Congratulations to me!

I just finished the final chapter of the novel I've been working on, seems like forever! At about ten this morning (Carboneras time), I put in the last period. Whoopie! Now to see about publishing it.

Ox-bow revisited: Acquittal in Fatal Beating - NYTimes.com

And we thought we were making progress in race relations in the U.S. This just shows we have a long, long way to go. National Briefing - Mid-Atlantic - Pennsylvania - Acquittal in Fatal Beating - NYTimes.com

In case you don't remember or never read this famous 1940 novel (and 1943 movie with Henry Fonda), you can check out my review of The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark. Another literary antecedent is O. Henry's invention, the Cisco Kid (NOT the one who appeared in the TV series), a maniac who murders Mexicans for the fun of it. Here's where you can download the pdf of "The Caballero's Way" by O. Henry, as frightening and beautiful as any by Cormac McCarthy.

Cities, architecture and all that

I just discovered this terrific blog: Geoff Manaugh's BLDBLOG: Architectural Conjecture, Urban Speculation, Landscape Futures. Just what I needed as Susana and I continue working on Latin American urbanism in the 21st century (the last section of the book for W. W. Norton).

Organized atheists

In case you missed this: readers of this blog will probably be interested in this NY Times article by Laurie Goodstein, More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops. I've already said what I had to say about this topic. Click on label "religion" below for my previous comments on religion and atheism is Spain and elsewhere, including a review (2006/07/15) of William James great work, The Varieties of Religious Experience.

Maybe you can go home again?

That's what several of our foreign friends and acquaintances in Spain are hoping, such as Rumanians who may have had some other profession but in Spain were working in the once-booming construction industry. See As Jobs Die, Europe’s Migrants Head Home in yesterday's NYT. But "home" isn't what it used to be, either. There will be lots of stories to tell, of kids pulled out of school, repatriated and having to function in a language they´re no longer used to (or maybe never learned beyond talking with their mothers), of marriages in trouble because of new economic stresses, and lots more. Maybe the only upside of this crisis is that it is sure to enrich Rumanian (and Lithuanian and other eastern countries') literature.

Bad move by Japan

Now this is going to be self-defeating: Japan pays foreign workers to go home. No, folks, you can't de-globalize, though you can do your economy a lot of damage by trying. They're going to need foreign workers in Japan if they're ever going to climb out of this recession, but when they do, will they be willing to come after this insult?

Autoescuela update

In case you were worried (I was), I just learned that I PASSED the written test for my Spanish driving license that I took on Friday. 30 minutes for 30 multiple-choice questions. I'm pretty sure (from comparing notes with another student afterwards) that I got two wrong (you're allowed 3 errors), but I'll never know for sure and it doesn't matter. So now on to the practical (physical driving) test.

Dirge for all humanity

A Spanish friend who likes to read novels in English pressed this terrifying little book by Cormac McCarthy on me: The Road. (The link takes you to my summary and commentary.)

Vengeance vs. pragmatic politics

My friend César Chelala has just written a vigorous denunciation of Cándido Conde Pumpido, Spain’s attorney general, for saying "that he wouldn’t recommend going ahead with a probe of six former US officials over allegations that they gave legal support for conducting torture at Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba." (See Bush Six Should Be Indicted.) The six miscreants are former US Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales; ex-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith; former Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington; former Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee and Pentagon lawyer William J. Haynes II.

Well, yes and no, César. Yes, morally and psychologically, it would be good to see those guys squirm and to teach a lesson to any other government officials who might be tempted to commit such crimes. But politically, Spain's taking on this case would be a bad move for two reasons, one of them strictly internal to Spain.

The non-Spanish reason is what the ever-astute Obama implied when he said we should be looking forward, not back. An indictment in Spain or any other country would necessarily take up political resources (media attention, government expense) that his administration wants (correctly, in my opinion) to concentrate on its other enormous challenges. It would just give the usual rightwing bloviators (I love that word bloviator -- who invented it?) more material for firing up chauvinistic emotion and confusing voters (example: if Obama doesn't defend those Bush officials, he'll be accused by that crowd of treason and bowing to some foreign, puny power; if he should defend the six, he knows he'd lose the support of a lot of the rest of us. Better to just let it alone).

OK, accept that reasoning or not (I find it persuasive), here's the specifically Spanish reason: There is a huge campaign here by the unreconstructed hard right to find any grounds whatever to discredit Judge Baltasar Garzón -- which is probably why the case landed in his court. This is because Garzón has uncovered massive corruption (nothing to do with Guantánamo or with international politics; it's all about money for political favors) by some of the biggest honchos of the Partido Popular. Garzón has also been a key judge pursuing ETA terrorists (the right approves of that, but not out loud, because they don't want to give Garzón any credit). Garzón himself is bullheaded enough to go ahead to do what he thinks is right regardless of the political consequences -- once a card-carrying Socialist, he brought the case that brought down the Socialist government of his one-time friend Felipe González in 1996 (uncovering the "dirty war" against ETA by the government's Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL)-- see the RTVE article on Garzón). That makes him very unusual and admirable. But he doesn't need this case, which seems to have been designed by Partido Popular strategists to create a fight between him and the U.S. Government and make it harder for him pursue those corruption cases.

If we want those six to be indicted, we should press to do it in the U.S. courts. It's the only dignified thing to do, rather than let some other country tell us what is right. And let's get Cheney, too.

A personal update

RD (click on her icon in the "followers" box to find out about her) just asked me what I was up to, and I realized I hadn't had anything to say here for weeks and weeks! So, before I get into more consequential subjects, here's an answer to RD and an explanation (and apology) for my absence.

I'm still committed to two major writing projects, the same two I've been working on for years. But of course there are always myriad distractions, more here in this little Andalucían town than I remember from 25+ years in Manhattan. Birthday parties, first communions, the library reading club (this month: L'Éducation sentimentale by Flaubert), weekly tapas with English friends (good for keeping in practice in English), plus our personas libro group, serving as juror in the annual poetry contest (we just met last night). All of this I can usually keep under control: I exclude everything else from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. (the usual time here to break for the day's big meal), and take care of everything else between 5 p.m. and whenever. But lately two new things threw me completely off my work routine.

One was the inauguration our new home and first condominium association meeting, during Semana Santa, when the people who bought the other houses in the complex were all here. I'm currently president of the condominium association (till August at least), and had to get together account info etc. Even without that, it's hard to get any work done in Andalucía (or probably anywhere in Spain) during Semana Santa.

The other was something completely unexpected. I discovered that in order to get a Spanish driver's license, I would have to go to driving school! There's no other way to do it if your only driver's license is from the U.S., because (unlike the European Union or most countries of Latin America), there's no reciprocal recognition of licenses between Spain and the U.S. And if you acquire Spanish residency, as Susana and I did, you have just 6 months to continue using your foreign license. I couldn't believe this at first, but I checked, and that's the law. And the only way to get to take the driving tests (written and practical) is through a registered autoescuela, or driving school.

So there I was, after more than 50 years of driving many kinds of vehicles, sitting in a classroom with teenagers eager to get onto motorcycles and young workers who need their first license, studying arcane stuff about Spanish driving laws and road signs. Two weeks of this, 9:30 to 1:30 p.m. every day (except for Holy Thursday through Sunday), with lots of homework. The questions are tricky. They include things like permitted trailer dimensions and weights under specific conditions, speed limits for different kinds of vehicles on different kinds of roads, when you're permitted to use your fog lights, car maintenance, and even emergency assistance to offer if we come upon a serious accident. I just took the test (with hundreds of other people) this morning. I hope I passed -- I won't know until Monday.

If so, I can get back to my strict routine and try to recover lost ground. If not, I'll have to take the test again & devote some more time to studying.