bikes and feet in mexico

I call them non-tariff cultural imports -- those attitudes we northerners tuck into our suitcases with our swimsuits and smoked salmon when we saunter south to Mexico.

And we all have them. Trying to trash them is a  quixotic task. Those cultural notions we have exercised for decades may not be hard-wired into our systems, but they certainly are endemic. And, even though they do amuse me with the potential of blog fodder, they too often get in our way of enjoying what Mexico has to offer.

Yesterday I was walking along our main coastal highway from Barra de Navidad to Melaque. A group of four bicyclists were rapidly coming at me.

What initially caught my attention were their costumes. They were outfitted in the type of lycra outfits that look good on people until they reach the age of 22, and, after that, the material exposes every erosion and decay of getting older. Sort of a cross between Star Trek and a high school cheer squad.

I had starting conjuring up phrases for an essay when I noticed that the lead biker, festooned in his national colors and emblems, had that look Tom Cruise gets when he is trying to act like a man with an intense mission. All stare and furrowed brow.

When he was about 20 feet away, he bellowed: "Get off the bike path."

Well, that is not exactly what he said. The words he used were not particularly nice. But, stripped of the vocabulary-handicapped vulgarities, that was his message. The other three riders dutifully glared as they whisked by on their fast and extremely expensive dandy horses.

This is not the first time I have encountered that attitude here. A couple of years ago, a concerned visitor asked me who she needed to see to enforce violations of the highway bike path rules. When I asked her what she meant, she said she was concerned that motorcycles and pedestrians were walking on the bike path making it difficult for bikers. Cars were often parked there.

I told her there is no bike path on the highway, the white line designates where the shoulder begins. But it is just part of the highway -- a multi-use part of the highway.

She was happy with the explanation -- and just a little bit embarrassed that she had made the mistake.

But I understood why she made it. In Vancouver, if a lane is marked beside the car travel lane, it is usually designated for the exclusive use of bikers. And, for a lot of reasons, once they have conquered that strip of territory, bicyclists will not surrender it.

Bike paths are not unknown here. We have one that runs the length of the access road into Barra de Navidad.

In fact, there are two paths -- each marked subtly for the exclusive use of either walkers or bikers. This one is marked for bikes.

This one is marked for pedestrians.

Interestingly, some visitors do not unpack their bike etiquette when they arrive in Mexico.

I regularly walk there. About 90% of the users stay in their designated lanes. Not surprisingly, the largest group of users are my Mexican neighbors. Which puts to rest the silly notion that Mexico has rules that no one follows.

Now and then, though, a small number of bikers choose to use the walking path and most will barrel right through walkers with that same Top Gun stare, rather than move to the proper path. The sad thing is that nine out of ten of the violators are northerners.

Each time I have attempted to point out the clearly-marked differences in the paths, I have been met with the same invective-punctuated screed used by the lead biker yesterday. Often with a coda shot over the shoulder: "There are no rules in Mexico."

Well, there are. And it would do all of us well to know them and apply them. Part of the problem is getting over ourselves -- and I include myself in that category.

Here is one last example. I had dinner with a woman who was visiting our area for the first time. She was one of those seasoned travelers who tries to gauge the cultural lay of the land and to then act accordingly.

But something was bothering her. "I love the bus system here. It took me just one day to figure out how it worked. My fellow passengers are friendly and always teach me a lot about Barra. But, when I get off of the bus and try to cross the highway at that crosswalk, cars don't stop. Why?"

Her use of the term "crosswalk" threw me. We don't have any designated crosswalks here. At least, none that I could remember.

When she described it, though, I knew exactly what it was. 

A tope has been constructed on the highway at the bus stop and it has been painted white and yellow to warn drivers of its presence. I suspect it is there to slow traffic for the people who get off of the bus and need to cross the highway into Jaluco.

But it is not a crosswalk, and it does not carry any of the rights and obligations that one would find in a Portland crosswalk. The tope may cause drivers to slow down enough to give pedestrians an opportunity to cross, and some drivers may be courteous enough to allow that. But anyone who expects that to happen and exercises her "right of way" to cross the road may very well have the additional cultural experience of seeing how the Mexican medical system works.
I offer all of this in the spirit of advice. You are welcome to do with it as you choose. But, I am willing to bet, we can all improve our experiences in a new culture by constantly questioning our own assumptions. 

If you leave your own cultural notions in your suitcase, they will be there when you get home. 

I will now see if I can get that mote out of my own eye. 


PS -- A Facebook reader raised a good question that reminded me I had one additional point that I failed to mention. So I will now.

She related a story that she had been the object of northern scolding for riding in the wrong lane on the andador, and that the experience had destroyed her enjoyment of her otherwise-fun bike ride.

I meant to note that I am now out of the advice business. Getting angry over such things also ruins my day. I am going to start doing what my Mexican neighbors do. They seldom confront bad behavior. Instead, they store up those experiences to share in the barrio. My neighbor once pointed out: "You are really weird people." He meant me, as well. I suspect he meant me primarily.

A Mexican friend, who works as a waiter, asked me last week: "Why do you Canadians [he meant "northerners"] complain about everything?" He also included me in that category.

Both of them are correct. We complain and confront far too quickly. And we are miserable for having done it. I intend to continue collecting our aberrant behavior, but you will not see those tales here. Those are going to be adventures shared over tacos.         

"here" of the dog that bit you

New languages are like dating.

There is the excitement of new discoveries balanced out by crashing disappointments.

I am no stranger to foreign languages. Over the years, I have sat through classes in Latin, German, Russian, Greek, Italian, and Spanish. And I was not very good at any of them. Eventually, I would start a new language in the hope that at least one other person would be less-talented than I. If not, I usually did not show up to the next class.

Language teachers have told me that people with a basic notion of logic, and especially those with a good ear for music, should do well in languages. I have both -- and I don't.

But I do have an almost-unquenchable curiosity about the structure of language that keeps my interest in learning foreign tongues alive.

My ongoing attempts to learn Spanish are a perfect example. For me, learning Spanish is not an academic exercise. I need it to communicate with most of the people I encounter daily in Mexico. What s the point of living here if you cannot participate in the culture sea surrounding us?

I have a leg up in learning Spanish. My high school Latin has been very helpful in grammar structure and vocabulary. There is the added bonus that when the Normans invaded England, they imported their rather odd version of French that became a building block in the development of the English language. Without the Normans, we would not have "accessible," " transformation," or "omelette."

Those words also exist in Spanish with almost the same spelling. That is not surprising since all three languages take the words from Latin. Grammarians call them cognates. Students call them "words I already know."

I have taken two classroom courses in Spanish since I arrived in Mexico. And my classmates and I have gone through the same seven stages of grief that students since Aristotle have experienced when trying on a new language. Death does not own a copyright on grief.

The "shock and denial" stage sets in early. Inevitably, a student will become almost indignant to discover that Spanish words can have more than one meaning. "How can 'tiempo' be both 'time' and 'weather?' That makes no sense," said a fellow student from Washington.

Well, it makes no sense in the language that is hard-wired in our heads -- for most of us,, English. My response is to pity the poor student of English who has to learn the subtle differences between "smell," "aroma," "scent," "bouquet," "perfume," "stench," and "stink." They mean quite different things -- although native English speakers often use them as if they were interchangeable.

The allure of interchangeability occurs in Spanish. "Here" is a perfect example.

Unlike "tiempo" with its two meanings, there are two Spanish words for "here." "Aquí" the word most of us associate with "here," and "acá."

The first time I encountered "acá" was in a discussion with my friend Gary. His gardener had used the word and Gary asked him to explain it. The explanation? "Aquí" is something right next to the speaker and acá" is close but further away.

I asked Omar. He relied on the same theory, but claimed reversed the distinction. For him, "acá" describes something close to the speaker.

In times like these, I reach for scripture -- my Spanish grammar books. They were unanimous. Both the gardener and Omar were wrong. The distinction between the words had nothing to do with spatial difference.

"Acá" requires a verb of motion, as in, "Come here." "Aquí" would be used for "I am here."

These are the type of distinctions that make me look around the classroom to see if at least one other person shares my look (somewhere between stunned and drowning). It is like the differences between the two "to be" verbs in Spanish, when English has only one for the same purpose. Teachers are usually wise enough to grant absolution on the rules: "You'll figure it out by listening to native speakers."

Except, you won't. Maybe if you hung out in the court of Felipe VI, you would hear grammatically-correct Spanish. But certainly not in my little village.

From what I have read the distinction between the two "here" words resides almost exclusively in grammar books. Very few speakers draw that distinction. But if you want to spend your time worrying about such matters, consider the three Spanish words for "there" that are based on an incredibly subjective distinction of distance from the speaker.

Getting too focused on grammar may not take you through the valley of death, but it will afford you a weekend visit to the vale of tears.

And it is not just Spanish that contains these linguistic landmines.

In a different Spanish class, our teacher, who had spoken Spanish from her youth and is a high school Spanish teacher, asked us to translate: "Ella es mayor que yo." She told us, this sentence was easy because we could translate it word-for-word, unlike most Spanish sentences.

One of my classmates shouted out:"She is older than I."

Before she could move on to the next sentence, a northern visitor raised her hand and said: "Excuse me, but that's not correct English."

The teacher asked her what she thought was incorrect. The student responded: "Proper English would be 'older than me.'"

Our teacher explained why "I" was required. The sentence calls for a nominative pronoun. The explanation, of course, resulted in blank stares. Most of us (who were in our 60s and 70s) had long ago forgotten about the distinction between nominative and objective pronouns.

While most of the class had blank stares, the "older than me" woman slipped into the next step of language grief -- anger. With a couple of exchanges that she had been speaking English all her life, that the teacher did not know what she was talking about, and she would not sit there and be insulted by a woman a third her age, she slammed her book on the table and made an exit that would have been the envy of Elizabeth Taylor under full sail.

I can empathize with the dearly departed. Few people graciously accept correction -- especially, when they are wrong. And English grammar is an area where we often are wrong. Consider the struggle some of us go through with "I was" or "I were" when we try to capture or avoid the subjunctive mood. Grammar can be tough.

In a way, the angry woman had a point, though she did not know it. The easy way to determine if the nominative is required of a pronoun is to remember a little trick. In English, "She is older than I" actually leaves off a word at the end of the sentence. We are really saying: "She is older than I am."

But, because we have forgotten (or have never learned) that trick, the majority of English-speakers use the ungrammatical "than me." And that raises a question, if grammar is merely a set of rules to help us communicate subtle meanings to one another, doesn't usage matter? Especially, if the thought seems to roll smoothly.

At the start of this essay I purposely inserted the correct use of the nominative: "Eventually, I would start a new language in the hope that at least one other person would be less-talented than I." I am willing to bet, some of you tripped over that "I" as if it were a glottal stop. And I bet if I had used "me," none of you would have written a comment about my eroding grammar. (Or maybe not. These pages tend to be a target-rich environment for similar criticisms.)

Because English is my native tongue, I will probably keep applying the grammar rules I learned as a student. After all, we called it grammar school for a reason.

But my Spanish is not yet subtle enough to turn myself into Señor Gramático. I will follow the lead of my neighbors where "here" is a place with many meanings. Or one.

There are limits, though. I doubt I can bring myself to ignore the distinction between the preterit and the imperfect as a lot of my neighbors do. But that is a tale for another time.

I now need to figure out if I am aquí or allá. 

so, a portuguese, an indian, and an italian walk into a mexican kitchen

It sounds like the first line of a joke designed to set modern sensibilities on edge. But the Mexican kitchen was mine today, and my lunch theme was fusion across three continents.

Because I have reduced my daily eating hours from 2 in the afternoon to 7 in the evening, I want each of my meals to be a culinary adventure. And that has not been difficult.

I read some years back that the majority of any given American family’s meals are limited to only twelve recipes. (At least, that was more than the British average of nine.) When I read that, I thought it had to be wrong. But, after talking with friends and acquaintances, it appears to be accurate.

I need more variety than that to keep from getting bored with my food. That is probably one reason I bought an Instant pot. It was a new tool to induce me to experiment.

And that was exactly what I intended to do today for lunch.

I have seen several Instant Pot recipes for Indian pork dishes. Ground pork vindaloo is a popular choice.

Vindaloo has always intrigued me. Even though it sounds (and tastes) very Indian, it did not originate on the sub-continent. The Portuguese brought the method with them when they were the colonial masters of a good portion of India. The cuisine of the region around Goa (Portugal’s last colonial redoubt in India) still bears a notable Portuguese influence.

In the case of vindaloo, it is vinegar (an important component of Portuguese cooking) that defines the dish’s flavor layering -- and origin. But the spices are what make it Indian -- cumin, black mustard, paprika, coriander, cinnamon, black pepper, turmeric, and, of course, lots of cayenne. All of that is complemented with onion, ginger, and garlic.

That was the Indian and Portuguese contribution. But mine is a Mexican kitchen. As much as I like spicing up dishes with cayenne, it does not have the same depth of flavor as serranos and habaneros. (For those of you who believe habaneros have no Mexican roots, we will have to talk.)

I looked at those ingredients assembled next to my Instant Pot. By using my wok, I could have my meal in less than 10 minutes -- and I could control the layering of the spices. The Instant Pot would reduce my ability to tinker, and would take longer.

One of the lessons I have learned with the Instant Pot is that buying a hammer does not turn everything into a nail. As wonderful as the Instant Pot is, it is not a universal cooker.

So, out came the wok. I decided to add a bit of Siam by cooking everything in sesame oil. It turned out to be a success --  something I need to remember for future pork experiments.

And the Italy part of the meal? About a week ago, I bought a package of Italian gemelli pasta (one of my favorites) that would be the perfect shape to capture the subtle layers of the vindaloo. And it did.

The only surprise was inside the package. It does not bear on this tale, but it certainly will be a good topic for a future essay. The squeamish need not inquire further.

The meal was delicious. I do not think I have had a well-engineered Indian dish that I did not like.

My blogger pal Jennifer Rose suggested that I buy Urvashi Pitre’s The Keto Instant Pot Cookbook to get some ideas for my low carbohydrate-high fat food regimen. When I looked at the reviews on Amazon, I was amazed at the number of people who complained that the food was “too foreign” or “real weird” or “my family would never eat any of this stuff.”

I suspect the naysayers (some of whom most likely fall into the 9- or 12-recipe repertoire) were reacting more to the “Korean-style Galbijjim” or “Chicken Shawarma” than to “Corned Beef and Cabbage” or “Chicken Tortilla Soup.” But maybe they had something against Irish and Mexican cuisine along with their Asia-phobia.

Pitre’s Keto cookbook, along with her Indian cookbook, has given me some new leads for my “a-new-dish-every-day” method of cooking.

And it has reminded me that good food should not only please the tongue, it should be as fun to make as it is to eat.

Tomorrow? How about something German, Italian, and Japanese?

Or maybe not. It seems like the last time those forces combined, the dishes were not quite edible.

putting the bang in constitution

WHAM! WHAM!

It was 6 AM. The explosions did not startle me awake, even though they were close enough to nudge me out of my sleep.

For a moment, I thought I was in in Beirut in 1980. Where your first reaction is fear that you are under attack -- a fear that morphs to compassion for others when you realize the bombardment is directed three blocks away.

For the past four mornings, the cohetes of the church's religious procession in homage to San Felipe de Jesús, patron saint of the barrio, has passed by my house. The mater of the cohetes has been using the antenna next to my house as a target. As a result, the rockets burst right over my patio. And I rather like the excitement. The feast ends tomorrow.
There has been all sorts of speculation amongst the tourist community about the bomb bursts in the early morning air. My favorite came last night.

A very earnest visitor from up north told me last night that she had figured it all out. Our local ATM is empty because the town is filled with Mexican tourists enjoying a long weekend at the beach. Today is Constitution Day.

My new acquaintance told me she had seen the procession going by with the priests and the man firing off the sky rockets. She put two and two together and came up with zero.

"The church is firing off sky rockets to celebrate the constitution."

I laughed appreciatively, thinking she had constructed an incredibly good historical joke. But, she was not joking, and was a bit offended at my reaction.

It is true that today is Constitution Day or El Día de la Constitución, to give it its full linguistic due. One of Mexico's few statutory holidays (there are only eight), this is the day set aside to celebrate the enactment of the 1917 constitution. It is a big deal.
Historians are unanimous that the Mexican Revolution was the greatest historical event influencing what we know as modern Mexico. But revolutions do not create states. That task was left to a congress of various revolutionary interests to draft a constitution that would memorialize the gains of the revolution.

There were a lot of reasons the Mexicans rose in revolution. And not all of the groups were happy to work with one another. President Carranza, the leader of the army who had overthrown the reactionary Huerta regime, had very definite ideas what should and should not be part of the constitution. Land reform was way down on his list.

So, he excluded the supporters of rival groups. That included the supporters of Emilio Zapata (he of the wild-eyed stare and enviable mustache). They were primarily interested in radical land reform. (Carranza would later arrange to have Zapata assassinated.)

The followers of Pancho Villa, who also supported land reform, were also excluded -- primarily because of Carranza's fear of an alternative power base in the north. (A subsequent president, Calles, arranged Villa's death.)

Carranza, as a relative conservative from a cattle-ranching family, thought he had control of the congress that would draft the constitution. He didn't. There were forces far more radical in the congress that drafted clauses not to his liking.

The congress was not working with a blank slate. The Reform Wars in the 1850-60s had laid the foundation for a number of the revolution's goals. That included a failed land reform program and a marginally successful reduction of the Catholic church's power in Mexico.

Land reform and Catholic suppression remained a goal of the congress. But they also considered other causes of the revolution -- foreign ownership of industry and property, foreigners meddling in politics, abuse of re-election, and economic disparity.

The 1917 constitution created by the congress (and memorialized by a 100-peso note issued two years ago; President Carranza is on the right with the John Brown beard) radically altered the way Mexicans thought about governance, the Catholic church, and the activity of foreigners within its borders. Among other things, the constitution --

• Established a system of free, mandatory, and secular education, thus restricting another traditional role performed by the Catholic church
• Set up the foundations for land reform through the ejido system
• Declared all mineral resources in the subsoil belonged to the state
• Provided for liberal labor rights
• Placed ownership of all property in the hands of the government and restricted foreign ownership of property near borders or on the coast ("Private property is a privilege created by the nation.")
• Increased the restrictions on the Catholic church beyond those of Juarez's constitution -- including the seizure of church buildings
• Empowered the government to expropriate property -- from the hacienda owners, and particularly property owned by foreigners
• Prohibited the reelection of any official -- especially, the president
• Guaranteed the right of persons to own firearms in their home

The final product was a repudiation of many of the liberal principles Benito Juarez had championed during the Reform Wars. But this was a different time.

So, you can see why I found it too be a good joke that someone would believe the Catholic church would celebrate the enactment of the 1917 constitution. One of the constitution's purposes was to strip the church of its secular authority.

A subsequent president, Plutarco Calles (the same guy who ordered Pancho Villa's assassination) would so stringently impose anti-clerical laws that some members of the church rose in a rebellion. That was known as the Cristero War -- a rebellion that had strong support in our home state of Jalisco.

The constitution enacted in 1917 is still in existence -- with a few major amendments.

So, that is why our little beach villages have been filled with tourists this weekend. Most are celebrating this major step in the development of the Mexican state just as Americans celebrate the Fourth of July or Canadians celebrate Canada Day -- by lugging the family to the beach for good food and a lot of sand.

And that does not need any Beirut-style sky rockets. 

the bittersweet mail

When I am wrong, I am famously wrong. Probably because I get a lot of practice.

But the times I am correct, rare though they may be, I am a veritable Jean Dixon.

This bit of hubris has been occasioned by my prediction last Monday in mexican mail -- it delivers what counts that even though Christmas is long gone and my birthday slipped by three weeks ago, the Mexican mail would continue bringing me appropriate greetings as the year wore on. And so it has.

Yesterday, I checked my box and found --

• A Christmas card from Dale and Katie Zimmerman. He was the last in a long line of Air Force officers who commanded me.
• A Christmas card from my cousin Marsha, who still refers to Oregon as my home, as if I somehow made a wrong turn and ended up lost in Mexico.
• A birthday card from my mother -- the type of greeting mothers send to sons: far more aspirational than biographical. It will be added to the pile of cards I am squirreling away for the inevitable day in the rest home when my sole memory will be that of Hallmark.
• A birthday card from Dave Eikrem, one of my oldest friends from grade school.
• A birthday card from my friend Leo Bauman. You probably remember him from his visit here almost four years ago (leo ascending). One of those visits I will look back on as being a watershed in my life.

Last Monday, I wrote: "Even if the cards arrive late, it truly is the thought that counts. It also gives me another opportunity to celebrate our relationships." And that was certainly true for each of those cards. As my friend Colette once said: "My birthday is like Hanukkah."

But there was a fifth card in the mix, and I did not immediately recognize the name. That was not surprising in itself. One of the nicest things about writing these essays is that readers will occasionally send me a letter or card.

That was not the case with this card.

It was a Christmas card from Theresa in Albany, Oregon. It then hit me. Theresa is the sister of my friend Dr. Robert Wilson. He spends part of the year at her house and the rest at his house in Volcano, Hawaii.

Her news was not good. Bob had recently had a series of health problems. I knew that from our letters. Bob was not a man of the 21st century. He is one of my three friends who have never made the leap to communicating electronically. If I wanted to talk with him, I had to sit down and write a letter.

And that was fine with me. The act of holding a pen in one's hand seems to bring greater clarity to one's thoughts.

Theresa informed me Bob had suffered a fourth stroke, the last one coming in August when he was in his Hawaii home alone.  He was admitted to a skilled nursing home in Hawaii until he had recovered enough to be transferred to one in Oregon.

Because of the time gap created by the mail, I actually knew the end of the story before Theresa's letter arrived.

Last week, Dave Eikrem (the same friend who had sent me a card in Saturday's mail) sent me an email informing me that Bob had died on my birthday. For some reason, that had an eerie feel of closure in my cycle of celebration.

I met Bob while we were both in university -- even though we did not attend the same schools, we worked together at a bank reconciling checking account statements. It was also where I met Leo Bauman.

The three of us plus another work friend, Michael Brennan, struck up friendships. We dined together. Partied together. We even rented a condominium together on Mt. Hood where we established ourselves as the Polish Ski Team. (There must have been some reason for the name. If there was, I forget it.)

We eventually went our own ways. I was the first to leave -- for the Air Force. But we kept in contact through letters. Reuniting, as friends do, at the great passages of life. We were all in Leo's wedding party.

When I left the Air Force, we had settled into our professional lives. Me as an attorney. Leo as a banker. Bob as a dentist.

After practicing in Canada for several years, Bob returned to Oregon, where he set up practice across the river from my other dentist friend, Dave Eikrem. That is why Dave knew of Bob's death before I did.

The seine of my friendships was pulling the disparate parts of my life together. When I would visit the Eikrems, I often went across the river to spend part of the day with Bob.

People say they have unique relationships with some of their friends. I would certainly say that of Bob. We shared parts of our lives with each other that we had never (and would never) share with anyone else. And that I am obviously not going to share here.

There are many reasons why we will miss friends who have died. One of them should never be regret.

There are no regrets in my friendship with Bob. We saw one another when we needed to, and we shared what we thought was appropriate. It was the type of adult friendship we all strive to achieve.

Even though I have no regrets, I will miss the opportunity to talk with him about the thrill of living on the slopes of a volcano and the joy of simply walking down a dirt path on his farm to see if the raccoons have eaten the last of the fish we transplanted.

 You were a great companion, Bob. I hope the rest of your journey is a success.

feting a local boy

We all commit sins of the flesh. It seems to be our nature.

Sondheim plays with that notion in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street when Todd asks Mrs. Lovett, who has hatched a plan to bake people into pies, if her priest pie is good. 

"Sir, it's too good at least/ Then again, they don't commit sins of the flesh/ So, it's pretty fresh."

Well, we did not have any meat pies yesterday afternoon, but we did have priests. Two of them. Along with a saint, faux Indian dancers, and singing congregants. And those joy-inducing cohetes -- sky rockets -- beloved of Mexican Catholics and dreaded by some northern visitors.

It was the first day of a 5-day feast celebrating our barrio's very own patron saint. San Felipe. Or, as we would say in English -- Saint Philip.

But not that Saint Philip. Not the one who was a disciple of Jesus and plays a recurring minor role in John's gospel. Or even the one who worked with Stephen to tend the Greek widows.

Nope. This is San Felipe de Jesús. A local boy. 

There will be all of the usual excuses during the next five days to indulge in mild passions of the flesh that accompany Mexican fiestas -- religious or otherwise.

It turns out this particular saint had a penchant for pleasures of the flesh himself.  Born of Spanish parents in Mexico City in 1572, he led the type of spoiled childhood we would expect of a son of the conquest.  Because he was born in Mexico (and not in Spain), his vocational opportunities were limited.

He took one of the routes open to him by joining a religious order -- the Franciscans.  But, his heart was not in it.  A couple months later, he left the order and decided to be a merchant (a lowly job for his birth) in the Philippines.
The kid may as well have been Hamlet.  Within a year, he decided he wanted to be a Franciscan. Again.  To be. Not to be. And to be, one more time. But he did not quite make his way back into the fold.

Because there was no bishop at the time in Manila to ordain him, he boarded a ship to return to Mexico where a bishop could re-admit him to his order.

Fortune was not Felipe's co-pilot. His ship was wrecked on the coast of Japan.  The Japanese feared the priests (along with all of the soldiers and cannon on board) were part of a European invasion. The Japanese had had enough trouble with the bothersome Portuguese. They did not need Spanish priests mucking around in their business.

Philip's end was not a pretty one (along with the other priests on the ship and several Japanese friars and priests -- 17 in all).  Their ears were sliced off. They were paraded through Japanese streets. And, then, in an act of religious parody that would have warmed the heart of ISIS, they were marched to the top of a hill, tied to crosses, and pierced with spears until they died. 

That was 1597.  Within 38 years, Japan was closed to all foreigners. Not that it mattered to Felipe.
He was dead at 25 with nothing much accomplished during his lifetime -- other than the fact that he died a martyr's death as a lapsed Franciscan. He was not canonized until 1862. But all of that was good enough for Mexico City to adopt him as its patron saint.

So, for the next four days, we will celebrate this prodigal son of the church. Of course, there will be daily processions with that home-town feel one can find only in small communities -- like Barra de Navidad or Springfield..

There is always the inevitable lilliputian carnival with its fusbol tables and mini-carousel.

We are even hosting some giant peripatetic rocking horses that have been making their way through the local villages. An opportunity for children to indulge in the sins of the horse flesh on mahogany mustangs.

  
Yesterday I accompanied the procession from my house wending through our neighborhood and then joined everyone at the church.

The dancers filled the aisle of the small, partly-completed church. The drums continued to beat. And the dancers circled and twirled before the altar -- reminding me of Anatole France's Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame.

France's tale is of a juggler who joined a monastery. When he could think of no other gift to offer a statue of Mary, he did what he knew how to do. He juggled. Juggled well.

And that is exactly what these Mexican women, dressed in their red and white "Indian" tunics and carrying their stylized weapons, were doing. They were offering up their talents to their faith.

The juggler's fellow monks were scandalized at his offering. But I had no doubt that these women were offering up their heart and faith on this festive day.

I hope we hear Jesus' words in our own hearts: "You go and do as [they] did."

through a pot clearly

Bad movies can have good lines.

One of my favorite lines appears near the end of the dreadful The Devil's Own where the story line is as dodgy as Brad Pitt's Belfast accent. The line almost redeems the rest of the movie. "Don't look for happy endings, Tom. It's not an American story. It's an Irish one."

Those three sentences sum up an American character trait that is both a great strength and too often a weakness.

Americans, as children of the Enlightenment, believe there is a solution to every problem. Problems may be intractable, but they are never irresolvable. That may be why an American mediator was able to deliver the Good Friday Agreement. Only to see it unravel.

Sardonic though I am, I am a True Believer in the Church of Getting Things Done. Even if it is something as simple as finding a clear glass teapot.

Last Friday, I told you I had begun the quixotic search for a teapot that would let me watch the blooming of tea balls I bought in China (mexican pot search). I started with my usual source -- Amazon. And almost immediately crashed into the same wall that has often frustrated my shopping Jones.

There were all sorts of clear glass teapots in an almost endless combination of styles. Some were highly-rated by users. Others were so low on the rating scale, I did not bother looking at them.

I quickly reduced the list to five candidates. Amazon has a very helpful feature on its site. Right under the item is a notice whether or not it can be shipped to the buyer's location. Helpful and frustrating.

The notice informed me that choice number one "cannot be shipped to Barra de Navidad." Fine. I had four backups. Unfortunately, the news was exactly the same on all five teapots. For whatever reason, they could not be shipped to my house.

But I am no tyro when dealing with the vagaries of cross-border purchases. I long ago figured out that if something could not be delivered to me from Amazon, Amazon.Mx would be happy to accommodate me.

As it turned out, I should have simply first looked at Amazon.Mx for the teapot because my second choice on Amazon was not only listed, but could be shipped to my house. Even better, the total cost was less than the teapot offered on Amazon.

So, I ordered it on Monday and the Estafeta man put it in my hands yesterday afternoon. Cheaper and quicker than if I had ordered the same pot from The States.

Jana Hofer, the wife of my good friend John, gave me four or five tea balls on her month-long journey to China over a decade ago. They fascinated me.

Each one was a jasmine flower that had been dried into a ball that looked like something a Chinese natural medicine practitioner would have patients swallow (or slip under their pillow) to cure hang nails or cancer -- or both. When hot water is added, the flower rehydrates and "blooms" in the pot. It is quite a show.

I saved one of those balls. I don't know why. Maybe because it was a special gift that symbolized our friendship. Sentimentality can do that. Take a perfectly practical gift and suck its utilitarian purpose dry.

That last tea ball made its journey to Mexico with me ten years ago, and has rested in my tea bin ever since. I decided the time was right to put that gift to its intended purpose.

When I poured the hot water into the pot, the ball just bobbed around on the surface doing nothing. A few dried pieces of blossom dislodged themselves from the ball and sank to the bottom. I almost felt as if I was watching a remake of Titanic instead of enjoying a flower show.

Bit by bit, the jasmine blossom started to emerge. And, after ten minutes of coaxing, it had completely unfolded.

It was not the show I had expected. Age had undoubtedly slowed its ability to properly live up to its billing. And I guess that may be true for a lot of us. But the tea was perfect with the subtle taste of cinnamon inherent in aged jasmine.

I now know why I kept that ball. Jana gave it to me as an act of friendship, and I wanted to preserve it as long as possible. My first reaction was to call her and thank her for the gift -- and to tell her it had withstood the ravages of time, just like our friendship.

But, Jana died three years ago (a gap in the circle). So, I will call John instead to reminisce with him about the travails of life and the bond that holds us together.

And that truly is an American story.