as he aimlessly meandered through the confetti stand and stared at raw chickens in their freshly slaughtered cases. His dark eyes held no light behind them and an emotionless expression was painted upon his brown face. His pants were falling off his waist as the elastic was worn and he had no shoes for his blackened feet. He carried a deflated, broken yellow balloon in his hand. He walked slowly past me, but lacked any kind of dilliberance in his step.

The following day, he found me again. Donning the same clothing, he sat hugging his legs upon the cobblestone road, rocking slightly. His sunken eyes were fixed on the bright yellow of the corner fruit stand. His wrinkled balloon, which I now realized was trailing its shredded blue leash of a ribbon was clasped tightly like a teddy bear.

I shuddered deeply for the third time as I walked past him.

How many opportunities does it take us, as a human race to act upon common sympathies and emotions? I left school to work with medical teams, and I see a man in the street and walk by him three times before I spent a single quetzal, which in terms of dollars is the equivalent of sixteen cents. Recieving only an empty stare as I asked if he wanted fruit, he was handed a bag of pineapple. Yet I gave him no money thereafter. I had 100Q in my pocket, which is far more than many have - particularily this man of 30 something. While this human being had lunch for the day, I had ample money left over. Who would feed him next time? His state hardly allowed coherence and cetainly no means to care for himself. Yet people walk by. The woman with the fruit stand had undoubtedly stared at his face for some time before I walked into their presence. He needs to be clothed and taken care of and loved. These are pieces of human dignity that need no sort of earning. These are all things that I´ve been handed in my life. Yet I walked away, only having spent sixteen cents. I did not do more, and perhaps am as guilty as the people who see him day after day and walk by.

Saturday, many of the team members hiked to a magnificent waterfall on the side of a cliff in the mountains adjacent to the town. We rode in the back of a pickup back to the hospital. He found me again. In the middle of the highway along what would have been the yellow line of the road, sat the man and his yellow latex companion. The cement of the road was his chair as chicken busses whizzed past his unsensing face, inches from catastrophe. One of the local women with us, shook her head with a chuckle and lightly told me he was, on the most basic sense, the village idiot. My heart broke.

Middle class?

2007-02-09T12:49:00.001-06:00

It amazes me slightly, how a few minutes on AOL instant messenger can change the course of your entire day. It was refreshing to hear news directly from home yesterday and to talk with friends long missed. Valentine's Day is this next week. What? It just dawned on me yesterday. I hear many of you are dealing with subzero temperatures and for that, I feel for all of you. In contrast to popular belief as well, I have hardly a tan. When I'm in the villages I have to remain covered and in the city I am often inside. So sorry, but I probably will not be a nice brown that is assumed. Besides, that's not at all what I'm here for. I just keep hearning it in messages and thought I might set the record straight.

I've been reading much lately. The Little Prince is something I'm appalled I've never read by now - but it was absolutely refreshing. I just started Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff, and it is absolutely hilarious. A memoir author origincally from Canada, he reminds me of David Sedaris. It's nice to be able to cross some of these books I've been meaning to read off my list of things to do.

I will be leaving Guatemala City again on Sunday morning. This time the we're headed to Uspantan, a mountainous village with a drastically more temperate climate. My job for the week will entail the surgery paperwork for each patient who comes through the OR. A good friend of mine, Becky, typically does this job and makes sure all is filled out to code. School has called her back to her master's program however, and thus I get to care for this large job. Additionally I get to organize and count each paper for each patient that will come through the hospital doors in this upcoming week. Which means I will be the grand owner of 2,000 pieces of essential paper. I'm slightly nervous about the whole thing and will likely call Becky half way through the week. Even still, I'll keep my fingers crossed and enjoy the idea of having an official task. I'll hopefully get to translate some as well.

As for these last couple days we've spent in the city, Laurie (roommate and fellow staff member) and I have been spending time with friends we've met here. Alexa is a translator for helps and will be working with us on many of the teams through May. Her mother is from Ohio and her dad is from Guate, and thus she's a dual citizen of both countries. It's been wonderful and she's been showing us around the city and welcomed us over to her house. She graduated from the German school here in October and is interviewing with many colleges for the fall. I remember the process well. This morning she took us to Cafe Barista and I had one of the most amazing cappucinos I've ever tasted. She brought us to an antique store that her friend's mother owns, and I couldn't help but think of my own mother as she would have loved to put the entire place into our own home in the States. Perhaps I get my love of old things from her. We also stopped by Alexa's grandmother's house and chatted for a time. She's a charasmatic little woman with frizzed brown hair and tons of stories. She spoke of growing up in Guatemala, the government and her own interest in medicine. She was very interested to know what we've been learning and was appreciative of our time here. Greeted and bid goodbye with kisses and hugs, it reminded me much of my grandmothers back home and made me want to stop by their similar homes for a visit as well. I guess that will have to wait until May.

It often amazes me, the distinct difference between the villages and the city. Seeming to be the difference between a place like Minneapolis and a shanty town, the drastic division of wealth is apparent. People either have more than my middle class family or nothing at all. Knowing what I have at home and how little many have here, it often makes me feel guilty for being comfortable and riding in nice cars with friends in the city. I have to remind myself that I spend more than half of my time on a cot in a sleeping bag. But doing the little math of which my mind is capable, I also realize the two bags, pack and camera I carry around this country with me could feed more than one Guatemalan family for a year in the village. It's distorted, the balance here. There really is nothing equating the middle class, either you're comfortable or you have nothing.

My time here often has its ups and downs. For as much as a person can expect, you never realize that sometimes being away is hard and lonely. But then the moments happen where you whitness a birth or a burst of colored flowers sprouting over an enclosed wall or a little child latches to your hip and kisses you as you bend over to ask about their day. It changes everything. I often catch myself thinking, even when things aren't ideal, that I must be one of the luckiest individuals on the world. I'm making the time now, to do what many wait until their middle ages to do. Regardless of the bad that sometimes creeps in, I feel assured in the feeling that I am exactly where I'm supposed to be in this particular moment of my life.

La Tinta, A Place Nearly As Hot as the Fever I Ran

2007-02-06T15:16:00.001-06:00

I've spent the last week in the middle of the jungle. We had a six hour bus ride with more than half that across a dirt, mountainside road. I'm impressed that more vehicles don't fall of the side off these cliffs. One slip of the wheel at nearly any moment and we would have sidelonged in various gorges, catching trees and barbed wire fences along the way. From the moment we stepped out of our air conditioned buses, it was over 90 degrees with Minnesotan humidity until we took the buses back up the dirt road and neared Coban, further north of our location. The bugs were twice as large as you'd ever find in the states. Giant lizards rambled around with horns and green skin. Moths were beautiful and larger than my fists, I found a praying mantis crawling up a wall and scorpions crawling out of my suitcase. Thankfully I avoided being stung.

Sunday night, I started running a fever. By Monday evening all was full fledged. I was running a 102.2 temperature and managed to sleep for almost 48 hours solidly. I was wheezy and coughing and overall in miserable shape until midday Wednesday. However, I avoided an IV by drinking water by the liter. Dropping into the swing of things halfway through the week was slightly difficult for me. By this point, most have developed their position of work for the week and I was starting from scratch. I had ample reason to float for the rest of the week. I spent some time attemtping to translate in the dental clinic and popped in and out of the medical clinics as well.

One of the highlights was watching the marvelous Paul Schultz work. A plastic surgeon from St. Cloud and the father of a dear friend of mine, Meredith, Paul can put people back together like I´ve never seen before. I watched him work on a severe cleft lip and pallate Wednesday afternoon. One and a half year old Oscar suddenly had a new face, and I can´t even describe to you the look on his mother´s face when he came out of surgery. A woman in her young twenties who spoke only Kekche, a native dialect, she couldn´t speak and just kept looking. Awestruck at her son´s closed lips and with another newborn baby on her hip, she stayed near him for the next several days. It was entirely joyful to see Oscar squeak and dribble food from his mouth a day later. He had to figure out how to eat all over again. I can´t help but realize how close to my own age his mother was and how frequently that is the case. A little girl from the village asked if I had a boyfriend and was shocked when I told her I was twenty and flying solo. That doesn´t happen in the villages here. You get married and have a family, and hope that your six or eight children make it past year five.

Because of one person, this little boy´s life will be so different. The work Paul does makes me crave the ability to impact others in an equally drastic manner. I just don´t think that I could live with myself in the states if I had to perform lyposuction and breast implants the other 345 days of the year when I wasn´t in Guatemala. But this man literally puts people back together. He can give a man who´s fallen in a fire and fused his hand shut, functioning fingers again. We´re even built with extra tendons in our hands, which, when transplanted into a faulty digit, create new opportunity for movement. It´s amazing, and while I´ve always been sure of my study, his work makes me consider other paths. The question was poised to me recently if I´d ever considered the medical field. I gave my blanketed no, I was satisfied to solely watch. However, I suddenly am not so sure.

I´m beginning to realize I´m learning much more than I ever anticipated I would. Of course I subconciously knew that would happen. It´s amazing what happens when you have a crappy week out in the field. I was in a wretchedly hot environment for a week. Sweating while sitting at eight o clock in the morning is not my idea of a great time. Yet I spent a week there. The difference is that I had the option to leave. These people living in literal shanties, don´t have that option. That´s the difference between my situation in La Tinta and theirs. I have hot summers as well, but I have a functioning stove, an air conditioner... My six membered family lives in three separate locations, and my gradmothers add an additional two. We have floors. We have vehicles. We have ice. Now place these eight people in a tin walled, eight by ten foot space and you have the dwelling place of my individuals I saw along that dirt road this week.

And as we passed by in our air conditioned busses, and the gringos (slang for Americans) took pictures out the window, people ran down the road and families smiled out their dimly lit doorways. Dirt covered kids with torn tshirts or no tshirts at all, played with each other in the street and waved us on, grinning.

Back in the City For a Few Days...

2007-01-24T16:58:00.001-06:00

Salsa dancing until 1:00 and a 3:00am wake up call is a bad combination. I'm exhausted. We left Antigua at 4:00am to ensure that the San Cristobal team would catch their flight home on time. It's difficult to know that I'll be starting another team with entirely new faces next week and to see that this team, with whom I've spent the past ten days conversing, realizing and relating, will not be traveling with me to my next destination: La Tinta.

I had a wonderful few days in Antigua Guatemala. A 24 hour hour bout of dehydration put me out for some time, but if anything it gave me an excuse for some time on my own. It was well warranted time as I relished in my walk around the city and took a few pictures.

Antigua is a very old city and for as much of a tourist trap as it is, its history and beauty remains. It's about 20 by 20 blocks big and you can see it's entirety if you make a walk up to "La Cruz." It's a short walk to the city's boundary and a hike up a hill where an immense stone cross has been standing on the hillside in a grassy, clear opening. From it's base there, words really dimminish the meaning of the view. One can hear distinct voices of people in courtyards, and hear horses and cars clipping down the city's cobblestone streets. From its height, one has a direct sight of the opposing volcanic mountain side that shadows the city in its valley. Morning mist lifts higher and higher. I shared this moment with two friends, John and Anna Boyle on Tuesday morning. As we woke early and strolled across the city to the base of the cross together, John recounted his stay in the country the year previous. We got breakfast in a small coffee shop and afterward I took my stroll in the city.

Iron casts over the windows of every buildling to protect from rocks and larger, more human predators, houses and shops alike blend into one wall that is divided only by sky blue, marigold and salmon hues. Roofs are flat and clay eaves hang down to connect them. Sidewalks are tall and treacherous. Often unkempt and barely wide enough for the extended windows from the buildings to cover, it is easy to clip one's shoulder or head. The cobblestone of the street is just as much of a challenge however, as uneven rocks produce bumpy bicycles and vespas rides alike.

The center square is filled with trees - the canopies of which you can see from La Cruz. Benches adorn their concrete walkways and a massive fountain with nude women etched into its stone chatters among the street vendors and shoe shiners. Charming as it is, these shoe shiners make their living here. It is not so much like the men in airports who ask for tips. As you walk down the street every so often, a coffee shop's aroma fills your nose or fresh oranges and papaya make your mouth water. Children run around with yellow and magenta ice cream as drips eagerly fall create mess on a shirt.

Ruins of old churches immerse with the architecture and color of those still upheld. A great yellow arch containing a clock is ahead, beckoning ones eyes to the matching Catholic church behind it. During Semana Santa (Holy Week) these streets will be filled with intricate carpets, colored and designed with sawdust. They are a reverence to the Holy parades that take place and holy the ground the float bearers walk upon. In either direction one looks, mountains and volcanoes surround, as a sky turns pink and the clouds streak blue.

I Don't Smoke and I Don't Chew, and I Don't Go With the Boys That Do.

2007-01-21T16:48:00.001-06:00

Alright, so I figure the title is just kind of catchy. It was one of my quotes from the day from a 70 something nurse I was working triage with this week. I decided it was worthy of writng down.

I just arrived this afternoon in Antigua, Guatemala after a week in the highlands of San Cristobal, Guatemala. The week was wonderful: complete with unflushable toilets, and not enough water in the hospital to shower everyday. Plumbing is an interesting concept in Guate, many times it's not uncommon to see people on the side of the roads, using the ditch as their plumbing. But if you're like me you'll find a toilet more proper. However, pipes and sewers are not equipped here to handle toilet paper and thus paper products go in the garbage. There is a policy on every team: "If you flush it, you fish it." And they're not kidding. So folks, be grateful that you can throw things down the toilet, you have enough water to take more than a freezing navy shower and that your plumming is equipped to handle even goldfish.

I plan to hop into another internet cafe and blog again tomorrow, as it's beginning to darken and it's not safe to walk down the street to the hotel by myself.

Before I pay my internet cafe dues and such, I thought I'd give a quick run down of what my actual job here entails. HELPS international has approximately 11 medical teams from the United States flow through Guate every year, my job is to make each of their trips flow smoothly. So, for instance, the next team flies into GUatemala City next Saturday evening. My job before that it to shop for their groceries, mind you the cooking portion of the staff is cooking for more than 100 people and recovering patients for a week. So as you can imagine, 500 rolls of toilet paper and 70 pounds of carrots is standard number. So we shop, and then we pack the food so it's easily trasportable for that team. We also have various project around the warehouse. Come Thursday, the crew will be packing the trucks with medical equipment, which mean anesthesiology equipment, dental chairs (Dad, all of your supplies were put in the proper hands, you have nothing to worry about and I took care of your bag), overhead operating lights, toolboxes for the mechanics, portable shelves and other units of power and medical devices. We typically have three moderately large, almost semi trucks worth of equipment for these teams.

Now the people who fly in are a slew of dentists, plastic surgeons, gynecologists, general practitioners, cooks, mechanics or mcgyvers, (sp?), pharmacists, nurses, general surgeons, translators, triage persona, and various other odd jobs tha occur around the hospital. It's quite the crew. So they fly into the city on Saturday night. I'm part of the welcoming committee that comes and lets them know about tour information after their weeks worth of hard work, and other specifics about the area we're traveling to and the rules involved there (i.e. the toilet paper). Sunday morning we load onto two or three large busses, travel to our location and set up the hospital. We work Monday to Saturday morning: surgeons prforming hysterectomies, herinias, many cleft lip and pallate surguries and various lumps and bumps. This week there were a total of 109 major surguries completed (discluding lumps and bumps). Meanwhile, the General practicioners are seeing patients - giving out worm medicine and lots of ibuprofen and vitamins. That's right, not everyone can afford basic pain medicines, and most of you don't spend your days working in a field or washing clothes my hand or carrying a week's worth of laundry on your head. The dentist are completing cleanings, fillings, a few crowns and a lot of pulling. Some small children have so much decay they have all four from teeth pulled out. THe pharmacy is pumping out drugs and the recovery room is filled with groaning babies, worried mothers, and vaious women and men. One woman this week, asked Dr. Schmidt, a gynecologist if he was the surgeon who put her in so much pain after her hysterectomy. He said yes. She replied "Thank you" with a kiss as she took his hand.

Friday comes and the town throws us a fiesta, complte with incredible typical food, and men dancing with fireworks strapped to their backs.

Saturday we tear the hospital down, and end up here. And by the next week, I'm set to do it all over agian.

Hopefully I'll have a few moments to add stories tomorrow. I think of all of you frequently, for various reasons. Today I'm wearing brown and baby blue, so Benjamin Bradley popped into my mind. It's small things like that that remind me from where I've come and how blessed I am to have such wonderful friends and love in my life.

Te quiero mucho,

Kelsey

And So It Begins...

2007-01-06T12:24:00.001-06:00

My last three days have been exhausting, exciting, and a million things at the same time. The flights were smooth, and I'm discovering that my spanish needs exercise... terribly. I must say, however, after three days I'm already fighting the urge to write to you in Spanish, or spanglish in the least.

I've been trying to keep track of things I learn each day. For instance, at 5:30am on Thursday morning I learned that Starbucks is a heck of a long hike from Councourse E in the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport. I also learned that the grocery store (El Paiz) carries everything from laundry detergent to shirts and ties and bras and underwear to apples and good wine. Driving here, as Megan Albertson (the Team Coordinator and my boss) quite accurately put it, is always a contact sport, and the lane lines... are merely a suggestion. I commend her greatly for her skills at mangaging a manual Toyota Land Rover and a cell phone at the same time. I've also found that boys tossing fire in the streets is a common novelty that can be paid in either granola bars or pudding.

However, the greatest things I've learned, or was reminded of rather, is the difference between Cansada and Casada. While I knew both words previously, their difference is between being married and tired. My seat neighbor, Juan, was a kind man from South Carolina with gold embellishments on his teeth. After learning where I was going and what I was doing in Guatemala, he asked me kindly if I was married. Thinking he had asked me if I was tired, I said of course. That was slightly embarassing. But after a little confusion, we got our differences figured out and made for a most enjoyable flight. He was going to visit his mother, and I was embarking on something I've never done before.

Yesterday, I learned that the Bodega (HELPS warehouse) is extremely dusty, and that my allergies will have a hay day in this country for the next five months. Bugs also are extremely attracted to dried celery. Kory and I found some friends while packing food yesterday afternoon, but don't worry Dad, we got rid of it and no one will be cooking with such a seasoning. I also found that Banks are located in malls. And that none of the banks in Guatemala accept Visa traveler's checks. There is also a national money shortage, and the banks are stingy when it comes to buying quetzales (Guatemalan money). Supposedly the man in charge forgot to order paper to print the money. Ooops.

I am staying at a wonderful place called Seteca. It's kind of a monestary/hostel, and is far more acommodating than I had expected. The compound is surrounded by a tall, cement, fence with circular barbed and electric wiring around its top. A guard carefully mans the gate and no one is let in or out without their safe knowledge. There are open grounds, basketball courts and soccer fields, a few small courtyards with garden benches and breezy windows. Any venture outside the compound however, is surely dangerous. It's amazing how the demeanor can change at a finger's snap. The first night I had a large eight legged friend first out my window and then above my head. He soon became good friends with the bottom of my shoe. Now normally I'd capture and bring him outside, but I was in my pajamas, and knew he probably was familiar with the way to enter again.

Well, I can only nab so much time in an internet cafe in Antigua. Tomorrow I'm off to church and possibly a little frisbee game with Kory and Rudy (a member of the HELPS staff). But for now, I'm off to the market, lunch and probably a glance at a pair of new earrings. Granted, nothing will be bought until later as my money is a sketchy situation. My parents were glad to hear I was still alive yesterday afternoon when I called, and my dad's cold seems to be clearing up well. I, on the other hand, may have to send for some allergy medecine. El polvo, or dust is a big problem.

I hope all is well in the states, and you aren't too cold in the snow! I apologize for my spastic writing, but it's been quite the jumble the last couple days.

Te amo mucho,
Kelsey

Cumulonimbus and the Birth of a Filly.

2006-12-21T01:50:00.002-06:00

It's 2:00 A.M. and I'm refusing to pack.

Maybe my trouble is that I've refused to process anything past Wendesday the 20th for the last three or four weeks. Consequently, my last final occurred eight hours ago and I am thus at a complete loss. I understand my clothing isn't going to jump into suitcases and my lamps and notebooks aren't going to arrange themselves according to their size, filling tupperware containers just so... but I'm sitting here, listening to Drew Gordon plunk a geniusly crafted tune out on the piano, and don't particularly feel inclined to move. A terrible situation I've found myself in.

I'm not paralyzed in fear of my trip, or in fear of moving back to St. Cloud for two weeks. But perhaps, for the first time, the reality of my leaving is settling in. I've been saying "goodbye! Have a good semester! I won't be here!" with excitement endlessly. I never really know when the last encounter with a friend will be. Sometimes they show up less than 24 hours later and I have to say goodbye all over again. I'm always guessing.

However, tonight was just slightly different. It's my last night in Minneapolis for an extended period of time, and my last night with the proximity of many I care about. It's just a little more real than it's been before. I suppose in my logical, relational sort of brain I'll come to the conclusion that not packing isn't going to make the morning come any more slowly. But part of me wants it to. Yet I know it will all be here, waiting, when I get back to the states. And I'll get a glimpse of the city lights on the 4th of January when I drive to the airport at 4:00am.

Drew Gordon is still playing.. but it's now his song called "The Birth of a Filly," and I can't help but remember his apparent mantra as the eighth notes dance on top of his swinging 3/4 measures. For those who have never heard of him, Drew was an accompanist in the dance program and was dearly loved. He passed away early this past fall, and the Barbara Barker Center for Dance will always resonate with his quirky charms, enthused rhythms and endless, genuine love. He was a man of passions: never allowing the hurt of the world to reflect his nature and attention for the individual. I guess his mentality, subconciously, somehow has supported my desire to travel and do something that will make a direct impact. Because in so many senses, that was what he was about too. It's good to know someone else shares my passion for people. However, I am going for five months. Drew was "going" his entire life.

So maybe going is good. Not that I ever thought it wasn't. And maybe I'll start packing. After all, it is now closer to 2:30 than when I started and the clock will keep on keepin' time.

Jazz music, Paper chains and Overwhelming support.

2006-12-15T22:43:00.001-06:00

I'm beginning to find myself again.
Not that I was really lost, but only that I wasn't always letting my whole self out.

Yet in leaving, I've found tremendous support. Part of my trouble coming back to school last fall was that there were very few to whom I could deeply relate. I'm finding that again - that support network. Those deep relationships, where people really care about what I'm about and where I'm going. The traveling bit doesn't only pertain to my immediate relocation. I've begun to immerse myself in a network of individuals who have a genuine interest in my success in both school and my eventual and inevitable "long run." Everyone wants to know about the fluency of my spanish, my locations, the people there and about their dance.

I just feel so loved.

In my mind, my general leaving for five months was never a big deal - but there's so much genuine attention when people ask about my trip. It sometimes makes my heart want to burst open and give it all back to those who are asking. I'm putting a huge chunk of my life into an entirely different direction, and my friends, family and mentors alike truly have an interest my passion for the place that I'm going.

Two of my best friends, Lauren Baker (my roommate and fellow Dance Major) and Chris Vatsaas (who lived on the sixth floor of my dorm last year and enjoys the occasional trip to the caves for swing dancing), threw me a going away party entirely in my own style last Saturday night. They deemed it: "Are You Fairly Buzzed?" The idea was that everyone was going to drink coffee all night instead of getting tipsy on booze. It was complete with a red paper chain, jazz music, and all my friends wearing red and black - my supposed signature colors. I'm a giant nerd and made cards containing the information for my trip, so they could be tacked by magnets to refigerators. My excuse was that it was easier than writing it all down each time I was asked, but subliminally it seems I just didn't want to be forgotten. However, It wasn't so much the event that made the night wonderful, but rather it was the people who came. I was surrounded by those people mentioned above - the ones who have genuine interest in my passion. There was an obvious kind of warmth in the room, and it wasn't just from the number of bodies within it. It was so nice for many of my friends to finally meet the people they hear me boast about in conversation. I also knew many were off performing in a midnight cabaret that night, and it was wonderful to get phone calls and to know we'd be catching up over coffee this week.

It's with occasions like these that I am utterly convinced of the beauty and goodness in the world. It's amazing and I am just so grateful. Grateful for both the beautiful people in my life and for Guatemalan chickens in the streets.

As for the most current on-goings of my life, they are consisting mostly of giant papers and one final on Wednesday that will inevitably, (for the purposes of this being a family shared journal) whoop my behind. I move on Thursday, which I'm sure will be an event of semi-mixed emotion. As my father has suddenly quit his annual writing of the Christmas letter, my mother sent me a pleading email last week and I took his job and wrote the letter on Tuesday. Many of you should expect that in the mail soon. My Christmas shopping is done, and I have managed to string a set of 100 mini lights to the slightly-browning plant in my room. My last day of work was yesterday, and the Kudak family Christmas tomorrow is a great excuse to take a break from my current loathing of early British Literature.

I think, perhaps, that I either need to start posting more frequently, or practice my "short" windedness. I'm always so lengthy and I know very few of you have more than a few moments in the day. Speaking of time, I wrote a fair amount on the constraints of that subject the other day. Nevertheless, that is another topic for another day. I hope all of you are finding some quiet in your hectic lives to enjoy our, wait .... green grass and rain in December? While I would love a little snow as well, continue to enjoy your days. Remember the sun shines just for you and the world is filled with beautiful energy.

Much love and peace to you all,
Kelsey

Six weeks?

2006-11-19T22:59:00.002-06:00

So the other day a good friend of mine, Jeff Wencl, put it rather nicely into context when he noted I was leaving in approximately six weeks. Red flags of course didn't really go off in my mind until a time later.

But really, six weeks.

While I tend to not be a person of ferverous anticipation and would rather take everything moment to moment, I am now finding myself surrounded by list after list: packing list, money list, things to buy list, books to read and buy in spanish for kids lists, people to touch base with before I leave lists, pieces to accomplish before leaving lists, where am I going to live next year and what classes am I going to take lists, questions lists, university official documentation lists, resumés, cover letters and letters of recommendation to apply for a summer intership in Boston lists....

I suppose all of you can see what's been governing my life lately. And though this is a tich exaggerated and I tend to keep an even keel, I'm suddenly beginning to realize that I'm slightly overwhelmed with three excruciating papers left in the semester to boot. Yet, then I think of where I'm about to go and what I'm about to do... and then I realize the lists no longer matter and that in a mere six weeks I'll be back in a place I haven't seen in four years. The thought is absolutely wonderful and beyond that, there is little else to say.

Six weeks. Hmm.

Well, it's official. Guatemala. Starting January 4th, 2007.

2006-11-11T14:10:00.001-06:00

To be perfectly honest, I've always been turned off by the idea of a blog. I've never felt the need to pour my heart out to the anonyminity of the internet - to complain, to excite, to let all those unknowns find my page and my latest romantic interest. Since the fifth grade I've kept all that is close to me tucked in journals of varying color and range. Moleskines are my current notebook of choice. There's just something about the pocket in the back.. I always have pieces of myself falling out of the pages of my journals, and the pocket somehow keeps me all together. It's utterly fantastic.

At any rate, I'm leaving the country for five months on January 4th. My flight to Guatemala is booked, and really I can't say more than this is something I've wanted to do since I spent ten days in that mountainous country as a junior in high school. I always knew I would take the time to go back. To have the opportunity to take a semester off from school to go and spend five months of my time in a place where I left my heart, is unbelieveable. For those of you who don't know what the heck I'm doing and would like to, look at www.helpsintl.org and you'll get a better idea. I'm working on the permanent staff with HELPS International, the organization my father has been connected, traveling and organizing with since I was eight years old.

With that and the knowledge that the majority of those close to me won't speak to me in those five months (as I will be in and out of tiny villages in the highlands with medical teams), I've decided it was time to suck up my blogging phobia and let all of you hear what I have to say (or in the least, read what I'm up to on a weekly basis). So I guess here's this new thing I am going to call a blog.

If you want to read a piece of work I wrote about a year ago concerning my original time in Guatemala, look below. However, I would like to disclaim the possibility that this is a polished piece of work, because it's not. I'm dissatisfied with the end and many of the transitions. I hope that maybe my journeys might give me the means to finish the six or so pages that I've started. But for now, I wish wonderful days and peace for you all. It's beautiful outside. Enjoy the day.

Tejutla. March, 2004.

2006-11-11T13:46:00.002-06:00

I apologize for the poor formatting of this piece. But of course, text and formatting doesn't transfer when you paste a word document. The original contains particular formatting elements that identify people or official information. You'll have to bear with me as I attmpet to sort it out without an ability to format text. I wrote this in the fall of 2005, about a year after I first traveled to Guatemala. The dated pieces are exerpts from my journal during my time there, and most of all my other documentation is cited accordingly. The direct quotes are my father speaking.

“In the early 1980’s, Guatemala was involved in a civil war with the northern highlands being one of the major centers of conflict. Because of the war and the remoteness of the location, the local populations had virtually no transportation, communication or medical assistance. Many communities were without food, potable water, electricity, and many families were displaced.” (HELPS International www.helpsintl.org)

HELPS international is a Christian based, non-profit organization that works in the villages of Guatemala, in an attempt to aid the country’s people in medical need. Originating in Texas, and sending its first medical team in 1984 in the midst of the still raging war, HELPS has grown to send ten to twelve teams each year and had collectively given over sixty million dollars worth of service to the Guatemalan people. The capability of each fifty-member team has reached full plastic and reparative surgery, a general practice, and fully functioning dentistry effort. Over the span of one week in a village, each team completes over 100 surgeries, sees more than 1300 patients in the clinic and provides around 700 dental procedures.

“I got involved because I was asked to.”

"Bruce Kudak, D.D.S. Dr. Kudak is the head of HELPS’ dentistry effort. From St. Cloud, MN he went on his first medical team in 1995. Since then, he has been deeply involved with the HELPS medical program and has been on the leadership board since 1998. Through his work, this critical area of medical assistance is fully mobile, which allows for dental surgery and dental restoration in the hospital or in the field." (www.helpsintl.org)

My father finally gave into the urging of his long-time anesthesiologist friend, Dr. Gary Boeke, and traveled for the first time to the highlands of Guatemala when I was a second grader. Remembering this, I’m not entirely sure he knew that when he would begin a kind of work more gratifying than any he’d done before. The highlands of this small country, whose boundaries are slightly smaller than that of Tennessee, remained torn after guerilla and political warfare had destroyed much of what the people had called their own over the previous thirty-six years. He came home for the first time, in March of 1995 with stories of children needing plastic surgery to defuse their hands after falling into open cooking fires in their one-roomed, cement houses, and of small men having “fallen off their farms” in an attempt to procure agriculture on the sides of the mountains. The people, mostly of indigenous decent were grateful, he said, even if he had extracted six permanent and rotting teeth. The children, whose teeth decayed from chewing on sugar cane, showed brilliant smiles at the brightly colored toothbrushes and toys he had brought for them. He was different, somehow, when he returned - perhaps more humble. Bringing jade for my mother and leather belts for my brothers, there was a new kind of care to his smile. I replaced my shirt with the brilliantly woven huipil (wee-peal) he carried home to me, and knew that he would travel again, perhaps someday taking me with him.

“You know there’s something pretty powerful about being on team like that, Kelsey, and forgetting about where you came from and what you do, and helping someone less fortunate.”

I’d heard my father say this each time he recalled his time in that beautiful country. Exposing and developing countless rolls of film during his trips, he captured the faces of the people and their beautiful color and kinship. Looking constantly at the albums he’d accumulated and watching my older brother make three trips before me, my time finally had arrived in my junior year of high school. Two years after I made the journey out of the United States into a country where “foreign” doesn’t begin to describe, I often remain lost in my memories of the brown, joyful faces I found among the dusty roads and primitive hospital structure in the village of Tejutla (Te-hoot-la), Guatemala.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Penny for your thoughts…” my father’s dentist friend Bill Moilanen says to me, pulling me from my awed trance that had been aimed through the bus window. A Michigan native from Flint and sitting behind me, he is curious to know of the electric sparks pulsing through my brain as the bus pulls out of the raging traffic of Guatemala City and heads for the dirt roads of the countryside. I had been wide eyed as a baby following a circling fan, and been desperately attempting to think of the way to convey my thoughts in Spanish, as he interrupted me in my fluorescently upholstered seat. I can’t begin to answer, as I glance back through the pane. A truck with a wooden fence on the attached to the wagon passes us on the unguarded mountainside road. Its back end is filled with Guatemalans pressed tightly together, and a small man of thirty or so, dressed in dusty jeans and a white buttoned shirt, smiles and winks at me as my widened eyes stare blankly back.

Tuesday 3-28-04, 7:08 PM
There is not one person who couldn’t need a doctor, or medication.
They live literally in poverty, yet they seem so happy.
Perhaps it’s what we bring to them – perhaps it’s just their spirit.
I knew what it was going to be like.
I’d heard the stories and seen the pictures.
But now that I’m here amongst it all and enveloped in it, it’s overwhelming.
I have to keep reminding myself that this is their life.
They don’t get on a plane in seven days and fly home to four cars with ipods, dancing, private school…
they might not see any of that in their lifetimes.
It’s my everyday life.

"The distribution of income and wealth remains highly skewed. The wealthiest 10% of the population receives almost one-half of all income; the top 20% receives two-thirds of all income. As a result, about 80% of the population lives in poverty, and two-thirds of that number--or 7.6 million people--live in extreme poverty. Guatemala's social development indicators, such as infant mortality and illiteracy, are among the worst in the hemisphere." (U.S. Department of State)

I walk into the dental clinic one afternoon, and greet the line of people on the benches outside holding their numbers and slips of papers containing names, ages, birth date and their ailment. They are hoping to have mere moments with either my father or Bill. As I take a left in to Bill’s room from the hallway, I help him to prepare instruments for an extraction as we wait for Novocain to take effect on a boy of about twelve. After the procedure as he comps on a wad of gauze where his tooth had been, he smiles at me with his dark brown eyes and holds his hands behind his back, hiding something from my sight. Asking him in Spanish what it is, he grins and holds out a quetzal, a coin valued at sixteen cents, up toward the light. I begin a guessing game with him about the currency’s production year and finally guess “dos mil” (2000). When he proclaims “¡Sí!” and hands me the coin to examine, I pat him on the shoulder. After a glance to verify its date, I attempt to give the money back. Shaking his head, he says the coin is no longer his. “Es tuyo, chico.” “It’s yours,” I say, gesturing the coin toward his pocket. “No, señorita. Es tuyo.” As the argument continues and as I finally accept defeat, the smiling boy hugs me and leaves the clinic, leaving me with his bus money in my light skinned palm. I know that it is likely he will walk kilometers home to his family that afternoon.

Wednesday 3-24-04, 7:19 PM
It’s really true what my dad says about a smile here.
One smile means so much.
It gives a thank you, a comfort.
It’s just this feeling that I never realized a simple smile could bring.

A woman with a long gray braid down her back shifts her brightly skirted legs off the dental chair in my father’s room. Smiling through gaping holes in her elderly mouth she turns to hug and kiss each of the room’s occupants. “Dios la Bendiga,” she says. The words of God’s blessings ring through my scrub-hatted head as I memorize the weathered lines of her shining face, realizing that her care for me is what has made me blessed.

“When you go into the villages and the people sit in line forever hoping that they’ll be able to be seen, they all come up and thank you. Sometimes it’s pretty humbling to go down there. They have their share of problems too… alcoholism and domestic abuse in some cases, but for the most part you see the big kids helping the little kids, and you get the sense that if they had enough land and could grow enough food they’d be happy. It makes you wonder sometimes,
‘Do I need a bigger house or a boat, or those kinds of things?’ ”

Walking from the dental clinic toward the surgery recovery room where cots have been set up to accommodate IV stands and careful eyes of the nursing staff, I see a few members of the team talking with a man whose wife is recovering from a hysterectomy. As they had walked kilometers to the hospital and her surgery together a few days previous, they would return home in the same fashion. But on this trip as she could not walk the journey, he would carry her.
Turning the corner to enter the doorway of the cement constructed room, two young faces of perhaps three and six peer around the side of the building. Holding yellow and orange balloons, the two sisters giggle and the elder puts her arm around her runny-nosed sibling as I approach. They giggle and talk to each other as my friend Santiago translates for me. He tells me the older girl wishes to give me a hug, but is too shy. Because of my blonde hair and blue eyes, she hides behind her balloon and tells him that I look like a Barbie. Taken aback by the reference and without the inclination to laugh, I recall the dozens of Barbies I had as a child. Variations of long crimped hair, and ballroom dresses become vivid, painful visions as I realize this little girl nor her sister would never have one of the plastic, disproportionate dolls that every little girl craves.

Wednesday 3-24-2004, 7:23pm
It’s so beautiful here.
I look out at the mountains and hear things so different from home.
Birds chirp all the time.
Roosters give their morning call – the sky is so blue.
To be here, is to humble oneself, to simple oneself.

A young girl sits outside on the steps of the clinic. Her hair in a braid like my own, I sit down and ask her name. Julisa is five years old, and when I ask her if she likes school or dancing she gives me a funny look and giggles at my poor Spanish grammar. She talks of her family: her younger brother, mother, and father. She squints and looks down from the midday sun. She explains to me that her father is a migrant worker in Florida. When I ask her, again in poorly formed Spanish, what she wants to do when she gets big, she tells me she wishes to be “una trabajadora emigrante, similar que mi papa.” “A migrant worker, like my dad.”

Wednesday 3-24-2004, further on in time
I helped Bill pull a few teeth… wait just one on her.
She was ten, I think, and her mother had the biggest grin on her face I have ever seen.
I told her in her language I liked her pink pants, and that they were such a pretty color.
It was as simple as that.

I saw her in the clinic the next morning, and she was so excited just to see me again.
I helped pull her tooth the previous day and had only said hello – almost nothing,
yet when I asked her how her tooth was feeling, and her mother said it was healing beautifully as she hugged me and kissed me.
I only told her I liked her pants.
She was wearing the same ones that next day.

“Sometimes you wish you could do more.”

I find frustration as the week concludes. We’ve seen so many people, but we haven’t seen everyone who is waiting. We will be leaving, and many of the beautiful faces in the lines will not have the chance to be given what they so desperately need. What will happen to them over the next years? Knowing they will continue living in the manner they always have, I am deeply pained as I realize I am simply returning to my comfortable life, a plane flight away. The reality of the world’s imbalance seems to uncomfortably settle into my being. Why is my situation the one with the car, and the doctor father, instead of among the farmer families of Guatemala?
Yet, as my father and I sit outside on a cool night before we leave, he tells me something that I will always remember. “Kels,” he says, “I know you want to change the world. But I also know that you can’t do it all at once. It doesn’t work that way. You have to be satisfied with what you can do now. Look at the hundreds of people we saw this week. We made their situation a little better, and that’s all we can ask for. We’ll come back next year, and there will be more work to do.”
As I return to school caged, but consciously grateful for my opportunity, one afternoon I find a small scrap upon the dirty tiled floor of my high school. It is a quote, now taped among my journal writings from my stay in that breathtaking, mountainous country.

“We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference,
ignore the daily difference we can make
which, over time, add up to big difference that we often cannot foresee.”
– Marian Wright Edelman