Rants and Raves

Something To Think About

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Mike

Randy Brameier lived 13,904 days. He died 14 years ago at age 38. Diabetes gradually overtook him.

He was a friend and colleague. We would leave the office at least twice a day to go on “jaunts” to buy coffee and snacks or lunch, but the underlying purpose of our walks was to talk about and clear our minds of the insane things we had been working on that particular day as news reporters in New Jersey shore (United States) towns with ample crazy news. Randy had his serious side, but also a great sense of humor and he could make light of a bad situation like no other. We would laugh when we really should have been shaking our fists and cursing the planets.

“What we have is a failure to communicate,” was his favorite saying around the office. It seemed our bosses were always failing to communicate. Randy used the “failure to communicate” line in the face of challenge and adversity brought on indeed by a failure to communicate. After so many failures by the head office, what else was there to do but make light of the repeated missteps.

As I’ve stated here before, hours and hours spent traveling on a bus leads to hours upon hours thinking about the mundane, but sometimes about life. What should I do? Where should I go? Should I return home to find another job in journalism? Should I settle down? Should I just plain settle? Am I doing the right thing? Should that guy really be wearing yellow? Questions, questions.

When I recently saw the above poster on the Internet as I sat on a bus at work picking up a weak wi-fi signal, Randy came rushing back into my brain. As if it were yesterday I could hear him saying his classic failure to communicate line. Made me smile. But then I paused to examine the content of the poster, oddly placed on some Malaysian website written entirely in Malay except for the words on the poster: “Your Failures Do Not Define You.”

I’m not sure Randy would have run with this particular mantra. He was too much of a wisecrack to go around reciting such hefty prose. But then the whole notion of failures in life hurled my cluttered brain toward a conversation-turned-debate I had earlier in the week with a friend.

We were chatting via Skype. When we began to discuss turning points in our lives, I didn’t think it would be such a big deal when I told her “I love my life.” Her expression quickly changed and she responded that it was alright to love my life, but to voice that sentiment was not okay. She argued that it amounted to crass bragging and was insensitive to others whose lives aren’t going so well. Ohhh-kaaay!

I don’t claim to be Mr. Sensitivity, but I’m far from insensitive when it comes to the downtrodden. Been there myself, after all. I know a thing or two about being down and out. But how is expressing one’s happiness wrong?

After a volley of exchanges on the subject we agreed to disagree and moved on. (Hmmm…maybe I should have said I hate my life and gone for the sympathy).

In life we are pleased when we are doing what makes us happy. One of the things that makes me extremely happy is travel. My love of travel came at a very young age. I was always drawn to maps and could study them for hours. Geography was my favorite subject. It still is.

So now that I am fulfilling one of my life’s dreams – to travel around the world – I can truly say I love my life. Not that I didn’t love it before. I’ve been blessed with experiences few can claim: Visits to all but one of the U.S. states – Alaska get ready for the celebration of my arrival – travel to all but two continents – Australia and MAYBE Antarctica here I come. Meeting some incredible people worldwide, with more ahead.

Now I realize that there are countless others who would love to do what I’m doing, at least so they tell me, but because of circumstance and happenstance they can’t – or won’t.

Randy’s life was short. Jon Chamber’s life was short. Gayle Westry’s life was much too short. The list of peers who have died young is too long. Their brief time on Earth serve as a reminder that life is too short and there’s much to be seen and to be done. Follow your heart. If you like to cook, cook. If you like to climb, climb. Fulfill your dreams! A don’t fail at communicating to yourself and to others what makes you angry, sad, but above all, happy. And recognize that indeed your failures do not define you. Dust yourself off and next time around do for you that which makes you stand up and say I LOVE MY LIFE!  There is no greater feeling.

For me, it’s the love of travel. Or a simple matter of remembering an old friend.

TTT

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Gone But Not Forgotten

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Mike

Not Forgotten!

Hard to believe it’s been 10 years since the terrorists attacks in the United States. To me it feels as if it happened yesterday.

I remember where I was – living in Portland, Oregon, where I worked as a reporter for the state’s largest newspaper, The Oregonian. That previous week, I had worked long days and extra hours, so I had been granted a day off to catch up on some much-needed rest. I was in a deep sleep when the first phone call of the day came from a colleague. She didn’t bother with the usual “hello”. Her immediate frantic words were: “Mike, New York is under attack!”

Groggy and still half-asleep, I gently protested that she woke me up and asked what in the world was this about. She told me to put on the news. I turned on the television and didn’t have to switch the channel to find the unfolding drama as every television channel was broadcasting it live. Still, I switched to CNN, because what I was seeing on the television seemed unreal, like a Hollywood movie. Soon after I had tuned in, right there on live television, the second airplane crashed into the second World Trade Center tower.

I tried to call my family in New York to see if everyone was okay and out of harm’s way, but the phone calls would not go through. The phone lines were either jammed or down.

As I watched this insanity unfold, the second phone call came, this one from my editor who said he realized that it was my day off, but “we need all hands on deck.”

As I made my way to the office, I caught my first surreal image of a nation at war: A pickup truck sped up Broadway, one of the main downtown streets, with a man in the back holding high a very large American flag. I stopped dead in my tracks and looked at him, struggling to hold the flag high in the wind and to the truck’s jerky movements. As the truck slowed at a traffic signal, he looked dead at me and said nothing. There was fire in his eyes. He seemed ready for a fight. I guess it was his way of sending a message to the terrorists.

September 11, 2001, touched me in much deeper ways – an attack on a city that I love filled with family and friends who worked either in the towers or the World Trade Center area. My hometown, where as a teenager in Brooklyn I would stare at the Manhattan skyline dominated by the Twin Towers. Those attacks affected friends and family in unimaginable ways. Some are simply not the same people. I’m not the same person. I still travel and will never stop traveling, but like so many, I am wary. I study every passenger who comes aboard a flight I’m on and think about what I could and would do in the event of a terrorist act aboard. It’s the new reality we live in.

At one point that day 10 years ago, I ended up in Pioneer Courthouse Square in Downtown Portland, sitting alone and being comforted by a complete stranger – A woman who didn’t have to ask what was wrong. On that day, 300 million Americans grieved over the same loss and the rest of the world joined in that grief.

So I take this day to remember those nearly 3,000 people from all walks of life; representing dozens of nationalities, who lost their lives 10 years ago. And I pray that these evil men who profess to follow the teachings of a holy book and yet kill helpless men, women and children in the name of religion, are defeated once and for all. Evil is evil, no matter how they try to wrap it.

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Every Protest Should Rise To This Level Of Fun

Posted on August 29, 2011 by Mike

"What Would Chile Be Without Calama?"

I have to hand it to Chileans. Well, at least the Chileans in the northern town of Calama. They know how to make anti-government protest and random acts of civil disobedience entertaining. I’ve never had so much fun at a demonstration.

Not that I’ve participated in many protests to know the dynamics, the mechanics and what is to be expected. I have to think back to my college years to recall a demonstration I took part in. It was against a proposal to replace the free-wheeling, free-choice Liberal Artsprogram with a mandatory core set of academic subjects. So instead of entering college and choosing which subjects you wanted to take toward your major, a freshman would be required to take a series of  courses in math, science, English and a sprinkling of other subjects before he or she could fully concentrate on subjects in whatever major he or she had settled on.

Masked Man

Minority students saw that as a backdoor strategic move to scrap ethnic studies, such as Black Studies and Puerto Rican studies. Demonstrations decades before had led to the establishment of those departments and students weren’t about to let them go without a fight. I still remember the chant of hundreds of students in front of the administration building: “Core curriculum we say no! Ethnic studies won’t go!!” We lost that battle. All the college administration had to do is wait. Soon, the vocal opponents would have graduated and moved on to real life issues, such as jobs, marriage, kids, a mortgage.

After college I was not allowed to participate in protests or even so much as sign a petition no matter how worthy the cause. I was a journalist and journalists give up certain rights and freedoms other citizens have. Journalists have opinions, certainly, but they must keep them in check if they want to keep their jobs. Of course, journalists who are paid to give their opinion, well that’s a different story.

So this protest thing was sort of foreign to me. As a reporter I had covered my share of demonstrations, but they ranged from peaceful gatherings to the odd guy in a monkey suit chained to a bike rack in front of a federal courthouse.

Music and protest

In Calama, it was all about music. This protest to force the central government in Santiago to give Calama 5 percent of the revenues generated by the copper mines in the region was more like a folk and rock concert than anything else. In between pronouncements and denouncements of the administration of President Sebastián Piñera, bands took the stage and rocked the crowd. The headliners, the Chilean band Sol y Lluvia, had the flag-waving, mostly young audience jumping up and down in unison and singing along. Sol y Lluvia formed in the 1980s and became popular for their brand of music that mixes modern and traditional instruments, but also because of their strong opposition to the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. I really enjoyed this band. And so did the rest of the audience on hand.

Besides the bands, there were cheerleaders doing acrobatic stunts, men and women in strange costumes, jugglers on stilts, flag dancers, loud vuvuzelas left over from World Cup Soccer, and an assortment of other acts that pleased the audience. This was the most excitement I had seen in Calama in the nearly two months I’ve been here.

Freed mayor speaks

Now, I refer to the amassed crowd as an audience rather than protesters because the event evolved into a street festival. Sure, there were some tense moments, but few and far between. At Chuquicamata, the largest open-pit mine in the world, Calama Mayor Esteban Velásquez and several others were arrested and put in jail for several hours after they blocked the entrance to the mine to stop vehicles from entering and exiting in a failed effort to shutdown mining operations. According to eyewitnesses, several of the demonstrators who showed up at the mine around 4 a.m., were forcibly removed by riot police brought in from the town of Iquique, about five hours drive north. The mayor and the others were freed after boisterous demonstrators turned up at the police station to demand their release. Other demonstrators claimed they and others were beaten by riot police at the mine.

Also at the Calama Shopping Mall, which chose to ignore the citywide work stoppage, demonstrators blocked access and refuse to allow potential shoppers to enter. Mall security and police worked out an agreement with the demonstrators to allow the mall to stay open until noon. The protesters agreed and promptly at noon were back at the mall chanting and turning away people who were trying to do some shopping.

Several demonstrators at the mall tried to get me to join them and I pointed out that I was not Chilean and the penalty for foreigners participating in demonstrations in Chileis automatic deportation. The women said they would protest my deportation. Funny.

 

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Sol y Lluvia

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