Tia Rafaela

my Tia Rafaela is an artist. he main body of work is her life, the sculptures, paintings and poems are adornments - a frame for her masterpiece.

careta & siblings

my Dad recently got a slide scanner. there's gotta be some jewels in there since he was an avid photographer in the 80's. here's the 3 siblings with our white boxer named Careta circa 84-85.

the return

been two years now since my primo Baldiri visited. he arrives tomorrow from Iceland where he's spent the last week treking mountians and glaciers. we'll have a good time no doubt -as we have a backcountry canoe trip planned and hopefully get some surf in as well.


for those of you who've never been here I'd like to show you what our coast often looks like in the summer. I'm not sure what the meteorological explanation is for our summer fog but I can say that it's plentiful and sometimes so thick that you can't see the shoreline from the line-up -nor can you see the waves 'till they are mere feet away. here's Baldiri with the knowledge that out there on that day it was head high.


somewhere out here is secret sandbar plain sight number 7's.

in the face of drink and smoke I run

these are no longer disthymic times. the clouds have lifted and with them the figurative fog has given way to sunshine. a cold northeast wind still blows and the ocean is lake calm with lucky low tide sandbar sessions here and there but mostly smooth silky surfaces on the horizon. is it spring or strain of will that lifts the greys to lighter hues? I can’t say but one thing is certain, one step in front of the other gets me somewheres.

each day I try and try to remember. eleven years ago I asked skinny Rob to stop his Santeria for a moment and use his tattoo machine to etch a simple statement on my calf. “will transcends fear” I said to him proudly, displaying a mix of symbols, some as old as three thousand years. what did I know about transcendence and wills and waning idealism's in the face of drink and smoke so thick that for years I would not escape the fog?

what do I know now? nothing more than there is only one step in front of the other. legacy? that’s for sculptors or perhaps scientists. written words are no longer a path to remembrance for futures. written words are like so much dirt, so many opinions loosed upon us with disregard for thought or person or creed or even crude human decency. Burroughs knew it in his drug addled middle years as he led his ragged troop of beats into oblivion and shitty parenting –unwittingly (or perhaps not so much) outliving them all by decades.

surf? it is transcendental but we can’t write about that now can we. oh no. if you’re not producing you ain’t shit mister. “sit down and shut up.”

I grabbed a number ticket from the red dispenser and sat in the stale waiting room. H1N1 signs and sanitizing stations every 12 inches like sentries. who are the swine anyway? is it not we who are ruining it for we?

“again sir I will not ask you again. sit down and shut up.”

so now I run. at first from fear and, lookin behind my shoulder knee jerk reactions, left over from those early sleepless nights in Isnotu. could I blame it on my Tia? she took me at a tender age to see the old soothsayer in his dark dank home to see if he’d cure me through shitless scare tactics out of sucking my thumb again. after the celebration with the superman piñata I slept less and less until 13 years after she didn’t come that night I lost it completely and then it got foggy.

surf? not to be underestimated in terms of power to reconnect those synapses loosed from the ether. like it or not we are beasts with intrinsic needs. we can philosophise our ways out of thinking we’re not needy but sooner or later the thin veneer that is our vanity vanishes and then what?

I run. for ego and self image and I can’t say it’s not a draw. I run from what I would be doing otherwise. sloth or time wasting.

I said it before and I dare say it again. I have these muscles and tendons and bones. and well honed they can move me through space with the grace and fluidity of any wild animal. fail for just one day to use them and I forgo the greatest gift I’ve been given. the gift of self propulsion. some praise our ability to think. but how amazing is it to ride the swells upon the ocean and then forget?

I run to surf.

surf? because you can.

stick out your chest: the book Chavez gave Obama

and not your ass

OK so some people think that the Hawaiian surf culture can take localism too far. that they use violence too easily. but what else is a people to do? the video below is very interesting and features a member of Da Hui reading an open letter to the people of Tahiti encouraging them to stand up against Billabong and the ASP and demand to be able to take a greater part in the contest both as competitors and organizers.

why? because it is their land, their wave, their culture, their capital interest and their sovereign right. I truly and sincerely hope that the Tahitian's take heed and move to force the ASP to comply.


this brings me to another point. I have often lamented here that the internet has questionable benefits in terms of human and personal relations. but the same way as Da Hui video will influence many so has the photo and story of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez gifting a communist book to America's Barak Obama.



the book is "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent." in the book author Eduardo Galeano explores the "various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation."

exploitation may seem like a harsh word to some North Americans, especially if you are a good law abiding citizen who works an honest wage and takes care of his family. but we need to open our eyes to the vast desert of social and environmental destruction which we are leaving behind in our wake of over consumption.


Chavez is brilliant in this public propaganda stunt. by this simple gesture he will effectively educate thousands of Americans in the way of economic and military exploitation that the US has been so successful at inflicting on Latin America. I hope that the Tahitians too will take back what is rightfully theirs and demand a major share in the earnings of the western companies who are exploiting Tahiti's natural resources.

Tio Rogelio

Rogelio was a quiet man as I recall. Stoic and perhaps shrouded by the exuberance of Rafaela, his lifelong partner and fellow artist. I remember him clearly, pencil moustache, thin combed back hair, button down shirt neatly tucked into his trousers, and leather loafers. His hands were strong from years of craftsmanship. I wonder what stories he had in his head for he wasn’t a talkative one. But he was there through it all. Rafaela’s life is one of wonder and surprise, a life full of spirits and spirituality, and visions, and dreams, and controversy. The masses flock to her garden to see the one touched by angels, to have their fortune’s forecast, to be in the presence of someone admired. Her sense of humour is full of irony -her work holding on to tradition and post colonial life in a way that I’ve yet to understand. And Rogelio? There he is in the back, quietly working on the aviary, or a carving, or a fiddle. Always there.

Que en paz descanse.

lottery

I won the lottery. After cashing the check and getting some things taken care of I schlepped off to find a new place. A place green, like the parrots that flew over our house in the late afternoon goldlight.

My brother used to catch them when they landed on the big Roble that we could see from our rooftop. He’d make a paste from some sort of tree sap. With a discarded tin can he’d collect the white milky substance from the mutilated tree. With bubblegum and I don’t know what else he’d boil the tacky mixture over a little wood fire right inside the tin. The stuff turned brown and sticky like the best taffy. After he’d cut a coffee limb from one of the old trees in the neighbours back yard. Coffee was perfect for the trap. It has one straight branch going up the middle and perfectly spaced branches going out on all sides. Just like the kind of tree branch you’d draw if you were in primary school. He’d take the taffy and skilfully wrap it around each branch until the whole thing was covered in the parrot catching goo.

Then I’d follow behind him and Oscar -always the smaller one, trailing and making too much noise. My hunting walk was terrible. I made more noise than anything my brother could think of. Still they’d let me tag along most times. Either my brother or Oscar would climb the tree with the trap. Careful not to fall and scrape the sticky stuff off, they’d get to the top and tie it with rope so that it protruded over the canopy. Then we’d go back to the roof and wait and watch.

Like clockwork they’d come squawking and flying erratically like so many Jonathan Livingston Seagulls. They’d swoop and twirl and screech until they reached their perch for the night. The big tree where they slept each night, majestic at the hillcrest where the road intersected -one going up to where the weird Germans had built their stone mansion set back in their property. The other road went down to the potrero and curved ‘till it reached the little farmhouse where the boys would hand milk the cows in the dawn light. Those multicoloured cows like mongrels –without breeding papers, mixed like the people that milked them. The parrots would land on the treetop and each time a dozen or two would land on the taffy covered coffee limb.

Like Olympians, Oscar and my brother would sprint up the dirt road towards the tree. You had to be fast because eventually the little green perikitos would work themselves out of the sticky mess and fly off to another branch. But usually there would be a few left, good and stuck, and they’d retrieve them with a tenderness unlike that with which they caught them. With cooking oil they’d de-tack the little birds and into the aviary they went. Saturday morning they’d be taken down to the town to sell to the pilgrims who came to see where Jose Gregorio performed his medical miracles.

So I’m off, I hope when I find that green place with my lottery winnings there are parrots that fly to their tree in the dusk and sleep. I hope the place has no patron saint, no pilgrims coming in buses and cars to see if they could get a glimpse, a golden light in the saintly place. I just want the twilight at sunrise and gold at sunset.

cousin

My cousin Baldiri is in town from Barcelona. We've been raising hell since he got here but we're starting to trim back a bit now.

On Sunday was Canada day so we went all over town enjoying the festivities which culminated with fireworks over the harbour.

Monday we surfed some small kine beach break at one of the most beautiful spots in Nova Scotia.

Tuesday was his birthday, and we had a nice get together at home complete with home made pizzas and lots 'o beer. Below is a video of Baldiri ripping it up in the living room with a diabolo yo yo.

-Bust of General Araujo in a mountain village in the Andes called Jajo. He is one of my warring Venezuelan ancestors. Some of the stories about him are mythical in scope. Perhaps one day I will attempt to put them on paper. This is the village where my father grew up; where he saw the devil one night walking back home when he was a kid.

Rule by decree passed for Chavez

from BBC News Friday, 19 January 2007, 10:16 GMT



"Venezuela's National Assembly has given initial approval to a bill granting the president the power to bypass congress and rule by decree for 18 months.

President Hugo Chavez says he wants "revolutionary laws" to enact sweeping political, economic and social changes.

He has said he wants to nationalise key sectors of the economy and scrap limits on the terms a president can serve.

Mr Chavez began his third term in office last week after a landslide election victory in December.

The bill allowing him to enact laws by decree is expected to win final approval easily in the assembly on its second reading on Tuesday.

Venezuela's political opposition has no representation in the National Assembly since it boycotted elections in 2005.

Pledge

Mr Chavez approved 49 laws by decree during the first year of his previous term, after the assembly passed a similar "Enabling Law" in November 2000.

Now the president says an Enabling Law is a key step in what he calls an accelerating march toward socialism.

He has said he wants to see major Venezuelan power and telecoms companies come under state control.

Mr Chavez also called for an end to foreign ownership of lucrative crude oil refineries in the Orinoco region.

Critics of the president accuse him of trying to build an authoritarian regime with all institutional powers consolidated into his own hands.

But, National Assembly President Cilia Flores said "there will always be opponents, and especially when they know that these laws will deepen the revolution".

Campaigning for the elections last year, Mr Chavez vowed he would strengthen his "Bolivarian revolution", named after the 19th-Century Latin American independence fighter."

from BBC News

Hardcore?

You thought surfing in below freezing air temps and super cold water is hardcore? Check out these guys.




From the BBC's A Day in Pictures -Korean soldiers proving how tough they are by bathing in snow during a winter training session.

In other news, Venezuela's president (autocrat) Hugo Chavez was sworn in today and will be changing the constitution to allow him to rule by decree, effectively giving himself the ability to pass new laws without any public input and do whatever else he wants. In addition, he has announced that many industries from telecommunications to banking will be nationalized in the coming months. We shall all have to wait and see if this new brand of socialism proves to be better thought out than the previous failed forms.

It's cold in Halifax. There are waves today and I'm working. Life seems to be passing me by right now.

and the winner is...

Chavez won by with over 60% of votes. The people spoke -the next six years will prove something or another.

cold - voting

It was 10 degrees below freezing (celsius) this morning. The waves weren't great but rideable.


Venezuela is holding elections today. Will Chavez hold on to his presidency? We will know soon enough.

Hugo Chavez & the Bolivarian Revolution

Chavez is no different than America’s G.W. Bush. Their populist rhetoric is filled with the same types of tricks to get people frothing at the mouth and enemies scurrying for safety or arming their troops. The population that they target is virtually the same, the uneducated. The primary difference is of course the message. Where Bush preaches prosperity and “freedom” for his American People, Chavez proclaims that he will bring forth a new socialist Bolivarian revolution where the people own the nation.

According to about 90% of people I spoke to, Chavez is full of shit and quite dangerous. Allow me to clarify who these people are. I spent two months in Venezuela and traveled extensively, although I spent a majority of time in the Andes. I talked with taxi drivers, grocers, hotel staff, my family, university professors, business people, you name it. I saw some Chavistas -you couldn’t miss them when they were present. Always in groups, they would often wear the colors of the new revolution and make a lot of ruckus. We were on a ferry to Margarita Island and there was a large group of Chavez supporters (about 20) who had just graduated from one of the “misiones.” They all had the revolutionary hats and all other accouterments of the revolution. They staked off a corner of the ferry and began to cheer and toast and make a whole lot of noise. It seemed to make everyone quite uncomfortable, as Venezuelans are generally quite polite.

The interesting thing that I noticed was that when one of them got up to move around the ship without one of their colleagues, he/she walked head down; lacking the confidence boasted just a second before leaving the group.

There doesn’t seem to be any other better yardstick to measure a leaders success than community economic development. After all, one of the main responsibilities of a democratic leaded in today’s world is to ensure economic stability and a humane standard of living for it’s citizens right?

Chavez has been handing out money left and right on the international scene. He has also purchased automatic weapons, helicopters, war ships, and other weapons. He routinely takes trips around the world spreading his gospel of a new socialist revolution –trips mind you that must cost the revolution and pretty penny. He has changed almost every symbol of Venezuela’s past. Every flag, coin, bill, official stamp, you name it has to be remade with the new revolutionary symbols. It’s impossible to imagine the cost of changing every official image so that Bolivar’s horse can run the other direction.

There are other things too which he is changing that we in North America don’t hear about. For example, every town and city in Venezuela has a “Plaza Bolivar.” Each plaza is quite similar. There is always a statue of Bolivar in the center, and the rest of the common is lined with benches and walkways. There are always trees and colorful shrubs too. The plaza is the proud gathering place of every town and some of them are over a century old. Chavez has decided that the plazas must be representative of the revolucion. So, many are being demolished, only to be rebuilt in the new revolutionary style.

The frightening thing about the face-lift of official symbols and the plazas is that it is in effect eliminating the countries identity. This not only seems absurd economically but it stinks of fascism too.

So what about all the community programs he boasts about, and the Cuban doctors in the barrios you ask?

The roads are in horrible condition. I heard about a village south of Merida called Santa Cruz that had been completely wiped out by a flood last year. One of my cousins owns a small sporting goods store; one of her employees lost his life in the flood. The flood razed the town. Many were left homeless and hopeless. Months later the government had not been to the site, the roads were still demolished, and not a single home had been built to assist the people who lost everything. I remember now that the person telling me this story was getting really angry because at the moment Chavez was giving money to Bolivia for a road betterment program. He had also announced that he would help Argentina clear their overwhelming international debt. Many felt cheated and deceived.

People hardly had good things to say about the Cuban doctors. Not that they were not capable, it is widely accepted that Cuban doctors are well trained. The problem is that many Venezuelan doctors were being displaced, and many were moving away to work in other countries. This type of mass exodus also happened with many of the oil industry engineers who were displaced when Chavez took over a few years ago. Anyone who was not with the revolution was fired. In fact, many people told me the same exact story about what happened to those who signed the referendum. If they worked for the government, they were fired. All who signed the referendum were black listed and unable to find work in the public sector.

I will give one more example of the loss of democracy. Historically, academic institutions in Venezuela have remained fiercely independent. Student unions have always been extremely powerful and riots often erupt anytime that the political situation seems grave. While we were in Merida there were riots. We were on the south side of the city and the schools were in the north so we didn’t get the direct effect of it. In short, there were gunshots and Molotov cocktails and tanks.

Student elections were on the horizon. The academic board of the university is not in anyway affiliated with the government. However, the government was forcing a seat, it wanted to control the political powers of the university. The candidate Nixon who was set to win the elections as he has for the past few years was suddenly accused of a violent sexual crime. Riots ensued, and Nixon went into hiding. I read the papers every day. It made little sense to me, as I didn’t have much background about student politics. But the bottom line is that the government wanted to be in charge of the political movement, killing the universities independence and forcing the revolutions “ideals” on the students through the curriculum. It meant nothing to slander the current student body president without a witness or formal charge, and force him into hiding fearing for his life.

Some of what I have written may sound exaggerated to you. You may think that I am an anit-Chavista, that I am an “escualido” (the people who are not Chavez supporters are called the squalid people).

Because of his charisma and anti Bush stance, Chavez has won the hearts of many people across the world that feel dissatisfied and deceived by their own governments. To use a well-worn cliché - if things are too good to be true well then, they probably aren’t true. Time always uncovers all secrets. If I am wrong the world will be a better place and nothing will be lost. But I fear that I am right, and that Chavez is throwing around a lot of money that people of the nation desperately need. He is buying the world’s love and admiration with oil money (and the rumor is that oil production has never returned to the levels before the takeover so he is spending money that will be generated in the future). I have heard my friends on the West Coast proclaim him as a hero to be admired. But his own people know better, they have seen this type of corruption before and they are only hoping that something will give before things get too bad.





Please feel free to write m with any comments you may have. I am quite interested to hear what you have to say.

Rafaela Baroni

The following photo collection is dedicated to my aunt Rafaela Baroni. Rafaela is an artist living and working in Venezuela. She has received several awards and has international acclaim for her work.

Rafaela spends her days doing workshops for kids in her community, tending to her guests and small zoo , and sometimes fortune telling. Some come to her for healing too, for they beleive that she has the power to perform miracles. She is the oldest of my aunts and is quite charismatic and lively.

In the next few days I will continue posting photos from our trip to Venezuela this summer. Please feel free to email me your questions or comments.

El Paramo

All of the photos in the last three posts were taken in the state of Merida in a region called "El Paramo". El Paramo represents the highest point in Venezuela, home to the mighty and caged Condor as well as the rare high mountain Freilejon plants. There are also glacial lakes and gorgeous flowers.

More writing soon come and I’m coming in breathing fire!

Chow and La Loca

Cow and Chapel

El Paramo

On Poverty

Poverty can be a tricky way to describe a state of being. There are certain definitions based on economics, and there are ways of defining poverty based on the quality of life a group of people enjoys. Not having access to potable water, health services, shelter, work, etc., can be considered a base form of poverty. In other wealthier countries like our own, not having cable, a car, a computer, or owning your own home can be considered living in poverty. Why do I bring all of this seemingly obvious stuff up? Because things are not always so obvious.

Most people in North America imagine that the world is poor with the exception of Western Europe, Japan, and Australia. We imagine that other countries have only dirt roads, poor hygiene, poor health services, widespread ignorance, and so on. Another common misconception is that people living in poverty often enjoy a sense of community that we wealthier folks don’t have because their lack of material distractions brings them forcibly together (this may be true in some cases but is certainly not the rule). The problem is that defining any group of people using any given term is in all practical purposes impossible.

By the way, most countries in the Caribbean and South America have easier access to wireless services and high speed internet, and at way lower costs than we imagine. Just do a search for wireless services in the Caribbean and see what you can come up with.

In the spirit if Walt Whitman I would like to catalog some of the things we’ve seen in the last few days that lead me to believe that I am not in a poor country.

-Real fresh fruit juice at the café
-High speed internet access for $.30 an hour
-A whole lot of people drive cars, and no they are not all jalopies (not environmentally friendly of course)
-Free tuition at the university
Engineering, medicine, science, architecture
-Great public transportation
-No one works when World Cup is on
-A cell phone, with service and contract, $30 U.S.(no contract)
-People ride their bikes for exercise
-People are out walking in the morning for exercise (we hardly even do these things in the states)
-Direct TV
-Health care, education, water, solid waste disposal
-Hippies (these guys can only make it in a country with resources for all)
-Fashion
-Guys on $10,000 sport bikes doing nose wheelies down the strip
-Classic Film TV Channel, all Latin American movies all the time

And I can go on and on

I’ve described the material wealth here, and only because I feel it necessary to continue my work is describing our trip. It would be unfair to you my readers to picture B. going to English class on mule back down a dirt track, when she actually takes the bus just like she did in Portland and has a pastry and cappuccino at the cafe before she gets to class. It would also be unfair for me to describe any sort of hardships and you thinking that it must be rough down there in that poor ass place with no nothing. I will snap some photos this week. -Going trout fishing with my uncle for a couple ´o days, in between sipping cappuccinos and watching the World Cup projected huge on the wall at the café.

The U.S. loss against the Czech Republic was definitive. We got a lot of work to do.