the worth of madero

"I have something to show you."

The text messages begin with that hook designed to whet my curiosity. I receive one every month or two. When I ask for more information, the "something to show you" always turns out to be something one of my local acquaintances wants to sell me.

Cameras. Computers. Televisions. Pistols. Drawings. A bag of German coins. A screen door.

I am not certain why they persist in asking because my answer is always no. Whatever is on offer is something I either already own or that I do not need.

But a text from a friend yesterday actually piqued my interest.

"I have a thousand peso note special edition

"Or shall I say collector s edition Id like to sell you??? 

"Would you like to buy it 4m me?"

I am not certain which part of the message caught my attention. We seldom see 1000-peso notes here. In the 12 years I have lived in this area of Mexico, I have encountered only one in the wild. I have seen far more around San Miguel de Allende on my periodic visits to the highlands. But it is difficult to pass one in the local economy because no can change them.

The only one I have held was from a Canadian tourist who tried using it to buy his breakfast at Rooster's. One of the waiters asked me to change it. I then used it as a prop in my History of Mexico lectures.

But there was that additional barb that caught me through the lip -- "collector's edition."

Periodically, Mexico produces commemorative editions of its bank notes for special events. In 2009 the Bank issued a 100-peso note to commemorate the centennial of the Mexican Revolution and a 200-peso note to commemorate the bicentennial of the War of Mexican Independence. In 2017 the Bank issued the most-recent commemorative bill -- a 100-peso note honoring the centennial of the Mexican Constitution of 2017.

But I was not aware of a 1000-peso commemorative having been printed in recent history in Mexico. My friend attempted to bring the sale home with: "Be worth 10 or 20 times more in the future[.]"

When he showed me the note, I knew immediately what it was.

In August 2018, the Bank of Mexico started issuing a new series of its bank notes (goodbye and hello to our favorite nun). This was the 1000-note for that series.

The notes are in historical chronological order from the Pre-Hispanic foundation of Tenochtitlan on the 50-peso note to contemporary Mexico of Octavio Paz and Rosario Castellanos on the 2000-peso note. (The 20-peso note is currently -- and slowly -- being withdrawn from circulation.)

The 1000-peso note honors the Mexican Revolution. It is grayish-blue with portraits of Francisco I. Madero, Hermila Galindo, and Carmen Serdán on the front, and a jaguar on the reverse. And similar to the other smaller-denomination notes that increase in size with each denomination, it is just a bit longer than the 500-peso note.

Unlike the American banknotes that I grew up with that are all the same color and size, I have come to appreciate the ease of immediately identifying a Mexican note's denomination by both its color and physical size. That is why it will be nice when we see the back of the 20-peso note. It is still too easy to confuse one of them with the new 500-peso note. They are both blue and feature portraits of Benito Juarez.

I am afraid I greatly disappointed my Mexican friend. He was hoping to sell me the 1000-peso note for more than his face value. By the time he had arrived at my house, I had been to the bank where I purchased the two 1000-peso notes that the bank had in its teller drawers. (It is that rare here.)

When I told him the story behind the new series of notes and that the 1000-peso note he held was issued November of last year and was no more valuable than the millions that the Bank of Mexico will print for this series, he was disappointed. 

Disappointed, but not defeated. He told me he was going to keep the note for several years and he would then sell it for its increased collectible value.

I knew when I was defeated. Nothing good would come of extinguishing that modicum of hope that circumstances in the future can only improve -- despite all historical experience.

I am also practical enough to know that daily exigencies here will most likely conspire to put that note back into the stream of commerce before too long. And that will also be good.

But, if you would like to get in on the ground floor of purchasing a commemorative 1000-peso note that I have heard will increase in value ten or twenty times, I know who you should talk to.

Me. Remember, though, supplies are limited. I only have two.

     

taking the shot

Our local Facebook pages here on the coast are starting to heat up about the virus.

That sentence sounds nonsensical. Facebook pages populated by northerners have been virus-obsessive for over a year now. But a new wave has started with vaccinations.

In mid-February, I drove over to Cihuatlán to gather information for an essay about the first round of virus vaccinations in our area. I had no intention of getting a jab. But, after standing in line to interview the vaccination team, I decided that I had invested enough time that I would accept the vaccination (a tale of two lines).

When I was discharged, a young man on the team gave me a sheet of paper showing the date and type of my first vaccination. Near the bottom was a statement that my booster would be administered on 15 April. He then annotated my sheet that the date was approximate and that I would receive a telephone call letting me know when and where I would actually receive my booster (the dearly departing).

Since then, several events have occurred that gave life to that "approximate" warning. The European Union has started indulging in a rather odd bout of vaccine nationalism by threatening to cut off the export of AstraZenca vaccines to the rest of the world.

India, which has been the biggest producer of AstraZeneca vaccine has taken a similar course. On 24 March, it announced it would freeze all exports of the vaccine and use the supply for its own citizens. The freeze is anticipated to remain in effect through May.

The news from India is bad for Mexico. Mexico anticipated receiving millions of doses from India through COVAX. That is not going to happen. At least, not for two more months.

According to The Economist, when new studies of the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine showed that the first jab has a 76% efficacy rate and a second jab adds only 6% more efficacy, the Mexican government considered limiting AstraZeneca vaccinations to one jab. That was based on the goal of vaccinating as many people in Mexico as possible. The reasoning made sense when doses were limited.

That concern was lessened on 29 March when Mexico received the loan of 1.5 million does of a promised 2.7 million doses of AstraZeneca from The States. The States has an undisclosed quantity of the vaccine stockpiled -- vaguely described as "tens of millions. The Americans cannot currently use those doses because the vaccine has not yet been approved. Thus the loan to Mexico. 1.3 million doses were also loaned to Canada.

That means the AstraZeneca stockpile has been partially replenished. There has been no word on whether those doses will be used for boosters or whether they will be given to people who have not yet been vaccinated.

Mexico has approved and is administering five different vaccines: Pfizer, AstraZeneca/Oxford University, Sputnik V, Ad5-nCoV, and CoronaVac. The last two are Chinese vaccines. That gives Mexico multiple paths for its ongoing vaccination program that is behind its original schedule.

Since the primary goal is to create herd immunity, and not to provide individual immunity, it would make sense to use all current doses to vaccinate as many as people as possible. But that is not my call, and I have no idea what the people who make that decision are now thinking with the arrival of the American AstraZeneca doses.

By coincidence, I was in Villa Obregón on Sunday and talked with the woman who had been standing next to me through the entire vaccination process in February. I asked her if she had heard anything about our booster. She said she had not given it much thought because she had received the same notification I had received -- that the date was only approximate.

She then asked me why we Canadians worry so much about time. I did not bother correcting her about the nationality error because her comment applies to most northerners. We are obsessed with time -- actually, we are obsessed with anything that can be quantified.

Her Mexican attitude was that it would happen when it happens. If it happens.

I have never been anxious about getting the vaccine. In fact, I was surprisingly pleased to be able to boost my immunity with the shot I received.

As for the second, we shall see.

Because I do not have full Mexican patrience, I will probably drive over to Cihuatlán on 15 April to see if anything is happening at the IMSS clinic.

Even if nothing is, it will make for a good story -- about learning patience in this land that still provides a positive life for me.       

floating my day

In 1994, The Oregonian, Oregon's primary daily newspaper, conducted what can only be labeled as a populist sting.

The newspaper sent a reporter to Mexico to interview retirees from the Oregon Public Employee Retirement (PERS) system. If I remember correctly. most of them were retired school teachers who had moved to Mexico to stretch out their retirement dollars.

But that was not the story that The Oregonian told. According to the reporter, the teachers were living the high life off of the back of Oregon taxpayers -- taxpayers who were only just coming out of a recession. The front page of The Oregonian featured a photograph of the teachers sitting in front of a swimming pool while raising glasses of what appeared to be margaritas.

What bothered me was there was no need to demonize the retirees. PERS, like public retirement systems throughout The States, had been under-funded for decades. From the 1980s, the legislature granted ever-higher retirement benefits instead of funding salary increase. And, because the state could not afford the salary increases, neither could it afford to invest funds for future retirement benefits. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

When the legislature enacted some minor reforms, the Oregon Supreme Court stepped in to stop most of the law from going into effect. Even though I was not a state employee, I was a member of PERS.

But, more importantly, I was a taxpayer. And, it was as a taxpayer that I supported most of the PERS reforms even though their enactment would have reduced my retirement benefits. Unfunded deficits do not go away on their own.

My thoughts today turned to those retired teachers in Mexico smiling contently at the newspaper readers. I found myself floating this morning in my pool with that same look on my face.

When I bought the house with no name, I used the pool almost daily. It was my refuge for reading and dining. Somewhere along my journey, I must have acclimated to our weather because I stopped using the pool in the winter. That was last year. The same was true of this year. It was simply too cool. I have been in the pool twice (and then only briefly). Until today.

We have had a pleasantly cool winter here on the coast. Days in the 70s (occasionally into the lower 80s) and refreshing nights in the 60s. Unfortunately, those temperatures do not warm my pool.

This is probably my favorite time of year. The days are warm enough for all outside activities and the nights provide perfect sleeping weather. I simply open my bedroom doors to the patio, and there is no need for a fan. If the temperature arc continues at its current rate, I will not need to use my bedroom ceiling fan until the first week in May.

Late last week, the day temperatures increased slightly. My patio wavered around 84 this weekend. That slight increase in temperature was enough to raise the temperature of the pool to, coincidentally, 84 degrees.

That was warm enough for me to pull out the pool hammock and spend three hours floating across the surface of my pool as if I were Sir Francis Drake in pursuit of Spanish gold. More prosaically, I tried to catch up on my reading.

As I was enjoying this little piece of Mexico where I have chosen to live, I thought of those unfortunate teachers who naively trusted their life stories to that reporter. I hope that even after the story ran, they continued enjoying their choice to move to Mexico.

The true irony is that after all the press, all the political battles, amd all of the court cases, PERS still has an unfunded deficit of $24 billion -- even more than when the reform movement began.

Should I hear a reporter from The Oregonian knocking on my door asking about how I enjoy my life in Mexico, I am not going to talk with him. You cannot fool this boy twice.

I spend enough time demonizing myself on these pages without requiring the services of a reporter.
      

behold the lamb

I found a role for my lamb. 

A week ago, I discovered a butterflied leg of lamb at La Comer in Manzanillo (mary had a little --). For me, it was a great culinary discovery. There may be some meat that I like more than lamb. If there is, it is not coming readily to mind.

I suppose I was overly-excited about finding it because lamb is a rare commodity here. Good lamb even rarer. So, I needed to find the right platform to let the meat shine.

The liturgical calendar provided an easy solution. This is Easter weekend and the metaphorical and culinary connections between today and lamb are numerous.

During the year I was stationed in Greece, I celebrated Easter on an Hellenic Air Force Base in 1974. It was my introduction to Greek Easter customs. Dances. Egg-bashing. And, of course, the food. Greeks know how to prepare their lamb. Tender and simple.

The one course of that Easter dinner that I remember the most was a starter. I thought I had been served a baked acorn squash that had been stuffed with various meats. At least, that was what my rather naive Oregon mind was telling me.

It wasn't a baked stuffed acorn squash. It was baked, but it was not stuffed. And it was not an acorn squash. It was a halved lamb's head.

The thought of eating it did not bother me. I just had no idea where to start. A Greek Air Force captain, who I had befriended, told me: "Just eat the tongue. It is good. The rest is not."

Well, I did not have a lamb head to bake today, but I did have that leg of lamb, and I decided to cook it as I learned in Greece. A day-long marinade in lemon, olive oil, oregano, garlic, and lemon juice -- and then a quick grill leaving the lamb just between blue and rare.

Not every lamb can be cooked that lightly. But there is no better test for the quality of lamb than to eat it rare. It should be tender with none of that vaguely-gamey taste that lambs acquire when they are on the verge of muttoning out.

This leg was not the best that I have eaten. Its texture was a little tough; I suspect because it may have been a bit older than quality lamb. Even so, the taste was perfect.

I picked up as many Greek-oriented food items that I could find at Hawaii to create a true Greek Easter feast. Pita bread. Tzatziki. Greek salad. Mint peas. Crete wedding rice. The only thing that was missing was a hall of Greek military families. I could have been at Araxos in 1974. Minus the lamb heads.

One of the greatest dangers in life is trying to recreate a favorite moment in the past. A happy get-together with friends. That day that the sunlight at St. Peter's spotlighted The Pieta. A perfect meal at Enoteca Pinchiorri.

Those moments were special because they perfectly fit the time in which they occurred. And once time passed by, so did the moment. Any attempt to recreate it would be as futile as an opium addict's chase of the dragon.

Today's meal was good because it was new. I had to substitute a number of items that simply do not exist here. And that was fine. Because, instead of wasting my time on a long-gone moment, I created a new memory.

Maybe next Easter I will find something entirely different. I suspect it will not be a lamb's head.

I trust you all had a blessed Easter.

giving away time

Here we go again.

If you live in Mexico, tonight is the night most of us will set our clocks one hour forward. (Or, if you are the type of person who mourns the death of the subjunctive, you can move that hour hand forward at the official time of 2:00 AM. I will personally be doing something far more productive.) Daylight saving time is once again upon us.

I say "most of us" because two of Mexico's states (Sonora and Quintana Roo) do not participate in this annual hokey-pokey in honor of Chronos. Sonora does not play because its economic partner Arizona doesn't. That is the usual justification. I suspect they do not play because the last thing desert states need is a saving of daylight. Ranchers are practical folk.

But the rest of us are stuck with the game. Fortunately, almost everything in my house will not need my guiding touch to jump an hour ahead. My telephone, computer, exercise watch, and television will simply execute a command embedded in them long ago.

The only clock I will need to change is the one on the kitchen oven. Oh, yes, and the clock in my car. Ironically, the object I own that contains more computer chips than the rest of my devices combined is not smart enough to change its own clock.

What the computer programmers cannot do is adjust our circadian clocks -- that marvelous device in our heads that lets us know the natural cycles of time. For some of us, the world will exist in a haze for several days until we adjust to the New Reality imposed on us by Authorities Who Simply Cannot Help Themselves In Making Us Better People.

For the first time in my life, I will be springing forward twice this year. I just happened to be in The States for its switch over to daylight saving time. Canada and The States jump on the saving bandwagon three weeks before Mexico. Somewhere between Los Angeles and Manzanillo, I gained that hour back when I returned to standard time in Mexico. All good things end. I must now give it back.

In the past, I have spent too much time ranting about the silliness of this entire exercise. But that was just a lot of wasted typing. Time in Mexico means very little to me. Because I am retired, I go to bed when I feel like it. I get up when there is no more reason for being abed. I dine at my leisure. I watch movies on my own schedule.

The only regular appointment I have on my calendar is 10 AM for church each Sunday morning. And that is exactly what I will do tomorrow.

By coincidence, the time switch is on Easter Sunday morning. There is a message there somewhere, but I will let you ferret it out.

In its stead, I will simply wish you a blessed Easter. 

hate is not a station of the cross

Today is Good Friday -- the day that Christians memorialize Jesus' passion, crucifixion, and death.

The local churches were filled with worshipers. People may use Semana Santa as a handy vehicle for a week or a few days enjoying the beach, but it is still a very important day on the Christian calendar.

I had hoped that Barra de Navidad would use this apparent ebb in the corona virus to re-initiate its own passion procession of the stations of the cross with its full Cecil B. DeMille production values. Horses. Roman soldiers. Jesus carrying his cross.

But that was not to be. Instead, I noticed something new. New to me, that is. I have probably been so taken with the spectacle of the passion procession that I missed a much smaller -- but far more personal -- exhibition of individual faith.

After leaving Good Friday services, I noticed a series of small corner shrines where small groups of the faithful had gathered to pray and worship. If I had taken a closer look, I suspect they were shrines for the stations of the cross. The worshipers would move from one to the other and recite printed prayers.

I am not Catholic, but my Mexican Catholic acquaintances have taught me that I share a common faith with them -- what C.S. Lewis called "mere Chrisrtianity." One of those shared concerns is the meaning of Jesus the Messiah's torture and death almost 1990 years ago.

In his Good Friday sermon this morning, Pastor Al commented that one fact stood out to him as he read the four gospel accounts of Jesus' torture at the hands of the Romans. The flogging. The crown of thorns. The humiliation of being stripped.

But, out of all that, Al was most offended by one thing. "Why did they have to spit on him?"

My first reaction was that was the least of what was happening to Jesus. He would soon be hung on an execution stake where he would die.

However, as I listened to Al speak, that act of spitting gnawed at me. It was a sign of absolute hatred. We spit on what we find worthless in life.

And we still do. Throughout the world, authority still spits on the powerless. It may not be Roman soldiers spitting on Jesus. But the same spirit of hatred surrounds us. Burmese soldiers shooting their fellow citizens. Chinese bureaucrats imprisoning Uyghurs in prison camps. Police throughout the world treating the powerless as being devoid of humanity.

As I sat there, I thought how ironic it was that the same Jesus who taught that we need to treat even thoughts of hatred as being the equivalent of murder was subjected to such overt hatred. That if the same Roman soldiers had adopted his teachings, they could not have done what they did. Nor should we.

I am dining out tonight. But when I return home I am going to watch The Passion of the Christ. I have not seen it in years. Tonight would be an appropriate night to watch it again.

Today would be a good day for me to start taking inventory and then to rid myself of some of the hatred that has seeped into the darker corners of my life. I am certain my neighbors who were walking the stations of the cross would understand the sentiment.

 

zuckerberg promises a better facebook

Dateline: Washington, DC
1 April 2021


In testimony today before the United States Senate Commerce Committee, Facebook chairman Mark Zuckerberg announced a new feature that will correct one of Facebook's most irritating failures.

"For the past few years, Facebook has diligently sought a way to filter out misinformation in public posts," Zuckerman informed the committee. "Frankly, we have done that out of self-preservation to avoid having the government define what is appropriate content on our platform."

Zuckerman then listed a series of initiatives Facebook has put in place to distinguish between True Facts and False Facts. Each of those initiatives has failed.

"We are done trying to be truth monitors. Instead, today, I am announcing a new program that will put an end to an even more dangerous trend in Facebook posts. Non sequiturs."

He provided the following example to the committee. Mary Hulbert of Southport, North Dakota posted a request last month asking for suggestions on how to improve her potato salad. She clearly stated: "I do not want to add dill pickles, green onions, or capers to my salad. I do not like those flavors."

The first reply was: "Have you ever tried adding dill pickles?"

The second reply: " How about green onions? If you eat a dozen a day, you will never contact covid. My daughter-in-law once saw a scientist in a play."

The third reply: "I don't like potato salad. That is because when that corrupt Grover Cleveland was president, everything in government went bad. Cleveland is responsible for ruining vegetables in general."

98% of Facebook clients identified non sequiturs as their most irritating experience on Facebook. 99% confessed they had posted non sequiturs in the past 48 hours.

Zuckerman revealed that Facebook has been working on an artificial intelligence algorithm that would ferret out non-responsive replies by combining the censor skills of a Red Chinese functionary, the eagle eye of those lonely people who spend all day reporting content violations, and the breadth of knowledge of a retired reference librarian. Unfortunately, during test, the algorithm let all three of the replies in the Mary Hulbert example to be posted.

Instead, Facebook has conceded that its discussion pages are probably a prime reason why people are incapable of carrying on an intelligent conversation -- not only online, but in person. To resolve that problem and the related non sequitur issue, Facebook will automatically apply Godwin's Law to every Facebook post.

Godwin's Law postulates that if an online discussion goes on long enough, sooner or later, someone will compare someone or something to Adolf Hitler or fascism in general. Once that happens, discussion ends.

"This is how the new system will work," Zuckerman explained to two dozing senators on the committee. "If Mary Hulbert asked for suggestions on her potato salad, Facebook would be programmed to immediately respond: 'Only Nazis eat potato salad. And anyone who responds to this post is a racist homophobe and will be reported to the administrator.'

"This action may be drastic, but our research team predicts that the chances are high that, in response, people will cut down on online discussions and actually start having real conversations with their actual friends.

"Or maybe we will all turn out to be April fools."