A Sleepy Day in Carchá

It is Sunday and Carcha is basically closed down. It is drizzily, as usual, and there is not much to do except to rest and go to church. It is pretty nice.

I was thinking about relating a recent, rather hilarious story, but I´ll think put that in my back pocket for good dinner time conversations.

A little over a week ago I was in Nicaragua at MCC regional meetings. It was a lot of fun hanging out with MCC´ers who are, as a rule, very cool people. On the bus ride to Nicaragua we saw six movies. Common themes were: a lot of dyin, resurrection, immortality, the power to rule the world. It was annoying because you couldn´t take your eyse off the screen.

Now I am doing a lot of running around trying to keep things running semi-smoothly for a group of adult Nebraskans here on a Work and Learn trip. They are a lot of fun and it is really great to see all the people from back home who care so much about MCC´s work and the people we work for. It is very refreshing for me. It is also very good for people here for the same reasons.

Random thoughts:

John Smoltz with the Red Sox, you´ve got to be kidding me.

The United States biggest, scariest, and most effective weapon is the idea of democracy. Right? The idea of popular uprising for a just and representative government makes a lot of evil people with power shake in their boots. I know most cultures dont have these ideals so ingrained as being of upmost importance as ours does, but promoting it peacefully (can you truly promote just governance with violence?) might possibly go a lot further than at first thought. The French revolution was scary enough that all the monarchs of Europe came together to prevent it from happening again. Enlightenment ideas about government were captivating enough that, despite strict censorship, exiled authors, imprisonment, the death penalty and other forms of forceful government oppression, people kept on reading about these ideas, and people, amazingly, kept on writing.

I am considering to continue not shaving and see where it leads.

My Kekchi nickname (the nickname for Marcos, which is what I go by here) is Cux, which sounds like ¨cush¨ with th u sounding like the u sound you hear in ¨you¨ . My host mom once said to me, ¨a Jenny le extraña su cuxito¨

Sometimes the best parts of my day are the random conversations I have with people. The guys at the bus stop with whom we talk about why the United States has such a better soccer team (the first thing that is always mentioned is size, then money, then talent, nobody seems to think it matters that we have so many people... I don´t think many can quite grasp how many more people a huge country like the United States has to choose from for it´s team thana small country like Guatemala).

My own personal approval of Obama would shoot way up if he were to buy aHuskey or a German Shepherd, or just pick up a will be big total mut off the street and make it his.

What does it mean when the coke cans on the back of walmart brand soda says ¨100% satisfaction garunteed¨? I spent entire summers working at fruit packing sheds perplexed by that question and I have seriously dreamt of returning enough coke cans to WalMart (for only being 93% satisfied) that they stopped handing the money back to me. THen I would have to take them to court and they would either pay me off, or, even better, they would take off their arrogant claim that they can truly garuntee 100% satisfaction. Nathan Boldt my favorite work partner knows that this question is one of the few things that can truly make me kind of upset. Well, maybe not so upset, but it at least annoys me to know end. Where do they get the arrogance that their little sugar water product can satisfy (100% satisfy) so many millions of very different consumers. My rather acute sense of spitefunessl just rages and begs me to make my lifes work taking that silly little line off of WalMart coke cans.

I am reading my first work by a Russian author, Dostoeskys Notes From Underground. In it, the author is extremely spiteful. Basically like George in Seinfeld. He preceives everything as an insult and can never win. In it he dreams and dreams about, as a lowly person, instead of jumping to the side of a rich important person, actually bumping shoulders with him. When he finally tries to do it, he attempts and attempts and fails and fails. Finally he does, barely, bump shoulders with him... and he is exalted. This is like me and WalMart. One day I will come home exalted at the small amount of money WalMart has given back to me because they are foolish enough to make a claim they coulnd´t possibly keep if we were all honest. And WalMart wouldn´t care one bit.

ok, ok, so there is a small view of where the mind can wonder while working at a fruit packing shed (which, despite the idea the previous lines my give you, is a great summer job).

anyways, I need to get on with the business of the day and take a nap.

con cariño

Jordan

My ¨We are the World¨ post

The other night I wrote a rara ¨we are the world¨type of entry meant for my blog. I´ve decided now not to post all of it. Only a summary. Why maybe I felt it to radical. Maybe I was afraid it could be mushy (thus the sarcasm of my title). Maybe because I am too scared to talk about ¨love and compassion¨ as real things that can make a difference if we actually tried and really (really) did what those driven by the ¨love the neighbor as thyself¨philosphy ought to do.... I don´t know... I am just scared of being scoffed at I guess.

Anyways, the title of my post was goign to be

¨the constricted Mr. President/ my ¨we are the world¨ speech.

note: I think I have to very powerful sides, a very idealistic side and a very sarcastic, cynical and scared to death to be clichéd side.

Anyways - a quick summary- I am very excited about Obama

BUT, I think as president, he has to buy into a lot of things (American ideas or cultural myths or whatever you want to call them) that will force him to act a certain way.

Mr. President has to respond violence with violence. Mr. President always act in favor of us. That´s basically his job I know, but sometimes acting that way will probably hurt others. Mr. President has to be tough. I wrote that he has to push free trade, but I just realized that Obama will be taking a closer look at the NAFTA and the CAFTA. Mr. President can never say socialism even as a republican president does a very socialist thing and bails out banks. Mr. President maintain military superiority (though hopefully he will be reducing out amount of nukes). Has to try to maintain our position as a superpower, as if that´s somehow more important that things like our well being. Maybe that´s not a convincing enough list, but work with me here...

I wrote: I am not saying that he is taking the one ring for his own, I´m just aying that I think the job defines the man more significantly than we realize... possibly even more than the man defines the job.¨

I jump into bashing American society (that´s supposed to be sarcastic because I do believe that in some ways American society is pretty great, how can I not. That´s why there´s this hope thing Obama is talking about. It´s not him, it´s us (¨It´s not your, it´s me¨ says Georges girlfriend, George, ¨Your using the the it´s not you it´s me routine on me! I invented the it´s not you it´s me routine! If it´s anybody, it´s me!!¨ girlfriend, ¨Älright Alright, it´s you¨ snort of agreement from George) And that, the part before the seinfeld quote, is basically the point of what I wrote.

bad things: materialism sort of heads the list (bad for personal happiness, bad for environmet, global warming etc etc). Racism. Sexism. Violence is normal. We live in a society where people commit crimes for which we deem it worthy to kill the perpetrator and in which abortion seems like a necessary evil. militancy. Family problems. Nationalism instead of genuine care for our neighbor (actually Americans have always viewed ourselves as doing our best to help the world, it´s just the actual foreign policy, in my opinion, has not really done that too much). education is not important enough.etc. etc.

I wrote: ¨There are some diseases for which a good president is really just a bandaid. Those of us without th constricting title of Mr. President can go beyond anything politicians can do and attack the reasons why we have certain problems instead of trying to simply treat the symptoms. Only we can actually build a society more strongly based on love and compassion. Politicians have to deal with the problems that arise because we are not so much built on these ideals.¨ Changing our culture would change the presidency far more than any presidency ever could.

I listed stuff we might do especially to do with conservation of energy and investment in our communities were the main things.

I said it, ¨love¨... gasp. ¨does anyone remember the let your light shine song. It´s definately old, and possibly clichéd idea, but the amazing things that may come probably aren´t.¨

As I write I am realizing how classically American what I wrote is.

I end with a disclaimer. Of course Obama could do a lot. But not without us. And I emphasize that I think the L word translates into action and it´s just hard to live up to it most... I mean all the time. And the presidency and governance in general can also have a great effect on our culture, but still, us as individuals and as parts of so many smaller communities are the ones who really make it what it is.

Jordan

ps. watch the Flight of the Conchords song, ¨Issues, Think About it¨the live version. Pure comedic genious. on youtube.

pps. right now I am finishing up The Upside Down Kingdom and am feeling kind of convicted by it. I feel like we all need to read the gospels a little harder and ultimately try towalkas hewaled and do some of the things hewants usto do which we generally do not. And it can take part of the blame for this post.