LitPol is back!

De vuelta a casa / Back home again. We've just returned from Spain, and LitPol will resume more frequent publishing. However, for the time being, it's just going to be Fox and Lion ; Bear is off writing a novel, and Glib has started working for Dick Cheney (!) and so will have little time to spare for us until after November 2. Or even after, because if things go as some of us hope, Cheney will need Glib more than ever to explain how the sneaky liberals stole the election from him and his puppet W. (See Our Editorial Team for profiles.)

This is without a doubt the most important presidential election since the last one. The problem was that, in 2000, most of us had no idea how important it was. We couldn't imagine the magical effect that GWB as president would have on our budget surplus, our national prestige abroad, or on the lives of over a thousand young men and women in the armed services -- that he would make them all disappear! Now we know.

At this writing, it appears that the Bush campaign's scare tactics may work, and that we may have to endure another four years of the erosion of American moral authority, environment and economy, and continued blood-letting of our nationals and theirs in Iraq. Prepare for the worst, work for the best, as Gramsci said more elegantly. In the long run, America is weakening itself by trying to project its power rather than its founding values, which include "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind," as our Declaration of Independence puts it, and liberty (which means respecting other peoples' choices, not imposing ours) and democracy (which means real decision-making by the people affected, who also get to establish their own laws, and not a plebiscite to approve a candidate selected by the occupying power). -- More later, and maybe something more than a rant.

New York responds to Bush

I couldn't be there myself -- Susana & I return from Spain on Thursday -- but my friend and National Writers Union colleague Bob Lamm sends this report:

Dear Friends--For any of you who weren't there and who might be interested, here is a personal report on the anti-Bush protests in New York City this weekend.

Just a quick preface. During my freshman year at Yale, I was in small Spanish class for a year with George W. Bush. He was exactly the shallow fraternity boy that has been described in the media. I detested him then and so I can genuinely say that I've detested him for 40 years!

I was also in the Yale Political Union as a freshman when John Kerry was the
president of the Political Union and George Pataki was the head of the Political Union's Conservative Party (basically the equivalent of Young Republicans). I detested Pataki, wasn't a huge fan of Kerry, and still feel exactly the same about those two. But I'm certainly supporting Kerry in this election.

Anyway... on Saturday I went with my friend George Robinson to the March for Women's Lives sponsored by Planned Parenthood and many other organizations. We assembled at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn and marched across the Brooklyn Bridge for a rally in City Hall Park. Very good turnout and terrific spirit. And it's always worthwhile to walk across the absolutely glorious Brooklyn Bridge!

For those who've read the media lies about how younger women don't care about feminism, a significant majority of the demonstrators were indeed younger women, though there were plenty of middle-aged and older women and a good number of men. Before the demonstration began, George and I had a nice chat with two women and a man from Medical Students for Choice who'd come from Pennsylvania and who had plenty to say about how so few future doctors are being trained to perform abortions. Overall, it was an excellent,inspiring march apart from being *very* hot and humid.

Today (Sunday) was what was planned as the largest anti-Bush, antiwar demonstration of the week. After much wrangling about whether the demonstrators would be allowed to rally in Central Park, it was finally agreed that we'd march past Madison Square Garden (where the GOP convention will be) and eventually head down to Union Square (the traditional rallying point for radical demonstrations dating back many generations).

I went with my friend Steve Brier and we hooked up with a contingent from the Professional Staff Congress, the faculty union for the City University system. The crowd was staggering. They say it went on for a full two miles. Organizers had hoped for 250,000 and many people feel there were more, perhaps 400,000 people.

It was a *very* diverse crowd in many respects. Completely peaceful anywhere we were, great spirit, lots of energy, some incredibly funny signs. (I wish I'd taken notes!) In the midst of that huge assortment of people, I unexpectedly ran into four or five I knew and for a good while we marched right behind an actor whose work I've long admired (Stanley Tucci). Special tribute here to my friend George Robinson. Some of you may have seen on TV that there were people at the back of the march carrying coffins to remember those who've died in the Iraq war. George was one of them, helping carry a coffin for many hours on this hot, humid day.

Then, tonight, I got a taste of what the coming week will be like, as I unexpectedly ran into a protest I hadn't heard a word about. I went to the Walter Reade theater in Lincoln Center to see THE LAST FRONTIER, an Anthony Mann Western from the 1950s. As I was leaving, heading for Broadway at about 9:45 P.M., I heard shouting, whistles, obviously a protest happening right near me. Some GOP visitors were apparently arriving for a welcoming party at Alice Tully Hall (a concert hall on Broadway that's part of Lincoln Center). And there was a crowd of about 100 demonstrators offering the Republican fat cats a much less than pleasant welcome.

This is an indication of what's ahead in the next four days. Some protest groups have obviously studied the official and unofficial calendar of events for Republican delegates and will be turning up outside (or perhaps inside) their social events.

So that is a brief report from the battlefront here in Manhattan. For anyone receiving this who was out demonstrating this weekend, I'd certainly love to hear *your* thoughts about what you did and saw.

And if you don't like the chicken hawks, corporate crooks, and religious bigots who run the Republican Party and all three branches of the federal government... here's my unique, jaded perspective. I got a distressing look at George W. Bush and George Pataki forty years ago... and now one of them is my president and one is my governor.


Bob

¡Viva la República!

There are probably some people in other countries who believe that the Spanish Civil War ended in 1939. Here in Spain everybody knows that it is still going on. Last Thursday (August 20), Paco Ibáñez came to Carboneras to sing two songs and thus assist our mayor in dedicating a new memorial to the sons of Carboneras who died during that bloody period or later, because of it.

Actually, I was surprised to learn from the mayor’s little introductory speech in the Parque Andaluz, before a scant crowd of a few hundred survivors, survivors’ descendants and sympathizers, nobody was killed in Carboneras during the hostilities. The names on the plaque were of sons of Carboneras who had sacrificed in battles elsewhere. This is such a little village, and was so much littler then, and so remote – not on the way to a larger city -- that the combatants never bothered to fight for it.

Our mayor, Cristóbal Fernández, Socialist, has been in office for all but one term since 1982, when the PSOE first won nationwide. What “socialism” might mean in Carboneras has little to do overthrowing capitalism or revolutionary mobilization of the working class, which besides fishermen now includes restaurant workers and other tourist service workers, the staffs of the big cement plant and of the electric power plant, and all the municipal employees. with the day-to-day running of a village. But socialism, even at the village government level, does mean, sentimentally, a reverence for the tradition of struggle, and, pragmatically, the belief that public policy can make life a little better for all people – these days, the emphasis is on ecology and protecting the rights of women, and attempts to accommodate and assist in assimilating the immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, Ecuador, Eastern Europe and other places who find their way even to this little place.

I got to speak with Paco Ibáñez for a few minutes after the ceremony. He is older, of course, but still recognizable from the photo on the cover of the old LP we have at home and still play. I told him how important his music had been to us, even in distant New York, as a reminder of the dignity of struggle. On that old record, as in the ceremony the other day, he sings Spanish poems, his baritone and guitar bringing them alive, as they must have been meant to be sung. On Thursday he sang one by Luis Cernuda, “Un español habla de España,” and then he sang the poem that is inscribed on the stone of the Carboneras memorial, “A galopar,” by Rafael Alberti. Our new friend, the ceramics artists Vidal Hurtado, had brought and waved a big flag of the II Republic, like the current Spanish flag but with a purple bar below the bars of yellow and red. And our little group, veterans of that and other struggles, felt a little stronger about still trying to use public policy to make life a little better for all of us.

¡Viva la Virgen!

A week ago Sunday was the Fiesta del Pescador in Carboneras, dedicated to the Virgen del Carmen, and so we clambered onto one of the fishing boats for the annual procession out to sea. It was around 11 in the morning when, taking advantage of a moment when the boat rocked closer to the dock and the owner’s son – who had already decided that the boat was too full of celebrants and was trying to shoo them away – was otherwise occupied, we leapt aboard. Several others followed us, then and for the next half hour. Someone, the captain I suppose, had filled a cooler with cans of beer and soda for the kids; it was all happily unorganized, climbing aboard, grabbing for beers, finding a place to stand or sit on the crowded boat, either aft under the brutal sun, or under a plastic canopy forward, or up on the foredeck at the prow, where I finally found myself a space where I could stand supporting my buttocks against the low steel wall creating a protected space for ropes and anchors in front of the cabin with the steering wheel. Almost everyone else, those without such support, had to sit once we cast off, because the sea was heaving and the boat was rocking up and down.

Sun. Crowd. Chatter and jokes in a guttural Andaluz where I could catch only every fourth or fifth word. A boy of about 10 frightened by the violent leaps and falls of the boat and bawling, until his father, with the gentle help of one of the rough fishermen aboard, hoisted him to safety behind the wall where I was leaning. Bouncing on the waves. The other five or six good-sized fishing boats, plus a spontaneous flotilla of smaller craft, all heading out of the shallow bay, into the open sea. The boat behind us carried La Virgen, a plaster statue with a baby in her arms and protected from God’s sun by a canopy of palm branches. She looked overdressed for August in Carboneras, but I suppose a topless virgin, or even one in a bikini, would be distracting to the congregants when they returned her to her usual place inside the gloomy church.

We went so far out to sea that Susana said she could see Mojácar, the next town northeast, blocked from view from the Carboneras shore by two intervening capes. I didn’t notice, because I was watching the sea, and listening to the Banda Municipal which, luckily, had chosen our boat. There were at least a dozen musicians down below, where Susana was, horns and drums playing Spanish marches, like the ones that accompany bullfights, and keeping time despite the bouncing of the boat. Then we saw the dolphins. At least half a dozen of them, maybe more, leaping from the water to come to greet the Virgin and Child. One of my mothers-in-law used to sing an old Spanish song, “Cantan y bailan los peces en el agua / Cantan y bailan porque ha nacido un niño.”

And I thought again about what was the Virgin. Being literal-minded, I had always imagined her as a particular young Jewish woman named Miryam in the time of Herod. Clearly the Virgin has long since grown beyond that mortal representation. She is something much grander, among other things the motive for the Cofradía de Pescadores, the Fishermen’s Brotherhood, to sponsor a lubricated revel for the town aboard their boats, for even the non-believing Socialist council members to join the procession that later, on foot, carried her statue through the streets back to the church, and afterwards for the Cofradía to treat all comers to a sardinada -- volunteers frying thousands of big sardines in salt and olive oil, piling them on paper plates to the chaotic crowd (no such thing as taking a number, you just reached and called out and hoped to be the next to get a heaping plate). Beer and soda free, too. Now, that’s some Virgin! She smiles even on unbelievers.

So it doesn’t really matter what sort of robes they put on the plaster Virgin, because the Virgin is not in the plaster, but in the collective spirit of those fishermen, the ones who think of the sea itself as female and say “la mar” (almost everyone else says “el mar”). The Virgin is the comforting security we associate with our mothers (the luckier ones among us, who have had such mothers). So it is quite possible to accept the power of the Virgin without torturing the imagination to believe in anything as preposterous as God.

She had smiled on us, too, that Virgin. Our business here had finally prospered – that is, our dogged defense of the little piece of land that we want to make into something beautiful. So, ¡Viva la Virgen!

Recommended reading

Love of Reading's A Labor Lost For Many Now. But who knew half the nation was still reading? BY DANIEL HENNINGER, WSJ OpinionJournal.

Recent readings: Fielding, Cela, Yourcenar

Fielding, Henry. The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling. Washington Square Press, 1964 ed. London, 1749.
Who were the real parents of the infant that Squire Alworthy finds in his bed and rears as his own son and calls "Tom Jones"? After he ruefully expels the lad from his estate, due to the treachery of the squire's nephew & Tom's rival Blifil, will Tom regain the good Squire's favor? More urgently, how will Tom consummate his love, requited, for the lovely Sophia, despite his own low and bastardly birth and the violent opposition of Sophia's father, Alworthy's crude and simple neighbor, Squire Western? Through many rollicking adventures, including bedding & nearly bedding several other women, saving the life of a very peculiar hermit, a night's entertainment with a band of gypsies, the acquisition of comical superstitious barber-surgeon-pedant as his loyal companion, a tussle with a highwayman, a masked ball, some letters gone astray, mistaken identities, a duel and a charge of murder, and the shock of hearing that he has lain with his own mother, Tom pursues his Sophia to London. Thither she has fled her father to avoid being forced to marry Blifil -- and nearly is raped by a young lord, and then caught and reconfined first by her father (who loves her but demands she marry Blifil, because it would be good to join the two estates and thus, he believes, good for her happiness), and then by her father's old maid sister. All is finally resolved in the last pages: we learn Tom's true origins, he gets the girl & they live happily ever after, reconciled to Alworthy & Squire Western, and all the many other characters get their various just desserts.
I have never enjoyed a book more. At many moments I laughed out loud at the droll adventures. I chuckled over Fielding's wicked prologues (where he expounds upon the writer's craft, the reader's likely impatience, the obtuseness and perversity of critics, the superiority of noble & energetic spirits over dour repression, and the vagaries of fame). And finally I was amazed at the ingenious turns of plot & its ultimate resolution. 2004.6.26

Cela, José Camilo. La colmena, Clásicos Castalia. Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1989.
Madrid, invierno de 1943, es una colmena donde sendos personajes siguen sus instintos y tímidos deseos, tratando de sobrevivir con algún rasgo de dignidad bajo el frío, la pobreza y la represión de los recién victoriosos franquistas. Sus vidas entrecruzan en el café "La Delicia" de la repugnante y gritona doña Rosa, el bar "Aurora" del anarquista y veterano del ejército republicano Celestino Ortiz (que puso ese nombre al bar porque es gran admirador del libro Aurora de Nietzsche, que lee como si fuera la Biblia), y la "casa de citas decente" de la Celia Vecino, viuda de Obdulio Cortés. La señorita Elvira, "buscona asidua del café de doña Rosa" (según el Índice de Personajes en esta edición) tiene un sueño/pesadilla erótica donde se masturban unos enanos mientras un terrible tigre se le lanza encima y se convierte en gato-amante). Otros momentos memorables incluyen cuando don Roque, médico, y su hija Julita se cruzan en la escalera de la casa de citas de Celia (donde a Roque los espera su querida de turno, y Julita acaba de dejar a su amante), y cada uno inventa una excusa para estar allí; la rabia y orgullo de Petrita cuando decide aceptar prostituirse para ganar dinero para curar a su novio, que está en cama con tuberculosis; la muerte de la anciana Margot, madre de el mariquita de 53 años Julián Suárez, "la fotógrafa", aparentemente estrangulada pero no se sabe por quien, y la noche que pasan "Fotógrafa" y su amante Pepe el Astilla en carcel. Entre más de cien personajes con nombre y señas, no hay uno cuya historia toma precedencia sobre las otras, pero la que se destaca un poco más (y concluye la novela) es el de Martín Marco, "un hombrecillo desmedrado, paliducho, enclenque, con lentes de pobre alambre sobre la mirada," que raras veces tiene un duro (cinco pesetas), ni tiene trabajo ni carrera, pero escribe poesías y tiene una idea vaga de ser escritor, y al final de la obra está buscado por la policía, posiblemente por haber militado en el FEU (Federación Española, o Estudiantil (?), Universitaria) durante la II República. 20040716

Yourcenar, Marguerite. Memorias de Adriano. Translated by Julio Cortázar. Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1999.
Viejo emperador, moribundo, cuenta su vida y filosofía a su sucesor escogido, Marco Aurelio, en esta larguísima carta. Nacido en España y criado por su abuelo cerril y medio mago, Marulino, el joven Adriano hace brillante carrera militar contra las tribus germanas y luego en Dacia. Nombrado gobernador de Palestina por el emperador Trajano, prevé el desastre cuando éste, ya viejo, emprende campaña para conquistar Asia y realizar un viejo sueño inspirado en las historias sobre Alejandro Magno. En su lecho de muerte Trajano finalmente adopta a Adriano como hijo y sucesor cuando éste ya tiene 42 años. A diferencia de Trajano, el nuevo emperador negocia la paz cuando puede con las naciones vecinas y pretende extender la justicia y el orden a través del imperio para que Roma dure aún cuando en un future dejase de basarse en Roma (la ciudad); en sus últimos años (se enferma antes de llegar a 60) desgraciadamente no puede evitar una guerra terrible contra los celotes judíos que termina con la casi total destrucción de Jerusalén. Adriano también cuenta de sus amores, especialmente con el griego Antinóo, una suerte de joven fauno rústico, que se suicida a los 20 años en un acto de sacrificio por amor al emperador Adriano. La guerra en Palestina y la muerte de Antinóo, a quien Adriano convierte en dios y en cuyo nombre funda una ciudad, son las grandes tragedias en un gobierno mayormente de paz y fortalecimiento del orden y economía imperiales que ha durado 18 años. Hay pasajes descriptivos lindísimos (de España, Alejandría, Roma), observaciones filosóficas intrigantes, y episodios dramáticos, pero el interés del libro en total reside en su retrato de la vida de élites en este período; Adriano mismo no llega a ser un personaje tan cautivante como el Claudio de "Yo Claudius" de Robert Graves. 2004/08/06

Delibes, Miguel. La hoja roja, Biblioteca Básica Salvat de Libros RTV. ?: Salvat Editores, S.A. con la colaboración de Alianza Editorial, S.A., 19??
Un anciano que sólo espera la terminación de su vida encuentra una jóven que no sabe cómo empezar la suya. La Desi es más bruta que la pila de un pozo (como le dice una amiga) cuando llega de su pueblo y empieza a trabajar como criada del viejo Eloy, que repite continuamente que le "ha salido la hoja roja" (del librito de papel de fumar, que advierte que sólo quedan cinco hojas), y el decir de un amigo de juventud de que la jubilación es la antesala de la muerte (y que ese amigo se había ido hace más de 20 años sin guardar antesala). El viejo, tímido toda su vida de 70 años, hace esfuerzos por reconectarse con antiguos compañeros de trabajo (53 años en aseo urbano), del club de fotografía, y cuando éstos lo rechazan, finalmente con su hijo en Madrid, donde ve que es un estorbo. La Desi, que se considera vieja porque solera a los 20 años, hace todo lo posible por comprometer a casarse un chico de su pueblo an bruto y hasta más cerril que ella, cuando éste llega a la ciudad para la mili (servicio militar); pero el chico ("el Picaza") sólo quiere aprovechar de ella (para que el lavado de ropa y las relaciones sexuales, que ella no concede) y finalmente comete una locura tan grave (degüella a una mujer en la calle porque le mentaba la madre porque él le había tirado una rata muerta a la cara) que termina en un calabozo militar, haciendo añicos las ilusiones de la chica. Al final el viejo Eloy y la Desi aceptan que se necesitan mutuamente, y él le propone el matrimonio.
Escenas memorables: nochebuena, cuando el viejo le manda a la chica a comprar una botella de clarete, se emborrachan (con muy poco) y empiezan a cantar y hasta bailar (torpemente) las canciones de boda que la Desi recuerda de su pueblo; Eloy en el cementerio, después del entierro de su último amigo de juventud, Isaías, lee las lápidas de otros y recuerda las muchas historias de esas personas que las lápidas no cuentan; el bochorno del viejo cuando visita al hijo en Madrid y no puede hacer ni que el hijo se sonría ni que la nuera le diga "padre"; Eloy llevando a la chica al cine por primera vez en la vida de la joven. Todo ocurre en 1955 en un Valladolid donde nada cambia, salvo que en lugar de un rey (Desi ni siquiera sabe que significa "rey") hay un Franco en los titulares que Desi, bajo la tutela paciente de Eloy, se esfuerza por leer. Libro muy sentimental, con un conmovedor retrato de la vejez y otro de la bruteza obstinada de la vida de pueblo, que hace más comprensible los delirios de los analfabetos aferrados a sus creencias ya sea en el Talibán o en otras partes. 2004.08.09

Wind and towers

Have you ever wondered why farmers and herders along the Mediterranean coast never built their homes on the highest points with the greatest views? The wind. It blows with gale force here in Meseta Alta, where some good friends from the States have lent us their house this August. It rattles the doors and wooden shutters, but if we close everything we asphyxiate. It is a sere wind, pulling the water out of the air and out of your mouth and body. It drives the flies to seek refuge in the house, and they buzz around berserkly, seeking what moisture they can get from your lips or the sweat on your arms. This morning when I wanted to hang up some laundry, I had to struggle to get the sheets on the line at all, pinning them in 6 or 8 places in close series. Still they flew and flapped and wrapped around themselves on the line, one of them catching on a cactus several feet away until I moved it just out of reach. It took me several minutes to hang up everything, and by the time I had the last T-shirt up, the sheets were sucked dry by the wind.

Foreigners who expect the elements to obey them do build on the high points for the views. The foreigners who built half a cooperative on this mesa, and half in the village of Agua Amarga down below, in 1968 were American pacifists who wanted quiet retirement homes, and their leader built this house on the highest point on this, the highest mesa around except for the one holding up the lighthouse just behind us, and oriented the house to catch the breezes from both sides, poniente (from the west) and levante (from the east). Some breezes. Either he had picked an exceptionally meteorologically quiet year, or else he had never been here in mid August before he made his plans.

In olden times, only the lords who built stone castles and look-out towers would perch them on the high points, and mostly the castles have resisted the centuries of wind. Or at least, their stone parts have, or in the worst of cases, impressive chunks of their ramparts. On Sunday we drove into the interior, through the mountains past mountain town of Níjar, famous for its ceramics from the local clayey soil, and on to the higher more precariously perched village of Lucainena de las Torres, where until the Civil War they mined the iron that traveled down a narrow gauge railroad all the long way to an embarcadero – a loading dock – next to Agua Amarga. After a stop in the tiny plaza, which was more like a shelf carved out of the mountain, we went on and from the road could see one of the old towers, looming above on the mountain ridge, that gave the village its name.

Our real destination was Tabernas, more mountains of other stone – here shiny black, there rust brown or even red, glistening white silicate, cut dramatically by ancient rivers that once must have been torrents but now are deep, dry scars filled with yellow brush, green foliage and a newcomer, cactus originally from Mexico. The nopal has done especially well in the dry deserts of Almería, where it has been renamed “chumbera” and the people no doubt imagine it is a native plant. They don’t seem to be aware that the bright yellow and red fruit, chumbos to them, nopales to Mexicans, prickly pear to us, are edible.

Tabernas is best known for its fake “Hollywood” villages, where hundreds of westerns have been filmed, included dozens by Sergio Leone. One of them is featured in the hilarious movie “800 Balas” that we saw last year – when a group of players who stage Wild West shoot-outs for tourists are threatened with eviction, their leader, an old actor who claims to have worked with the great Clint Eastwood, gets them to load their old six-shooters and Winchesters with real bullets (they have enough cash on hand for 800), and they fight off the police, the army and Guardia Civil while a little boy joins the troupe and gets a lesson in sex from the cast’s bar girl. Great fun, but after that, we thought we’d seen enough of the fake Wild West. We were more attracted by the “Arab castle” (as it is labeled) up on the highest point above the real (not the Wild West smulacra) town of Tabernas. It’s very impressive from below. You would think the Moors might still be up there, ready to hurl rocks and buckets of flaming oil from trébuchets and fire arrows against their attackers. But after a long dusty climb, we found there was nothing there but the shell of its ancient walls. Splendid views, though. And plenty of wind.

Writers against the silence

The challenge to the Bush/Ashcroft Kulturkampf by 15 of our best known writers at Cooper Union got big play in EL PAIS on Sunday. Meanwhile, I share this, from Sophia Niarchos, who writes that it was "My favorite reading at the PEN event last night" -- yet another sign of the vigor of writerly protest. Sophia adds, "we should read poetry every day!" And "Though seeing it in writing is better than not experiencing it at all, the reading of it (staccato, fast-paced, out of breath!) made it extraordinary!"

I Am Waiting

By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waitingfor a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waitingfor the discovery
Of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waitingfor the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waitingfor the war to be fought
which will make the world safe for anarchy
and I am waiting for the final withering awayof all governments
and I am perpetually awaitinga rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the second coming
And I am waiting
For a religious revival
To sweep thru the state of Arizona
And I am waiting
For the grapes of wrath to be stored
And I am waiting
For them to prove
That God is really American
And I am waiting
To see God on television
Piped into church altars
If they can find
The right channel
To tune it in on
And I am waiting for the last supper to be served again
and a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaitinga rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waitingfor the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waitingfor a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the great divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waitingFor the secret of eternal life to be discovered
By an obscure practitioner
and I am waitingfor the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and TV rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waitingfor the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am waiting for retribution
for what America did to Tom Sawyer
and I am waitingfor the American Boy
to take off Beauty's clothes
and get on top of her
and I am waitingfor Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waitingfor Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting for Aphrodite to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waitingto get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waitingfor the last long rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeting lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

Sophia A. Niarchos

Event in New York

Susana & I will still be in Spain, but if you're in New York, you may want to catch this:

STATE OF EMERGENCY: Unconventional Readings:
On Wednesday, August 4, between the two major party conventions, PEN American Center presents a special evening of readings in support of free expression and America's core freedoms. A distinguished lineup of writers - including Laurie Anderson ,Paul Auster, Russell Banks, Don DeLillo, Ariel Dorfman, Eve Ensler, Jonathan Safran Foer, Barbara Goldsmith, A. M. Homes, Margo Jefferson, Edward P. Jones, Walter Dean Myers, Francine Prose, Salman Rushdie, Monique Truong, Kurt Vonnegut, and others- will come together to read and raise awareness about gravethreats to essential freedoms in the United States. We hope you will be there to support free expression. Help us spread the word and encourage friends and associates to attend this important evening. Please forward this announcement on to relevant email lists and circulate as widely as possible. This event is free and open to the public. Seating is by generaladmission and on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. Please call PEN at 212/334-1660, ext. 107 or visit http://www.pen.org/ for more information. This program is cosponsored by Cooper Union

Socialism in Spain

“Voting, I’ve only slipped once: last March, but it was to get rid of that guy once and for all. He reminded me too much of Franco.” Concha Pérez, 89 year old anarchist in Barcelona, interviewed in today’s El País.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, leader of the Partido Socialista Obrero de España, has just celebrated his first 100 days in office, with approval ratings higher than ever.

A big part of the popularity of ZP (“Zapatero Presidente,” a slogan invented during the electoral campaign) is that he is not José María Aznar, who as head of the rightwing Partido Popular and the government for the past 8 years turned a blind eye to ecological disasters (e.g., the ‘Prestige’ oil spill), sent Spanish troops into an unpopular war, encouraged the Church to burrow more deeply into the public schools, and reacted to feminist, regionalist and cultural concerns with sarcasm.

There is a sizable group of people in Spain who like those sorts of policies, but they are probably outnumbered by the Spaniards who consider themselves leftists (Socialists, Communists, anarchists, et al.). The right-wing Partido Popular (“People’s Party,” or PP) evolved from an ad-hoc coalition of monarchist, fascist and “National Catholic” organizations, dominated by remnants of Franco’s falangistas, but in order to win elections, it has to appear moderate. That trick worked in 1996, when voters wanted an alternative to Felipe González’s 14-year old PSOE government, which had become enmeshed in financial and police-abuse scandals. After 8 years of Aznar & co., PP support had seriously eroded, but the PSOE was still having trouble arousing enough support to beat the incumbents. But then the government’s attempts to manipulate information about the March 11 bombing in Madrid – the PP wanted it to appear that ETA, the Basque separatist killers, had done it, rather than Al-Qaeda – even anarchists like Concha Pérez (who don’t vote on principle) went to the polls to throw the bums out. (See my article in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Bombs and Ballots in Spain.)

Zapatero in 2004 is, like Felipe González in 1982, youthful, energetic, and attractive– approachable, smart, and even courteous to his opponents (even when the PP chieftains reply with sarcasm). The PSOE today is not talking about nationalizing industry, but about protecting natural resources (water, forests, coasts), grossly neglected by the previous government. It promises not to send soldiers to die in foreign wars without popular consent. It has already moved much more aggressively than the PP to advance the rights of women, pushing a law (still being debated) that would apply especially severe punishment to men found guilt of “domestic violence” (reports of murders of women by their husbands or ex-husbands or boyfriends are distressingly frequent in the papers), and naming as many women as men to the national government cabinet (including the first vice prime minister). And it, or ZP personally, has broken with the Aznar principle of tight central control to open up a “plural Spain,” where the governments elected in each “autonomous region” (Cataluña, País Vasco, Galicia, Navarra, Valencia, Murcia, Andalucía, etc.) have a greater say in the distribution of the national budget and decisions affecting their respective regions.

So far those regional leaders are eating it up, even those who are in the PP (Murcia & Valencia, for example, who have a beef with the new government’s water policy). Cataluña’s president Pasqual Maragall, has declared that “Cataluña is a state of Spain,” which is a big move away from the separatism that Catalans sought when Aznar was governing. With luck and cajolery and some long-range statesmanship from the president of the Basque region, el lehendekari Juan José Ibarretxe, ZP may even bring him around to a similar position. Giving the Basques more attention and resources is a gamble, given the strong nationalist secessionist current and, of course, but the prize would be very great, the recognition that their best bet is with Spain, not against it. Such a policy may be the most effective way to undercut the violent potential of ETA.