a prophet in the morning

Odd weekend this.


Mother Nature decided on Saturday night to remind me that Oregon is not Melaque.  For two days, she has sprinkled snow on Salem.  Not the kind of snow that the good folks of Buffalo know.  This was a mere dusting of confectioner's sugar.  As if we lived inside a bundt cake.


The kind of snow that makes the hot tub feel like a hot spring in the Cascades, rather than a mere good investment.


When it snows in western Oregon, traffic disappears.  They may be good rain drivers, but snow seems to paralyze Willamette Valley drivers.


My house is on one of Salem's major streets.  Usually, I wake up in the morning to an olio of traffic noise and pedestrian commuter chatter.  Weekends are a bit quieter, but I expected the symphony of commerce to resume on Monday.


It hasn't.  Very few cars.  The sound of the morning Amtrak passing through.  No state workers hustling by on the sidewalk.


Then it hit me.  It is 16 January.  Martin Luther King Day.  (And my friend Daurel Colony's birthday.  Happy birthday, Daurel.)


Like most American holidays (and I suspect most world holidays) established to honor people whose principles we strive to imitate, Martin  Luther King Day has simply become another three-day holiday for people to sleep in or to lure shoppers into stores for sales.


But sitting here in bed, I started considering what we have done to the good Dr. King.  Like most heroes, we have slipped him through the myth machine stripping him of his humanity -- or, at least, the flaws that make all of us human.


What we have left is an icon that various politicians trot out for their own use.  As if a prophet has no value other than as a prop in a political French farce.


Nothing symbolizes that better than the controversy over one of the inscriptions on the Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington, DC.  A memorial that was dedicated just this last year.


You undoubtedly know the details, but they deserve repeating.


Two months before he was assassinated, Dr. King delivered a sermon at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church.  Some people had referred to him as a drum major of the civil rights movement.  Like most people, he was subject to self-aggrandizement.  But, in that sermon, he took a course more in line with the teachings of the God he served.

"If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice, say that I was a drum major for peace.  I was a drum major for righteousness.  And all of the other shallow things will not matter."


A very powerful statement.


But the memorial architect had limited space on the memorial.  In a desire to include a portion of the sermon that Dr. King thought summed up his life, the architect edited the quotation to: "I was a drum major for justice, peace, and righteousness."


You don't need to be a writer to realize the truncated version does violence to the original.  The very tone changes.


But isn't that what we have done to Dr. King's dream?  To create a country where race does not matter?


Before I start sounding like an ego-bloated New York Times editor (and I may be 60-some years too late for that), I will simply suggest we might be a whole lot better off trying to live our lives as individuals rather than sinking into the politics of groups.


Now I need to get out of bed and get on with my day.  Maybe living up to a few of the principles we honor in American society. 


Even if only in the breach.

the tin lady

I wanted to do something special for my birthday.


Not that it is one of those big birthdays.  Unless celebrating prime numbers is a secret American tradition.


So, special it was going to be.  And it was.


I headed north to the Cinetopia (the theater with the great projection and sound I wrote about in tinker, tailor, soldier, bore) to see The Iron Lady.  Meryl Streep’s uncanny portrayal of Margaret Thatcher.


Margaret Thatcher is admired by a lot of people.  Even those who were not particularly fond of some (or all) of her policies.


That is why it is easy for everyone to enjoy this film.  It is not about policy.  In fact, it is often very difficult, based on this film, to figure out why this middle class woman was able to successfully navigate the reefs of grandee politics in the Conservative Party.


One reason, of course, is that she stood for something -- and the Conservative elite stood for very little.  Or as one wag put it in the 1970s: the Socialists stood for everything and the Tories stood for nothing.


Any screenwriter who attempts to reduce a political life to the confines of a film is faced with a very real problem.  How do you find the subject’s center?  Where is its bottom?  And how do you tell the tale in two hours?


It appeared that Abi Morgan had found that center in a little monologue put into Lady Thatcher’s mouth when her doctor tells her he understands how she feels about giving away her dead husband’s possessions.

People don’t ‘think’ any more.  They ‘feel’. ‘How are you feeling?’  ‘Oh I don’t feel comfortable with that.’  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry but we, the group were feeling...’


D’you know, one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than thoughts and ideas.


Now thoughts and ideas. That interests me.

The problem is there are no ideas in the film at all.  Just feelings.  It is as if Meryl Streep stopped by to give an acting workshop on how to portray an ambitious woman.  In the same vein as Helen Mirren’s Elizabeth II in The Queen.


And it is obvious the screenwriter simply gave up on trying to find the center of her subject.  Much in the same way that Edmund Morris gave up on trying to write a straight biography of Ronald Reagan.  Morris invented a fictional character (himself) to act as narrator.


Abi Morgan wanders down a similar path by allowing the long-dead Denis, Lady Thatcher’s husband, to act as an hallucinatory Greek chorus to carry along the narrative.  The fact that the ghost bears almost no psychological relationship to the real Denis Thatcher does not matter.  He is a convenient device to mouth the screenwriter’s thoughts.


But he doesn’t.  There is no explanation of why the British people entrusted their nation to  the Iron Lady -- or why her party eventually played Brutus to her Caesar.  Well, other than the fact that their feelings were hurt.


But Meryl Streep can really act. As can the male British cast of male actors that surround her.


Like Churchill, who was chucked out by the British voters at the end of World War Two, Margaret Thatcher was jettisoned by the grandees on the very night she was celebrating the end of the Cold War.

Of course, this film tells us little about that.  Instead, we get the vaguest of outlines on what was one of the most interesting political periods in British history.


It is a film worth seeing. But you will leave with the feeling that there must be something else to the woman portrayed.

tossing my pills

I hate my rants.


My usual rule is that if I do not have the semblance of an answer to the complaints I raise, I should just keep my mouth (or pen) shut.  It is one reason I do not blog much about politics.


But I cannot help myself when it comes to American medicine.


Within a few days of arriving in Oregon, I ran out of my blood pressure medicine.  In Melaque, I would have simply walked to the pharmacy with my empty prescription box, and the pharmacist would have sold me a refill.


Not so in The States.  I thought I might have had one refill on my last prescription.  I did.  But it was over a year old.  And the doctor’s office would not authorize it without setting an appointment to see a doctor.


So I did.  A few days later, I stopped by the doctor’s office at the appointed time.  She took my blood pressure and wrote out a new prescription.  I paid $140 for 5 minutes of her time -- and I was on my way.


Let me stop right there.  That was $140 in legal tender American dollars.


For those of you who see American medical bills on a regular basis, $140 may not sound like much.  But I was astounded.


This is what happens in Melaque.  When I need to see my doctor, I walk over to her office.  No appointment required.  She will sit and chat with me about all sorts of topics for about half an hour.  She will then take my blood pressure and we will laugh about the effects of Mexican food and how good life is.


When I leave, I give her $200 (Mx) -- about $14.60 (US).  And, if I need to see her again on the same topic, there is no additional charge.


I really do not understand it.  What has happened to increase the cost of medical care in The States?  I know everybody has an opinion --– depending on their respective ideologies.  But we are not talking about expensive treatment here.  This was a visit to renew a prescription.


I have read article after article trying to explain health care costs.  But they make no more sense to me than the equally baffling outrageous increase in college tuition.


But none of the articles even come close to explaining to me why my Mexican doctor, who lives in a nice home a block from the beach, can perform the same medical procedures for me while donating a large portion of her time to the local Indian school, and then charge me only $14.60.


I guess I don’t need to understand.  I just need to enjoy the benefit of low medical costs while I am in Mexico. 


Where even cremation is cheaper than it is in Oregon.

tinker, tailor, soldier, bore

My return to Mexico is at hand.  Five days.  That seems soon to me.


Before I leave, I am trying to shoehorn as many movies as I can into my schedule.  On Wednesday night it was Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy -- based on John Le Carré’s 1974 novel.


Anyone who knows  Le Carré’s novels will immediately see the problem of bringing a Cold War thriller about Soviet infiltration of MI6 to the screen in 2012.  For most filmgoers, the plot seems no more immediate than the Tudor succession.


But a stale plot line is not the greatest hurdle in translating what was a good read to the screen.  Le Carré’s novels are like chess matches.  Intricate.  Cerebral.  Inevitable.


There are no explosions.  Or car chases.  Only the most subtle of gun play.  All quite British.


But they are far more suited for legitimate theater than the cinema.  Like all thrillers, the enjoyment is trying to figure out where the plot is going before the author tells us explicitly.  And what we will learn about the human condition on the trip.


And that is one of Le Carré’s weaknesses.  He is still peddling his moral relativism to whoever will listen to him.  The west is no more moral than the Soviets.  Or the Iranians.  Or the [fill in whatever nation you like].  The same type of world weariness that led British aristocrats and American Ivy Leaguers to sign up on the KGB payroll.


That is not to say that the film is not worth seeing.  The cast is filled with some of Britain’s best actors: John Hurt, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Kathy Burke.


Watching Oldman bring George Smiley to life is worth the price of admission.  Like a chess master, he compartmentalizes professional shame and cuckoldry with a slight tic.


But more than anything, the film is boring.  Piecing together the plot is every bit as easy as figuring out an Agatha Christie thriller (at least those where she did not withhold all of the clues until the inevitable parlor scene).


And admiring the acting can only go so far with Le Carré repeatedly serenading us with his “We all deserve to die” aria.


What made the experience a pleasure was the theater we chose.  Cinetopia in Beaverton.  A local attorney had a dream of building a multi-plex theater with high quality sound and the type of special experience people recall from the golden era of movie theaters.


And it works.  The theaters range from giant auditoriums to small movie parlors with sofas and club chairs.


But the true quality is in the sound systems.  I have never heard such natural sound in a movie house.  Once I thought I heard water running behind me.  It was merely a strategically placed speaker reproducing well-engineered sound. 


Plus the films are digitally projected in amazing high definition.  Tied together, the full experience was better than IMAX.


So good that we are planning to make a return visit on Saturday to see The Iron Lady.  That should just about wring the Cold War out of me before I head off to Melaque.

dogging the bus

Yesterday I signed off with sounded like a toss-off line: “So, back on the shuttle bus I will go.  And wish that it could be half as nice as a first class Mexican bus.”


Yesterday morning while I waited for the shuttle bus to take me back to Salem, my mother entertained my brother and me with her Mexican bus ride story.  It was the late 1960s.  She had headed south with my father and her cousin, Rachel.


I will not go into the details.  Suffice it to say, she rode one of the chicken buses that now seems to be stuck in the American psyche whenever the term?  Mexican bus” comes up.


Well, my shuttle bus was not a “chicken bus,” as you can see from the photograph at the top of the blog.  The Valley Retriever runs from Newport through Salem to Bend -- and then back in the same day.


Greyhound once provided regional bus service in Oregon.  No more.  The market responded to fill that void in the form of shuttle services.


The Valley Retriever's equipment is the type of shuttle you often find in an airport parking lot.  Twenty-two fixed seats that are adequate for the three-hour trip from Bend to Salem.  Tough I suspect they get mighty hard on the final leg to Newport.


But they certainly are not what you receive on the premier bus lines in Mexico.  Seats that rival first class airline seats.  Food.  Toilet.  And the inevitable movies playing on the overhead television monitors.


I must confess that I have never set foot on one of those buses.  But I really need to give them a try.  If I can only get over my need to have a car at my ultimate destination.


I guess,though, that will be a story for another day.  Perhaps when I return to Mexico in just under a week.


But I bet the Mexican bus will not have this type of cool logo.

my mountain kin

For the past four days, I have been in Bend visiting my mother, my brother, his wife, and their daughter.


I really like my family.  They are clever, witty, caring, and just a joy to be around.  It makes me wonder why I do not spend more time with them.


If things had gone just a bit differently, I would have spent a lot of time with them.  My brother has lived in the Bend area for several decades.  My mother bought a house and moved to Bend just as I was getting ready to retire.


You may recall that my entire family was planning on heading south to Mexico at one point.  But those plans did not quite work out for the rest of my family.


If I had not committed myself to retiring in Mexico, I most likely would have ended up in Bend with the rest of the family.  The winters are a bit cool for me.  I actually came within hours of putting deposit money down on a new house when my mother bought hers.


Instead, I headed south, and they stayed here.


I would have come over to Bend earlier on this trip, but my brother was in Virginia until early January, and I wanted a chance for all of us to get together.


And get together we did.  On Sunday I caught a shuttle bus over the Cascades and spent three days in true Cotton fashion celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas, and birthdays (inducing mine) at a series of Bend restaurants.  To meet and not eat is to not be a Cotton.


My brother and I spent most of our time trying to transfer information from my old laptop to my new notebook. And then to get my telephone to synchronize with the notebook.  It still has one glitch, but I will survive.


Other than that, we watched movies and basketball games, talked politics, and caught up on local folklore.


I wish I could have spent more time with them, but I still have several projects to complete in Salem before I head Souths again -- probably on 18 January.


So, back on the shuttle bus I will go.  And wish that it could be half as nice as a first class Mexican bus.

polling the public

There are all sorts of political polls in the American newspapers these days.  And this blog has not sponsored a poll of any sort since acquiring its "mexpatriate" moniker a year ago.


So, in the spirit of the season, I offer the year's first mexpatriate poll.


The page has a new design.   But, depending on your browser, you may be getting a completely different experience. 


If you are using Internet Explorer, you will most likely see a green, white, and red banner flash on the screen, to be replaced by.

If you are using Chrome or Firefox, you will see the banner I originally intended to show.

             

 

I concluded there was a problem when several comments referred to the simple look of the banner.  Even though the background is new, it is not that much different than the banner it replaced.


There appears to be no way to remedy the issue with Internet Explorer.  It simply will not show the background.  Rather than merely nuking it, let me ask your opinion.  Which would you prefer?

• Let diversity reign.  Readers can choose their own view by choosing the appropriate browser.
• Fix it.  Let everyone share in the simplicity of black and white journalism.

The poll is to the right.  You have until Thursday to register an opinion.


Until then, the world will simply roll along.

Note:  Not surprisingly, 89% of the readers who voted in the poll chose to leave the banner as it is.  That is what I was incllined to do.  At some point, the banner will be revised.  It is inevitable.