Fred called late one afternoon and quickly dispensed with the social chit chat.
”Orlando’s been taking all the water and says he’s not going to send a peon to clean the ditch because he’s the mayordomo.”
“He’s not the mayordomo, you are,” Mark said. “He knows we just made him mayordomo on paper because you don’t own any land and can’t officially be the mayordomo even if you really are because you do the job.”
“Then you tell him that. He won’t listen to me.”
Orlando is Fred’s uncle and he knows that Fred is the mayordomo, the one who directs the rotation of water among the irrigators in the village. Orlando was the mayordomo for twenty years until Tomás, Fred’s father, took over the responsibility. Then Tomás lost his leg to diabetes and it says in the bylaws of the acequia association that the mayordomo can’t be someone who has a disability and Fred was the only one left to do the job. But Tomás hadn’t put any of the land in Fred’s name and neither can you be a mayordomo if you aren’t a landowner. Mark and I were already the commissioners, the treasurer and secretary of the acequia, so we really needed Fred (Tomas could then be the third commissioner, as that didn’t require having two legs). The rest of the village irrigators, or parciantes, never came to the meetings and were happy to leave the administration of the acequia to those of us who had governed it for years, even if two of us were gringos, Tomás had only one leg, and Fred didn’t own any land.
“I’m quitting if Orlando doesn’t agree to send a peon to clean the ditch and pay him the $64 just like everyone else has to,” Fred said. From the tone of his voice Mark could tell he was offended that his uncle wasn’t acknowledging his status as mayordomo.
“OK, Kay and I will go talk to him. If he gives us any trouble we’ll just tell him that the commissioners have decided he’s not going to be the mayordomo, even if it’s only on paper. We’ll use someone else’s name to make it legal and you’ll continue to be the mayordomo.”
“He’s loco,” Fred said. “And he’s my uncle!”
That’s never made any difference in this crazy place we live. So Mark and I walked down the road to Orlando’s house the next morning to try and get things straightened. There was no answer at his place so we went down to his son Nelson’s house and there he was, sitting outside in the sun watching Nelson work on one of his cars. Nelson had a job at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a construction foreman and never worked the land. Orlando irrigated it all and ran a small herd of cows, like he always had, although the only way he could get around anymore was on an ATV that he called his caballo.
“Hola, vecino,” I said. “Como esta?”
“Bien, bien,” Orlando said, giving each of us one of those gentle handshakes that are typical of the viejitos of the villages of northern New Mexico.
We sat down on the bench next to him, out of the wind, and made chit chat for a few minutes until I thought it was time to talk about why we were there.
“So, Fred called us yesterday and says that you told him you weren’t going to send a peon to clean the ditch. He says you told him you’re still the mayordomo. You remember at the meeting we just put your name down as mayordomo for the record because Fred doesn’t own any land, but that he’s going to do the job, right?”
Orlando threw back his head and laughed and laughed.
“I really got him good, didn’t I?” he said.
“You mean you were just joking with him?” Mark asked. “I think Fred believed everything you said.”
“He don’t know shit about being mayordomo, pero if you say he’s the mayordomo then I guess I have to send a peon to clean the ditch. I already asked someone anyway.”
Mark and I grinned at each other. Apparently these guys joked with each other as much as they joked with us, to the point we never knew when they were telling the truth or not. But asking Orlando about taking all the water was trickier. He had a reputation for hogging the water when he was mayordomo and we didn’t doubt for one minute that Fred was right in that regard. But we did our best to stay on good terms with everyone and didn’t want to be the ones to call him on it.
“So, who has the water?” Mark asked diplomatically. “We’d like to get it soon so we can water the orchard.”
“It’s coming down, it’s coming down, what’s your hurry. Everyone’s always asking, where’s the water when they know it’s got to go all the way up before it comes down.”
Orlando was referring to the water rotation that started at the lower end of the valley, where each parciante took his or her turn watering according to how much land he or she owned. If you had a few acres then you had one water right and you got the water for 24 hours, in a good year of sufficient water, and if you had a bunch of land you had several water rights and got the water 24 hours for each right. So in order to calculate when you were due to get the water you had to know how many water rights each parciante had and how long it would take the water to move up the village until everyone had had his or her turn and then the rotation started all over again. Most of us, even Mark and I as commissioners, just let the mayordomo work it out and let us know when it was our turn. But when the mayordomo was taking the water out of turn it was a problem.
“Are you irrigating your fields up above?” I asked. “I didn’t see any water coming through your compuerta at the house.”
“Si, si, I have the water until tonight at six and then I let it go. That’s the way we do it, and Fred should just quit bitching about it and wait his turn.”
“He says that somehow things have gotten out of rotation and it should already be coming down,” I say.
Orlando laughed again. “He’ll get his water tonight, no problem.”
We decided to leave it at that, a fairly satisfactory resolution of the problem. Which was highly unusual. When it came to dealing with the acequia, solutions were few and far between. When someone wasn’t complaining about the water being taken out of turn they were complaining about someone taking too much. Or someone not closing his or her compuerta, the gate that allowed the water to flow from the acequia madre into the landowner’s field. Or not leaving enough water in the ditch so animals downstream could drink. Or not paying ditch fees. Or letting the water run down the road instead of in the field. And the ones they usually complained to were the commissioners, meaning Mark, Tomás, and me.
When we called Fred to tell him what Orlando had said, he answered, “He didn’t sound like he was joking to me. A ver, we’ll see if someone shows up to dig for him on Saturday.”
Orlando’s grandson showed up to dig for Orlando on Saturday, and Orlando showed up as well, to keep an eye on things. It took us half an hour to figure out who was digging whose derecho, or water right, as most of the landowners in the village hired local men and women to clean the ditch for them. They were either too busy to do it themselves, too old, didn’t live in the village anymore, or uninterested in having anything to do with the acequia. If you had more than one water right your worker had to clean a longer section than the worker digging one right. Fred was the man who laid out the sections, approved the work, and moved us up the ditch, all day long, with an hour off for lunch. By the time we reached the presa, or dam, at the river, the ditch had been cleaned of weeds, roots, garbage, and mud. When the water was released from the presa at the end of the day, it hurried down the ditch on its long journey back to the river, and ultimately, the Rio Grande.
Orlando met us at the presa at five o’clock on his caballo.
“How do you like the new mayordomo?” he asked Mark and me, as we lay on the ditchbank, resting.
“Fred did a good job, and he’s not as mean as you,” Mark teased.
“You got to be mean to get these cabrones to do any work. I bet there’s still jaras all along the ditch that you guys didn’t cut,” Orlando said.
“We cut all the willows,” I said. “And they were a real mess, believe me.”
“That’s cuz you got to cut them every year and not let them get too big and suck up all the water.”
“Well, vecino, we cut them every year when Tomás was the mayordomo, just like we cut them every year when you were the mayordomo. So what do you think about that?” Mark laughed.
“I think you’re all loco, that’s what I think, and I’m glad I’m not the mayordomo anymore,” Orlando said.
Just then Fred opened the presa so the water could flow down the newly cleaned acequia.
Orlando got back on his caballo and took off down the road.
“I bet that old son of a gun is going to go open his compuerta and take the water before anyone else, to hell with the rotation,” Fred said disgustedly.
“Oh well,” Mark said. “For now, there’s enough water for everyone. Just go close his compuerta at six tonight and start the regular rotation. If he complains tell him to talk to us about it.”
Fred shrugged his shoulders and went off to pay the peones who had worked all day on the ditch.
I looked at Mark and laughed. “Since when are we the arbiters of what is reasonable?”
“Until someone accuses us of doing something stupid and then someone else will have to straighten things out. Let’s at least rest on our laurels for awhile. It won’t last long.”
So we did.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Elegy for El Valle
It is presumptuous of me to write an elegy for El Valle, my home for the last 20 years, when my neighbors and their parents and grandparents have been here for hundreds. But within the temporal context of my tenure, and the relational nature of my complaint, I’ll go ahead anyway.
I’ve written before about Tomás, the man who was our neighbor for most of those 20 years (he died a year and a half ago). In the eulogy I delivered at his funeral I said: “There is an unspoken law between us that any favor asked will be granted. It is based on an understanding that the favor will not be unreasonable, that it is necessary and not frivolous. Sometimes, because of our cultural differences, there may be a certain shaking of the head, a muttered, “those crazy gringos” or “that loco,” but we accede to the other’s wishes, and we write it off as what you do for a friend, pure and simple. I loved Tomás unreservedly, despite all the judgments I brought to bear. I hope he loved me the same way.”
Tomas was the unofficial mayor of El Valle, the Alpha Male of the village, and when inevitably challenged by some of the younger men who aspired to that role, responded as any benevolent dictator would: he proceeded to try to crush them with every power at his command. But benevolent is the operative word here: he asserted an authority that arose from the surety of what he felt was best for the well being of the community.
Now, as we (I’m an acequia commissioner) begin another acequia spring without his authority it’s like we’re dealing with an assortment of dysfunctional family members who we somehow have to appease while at the same time circumvent the chaos they threaten to unleash at any given moment. The situation is exacerbated by the loss of Mark, who as a commissioner for fifteen years learned how to balance Tomas’ power with his acuity. I long for Tomas to say, “Ya basta!” and lay down the law about who gets the water, when they get the water, who has a legitimate gripe and when they just have to shut-up. As it is, two parciantes are fighting over who is responsible for the capacity of their lateral ditch, which is outside the purview of the acequia commission but has drawn us in anyway because we’re trying to promote cooperation; a debate over a water right that is generations old and now divided into percentages that no one knows the genesis of; and payment of contract work for cleaning the ditch, which is something alien to the tradition of each parciante cleaning, or hiring someone to clean, the ditch communally, which we abandoned a year ago because none of the parciantes showed up and neglected to make sure someone would be there to do the work for them. There are now so many divided water rights among absentee landowners and family transfers that I can barely keep track of who I bill for what amount of money.
I got the water yesterday for my orchard and upper field. The first irrigation of the season is brutal; the lateral ditches have filled in with dead grass and debris, the water inevitably flows over the side of the ditch, and you have to run around hoeing and shoveling it free while filling “sackos”, or burlap bags with dirt to line the sides of the eroded laterals to keep the water moving toward what it is you’re trying to irrigate. It took me all afternoon to guide the run-off orchard water onto my garlic patch, so far the only greenery besides grass that I have in cultivation. Without Tomas, who made sure the manure was neatly shoveled out of the corral and into piles ready for delivery, and Mark, who once the manure was spread could rototill the garden at a moment’s notice, I am at the mercy of the current crew who may or may not have the tractor fixed or who may be so overwhelmed with wage labor work they don’t have the time or ability to help me, So the rest of my garden waits.
Tomas’s son just called and told me that his nephew and wife had a new baby and named him Tomas. That baby has big boots to fill. But it’s kinda like the Middle East around here: the days of dictators are over (even the benevolent ones), which is probably a good thing, but the future of acequia democracy may also be in trouble. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to take the water and as a commissioner try to channel Tomas as best I can: just irrigate when it’s your turn, close your compuerta when it’s not, and otherwise, callete!
I’ve written before about Tomás, the man who was our neighbor for most of those 20 years (he died a year and a half ago). In the eulogy I delivered at his funeral I said: “There is an unspoken law between us that any favor asked will be granted. It is based on an understanding that the favor will not be unreasonable, that it is necessary and not frivolous. Sometimes, because of our cultural differences, there may be a certain shaking of the head, a muttered, “those crazy gringos” or “that loco,” but we accede to the other’s wishes, and we write it off as what you do for a friend, pure and simple. I loved Tomás unreservedly, despite all the judgments I brought to bear. I hope he loved me the same way.”
Tomas was the unofficial mayor of El Valle, the Alpha Male of the village, and when inevitably challenged by some of the younger men who aspired to that role, responded as any benevolent dictator would: he proceeded to try to crush them with every power at his command. But benevolent is the operative word here: he asserted an authority that arose from the surety of what he felt was best for the well being of the community.
Now, as we (I’m an acequia commissioner) begin another acequia spring without his authority it’s like we’re dealing with an assortment of dysfunctional family members who we somehow have to appease while at the same time circumvent the chaos they threaten to unleash at any given moment. The situation is exacerbated by the loss of Mark, who as a commissioner for fifteen years learned how to balance Tomas’ power with his acuity. I long for Tomas to say, “Ya basta!” and lay down the law about who gets the water, when they get the water, who has a legitimate gripe and when they just have to shut-up. As it is, two parciantes are fighting over who is responsible for the capacity of their lateral ditch, which is outside the purview of the acequia commission but has drawn us in anyway because we’re trying to promote cooperation; a debate over a water right that is generations old and now divided into percentages that no one knows the genesis of; and payment of contract work for cleaning the ditch, which is something alien to the tradition of each parciante cleaning, or hiring someone to clean, the ditch communally, which we abandoned a year ago because none of the parciantes showed up and neglected to make sure someone would be there to do the work for them. There are now so many divided water rights among absentee landowners and family transfers that I can barely keep track of who I bill for what amount of money.
I got the water yesterday for my orchard and upper field. The first irrigation of the season is brutal; the lateral ditches have filled in with dead grass and debris, the water inevitably flows over the side of the ditch, and you have to run around hoeing and shoveling it free while filling “sackos”, or burlap bags with dirt to line the sides of the eroded laterals to keep the water moving toward what it is you’re trying to irrigate. It took me all afternoon to guide the run-off orchard water onto my garlic patch, so far the only greenery besides grass that I have in cultivation. Without Tomas, who made sure the manure was neatly shoveled out of the corral and into piles ready for delivery, and Mark, who once the manure was spread could rototill the garden at a moment’s notice, I am at the mercy of the current crew who may or may not have the tractor fixed or who may be so overwhelmed with wage labor work they don’t have the time or ability to help me, So the rest of my garden waits.
Tomas’s son just called and told me that his nephew and wife had a new baby and named him Tomas. That baby has big boots to fill. But it’s kinda like the Middle East around here: the days of dictators are over (even the benevolent ones), which is probably a good thing, but the future of acequia democracy may also be in trouble. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to take the water and as a commissioner try to channel Tomas as best I can: just irrigate when it’s your turn, close your compuerta when it’s not, and otherwise, callete!
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Who Are These People?
Whenever I’m in an upscale community (not a common occurrence), walking around looking at million dollar houses, I find myself asking, “Who are these people and where does all this money come from?” Right now I’m in Del Mar, California, in a house loaned to me by some homies from New Mexico who inherited it from their family. But who are all these other people, in their glass houses with ocean views, manicured landscapes, and shiny BMWs (I swear to God I haven’t seen one dirty car since I’ve been here)?
Who I actually see are the workers: gardeners, plumbers, plasterers, painters, general contractors, and dog walkers, busily keeping all this luxury afloat. The gardeners are all Mexicanos, pruning, planting, and watering all the lush vegetation that has turned these once barren hills (that’s when the homies’ family bought in) into paradise. In the mornings, as I walk along the windy streets in a circuitous path to the ocean I see some Anglo runners and dog walkers, most of them my age or older. Is this a community of retirees who bought in before the property taxes skyrocketed and who now benefit from Prop 13? Are they second home owners, so wealthy they can afford to hire all these people to maintain their houses for their two or three months’ winter stay?
Whoever they are, and whether their money is old money or nouveau riche money, I feel like an alien. Not only am I an alien in Del Mar particularly, but in California generally. Take today for example. I needed to put gas in my hosts’ car after driving it down the coast the other day to grocery shop. So I find out where the nearest gas station is and proceed apace. I make sure I know which side of the car the gas tank is on, and whether it has to be popped open from a release inside, and then I venture out. I pull into the gas station and there are all these instructions on the pumps about using your debit card or cash, which I intend to use instead of my credit card, but I’m already envisioning putting the money into the slot and seeing it disappear forever while I try to figure out how it actually connects to gas for the car. Fortunately, it also says I can pay inside, which I do. Then I go back to the car and pull the Regular Unleaded hose out and attempt to put it into my gas tank. But it has this weird accordion end on it, and try as I might I can’t get it to stay in the gas tank opening. Whenever I depress the delivery handle it just pops back up. I’m looking around in a panic thinking, maybe I’m trying to put the wrong gas in the tank because the pump says EC Regular Unleaded, whatever that is, but I see that all the pumps say that. So then I start looking around for someone to help me, embarrassing as that’s going to be, but remembering that I’ll never have to see this person again. But everyone who is working a pump is also working a cell phone and can’t hear me. Finally, I see a Mexicano worker put his phone away and I approach: “Habla Ingles?” I ask, and he answers, “ Poquito,” and I know I’m not going to be able to explain my predicament in Spanish. So then I find another guy, an Anglo this time, and I say, “I’m from New Mexico and I’ve never seen a pump hose like this and I can’t make it work in my gas tank.” Now I know I’m perpetuating a stereotype about New Mexicans, who already have enough trouble convincing everyone that we’re actually part of the U.S., but I’m desperate here. So he graciously comes over and shows me that you have to shove the hose into the tank until it locks and then dispense your gas. I keep apologizing and he keeps saying don’t worry about it but by then I’m completely frazzled and when I get back into my (their) car I pull out into the wrong lane and am forced onto I-5 going south when all I wanted to do was go to a gas station and fill the gas tank. I’m a perfectly competent driver under normal circumstances but now I’m a wailing banshee praying that there is am exit before San Diego where I can get off and find my way home without using up all the gas I just put back into the tank. And there is: Del Mar Heights, which brings me back to Camino Del Mar and the familiar streets leading up to the lovely bungalow that has been so graciously loaned to me by my New Mexico homies. As I’ve said before, maybe it’s best that I don’t leave home.
Who I actually see are the workers: gardeners, plumbers, plasterers, painters, general contractors, and dog walkers, busily keeping all this luxury afloat. The gardeners are all Mexicanos, pruning, planting, and watering all the lush vegetation that has turned these once barren hills (that’s when the homies’ family bought in) into paradise. In the mornings, as I walk along the windy streets in a circuitous path to the ocean I see some Anglo runners and dog walkers, most of them my age or older. Is this a community of retirees who bought in before the property taxes skyrocketed and who now benefit from Prop 13? Are they second home owners, so wealthy they can afford to hire all these people to maintain their houses for their two or three months’ winter stay?
Whoever they are, and whether their money is old money or nouveau riche money, I feel like an alien. Not only am I an alien in Del Mar particularly, but in California generally. Take today for example. I needed to put gas in my hosts’ car after driving it down the coast the other day to grocery shop. So I find out where the nearest gas station is and proceed apace. I make sure I know which side of the car the gas tank is on, and whether it has to be popped open from a release inside, and then I venture out. I pull into the gas station and there are all these instructions on the pumps about using your debit card or cash, which I intend to use instead of my credit card, but I’m already envisioning putting the money into the slot and seeing it disappear forever while I try to figure out how it actually connects to gas for the car. Fortunately, it also says I can pay inside, which I do. Then I go back to the car and pull the Regular Unleaded hose out and attempt to put it into my gas tank. But it has this weird accordion end on it, and try as I might I can’t get it to stay in the gas tank opening. Whenever I depress the delivery handle it just pops back up. I’m looking around in a panic thinking, maybe I’m trying to put the wrong gas in the tank because the pump says EC Regular Unleaded, whatever that is, but I see that all the pumps say that. So then I start looking around for someone to help me, embarrassing as that’s going to be, but remembering that I’ll never have to see this person again. But everyone who is working a pump is also working a cell phone and can’t hear me. Finally, I see a Mexicano worker put his phone away and I approach: “Habla Ingles?” I ask, and he answers, “ Poquito,” and I know I’m not going to be able to explain my predicament in Spanish. So then I find another guy, an Anglo this time, and I say, “I’m from New Mexico and I’ve never seen a pump hose like this and I can’t make it work in my gas tank.” Now I know I’m perpetuating a stereotype about New Mexicans, who already have enough trouble convincing everyone that we’re actually part of the U.S., but I’m desperate here. So he graciously comes over and shows me that you have to shove the hose into the tank until it locks and then dispense your gas. I keep apologizing and he keeps saying don’t worry about it but by then I’m completely frazzled and when I get back into my (their) car I pull out into the wrong lane and am forced onto I-5 going south when all I wanted to do was go to a gas station and fill the gas tank. I’m a perfectly competent driver under normal circumstances but now I’m a wailing banshee praying that there is am exit before San Diego where I can get off and find my way home without using up all the gas I just put back into the tank. And there is: Del Mar Heights, which brings me back to Camino Del Mar and the familiar streets leading up to the lovely bungalow that has been so graciously loaned to me by my New Mexico homies. As I’ve said before, maybe it’s best that I don’t leave home.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Diary of a Bad Year, continued
Marriage, or a long-term partnership, is in part a power relationship (see Marriage post), and ours was emblematic of how that power shifts and flows through the many years of individual and relational change. For some crazy reason—part masochism, part curiosity, I guess—I started reading a book by Rafael Yglesias called A Happy Marriage that was a fictionalized account of his wife’s cancer death. I’d read Yglesias many years before, and I must have seen it on the new bookshelf at the public library, but what possessed me to pick it up at that stunningly complex moment I don’t know. Once I started, however, I couldn’t put it down, and while I faced the latest manifestation of Mark and my relational shift I became intimately involved in the details of Yglesias’ topsy-turvey marriage and their descent into cancer hell.
Although we arrived there along different paths, Yglesias’s marriage and my partnership had settled into a less confrontational pattern, where jockeying for power had receded in the face of a need for peace and calmness between us as we came to terms with diminishing returns in the rest of our lives: less intensity in our political work, less need to prove ourselves artistically, and less parenting as our kids were fledged. We, like they, looked forward to some time to do things we hadn’t done in awhile, like work on projects for our own enjoyment, visit our friends more, see some places we had never seen (albeit for us on a marginal income). But then we entered our separate reality, which manifest in both spacial and temporal terms.
As Mark’s illness progressed, the past, present, and future took on entirely new meaning. He couldn’t look forward to anything (no becoming in Nietzchean terms). To look back was an exercise in too much painful nostalgia. So his life became the present, which meant a focused attention to the details of his health/illness with little room left over for attention to much else. He had to center every fiber of his being on his being. I began to lose him incrementally as the intimacy of our relationship, in which we shared a common history and a current engagement, began to recede. While he was very solicitous about my health and the burdens placed upon me due to his illness, he really had little interest in anything that didn’t relate to being in his illness.
Everything we did, and everything we took into consideration, revolved around what was possible for Mark. He didn’t want to see anyone but family and a few close friends. I had to diplomatically erect barriers between him and everyone else who wanted to see him or help me or at least demonstrate their concern. To minimize direct contact but maintain some connection I set up a list-serve where I periodically posted e-mails letting folks know how Mark was doing, being careful to supply just the bare facts about the latest results of a CT scan, another trip to the hospital, or the onset of diabetes (once his pancreas was compromised he couldn’t produce insulin): a supply of information that didn’t invade a privacy that was never explicitly outlined to me but that I implicitly understood. What he thought and felt and experienced with me and the kids was not for public consumption. I had to restrain a friend from setting up a Caring Bridge web site for Mark, something definitely not in sync with who we were and how we wanted to be in the world. I’d seen too many sites that elicited too much tortured comment that perhaps filled the needs of those doing the commenting but would certainly not fill ours.
A couple of weeks before Mark died I sent this e-mail to the list-serve, apologizing for the long time between postings: “I find it’s increasingly difficult to write these updates. It’s almost as if Mark and I are in a separate reality (I use the term ‘reality’ in all its subjectivity, although as a pragmatist I have to assign some meaning to it). Illness, and cancer in particular, does this to people’s lives. Although I am by profession a writer, I haven’t really wanted to write about what it’s like to face Mark’s terminal diagnosis or the day to day details of his decline, partly because it’s already been dealt with by so many other writers and partly to protect Mark’s privacy.” Now, four months later, I am writing, but I hope that what I deem is “for public consumption” means something to my readers and respects the dignity of Mark’s life and death.
Although we arrived there along different paths, Yglesias’s marriage and my partnership had settled into a less confrontational pattern, where jockeying for power had receded in the face of a need for peace and calmness between us as we came to terms with diminishing returns in the rest of our lives: less intensity in our political work, less need to prove ourselves artistically, and less parenting as our kids were fledged. We, like they, looked forward to some time to do things we hadn’t done in awhile, like work on projects for our own enjoyment, visit our friends more, see some places we had never seen (albeit for us on a marginal income). But then we entered our separate reality, which manifest in both spacial and temporal terms.
As Mark’s illness progressed, the past, present, and future took on entirely new meaning. He couldn’t look forward to anything (no becoming in Nietzchean terms). To look back was an exercise in too much painful nostalgia. So his life became the present, which meant a focused attention to the details of his health/illness with little room left over for attention to much else. He had to center every fiber of his being on his being. I began to lose him incrementally as the intimacy of our relationship, in which we shared a common history and a current engagement, began to recede. While he was very solicitous about my health and the burdens placed upon me due to his illness, he really had little interest in anything that didn’t relate to being in his illness.
Everything we did, and everything we took into consideration, revolved around what was possible for Mark. He didn’t want to see anyone but family and a few close friends. I had to diplomatically erect barriers between him and everyone else who wanted to see him or help me or at least demonstrate their concern. To minimize direct contact but maintain some connection I set up a list-serve where I periodically posted e-mails letting folks know how Mark was doing, being careful to supply just the bare facts about the latest results of a CT scan, another trip to the hospital, or the onset of diabetes (once his pancreas was compromised he couldn’t produce insulin): a supply of information that didn’t invade a privacy that was never explicitly outlined to me but that I implicitly understood. What he thought and felt and experienced with me and the kids was not for public consumption. I had to restrain a friend from setting up a Caring Bridge web site for Mark, something definitely not in sync with who we were and how we wanted to be in the world. I’d seen too many sites that elicited too much tortured comment that perhaps filled the needs of those doing the commenting but would certainly not fill ours.
A couple of weeks before Mark died I sent this e-mail to the list-serve, apologizing for the long time between postings: “I find it’s increasingly difficult to write these updates. It’s almost as if Mark and I are in a separate reality (I use the term ‘reality’ in all its subjectivity, although as a pragmatist I have to assign some meaning to it). Illness, and cancer in particular, does this to people’s lives. Although I am by profession a writer, I haven’t really wanted to write about what it’s like to face Mark’s terminal diagnosis or the day to day details of his decline, partly because it’s already been dealt with by so many other writers and partly to protect Mark’s privacy.” Now, four months later, I am writing, but I hope that what I deem is “for public consumption” means something to my readers and respects the dignity of Mark’s life and death.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Diary of a Bad Year, continued
Once Mark was admitted to the hospital, via the emergency room, when he could no longer keep any food down, they biopsied the tumor, which was malignant. It was, as we had previously been told, at the head of his pancreas and therefore nonresectable, or inoperable. The surgical oncologist came into Mark’s hospital room to tell us—the kids and I were there—while a drug addict in the next bed kept moaning for medication and turning up the TV to unbearable levels. He glared and muttered at me when I turned it down every time I passed by. Once the surgeon left after giving us the bad news they moved Mark to a private room. I remember going back to Jakob and Casey’s house about ten that night and collapsing on the bed in the guest room, sobbing, while the kids sat there helplessly with me.
It took nine days in the hospital to get a stent put in his duodenum with an endoscope so he could eat (it took two tries). Everyone there was incredibly kind. We made friends with all the nurses, the aids, the interns, the housekeepers, etc. and heard all their stories: how many kids they had; what school they were attending to improve their situation; where they were born and raised; how they liked (or hated) their job. You don’t have time to make friends with the doctors; you only see them when they have news to deliver (I never did see the gastroenterologist who put the stent in).
Chemotherapy was scheduled once we could get our insurance company’s approval. Mark was initially given dispensation for treatment at the UNM Cancer Center instead of Presbyterian Hospital, which was his medical insurer, because of the specialized surgical team at the Cancer Center. Once it was clear that surgery wasn’t an option, we had to again get approval through Presbyterian for oncology treatment. That took about a week, and I was grateful for the time. Mark was able to eat, albeit a restricted diet (no fresh vegetables, chewy meat, or anything that could conceivably get stuck in the stent), and gain a little strength before starting once a week chemo treatments.
We’ve all heard the horror stories about chemotherapy (and seen them, if you follow the HBO series Breaking Bad, ironically filmed in Albuquerque): losing weight, losing hair, throwing up, spiraling down. Mark’s physical well being improved, however: he gained some weight, never lost any hair (he didn’t have much to begin with but what he had stayed on his head), never threw up, and maintained the energy to go for a daily walk. After a few months of weekly chemo, if he felt well enough, he even drove himself down to Albuquerque for his session, spending the night at Jakob and Casey’s or even driving himself back the same day. Max had made the decision to take a leave of absence from college, and stayed in Albuquerque, so he was there with Mark when I wasn’t.
Every six weeks we both went down for a CT scan to monitor the size of the tumor and see the oncologist for an evaluation. (By the way, all those TV shows and movies where they show cancer patients going into the oncologist’s office for a consultation are a complete fabrication. Those docs run from exam room to exam room and barely have more than 15 minutes for a look at the lab work, a quick physical check-up, and to answer a few questions we manage to squeeze in. Then it’s off to the races.) We tried to make it festive, and had dinner with the kids, watched movies, and spent many hours in front of the fireplace on cold, winter nights.
Amazingly, Mark was also able to pay considerable attention to his intellectual work. For many months during his illness he edited and serialized in our non-profit community newspaper La Jicarita News an article he had written concerning the adjudication of land grants in New Mexico. The article was intended to be the introduction to a book dealing with this sordid period in New Mexico’s history, where indigenous people were dispossessed of millions of acres of land that had been granted them by the Spanish and Mexican governments. Titled “Brief History of American Imperialism” it chronicled early American expansionism, Manifest Destiny, the Mexican-American War, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and racism in the New Mexico Territory.
Not only that, but he spent two or three hours several days a week spread out on the floor of the bedroom finishing the article evaluating the effect George W. Julian’s tenure as Surveyor General of the New Mexico Territory (1885-1889). He had received a grant from the New Mexico Historical Records Advisory Board to do the research and writing in 2009, and he finished the work by the spring of 2010.
So from about October through April Mark had a pretty good run. Then, as we headed into late spring and early summer, and as my work in the garden and fields intensified, his work to stay alive became all encompassing.
It took nine days in the hospital to get a stent put in his duodenum with an endoscope so he could eat (it took two tries). Everyone there was incredibly kind. We made friends with all the nurses, the aids, the interns, the housekeepers, etc. and heard all their stories: how many kids they had; what school they were attending to improve their situation; where they were born and raised; how they liked (or hated) their job. You don’t have time to make friends with the doctors; you only see them when they have news to deliver (I never did see the gastroenterologist who put the stent in).
Chemotherapy was scheduled once we could get our insurance company’s approval. Mark was initially given dispensation for treatment at the UNM Cancer Center instead of Presbyterian Hospital, which was his medical insurer, because of the specialized surgical team at the Cancer Center. Once it was clear that surgery wasn’t an option, we had to again get approval through Presbyterian for oncology treatment. That took about a week, and I was grateful for the time. Mark was able to eat, albeit a restricted diet (no fresh vegetables, chewy meat, or anything that could conceivably get stuck in the stent), and gain a little strength before starting once a week chemo treatments.
We’ve all heard the horror stories about chemotherapy (and seen them, if you follow the HBO series Breaking Bad, ironically filmed in Albuquerque): losing weight, losing hair, throwing up, spiraling down. Mark’s physical well being improved, however: he gained some weight, never lost any hair (he didn’t have much to begin with but what he had stayed on his head), never threw up, and maintained the energy to go for a daily walk. After a few months of weekly chemo, if he felt well enough, he even drove himself down to Albuquerque for his session, spending the night at Jakob and Casey’s or even driving himself back the same day. Max had made the decision to take a leave of absence from college, and stayed in Albuquerque, so he was there with Mark when I wasn’t.
Every six weeks we both went down for a CT scan to monitor the size of the tumor and see the oncologist for an evaluation. (By the way, all those TV shows and movies where they show cancer patients going into the oncologist’s office for a consultation are a complete fabrication. Those docs run from exam room to exam room and barely have more than 15 minutes for a look at the lab work, a quick physical check-up, and to answer a few questions we manage to squeeze in. Then it’s off to the races.) We tried to make it festive, and had dinner with the kids, watched movies, and spent many hours in front of the fireplace on cold, winter nights.
Amazingly, Mark was also able to pay considerable attention to his intellectual work. For many months during his illness he edited and serialized in our non-profit community newspaper La Jicarita News an article he had written concerning the adjudication of land grants in New Mexico. The article was intended to be the introduction to a book dealing with this sordid period in New Mexico’s history, where indigenous people were dispossessed of millions of acres of land that had been granted them by the Spanish and Mexican governments. Titled “Brief History of American Imperialism” it chronicled early American expansionism, Manifest Destiny, the Mexican-American War, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and racism in the New Mexico Territory.
Not only that, but he spent two or three hours several days a week spread out on the floor of the bedroom finishing the article evaluating the effect George W. Julian’s tenure as Surveyor General of the New Mexico Territory (1885-1889). He had received a grant from the New Mexico Historical Records Advisory Board to do the research and writing in 2009, and he finished the work by the spring of 2010.
So from about October through April Mark had a pretty good run. Then, as we headed into late spring and early summer, and as my work in the garden and fields intensified, his work to stay alive became all encompassing.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Power in the Middle East
We all watched with joy and a certain amount of trepidation as the citizens of Egypt rose up in revolt against the Mubarak dictatorship. Seeing, and listening to, so many articulate (speaking English, no less) and passionate people from all walks of life demanding an end to the corruption and poverty that pervades Egypt after thirty years of totalitarian rule allowed us to focus on hopeful feelings rather than fearful ones.
Now that the military has reasserted its control (remember, since 1952 the military has essentially ruled the country), promising a transition to a freely elected government, the fearful feelings start creeping in. As much as I try to ignore what I’ve learned regarding institutionalized power, I can’t help but worry about how that transition will take place, who or what will be the beneficiary, and whether it will translate to a “democratic” government. I put “democratic” in quotes because I’m not sure what that means. If the U.S. is taken as an example of a functioning democracy, where citizens participate in “free” and “fair” elections, we’re in trouble. All you have to do is look at the incomes of our elected officials, or the billions of corporate dollars used to elect them, to remember that it’s the elites who run the country.
Michel Foucault is the go to guy about how society has transitioned from sovereignty, the rule over a territory, to governmentality, or the rule within our institutions, or “micro-power structures.” Unfortunately, in modern western democracies, this form of governmentality often takes the form of neoliberalism, based on the predominance of market mechanisms and of the restriction of the action of the state. We now live in a globalized society, and the revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and perhaps the entire Middle East, will unfold in that context.
There is no comparison, of course, between the lack of personal freedom and dire economic situations in the Middle East and the U.S. If the people there achieve freedom of speech, assembly, and the press, and slave wages and benefits are improved, their lives will be enormously better. But if the revolution is “highjacked” by the neoliberals, rather than the Islamists, we will see, just as we are seeing in this country and in Europe, an institutionalized divide between the rich and the poor and an assault on government’s basic function in society, that of providing access to basic needs and services. While the divide between the rich and poor in Egypt is already enormous (and already neoliberal, to a certain extent), will global capitalism just allow better access to a more efficient system of exploitation than the one perpetrated by the U.S., which has long worked behind the scenes in that country to ensure both political and economic dependency.
I went to the rally on February 22 at the Roundhouse in Santa Fe to show solidarity with the public employees and teachers in Madison, Wisconsin who are under assault by their Republican governor who wants to do away with collective bargaining. Private unions in this country have already been eviscerated, so now the neoliberalists are after the public unions like AFSMCE and teachers unions. The ultimate goal is to put more money in the hands of the corporate elite, and unfortunately, they’ve not only been successful in this goal but through the “power of consent” have convinced many of the working class that their interests are the same as the capitalists.
But the thousands of protesters in Wisconsin, those of us supporting them on the streets of Santa Fe, and many of the protesters all over the Middle East, understand that it is power imposed by economic coercion. We must break free of that control in the western world if there is to be any hope of breaking free in the Middle East. But in the meantime, off with their heads!
Now that the military has reasserted its control (remember, since 1952 the military has essentially ruled the country), promising a transition to a freely elected government, the fearful feelings start creeping in. As much as I try to ignore what I’ve learned regarding institutionalized power, I can’t help but worry about how that transition will take place, who or what will be the beneficiary, and whether it will translate to a “democratic” government. I put “democratic” in quotes because I’m not sure what that means. If the U.S. is taken as an example of a functioning democracy, where citizens participate in “free” and “fair” elections, we’re in trouble. All you have to do is look at the incomes of our elected officials, or the billions of corporate dollars used to elect them, to remember that it’s the elites who run the country.
Michel Foucault is the go to guy about how society has transitioned from sovereignty, the rule over a territory, to governmentality, or the rule within our institutions, or “micro-power structures.” Unfortunately, in modern western democracies, this form of governmentality often takes the form of neoliberalism, based on the predominance of market mechanisms and of the restriction of the action of the state. We now live in a globalized society, and the revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and perhaps the entire Middle East, will unfold in that context.
There is no comparison, of course, between the lack of personal freedom and dire economic situations in the Middle East and the U.S. If the people there achieve freedom of speech, assembly, and the press, and slave wages and benefits are improved, their lives will be enormously better. But if the revolution is “highjacked” by the neoliberals, rather than the Islamists, we will see, just as we are seeing in this country and in Europe, an institutionalized divide between the rich and the poor and an assault on government’s basic function in society, that of providing access to basic needs and services. While the divide between the rich and poor in Egypt is already enormous (and already neoliberal, to a certain extent), will global capitalism just allow better access to a more efficient system of exploitation than the one perpetrated by the U.S., which has long worked behind the scenes in that country to ensure both political and economic dependency.
I went to the rally on February 22 at the Roundhouse in Santa Fe to show solidarity with the public employees and teachers in Madison, Wisconsin who are under assault by their Republican governor who wants to do away with collective bargaining. Private unions in this country have already been eviscerated, so now the neoliberalists are after the public unions like AFSMCE and teachers unions. The ultimate goal is to put more money in the hands of the corporate elite, and unfortunately, they’ve not only been successful in this goal but through the “power of consent” have convinced many of the working class that their interests are the same as the capitalists.
But the thousands of protesters in Wisconsin, those of us supporting them on the streets of Santa Fe, and many of the protesters all over the Middle East, understand that it is power imposed by economic coercion. We must break free of that control in the western world if there is to be any hope of breaking free in the Middle East. But in the meantime, off with their heads!
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Mothering
Everyone is in a complete tizzy over the Chinese-American mother who wrote Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother about the strict and expectant raising of her two daughters, presented as a philosophy in direct opposition to contemporary American mothering where the child is the center of the universe and can do no wrong because that would lower his or her self-esteem.
But I don’t get it. Since when did the millions of mothers over there in China who are struggling to feed their families from subsistence farming or sending them off to work in factories 10 hours a day become Tigers? And since when do the millions of mothers here in the U.S. who work all day and then come home to cook and clean have time to be soccer moms?
This is all nonsense because of course we’re talking about the privileged few. China may have a Confucian culture that cherishes education, and this country a Protestant ethic that believes anyone can lift themselves up by their bootstraps and succeed, but without a discussion in the context of class these mommy wars (it’s always mommy wars, not daddy wars) are irrelevant. So I’m going to talk about mothering—and fathering—from a different point of view: just a regular Jill, the female equivalent of a regular Joe, trying to raise her kids in a loving, nurturing environment while at the same time make a living and have a life (more than a room, Virginia) of one’s own.
Mark and I, as I’ve talked about before, chose time over money so our kids essentially had both of us as almost fulltime parents. When they were younger we each had part-time or seasonal jobs that allowed both of us to parent together some of the time and at least one of us to parent all of the time. While there were days in their infancy when I wanted to run screaming out of the house to the nearest bar, the Konrad Lorenz argument that infantile features trigger nurturing responses in adults and that this is an evolutionary adaptation that helps ensure adults care for their children seems pretty accurate. They were so cute, loving, and interesting that for the most part I didn’t feel constricted or confined by spending a lot of time with them. I often viewed the rest of my life—writing guidebooks for a living, fighting the Forest Service over inane management decisions that impacted the community, and fighting the developers who wanted to smash the community—as obligations, not engagements, even though they were all of my own choosing.
When the kids were older we worked at home, so were both around during the difficult pre-adolescent and adolescent years when they didn’t particularly want us around. But things changed over time for us as well, as we got pulled into more interesting work or more intense struggles and we didn’t have the time, or the interest, really, in being as intense caretakers as we’d been. I can’t imagine trying to exert the kind of attention and influence the Tiger mother describes on children who start functioning more independently while we parents get on with our lives. We always expected our kids to do their schoolwork (even though a lot of it was just busy work) and get good grades (so they could have that illusory option of Harvard or Yale), we became more of a consultant than a programmer in our kids’ lives.
Jakob was just here to visit and told me how scared he was as a kid of the attack rooster when he had to go out and feed the chickens (we gave him an attack broom). We once left Max behind in the forest (momentarily) when he threw a fit about cutting one more tree to load into the truck for firewood. This was how we traumatized our kids instead of how the Tiger mother did, calling one of her daughters “garbage” when she made her an unexceptional hand-made card, or Lang Lang’s father did hanging him upside down from their apartment balcony when he told him he wanted to quit playing the piano. (Or am I getting that story confused with Michael Jackson and his hanging baby? I know Lang Lang’s father did something terrible to him). So who’s the worse for wear? It’s hard to say, but in terms of finding their way in the world, my kids haven’t done too badly, despite the fact that they can’t play the violin or the piano—well, that is; Jakob asked that he be allowed to quit taking lessons for his 14th birthday present. Sometimes you just have to let it be and hope that everyone, including your kids, can just have a life.
But I don’t get it. Since when did the millions of mothers over there in China who are struggling to feed their families from subsistence farming or sending them off to work in factories 10 hours a day become Tigers? And since when do the millions of mothers here in the U.S. who work all day and then come home to cook and clean have time to be soccer moms?
This is all nonsense because of course we’re talking about the privileged few. China may have a Confucian culture that cherishes education, and this country a Protestant ethic that believes anyone can lift themselves up by their bootstraps and succeed, but without a discussion in the context of class these mommy wars (it’s always mommy wars, not daddy wars) are irrelevant. So I’m going to talk about mothering—and fathering—from a different point of view: just a regular Jill, the female equivalent of a regular Joe, trying to raise her kids in a loving, nurturing environment while at the same time make a living and have a life (more than a room, Virginia) of one’s own.
Mark and I, as I’ve talked about before, chose time over money so our kids essentially had both of us as almost fulltime parents. When they were younger we each had part-time or seasonal jobs that allowed both of us to parent together some of the time and at least one of us to parent all of the time. While there were days in their infancy when I wanted to run screaming out of the house to the nearest bar, the Konrad Lorenz argument that infantile features trigger nurturing responses in adults and that this is an evolutionary adaptation that helps ensure adults care for their children seems pretty accurate. They were so cute, loving, and interesting that for the most part I didn’t feel constricted or confined by spending a lot of time with them. I often viewed the rest of my life—writing guidebooks for a living, fighting the Forest Service over inane management decisions that impacted the community, and fighting the developers who wanted to smash the community—as obligations, not engagements, even though they were all of my own choosing.
When the kids were older we worked at home, so were both around during the difficult pre-adolescent and adolescent years when they didn’t particularly want us around. But things changed over time for us as well, as we got pulled into more interesting work or more intense struggles and we didn’t have the time, or the interest, really, in being as intense caretakers as we’d been. I can’t imagine trying to exert the kind of attention and influence the Tiger mother describes on children who start functioning more independently while we parents get on with our lives. We always expected our kids to do their schoolwork (even though a lot of it was just busy work) and get good grades (so they could have that illusory option of Harvard or Yale), we became more of a consultant than a programmer in our kids’ lives.
Jakob was just here to visit and told me how scared he was as a kid of the attack rooster when he had to go out and feed the chickens (we gave him an attack broom). We once left Max behind in the forest (momentarily) when he threw a fit about cutting one more tree to load into the truck for firewood. This was how we traumatized our kids instead of how the Tiger mother did, calling one of her daughters “garbage” when she made her an unexceptional hand-made card, or Lang Lang’s father did hanging him upside down from their apartment balcony when he told him he wanted to quit playing the piano. (Or am I getting that story confused with Michael Jackson and his hanging baby? I know Lang Lang’s father did something terrible to him). So who’s the worse for wear? It’s hard to say, but in terms of finding their way in the world, my kids haven’t done too badly, despite the fact that they can’t play the violin or the piano—well, that is; Jakob asked that he be allowed to quit taking lessons for his 14th birthday present. Sometimes you just have to let it be and hope that everyone, including your kids, can just have a life.
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