Making it Real

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

I grew up attending a French immersion school on the very English speaking prairies of western Canada. Every subject, except English, was given in French by first language French speakers from Quebec or France. The problem was that when we stepped out into the freezing cold, the only French that existed for us was the obligatory translation on everything from chocolate bar wrappers to cartons of milk. 

Contrary to popular belief, only about twenty percent of Canadians speak French and the great majority of those live in the east. Out in the Wild West, exams were the sole motivation to use French and as the language didn’t exist to us outside the classroom, the system generally produced students with excellent receptive skills but only mediocre speakers. The added difficulty of learning everything in a second language only fueled the resentment that I used to feel while trudging off to school in the snow. 

It took me more than twenty years to finally thank my mother for her perseverance when I gave her a phone call from my first tour in Paris, thanking her for giving me the gift of another language. It’s with this experience in mind that I have always been a bit skeptical of the mad push for bilingual schools here. That is until the other day when I was given the chance to swap my normal workplace environments of concerts halls and adult classrooms for a crowded music room full of 5^th and 6^th graders in the Castra Caecillia. 

My bandmate, harmonica ace, Jose Luis Naranjo and I were invited to give a bilingual workshop on the Blues and in the talk we worked on the Blues as poetry and then showed them how to accompany the song they created on their instruments. 

It was one of those rare moments that every educator strives for, the learning was palpable in the room, the classroom fell by the wayside and the kids were learning without realizing it. Their language skills completely surprised me and the songs they played were excellent. With motivational activities like this, no wonder these hardworking teachers are making me reconsider.

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Cuatro Gatos y Un Burro...or the tale of Four Stray Cats and a Lonely Donkey

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

A few years ago, shortly before the outbreak of the neverending civil war, I found myself in northern Syria tracing the footsteps of the sixth century monk and embryonic travel writer, John Moschus. In his book, Spiritual Meadow, he had recounted his travels through Byzantium and I was looking for any remaining trace of his trail more than 1400 years later. Back in Juan’s day, the stylish Stylites were in fashion and the monastery where Buñuel’s Saint Simeon once predicated from his pillar is just a short trip away from Aleppo. The ruins are quite impressive but what struck me most about the visit wasn’t the monastery itself, but the abandoned villages that dot the surrounding countryside between it and the border with Turkey. Entire villages of Byzantine-era stone houses that reminded me of Alcuescar's Santa Lucia del Trampal pepper the Mediterranean landscape. Their open doorways gave the impression that their owners had just stepped out to buy bread, yet their homes now lay empty, deserted and doorless among the olive groves. The only sign of life was a lonely donkey tied to a tree, its owner nowhere to be seen. The area had been abandoned when it was the back and forth frontier between Christendom and Islam and since then, only the donkey has returned. A hollow museum of fifth and sixth century buildings that slowly crumble into oblivion because people chose, or were more likely forced, to live elsewhere. While the experience was interesting, I didn’t have to stay more than a few hours. I took my notes and pictures and left the ghosts behind, happy to return to a cold beer at an open air cafe in the warren of life in the old town of Aleppo. I sometimes fear that something similar will happen to my adopted home of Caceres. The give and take of the religious wars have long since passed on the Iberian peninsula but new foes have lately appeared. Ever increasing restrictions and calls for our UNESCO core to be turned into an open air museum, fit for films and festivals, might make for better pictures of stone but what about the people? Quaint medieval towns can be found all over this peninsula but few, if any, can boast of a still beating heart. You come for the palaces but you stay for the people. If it’s a choice between sword shops or hanging laundry, I’ll take the socks any day. 

The Beginning of a Quest, His and Mine

For many this was the end of the line, a place at the end of Africa to get lost in purple hazes and naked lunches. But long before Burroughs and Hendrix added their hipness, a local boy took the Tangerine brand far beyond the Levant. A medieval gap-year wanderer who saw it as a beginning rather than an end,  Ibn Battutah set off in 1325 from this white speck beyond Hercules' pillars on a pilgrimage that turned into a 25-year, 75,000-mile odyssey...all before coming home to dictate his tale. Get lost in the warren of the medina looking for this ultimate traveler-turned-saint's tomb, and pick up a bit of traveler's karma before setting out on your own journey. Or just try armchair travel by leafing through his Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling.

#architecture #history #coast #hippies #medieval #muslim #pilgrimage #maze #cemetery #islam #tomb #saint #explorer #medina #exploring #moors #beats #memorial #traveler #14thcentury #grave #gettinglost #storytellers #poets #odyssey #gapyear # #heroes #patronsaint #travelwriting #raconteur #tales #karma #ibnbattutah #wanderer #journeys #1300s #cultheroes #travelwriter

Originally published on Trazzler

Otras Luces

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

I write this from a cold damp grey dormitory city on the outskirts of Cologne, Germany. My wife,
being as persuasive as wives tend to be, somehow convinced this affirmed climatic refugee to go
against my natual winter migratory instincts and head north for the holidays. It's not my first time in
this country and while my German is limited to about ten words, the majority of them numbers, I
can't say I feel more foreign here than I do anywhere else. That said, I can't help but compare my
surroundings with the city that I now call home, Caceres. Even moreso when you consider the easy
scapegoat that Frau Merkel has become in these times of crisis for those less propensive to self-reflection.

I'm certainly no fan of the Troika and, like you, had about as much to do with the bank bailouts, failed toll-roads and empty airports as I did with the assassination of JKF, but all of those
delusions of grandeur aside, you can always learn something from travel.

The streets here seem dead. Shadows of people cross the street way ahead of me but the few shops remaining are closed for the holidays. The only lights from here to the big city are those that tell you when to cross the street and those that help traffic flow. The street lights' respective reflections flickering in the ever present puddles on the mended streets are about the closest thing I've seen to decoration so close to Christmas. Or at least it would seem that way if you don't take the time to look a little more closely.

It gets dark here just after five and it's then that the moribund lanes show the faintest glimmer of life. From around the curtained windows of the solid little houses that look out into the empty streets, little LED lights start to timidly blink and remind the passerbyers that it's Christmas time. Where the town hall has decided not to act, it seems that the people have. Sure, the combined lights of all the houses that have chosen to show their Christmas spirit wouldn't equal even one of the snowflakes on the Torre Bujaco but it's the thought that counts, isn't it?

I may not understand why a caña costs the same here as it does in Spain. Or why diesel is even cheaper here in Germany when we take the salaries and standards of living in account but I do admire the fact that the Germans haven't waited for the government to show them how to celebrate their holidays. 

A Holiday Doesn't Have to be a Holyday

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

It’s that time of year again. The time when coworkers loudly spill out of restaurants at all hours and then pour themselves into nightclubs only to stand around under a barrage of extremely loud music, shifting from foot to foot in awkward circles, waiting for the drunkest to break the ice and start dancing. That time of year when the festive lights go up and the shops that have managed to weather the crisis look up and hope that those vigorous roots the President keeps talking about will actually translate into a few more customers than last year. 'Tis the season when prawns and shellfish of all kinds dive deeper and deeper into the oceans only to end up next to a blog mayonnaise on a plate. And it's once again that time of year when, for some strange reason, those of us who view the virgin birth story with a healthy dose of scepticism are accused of wanting to get rid of holidays. And this year, with the seemingly unstoppable ascent of new poneytailed horseman of the Apocolypse, it appears that those accusations have grown even louder. But let's be serious, it’s one thing is to share the belief that religion is a private affair or that the mosque in Cordoba should belong to the people. But it is complete madness to think that because someone might believe in separation of church and state that they would also think that people shouldn’t have the right to a few days off of work in order to celebrate the return of Apollo with their friends and family. I may not feel the need to walk around the Kaba four times or to only eat fish on Fridays but I can guarantee you that there are few people who enjoy a fiesta more than me. Call it Christmas, Satunalia, Januca or the festival of light, but no matter what it’s called, I tell you I’m going to enjoy a few days off work. I'm also looking forward to seeing the smiles on my daughters’ faces while they open presents that came from Santa, the three wise men or their aunt in Athens. Trust me, they aren’t going to ask where they came from.

Spanish Sunday Afternoons #9

I've been shopping here in Spain for years, yet for some reason these have flown under my radar till I spotted them the other day. Don't have the time to make a Spanish Omelette but can't bring yourself to buy the shrink wrapped ready made ones? Here's your solution! Pre-fried potatoes with onion, just add eggs!

I could have used a bottle of these before whipping one up with what passes as olive oil in Canada this summer!

You Never Miss the Water till the Well Runs Dry

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

One of the things I liked most about living in an ex-Soviet republic like Azerbaijan was the public art. It seemed that every square had some sort of socialist-reaslist sculpture exalting the working class, Huge works in metal actually representing our lives as something admirable. In other countries I had travelled through, public art always seemed to be either religious, historical, folkloric or odd mixtures of the three. While kings, crosses and military heroes dominated public spaces elsewhere, out on the banks of the Caspian outrageously heroic factory workers marched off to glorious Monday mornings in the Baku oilfields. Politics and the joys of coalmining aside, these muscular odes to the proletariat offered a completely different roost for pigeons than the usual tragedy on the cross, despot of the day or couples dancing a local dance. With work about to start on making San Pedro de Alcantara a pedestrian street, there will surely be some sort of statue placed in the new golden mile of Caceres. But rather than a hero riding a horse from the past, why not celebrate some heroes from the present? The brave, selfless people who volunteer to help fight against an enemy much more present and lethal than any opposing belief or invading army. The people who struggle day to day to keep us healthy while their bosses cut back on everything that isn’t tied down and privatize the rest. Creating impossible working conditions all the while accusing the hard working doctors and nurses of being incompetent. Perhaps the statue of the brave nurse who might have touched her face should be left to preside over the Plaza Mayor in the city she almost died defending and choose another for our city. Personally, I would vote for a monument to the tireless midwife who helps bring new life into our city every day. A woman who twice kept my wife out of the surgical unit by never giving up and going far beyond the normal call of duty. Let the birds rest on statues that celebrate the kingly and the dead and let’s honor those that keep us living. 

Monumental Rock, Monsanto, Portugal

Perched high above a patchwork of olive groves and cork forests, a holy mountain juts 758 meters (2486 feet) from the surrounding plain. It's a sacred playground overlooking neighboring villages where naughty gods once used huge granite boulders as their croquet pieces, and left them scattered, forgetting to clean up after themselves. Over the centuries croquet balls morphed into houses, and then into a village. Be brave and dine under tons of rock on wild boar at the Restaurante Petiscos e Granitos, then siesta under a slab the size of a truck. Nobel Prize laureate Jose Saramago said it all when he insisted, “The traveler thinks he has seen stones of every type, that is until he sees Monsanto.

#smalltown #climbing #nature #forest #mountain #village #castle #getaway #geology #rural #local #mediterranean #rocks #rocky #stones #localfood #fruits #wildboar #landscape #legend #orchards #olives #boulders #oldstone #geologicanomaly #olivegrove #corktrees # #geologicalformations #geologyrocks #placestonap #cork #josesaramago

Originally published on Trazzler

Ogopogo Gets its Revenge

Remember when sea monsters were scary green dragon-like creatures that swallowed entire ships and saved the ravishing maiden for dessert? Times have changed. In this lake just about big enough to be a sea lives a legend that has morphed from its First Nation tale origins into a Disney-friendly smiling reptile that adorns everything from beach towels to key chains. Dig past the marketing to its origins and you'll find the eerily named Rattlesnake Island south of Kelowna. The tribes of the area give this as the birthplace of the beast that lurks beneath the water skiers and parasailers that dot this Canadian loch. Now a Provincial Park, the behemoth's lair is a peaceful place to tie up your boat and hike due to the fact that motor vehicles are not invited to the party. 2003 saw one of the worst wildfires ever in the region scorch most of the area, perhaps the perfect setting to imagine an enraged titan seeking revenge for its Mickey Mouse transformation.

#hiking #boating #loch #lake #outdoors #island #nature #getaway #kitsch #statepark #nativeamerican #story #firstnation #legend #tchotchkes #creature #beast #forestfires #seamonsters

Originally published on Trazzler

Camden Market

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

I grew up in my brother’s clothes, literally. I’m the youngest of two and inherited everything that survived his slips, spills and falls. One thing that drove my mother mad was that he was so hard on shoes that they almost never made it onto my feet and thanks to that, I got a shiny new pair that could easily climb slides every September. Everything else however, from winter jackets to baseball gloves, had seen a few battles before I first put them on. So in a sense I grew up second hand and when I started buying my own clothes, buying them second hand seemed like a natural progression. Where I come from, second hand shops are quite common. Like everything else these days, attempts have been made to rebrand these shops under names like vintage or boutique but at the end of the day they all sell stuff that people have sweated in before you get the chance to do the same. I have never really understood why Spaniards are happy to fly to London and search through the Camden markets for clothes yet refuse to do so here. Today's washing machines get stranger's dirt out just as well as stains ground in by cousins and older siblings. All the same, I was surprised to see the controversy surrounding the sale of second hand school uniforms here in Caceres the other day. The debate regarding school uniforms aside, I couldn’t believe that the police had been called in to deal with families trying to lessen the tremendous financial burden of sending their kids to school. In a place where the local police are rather laissez-faire in their policing, their urgency to deal with mothers swapping clothes seemed odd to say the least. My eldest daughter is three and as she’s going to a public school, we don’t have to buy uniforms, but the extra school material not covered in the cutback budgets of the school has cost us over two hundred euros. One of the main arguments I hear people use for sending their kids to the semi-private (yet funded by public funds?) religious schools is the values that they are under the impression that they represent. I guess the lesson in thrift that my used jeans represented isn’t one of them. 

Idanha-a-Velha...Good Coffee starts here

Around these parts the border is porous and exactly where Portuguese villages become Spanish is lost among the cork tree forests (and in today's Europe so is the point). Sometimes the little white houses are fringed with blue sometimes yellow but walk through the immense walls and past the Visigothic church and into a bar and the confusion ends. Even in this quiet stony little village of 79 people  the difference is clear, or should I say... black. Long a source of contraband across the Sierra de Gata into Spain, Portuguese coffee is just...better. Order one and see.

#architecture #churches #smalltown #coffee #flowers #village #culture #getaway #cafe #border #pueblo #color #villages #frontier #walls # #linguistic #floral #walledcities #dialect

Originally published on Trazzler