The Week Before April 4th

Hi Ya’ll!
Well all’s well in Corrientes. Today’s April 4, 2009, a Saturday, and it just rained for the first time since I arrived here on March 18.
Let me jump back a few days; last Saturday I established that I would call and email folks in Arkansas on Sundays and Wednesdays only. I hadn’t had so much free time since I was a teenager before I got a job at the Danville City Pool and this rule helped guide its use. On Monday I went to one of the schools at which I am to work and met the faculty. On Thursday I met the Britos Family, who played host to an Indian friend of mine some years ago, and then on Friday I had my first day of work.
At this public high school, I talked mostly in Spanish about colors in English, and specifically about the colors red and white and though I did NOT plan on it (at all), I’ll be dang if I didn’t call the Hogs. That took quite a bit of explaining.
I have reminded my “referente” (in Spanish), the professor in charge of my work and well being, that among the reasons I applied for Argentina specifically was the promise of teaching in a university. What an efficient way to find friends and musicians. And I will continue to gently remind him, but until then the teacher with whom I’m working at the public school is great, and so are her students.
I took my first LSAT this week, and finished The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar & Rhetoric by Sister Miriam Joseph, and then went and read An Introduction to Legal Reasoning by Edward Levi. Fortunately Mr. Levi has a funny bone. Now I’m reading Karl N. Llewellyn’s The Bramble Bush. The book’s introduction and notes were written by my mentor, Dr. Steve Sheppard. Lewellyn’s teaching style is similar to my Dad’s, so he’s certainly more entertaining than Sister Miriam Joseph and Mr. Levi.
Tonight I’ll have dinner with the Britos family. They actually invited me to a surprise party for the mother’s sister, but they would get back by 5, 6, or 7 am at the earliest. They actually invited me to stay the night (which would actually be the morning), also, but as my referente says in reference to the heat or Northern Argentina, “Me cuesta mucho.” Literally, it costs me a lot, or it takes a lot out of me. So I’m going to dine with them and then after dinner (midnight-ish?) I’ll come home and thankfully get into bed.
Among other friends and parents, I owe my adoptive-parents/-aunt and uncle Beth and David Hawkins for my regretless resolution. When it comes to refusing an offer, even though I am denying a cultural experience of the first class, I don’t mind. I don’t like alcohol, I don’t like not sleeping, and I’m fairly resolute about this. Now, if it were going to be a dance party featuring Michael Franti & Spearhead playing their album All Rebel Rockers live, then I’d dance all night long. But it takes specific causes and conditions, and just because something’s once-in-a-blue-moon or supposedly tastes really good or is the only one like it in the world is not enough.
On a more serious note, yesterday was the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop” speech. “He spoke without notes, and seemingly without forethought,” Andrew Young said. They were in Memphis trying to get union recognition and wages above poverty level for that city’s garbage workers. I listened to the speech today as I have “A Call to Conscience,” a collection of Dr King’s political speeches, on my laptop.

Here is a picture of the delicious broccoli curry that I made (Thank you Rachel, Geshe and Hamsa, my cooking teachers)

On Thursday before meeting the Britos family I had my first Argentine ice cream. They are justly famous for their ice cream, but I will not be having another because they are filled with sugar. Except maybe in Buenos Aires…

The Britos family and I had a great lunch; they fixed veggie pasta just for me. I met them because my friend Adam Dohagney introduced me to Moshe Newmark and because Moshe connected me with Swami Dayananda Saraswati in Southern India last summer. At Swamiji's ashram, I learned of the Swami Vivekananda Yoga University, and a month and a half later practiced yoga there with 50-ish other folks, mostly Indians, one of whom was Vipul Abhay Shaha whose brother lived with the Britos family.
The bus to Resistencia was packed on Friday morning.

Here is the moon and I in Resistencia’s main plaza, which was just jumping with music and an open-air market.

Back in Corrientes, Emilio and I ate a great pizza dinner last night.

And in honor of Dr. King here is an excerpt from that speech which he gave the night before April 4, 1968, the day he was assassinated:

“Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.
And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn't done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I'm just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period to see what is unfolding. And I'm happy that He's allowed me to be in Memphis."
The full text of this speech is at
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm .

One last thing, also related to social justice. If you are so inclined, please send a letter to Secretary Clinton questioning the March 22 US' shipment of arms to Israel: http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=11787&ICID=E0904A01&tr=y&auid=4706190

Thanks for tuning in!