Eating minnows...

Yesterday my gal Gina and I visited a Mexican town named Moreleon where they manufacture clothing and you can get some pretty good bargains at the factory outlet stores. On our way back to Irapuato in the afternoon we decided to stop in nearby Yuriria to get something to eat. There is a large shallow lake at Yuriria that is called a "laguna". It is ringed with water plants and it is full of little fish called "charales". The fishermen catch the charales with nets and the ladies deep fry them along the shore along with other types of fish and there is no better meal than a shoreside lunch of charales and fillet of mojara or robalo. The first time that I saw people eating charales I thought that they were eating minnows like the type that we used to use for bait in the rivers and lakes of Illinois where I am from. As a kid I always wondered if you could eat minnows. These little fish, however, are not minnows. They are a different species of fish and their English name is "Silversides" of which there are many sub-species all over the world. The species commonly found in central Mexico in the Rio Lerma basin is Chirostoma Aculeatum Barbour although there could be several other species mixed in. In any case they are a slender minnow looking fish about one and a half to two inches long.

Laguna Yuriria, as the lake is called, has an interesting history. It is a "man made" lake and one of the earliest hydraulic engineering feats by settlers in the New World. The town of Yuriria was establish in the year 1540 and in 1548 there appeared on the scene a very energetic Augustinian friar named , Fray Diego de Chávez y Alvarado. He immediately noticed that there was a large swampy area north of the town that gave rise to foul odors and he thought that the swamp might be detrimental to the health of the people. He gathered together a bunch of native people and dug a twelve mile long canal from the Lerma river to the swamp which promptly filled up with water forming a lake about four miles wide and ten miles long with a maximum depth of twenty-three feet.. It took him and his men two full years to accomplish this. This was not the last of Frey Diego's work either. In 1550 he began work on a monastery church called San Pablo Apóstol. He used three hundred men to gather the limestone rock from a quarry ten miles away and then twenty-one Spaniards and seventeen native stone masons took nine years to build the church. It is an incredible building on a grand scale and all that you can do is marvel at the skill and energy of the people who built it over 450 years ago.

I cannot think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon. It was so peaceful and relaxing sitting in the shade of a thatched roof eating fresh fish, watching the boats out on the lake, and chatting with the local people. For me this is what living in Mexico is all about.

What we need…

During this campaign season for electing the next U.S. president, like many other people I find myself reflecting upon what I think we really need in a leader. I remember the slogan of Theodore Roosevelt that went “Speak softly but carry a big stick”. That sits pretty well with me and just recently I came across an example of how in the past it was applied by a U.S. Navy captain named Duncan N. Ingraham.

There was a guy named Martin Koszta, of Hungarian birth, who had taken part in the political movement of 1848-49 for freeing Hungary from the dominion of the Emperor of Austria, and who had fled to Turkey upon the failure of that cause. He then emigrated to the United States and in July, 1852, he made a declaration under oath of his intention to become a citizen of the United States. At this time he renounced all allegiance to any foreign power. After residing in the U.S for about two years he took a trip to visit Europe and while sailing up the Mediterranean in June of 1853 the ship stopped at the city of Smyrna in Turkey which was a neutral port. Mr. Koszta went ashore and immediately placed himself under the protection of the United States by the American consul Mr. Offley at Smyrna. Since Smyrna was a neutral port he considered himself quite safe which in fact he actually was under international law. Unfortunately, however, he was recognized by someone in Austrian government who also happened to be there at the time and he was arrested by Austrian naval personnel and taken aboard the Austrian ship “Hussar” where he was placed in chains. No doubt the plan was to take him to Austria or Hungary and have him executed.

U.S. Captain Duncan N. Ingraham heard about the arrest of Koszta and he went alongside the Austrian ship and asked if Martin Koszta was on board. He was told that there was no one by that name on board. Captain Ingraham then went ashore and learned from others that Koszta was definitely on the Hussar and that the ship had been observed since Koszta was taken aboard and he had not left. Ingraham then went back alongside the Austrian ship and asked for Martin Koszta and again the Austrians denied that he was on board. Captain Ingraham returned to shore where he met the Admiral of the Austrian fleet and he said to him “I have been credibly informed that an American citizen by the name of Martin Koszta has been arrested upon these streets and taken aboard your flagship and is now being held as a prisoner. I have been to your ship twice, and twice the commander of your ship has lied to my face and denied that there was any such person aboard.”

Captain Ingraham immediately went aboard the Austrian ship. When Martin Koszta was brought before him in irons, Koszta was asked if he was an American citizen. He said that although he was not a full citizen, he had taken out his first papers after a residence in the United States of two years, and when the prescribed time had expired would take out final papers. He was asked if he demanded the protection of the American government. He said that he did. He was then informed by Ingraham that he should have that protection. Captain Ingraham demanded the immediate release of Koszta but the Austrians refused to comply. Captain Ingraham then gave them twenty-four hours to release Koszta and if he was not released by the end of that time then we would fire his guns upon the Austrian ships. The Austrians thought he was joking because they had three powerful naval ships with many men and guns and Captain Ingraham had only one small ship named the “St. Louis”. When the next day came everyone waited with much curiosity to see what would happen. The governor of Smyrna went to Captain Ingraham and thanked him for his willingness to protect the neutrality of the port but he was afraid that if Captain Ingraham carried out his demands the big Austrian guns would sink his ship. Captain Ingraham told him, “I know my duty and I shall do it. Unless the prisoner is released I will fire my guns upon them at the time specified.”

Captain Ingraham then placed his ship in better position where his guns could fire directly upon the flagship of the Austrians. The signals went up, the commands were given, the guns were loaded, and every man was at his post. Captain Ingraham was on the quarterdeck with his watch in hand waiting to give the order to fire just as soon as the time was up. Just a few minutes before the time expired a boat was let down from the Austrian ship and the prisoner was surrendered. For the first time the monarchs of Europe had learned that the United States was strong enough and brave enough to protect her people everywhere and would do so despite the danger, even though such citizens might be of foreign birth. In short…they learned that an American is an American no matter what!

So what happened after that? Well, I do know that Martin Koszta returned to the United States. He wrote a letter to the New York times thanking the American people which was published on Wednesday, December 14, 1853. After that he seems to have disappeared. Captain Duncan Ingraham on the other hand received the U.S. Congressional Medal of Honor on August 4^th, 1854 for his actions in the Koszta affair and went on to a long distinguished naval career, first in the U.S. Navy and after the outbreak of the Civil War he joined the Confederate Navy where he played an important role as a commodore. He married Harriet Horry Laurens and together they had 11 children. He died in 1891. He had been born in 1802 in Charleston, South Carolina and entered the U.S. Navy as a midshipman at the tender age of 10. He was navy through and through.

He is pictured below. There have been four U.S. naval ships named after him. The latest USS Ingraham is numbered FFG-61.

To paraphrase old Archie Bunker…“Mister we could use a man (or woman) like Duncan Ingraham again”. He would definitely have my vote.

Waterboarding

There has been quite a bit in the news lately about an interrogation procedure called “waterboarding” and whether it should be considered a form of torture or else “'a legitimate enhanced interrogation technique” as some members of George Bush’s legal team would have us believe. I was interested to learn recently that waterboarding as a form of torture used in the process of interrogation is not something new but its use has been documented for hundreds of years. In fact, it was one of the three or four main types of torture used during the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish certainly weren’t bashful about it. In their manner of thinking they were merely ferreting out heresy and saving souls. For those purposes they carefully documented each case of torture and the methods involved and those records are available to scholars to this very day. In addition, the Spanish Inquisition didn't invent waterboarding as a system of torture. Waterboarding had already been in use in earlier times during the medieval period and was later used by the Inquisition for more than 350 years, from about 1478 to 1834 in both Spain and Mexico. The Inquisition as an institution was finally ended here in Mexico in 1857 during the reform period but where I live in Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico the building that housed the administrative offices of the Inquisition still stands and is now the City Museum.

During waterboarding a “victim” is strapped to a board and the board is inclined so that his or her head is lower than their feet. Then they are blindfolded. There are even rumors to the effect that the procedure used by the U.S. Government agents involves using either duct tape as a blindfold or using office supply binder clips to clip the eyelids shut, which in itself is most likely a very painful and incapacitating experience. The victim’s mouth is then forced open and a cloth placed over the face and pushed into the mouth so that it reaches the back of the throat. The Spanish called this cloth a “toca”. Water is then poured into the mouth and nostrils through the cloth and the victim immediately feels the sensation that they are drowning. If this method fails, the interrogation goes to step two. They cover the victims face with a sheet of plastic kitchen wrap and make a small hole in the plastic over the mouth. Then they pour water in the hole over the mouth area. This is extremely painful and scary and often it is fatal or severely damaging to the victim.

The Dutch East India Company is said to have used waterboarding as well as the Japanese Kempeitai and the German Gestapo of World War II. The Cambodian Khmer Rouge (Remember the “killing fields”?) also used it and we all know what kind of people they were. The U.S condemned the practice during the Spanish American War and again during the Vietnam War when harsh sentences were meted out to U.S. forces who attempted to use such procedures. My, my, how times have changed. In 2002 President George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Attorney General John Ashcroft signed a presidential finding approving the use of waterboarding. Apparently they have yet to learn what the Spanish learned more than two hundred years ago. Confessions generated by torture were generally discounted or disregarded unless other evidence corroborated them because when a person feels that they are facing imminent death they are likely to say anything…Rambo and Superman included. Even in those times there was debate about whether testimony elicited under duress was credible.

Personally I think waterboarding is definitely torture and various polls show that about seventy percent of the American people think the same way that I do. It is nothing more than hatred and an undignified and futile practice. So why do we do it? Because George Bush says so, that’s why…and George Bush has a vision you know.

La Cabalgata

The Spanish word “cabalgata” is derived from the verb “cabalgar”, “to ride” as in to ride horseback. A “cabalgata” is a procession on horseback and at this time of the year it usually refers to “La Cabalgata de los Reyes Magos” which is the procession commemorating the Three Magi during the Epiphany when they came bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh for the Baby Jesus. In much of the Spanish speaking world the Three Magi or “Three Kings of the Orient” who are named Melchor, Gaspar, and Baltazar (in Spanish) also bring toys and gifts to the children. On the evening of the 5^th of January the children put their shoes close to a window and leave little gifts of food for the Magi and hay for their animals. In the morning there will be gifts in the shoes or next to the shoes. Santa Claus is making good headway in Mexico but nothing matches the excitement of the Three Kings. In the City of Irapuato, where I live in Central Mexico, there is a grand cabalgata on the evening of January 5^th and it is just about the most popular outdoor event of the year. It began in 1954 and this year there will be forty-two contingencies in the cabalgata represented by six hundred individual participants and it will be watched by about 350, 000 people who line the streets over an eighteen block area. The amount of people who will line the parade route is over half of the population. Just imagine the enthusiasm necessary to bring the people out on one of the coldest nights of the year!

Along the way there will be many vendors of helium filled balloons. Parents buy balloons for their children who attach their wish lists to the balloons and let them soar up to Heaven so that God will be sure to see them. The excitement of the children is really something to see, especially when the Three Kings arrive at the rear of the cabalgata. They are always represented by handsome muscular men who ride magnificent and spirited horses and they are all decked out in regal finery. I am willing to bet that the original Three Kings didn’t look as grand as our Three Kings of Irapuato. The cabalgata starts punctually at 7:30 pm and it ends about 9:pm. That should be a clue right there because hardly anything else is punctual here. Afterwards, all of the people go home and the kids put out their shoes and go to bed dreaming of the gifts that they hope to receive. The next morning they get up early to see what the Three Kings left for them. On January 6^th, the Epiphany, the people traditionally eat a cake that is called a “Rosca de Reyes”. It is a cake shaped like an oval ring and it has raisins and candied fruit on it. Inside the cake is baked a small porcelain or white plastic figurine of a child which symbolizes the Baby Jesus being hidden from the eyes of King Herod. Each person in turn is given a knife with which to cut a piece of cake for themselves. The knife symbolizes the danger that the Baby Jesus was in.

On the evening of the 6^th there is usually an early light supper called a "Merienda". Many times that is when the rosca cake is served accompanied by atole blanco which is a popular hot drink made from corn meal or the chocolate version which is called “champurrado”. Whoever receives the slice of rosca that contains the figurine has to host a tamale dinner for the rest of the people on February 2^nd which is called “Candalaria”. This date marks the end of the formal Christmas season and the figure of the Baby Jesus is taken from the manger and washed and dressed in new clothes and put away for another year. There is a little ceremony that usually includes saying a rosary and at the end of the ceremony everyone receives a traditional piece of candy.

Posada, Piñata, Pastorela

Every year that I live in Mexico I learn more and more about the traditions of the Mexican Christmas or “Navidad”. There are three main themes including the Posada, the Piñata, and the Pastorela that climax on December 24^th which is called “Nochebuena” or the “Good Night”. First I will address the “Posada” which means “lodging”. It relates the story of Saint Joseph leading a donkey bearing the very pregnant Virgin Mary from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem where Joseph frantically searched for a place where Mary could give birth to the Baby Jesus. Beginning on December 16^th and continuing up to and including December 24^th the posadas are held each night in turn by different people of the same neighborhood or family. This is a nine day period called a “novena” and some say that it commemorates the nine months that Mary was pregnant and others say that it commemorates the journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem, which supposedly took nine days. In the time of Jesus many societies followed the custom of gathering together for nine days following a burial and in the new testament book “The Acts of the Apostles” (Acts 1:14), we find the apostles, along with some of the close disciples and Mary the mother of Jesus gathered in the upper room and praying for nine consecutive days which culminated in the Pentecost or decent of the Holy Spirit upon them. In any case, nine seems to be a significant number in ancient histories.

How the posadas got started in Mexico is an interesting story. In the year 1587 a priest named Fray Diego de Soria, who was the rector of a monastery called San Augustín de Alcoman (just to the northeast Mexico City), asked permission to celebrate a mass called the “Misa de Aguinaldos” (Mass of Gifts) each day from December 16^th to December 24^th. In this mass there would be passages related to the story of the nativity and in order to draw the people to the mass the priests would include entertainment in the form of fireworks and songs and little gifts in the form of sweets. Now it just so happens that the people were already accustomed to celebrating during this period of winter solstice which they called “Panquetzaliztli” in their native tongue. It was a time when they celebrated their native war god whom they called “Huitzilopochtli”. The feast of Huitzilpochtli lasted twenty days from the 6^th of December until the 26th and it also had an element of pilgrimage in that people would travel long distances to come join the celebration. They would also receive gifts of sweetened seedcakes of amaranth or in Spanish “amaranto” and these sweets are still around today and are called “dulce de alegria” or “candy of joy”. Also note that even to the present day, the little bags of sweets given to children at Navidad are called “aguinaldo” and the same word is used for the end of the year bonus pay that is traditionally given to workers just before Navidad.

The earliest posadas were held in the open courtyards of the monasteries and began with a recitation of the rosary accompanied by songs and stories based upon the biblical account of the birth of Christ. Later on, the posadas were carried over by the people to their own houses and neighborhoods and evolved into what they are today. The posada entails two groups, one representing the innkeepers and the other representing the “peregrinos” or “pilgrims” meaning Joseph and Mary. All of the people in the pilgrim group carry candles and usually four of them carry a litter instead, upon which rest statues of Joseph and Mary and a donkey. Sometimes this is actually substituted by people dressed as Joseph and Mary and Mary is seated on a real donkey! There is generally someone walking in front of the group with a paper lantern lit by a candle. As is the custom they go to three houses and at each they knock on the door and sing their request for lodging. At the first two houses the group who answers the door listens to their request and sings a refusal. At the third house they sing their request to enter and the participants in the house give their acceptance in song and all of the people including the people from the other two houses are let in. Then they recite a rosary and sing a litany to the Virgin Mary and after this the fun begins. One of the things that they do which really surprised me is that everyone lights “sparklers” which in the United States people traditionally light on the 4^th of July. The ones that they use in Mexico for the posadas, however, are much smaller. They are called either “Luces de Belén” (Lights of Bethlehem) or “Luces de Bengala” (Lights of India). Even the small children get into the act and I am always worried that one of them will get burned but thank God I haven’t ever seen that happen and I hope I never will.

Now it is time to talk about the Piñata. The origin of the piñata can be traced back to China and it was part of the Chinese Spring Festival or what people in the west call “Chinese New Year”. The custom came to Italy by means of Marco Polo or perhaps some other adventurous soul and in Italy it took on a religious aspect and was called a “pignatta. It was used during the Lenten period and when the custom of breaking piñatas during Lent eventually arrived in Spain the Spanish introduced a feast every first Sunday of Lent called "The Dance of the Piñata." Breaking the piñata at the beginning of Lent symbolized the desire to end the evil in one's life, to convert the heart to return to God and receive an eternal reward. In the early sixteenth century, the piñata tradition was unknown in the New World but in Mexico, the Mayan Indians had a tradition of trying to break a clay pot that was filled with sweets and balanced on a pole. This practice was part of the traditional December “Panquetzaliztli” celebrations in honor of their war god “Huitzilopochtli”. The Spanish missionary priests were always looking for ways to convert the native traditions to Christian traditions and so they gave a religious sense to the game of breaking the pot and so they converted the “pot” into the form of the Spanish/Italian “piñata” and moved it from Lent to Advent. It quickly became a popular compliment to the festivities of the Posadas.

The traditional piñata of Navidad is made from a clay pot called an “olla piñatera” or “cantero” that is covered with bright colored paper and represents the Devil who tempts us with the bright colors. The classic piñata of Navidad is round with seven peaks or spikes, representing the seven cardinal sins: Sloth, Lust, Greed, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, and Pride. Hitting the piñata while blindfolded represents faith that allows us to believe without seeing. The stick with which to beat the piñata represents the force of the grace of God with which we combat evil. With God's help, we destroy the evil, and then we receive the fruits of God’s reward which are the sweets that are contained in the piñata. The shouts of the people who guide the blindfolded person with the stick represent the faithful of the church who collectively help us combat the Devil and who also share in God’s reward when the Devil is overcome.

The breaking of the piñata is always the highlight of any celebration. There are some very traditional songs that are sung in the process of breaking the piñata and during Navidad there are some extra phrases that are sung back and forth by the participants prior to the actual attempts to break the piñata:

“Ándale Roberto, no te dilates con la canasta de los cacahuates”. (Hurry up Robert, don’t dilly dally with the basket of peanuts.)

“Ándale Gina, sal del rincón con la canasta de colación.” (Hurry up Gina, come out of the corner with the basket of sweets.)

“No quiero oro ni quiero plata, yo lo que quiero romper la piñata”. (I don’t want gold nor do I want silver, I just want to break the piñata.)

“En esta posada salimos de apuro porque Luis nos dio solo ponte duro.” (We are leaving this posada early because Luis only gave us ponte duro.) Note: “ponte duro” are hardened little balls of corn flour mixed with unrefined sugar…a poor substitute for candy.

“Ándale José, mueve los pies con los copitas de vino jerez.” (Hurry up Joseph, move your feet, and bring us cups of sherry wine.)

“Esta piñata es de muchas mañas, solo contiene naranjas y cañas.” (This piñata is a trick; it only contains oranges and sugar cane.)

“Quiero mi canasta de papel de china, si no me la das me voy a la esquina.” (I want my tissue paper basket; if you don’t give it to me I will go out to the street corner.) Note: the basket referred to is the “aguinaldo” or gift basket of goodies which is given to everyone who attends the posada to make sure that no one is left out. The baskets are commonly made from or lined with either tissue paper, crepe paper, or white butcher paper.

“Quiero mi canasta de papel crepe, si no me la das me voy con José.” (I want my crepe paper basket; if you don’t give it to me I am going over to José’s house.

“Quiero mi canasta de papel estraza, si me no la das me voy a mi casa.” (I want my butcher paper basket; if you don’t give it to me I am going home.)

“En esta posada nos hemos chasqueado porque Teresita nada nos ha dado.” (We are very upset with this posada because little Teresa didn’t give us anything.)

“Echen confites y canelones a los muchachos que son muy tragones”. (Throw hard candies at the boys who grab for too much.) Note: “Confites and Canelones” are two types of hard candy.

“Todos los muchachos rezaron con devoción, de chochos y confites les dan ya su ración.” (All of the boys prayed with devotion so let’s give them their share of lupin beans and hard candies.”) Note: “Chochos” or “Lupin Beans” are like salted nuts and in Spain they are called “altramuz”.

“Castaña asada, piña cubierta; ¡Echen a palos a los de la puerta!” (Roasted chestnuts and candied pineapple; poke the people who are blocking our way!)

“Ándale Juan, sal de la hornilla, con la botella de la manzanilla.” (Hurry up Juan from the corner by the oven with the bottle of manzanilla wine.)

“De los cerritos y los cerrotes, saltan y brincan los tejocotes.” ( From the little hills and big hills the tejocotes jump and skip.) Note: “Tejocotes” are a yellow fruit about the size of a plum that grow wild and are used for fruit punch especially at Navidad.

“Ándale niña, sal otra vez, con la botella de vino jerez.” (Hurry up little girl, bring the bottle of sherry wine once again.)

“Esta posada le toca a Carmela, si no da nada le saca una muela.” (This posada is Carmen’s turn, if she doesn’t give anything she forfeits a tooth.)

“Ándale Mari no peles los dientes, yo lo que quiero son ponches calientes.” (Hurry up Mary, don’t give a silly grin, what I want is hot fruit punch.)

“Todaditos muy contentos a rezar la posadita, no es tanta devoción si no por la canasta.” (Everyone is content to participate in the posada, not so much for devotion as for the basket of goodies.)

“Ahora si muchachos ya se puede ir, para que mañana los dejen venir.” ( Okay boys, you can go home now because tomorrow you can come again.)

After the above calls back and forth the children line up stating with the smallest on to the biggest and the first person is given the stick (usually a sawed off broom stick or mop handle). Many times the first person is actually a baby who is held in the arms of his mother and this is the baby’s first ritual introduction to the piñata. The first person who is old enough to act on their own is blind folded and then spun in a circle while the people sing:

“Ya se va el curo Ponciano con su bastón en su mano a ver si vuelta u vuelta se quita lo panzón”. (There goes the priest Ponciano with his stick in his hand to see if by turning and turning around he can lose his belly.)

Then the blindfolded person is left under the piñata to try and find it and hit it with the stick. Some people pull on the rope that supports the piñata to make it jump about and harder to hit. Other people shout directions and encouragement while some of the people sing the following ditty to set a time limit:

“Dale, dale, dale,

No pierdas el tino

Porque si lo pierdes

Pierdes el camino.

Dale, dale, dale

Dale y no le dio

Quítenle la venda

¡Porque sigo yo!

¡Se Acabó!

¡Sigo yo!”

(Hit it, hit it, hit it!

Don't lose your aim

Because if you lose your aim

You will lose the path.

Hit it, hit it, hit it!

He hit it, and it didn't give

Take away his blindfold

Because it's now my turn!

It’s over!

I'm next!)

The people take turns until the piñata is broken and the treats come showering down and everyone scrambles to retrieve what the can. Often as not the piñata is finally broken by some twelve or thirteen year old girl who by now is a veteran of many attempts and knows exactly what strategies are needed to outsmart the jumping target. It is always interesting how exited the people get at the sight of the piñata. You can actually see grown people, especially young women, trembling with excitement as if wishing that they could take a turn. The piñata, however, is mostly reserved for children. After the scramble for goodies is over everyone receives a little bag of treats (aguinaldo) to make sure that no one is left out.

Now we come to the Pastorela or “Shepherd’s Play”. A pastorela is a simple morality play that usually involves shepherds who in some way or another are being tempted or tormented by the Devil. They began in twelfth century Europe and appeared in Mexico in the middle of the sixteenth century. They were used initially for the purpose of the evangelization of the native people but they eventually became part of the tradition of Navidad especially among school children. Many pastorelas are performed in schools or in community cultural centers. Almost every town of any size in Mexico has a “Casa de la Cultura” and putting on a pastorela performance is one of their traditions at Navidad. Pastorelas are homey, involve many children, and are at the same time quite predictable and very often amusing. The cast of characters has parts for everyone including simple shepherds, various Devils, Angels, Archangels, oriental Kings, and the Holy Family. Navidad just wouldn’t be the same without a pastorela. It is part of the fabric of Mexican culture.

One final note: The translations from Spanish to English above are my own. I have done the best that I can to convey the meaning but the translations are by no means literal. Some of the Spanish words are archaic and are not normally used in common speech and many of the phrases are linked to cultural practices which are no longer in use. When I asked some of my Mexican friends to help me with the translations they gave only a vague meaning for some of the words. I had to do bit of research to ferret out the details and even then when translated literally and out of cultural context the words didn’t make much sense in English without much additional explanation. What I provided above is what I consider to be a good compromise. Please forgive me if you don't agree and let me hear from you.

Hanukkah in Mexico

For all of my friends out there who may happen to be Jewish I wish you a Happy and Blessed Hanukkah season and to all of my friends who aren't Jewish here are some things that you should know about Hanukka:

Hanukkah occurs on 25th day of Kislev, the Jewish month which is based upon the lunar calendar and begins on a different date every year. The Feast of Hanukkah (or Chanukkah), sometimes called the "Feast of Lights", lasts for eight days. This year it starts at sundown tonight, December 4th, and ends at sundown on Dec. 12. It celebrates the victory of a group of Jews, the Maccabees, over a much a larger force of Greeks led by King Antiochus over 2000 years ago. The word Hanukkah means dedication. The holiday marks how a small amount of oil lasted eight days during the re-dedication of the temple in Jerusalem after it was desecrated by the Greeks. The Jewish people celebrate the holiday by lighting candles in a Hanukkah "menorah" for each of eight nights and eating foods fried in oil. Traditional Hanukkah foods include latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganiot (jelly donuts). Kids often play a game involving a dreidel (a spinning top) and chocolate gelt (money). The menorah used for Hanukkah is called a Chanukiah and is supposed to represent the menorah that stood in the ancient Jewish temple in Jerusalem more than 2000 years ago. The Chanukiah has nine branches, for eight candles and a helper candle used to light the other candles. The more traditional menorah has seven branches.

In Mexico Hanukkah is written "Januca,". The Jewish Hanukkah customs are very similar to those of Jews elsewhere except that the food may be a little different. Instead of latkes and sufganiot which are common among the Ashkenazic Jews of Russia and Eastern Europe the Sephardic Jews of Mexico tend to favor things like "buñuelos" which are fried fritters drenched in sugar syrup and also balls of corn dough with marmalade inside. Like their Jewish counterparts around the world they play the game of "dreidel" which they call "toma todo" and they call the dreidel top a "pirinola". To make their holiday really special and authentically Mexican the add a Mexican "piñata" in the shape of the dreidel top to the festivities.

There have been Jews in Mexico dating back to as early as 1521, when Hernan Cortes conquered the Aztecs, accompanied by several Jews who had temporarily "Christianized" in order to avoid the Spanish Inquisition. Many other Jews also eventually fled Spain and settled in Mexico in order to escape the Inquisition. Some of these Spanish or "Sephardic" Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism and were called "Converso" Jews, while other maintained their Jewish religious practices in secret to avoid being persecuted and they are known as "Crypto" Jews.

Few Jews migrated to Mexico after the conquest was complete and Spanish Inquisition became firmly entrenched and rigidly enforced in what was then called New Spain. Then, in the late 1800s, a number of German Jews settled in Mexico as a result of invitations from Maximilian I of Mexico, followed by a huge wave of Ashkenazic Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. A second large wave of immigration occurred as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, leading many Sephardic Jews from Turkey, Morocco, and parts of France to flee. Finally, a wave of immigrants fled the increasing Nazi persecutions in Europe during World War II.

Today, there are about 50,000 Jews living freely in Mexico and openly practicing their ancient religion. I hope they all enjoy their Hanukka festival. Happy Hanukka to everyone!!!

Winners and Losers

More and more lately I am hearing the phrase “It’s a win-win situation”. That phrase drives me nuts and I will tell you why. It ain’t natural, that’s why. It was something invented in the eighties by the soccer moms and the “Generation X” people. No longer was it necessary to have winner and a loser because everybody is supposedly a winner and everyone goes home with a trophy or a certificate of achievement or at the very least a “certificate” of attendance. I have actually been at a government sponsored conference where everyone who registered received a certificate that stated they had undergone ten hours of training in the identification and proper disposal of hazardous materials. That was in spite of the fact that about sixty percent of the people who registered for the conference never attended the training sessions but were either too hung over from the night before to attend the sessions or were out shopping, touring, or playing golf. The only meetings that were well attended were the hospitality cocktail parties in the evening that were mainly a warm up for bar hopping sessions later on. A “win-win situation” is just another way of saying a “bunch of losers” or at the very least, a “ceasing of hostilities”. The Korean War Armistice was a “ceasing of hostilities” and we all know what happened with that one. We didn’t want to win and so we lost…and are still “lost” more than fifty years later. A “win-win situation” is like a “tie” and a “tie”, according to a quote attributed to Michigan State University head coach Duffy Daugherty, “is like kissing your sister.”

Everything in this life is a struggle to win. The struggle from the lowly amoeba striving to become man floats down to us through history on a river of blood…the survival of the fittest. When was it announced that the lion has finally lain down with the lamb without eating it? As the poet Douglas Malloch once put it “The tree that never had to fight for sun, and sky, and air, and light, never became a forest king but lived and dies a scrubby thing. Whenever I hear that something is “win-win” it makes me shudder because I know that somebody is either losing and won’t admit it or they have had the wool pulled over their eyes. Give me a clear winner and a clear loser every time. I say “All hail to the winner” and “Better luck next time” to the loser.

I’m over a barrel.

As the price of crude oil is poised to go over one hundred dollars per barrel the news people keep showing pictures of modern 55 gallon drums to represent barrels of oil. This drives me crazy and it also distorts the true picture. Most people, including the news people (apparently), are not aware that a standard barrel of crude oil contains only 42 gallons and it has been that way ever since 1866. At one hundred dollars per barrel, a single gallon of raw crude oil costs $2.38 per gallon. If there were 55 gallons in a standard barrel of crude oil the raw crude would only cost $1.89 per barrel. To make things even worse, out of each barrel of crude oil we only get about 18 gallons of gasoline which is 43% of the total volume. The other 57% is divided among various distillates, residuals, jet fuel, feed stocks, still gas (whatever that is), asphalt, petroleum coke, LPG, kerosene, various lubricants, and some miscellaneous garbage. Even after selling all the byproducts to various customers the actual refinery gets to keep very little of that one hundred dollars.

Now, if you think about all of the energy that it takes to find the crude oil, pump the crude oil out of the ground, transport the crude oil, refine the crude oil, transport the gasoline, and pump it into your car, it is a wonder that there is anything left but fumes. Nobody transports oil in barrels anymore either. It would be better to talk about oil in cubic meters because that is how it is measured and shipped in tankers and pipelines. Once we start matching apples to apples and crude oil to the proper measuring standard we will have a much better picture of how precarious our energy situation really is. The next time you see a news story about oil prices and they show you a stack of 55 gallon drums you will now realize by how much you are being short changed. This is your wake-up call.

!Viva la Revolución!

Today is Revolution day here in Mexico. We actually celebrated the day yesterday, November 19^th, so that we could have a three day weekend but November 20^th commemorates the day in 1910 when Francisco I. Madero made the call to arms that would eventually last ten years or more and lead to the deaths of over one million people. That was seven percent of Mexico’s population at the time. It has always been called the “revolution” but it was really more of a series of civil wars and political skirmishes that led to the Mexican Constitution of 1917. The major killing didn’t stop, however, until well into the 1920’s and continued on after that as a series of murders and assassinations. It wasn’t until the years 1934 through 1940 when a man named Lazaro Cardenas finally put a stop to it. President Cardenas also abolished capital punishment which was commonly carried out by firing squad and his control of the country without the need for executions was an indication that the revolutionary period was at its end. In 1940 President Cardenas voluntarily relinquished all power to his successor Manuel Avila Camacho which was an unprecedented event in Mexican history. In 1942, Manuel Avila Camacho and all living former Presidents appeared on a stage in Mexico City in front of the Palacio Nacional to encourage the Mexican people to support the Americans and British in World War II. This demonstration of political solidarity between politically diverse elements effectively signaled the true end of the Revolution. Some say that the revolution never really died, however, and that it is just lying dormant and waiting for a chance to rear its ugly head again. It will be interesting to see what happens in 2010 when we celebrate the 100 year anniversary.

What Hath God Wrought?

Something happened to me this weekend that made me realize how fast things are changing in the field of communications. A friend of mine introduced me to a computer based voice transmission service called “Skype”. This service is free to people who want to communicate from computer terminal to computer terminal over regular phone lines and there is no cost for the service. If you want to call a regular land line or cellular phone from a computer anywhere in the world there is a small charge of two to three cents per minute. I ended up talking with a friend in Australia for two hours for free and other friends in the United States, Germany, and Italy. The only thing that I needed to do was download and install a free program from Skype and purchase a very cheap microphone for my laptop computer. The program is so simple to use that a child can do it and it operates with ring tones just like a regular phone. It is like magic.

It made me reflect a bit on the history of data collection and transmission. About 4000 B.C. the human race discovered writing and "Read Only Memory" was born. Before that, data could only be transmitted by talking, shouting, whistling, or smoke signals. To permanently store anything you had to carve it into stone and that was the first "hard disk". That's about all we had for the next few thousand years. I guess you could say that we had some floppy discs in the form of animal skins and papyrus but copying files was a very labor intensive process and there were many, many errors. File copying got a little easier around 1500 A.D. with the invention of the printing press and you could store the files in a library where they were fairly easily retrieved. You couldn't transmit them across town very fast, however, and the fastest transmission speed was limited to the speed of the fastest horse.

In the late 1840's a man called Samuel Morse came along and gave us our first electronic data transmission capability. It was still limited by geography and the topography of the earth's surface. In about 1910 it became wireless and data began to fly through the air. In the 1920's our storage capability was improved with the invention of audio and video recording. In the 1940's we began to send pictures through the air and in the seventies we acquired the capability to transmit entire documents at the push of a button.

When I was reading about John Gutenberg and Samuel Morse I was amazed at the amount of effort they put into their inventions. Not only did they invent the process but they also invented the product. Gutenberg was a goldsmith by trade and such a perfectionist that even today his bibles are some of the most beautiful printing ever done. I always had a mental picture of Morse as having had the good fortune to have stumbled upon a use for some odds and ends of wire and stuff that he threw together. Not so! He took great pains to make sure that his invention was a complete system before he introduced it. He used a process that today is called "frequency analysis" by data transmission engineers. When he decided to use an alphabetical system with his new invention he went to a newspaper and studied the type cases. He assigned the shorter dot and dash symbols to the most commonly used characters. He counted the type in one particular newspaper's bins and found 12,000 e's, 9,000 t's, 8,000 each of a, o, m, I, and s. He found 6400 h's and so on and so on. He assigned a single dot to the letter "e" which was the most common letter and a single dash to the letter "t" which was the second most frequently used letter, etcetera.

Morse finally came up with a code in which an English message consisting of 100 letters requires the transmission time of around 940 individual units where the transmission of a dot equals one unit and a dash equals three units and a space equals either one unit or three units depending upon whether it is between words or letters. If the signals had been assigned at random the same 100 character message would have required the transmission of 1160 units instead of 940. Even so, about the fastest that they could transmit information was about 25 words per minute. Consider the fact that that one "byte" equals one character and that there are 8 "bits" in a byte. To that let's add one "start" bit and one "stop" bit for normal data transmission via generic modem. We then have the formula that 10 "bits" equals one character. Therefore 1200 baud is equal to about 120 characters per second. If we assume that each of the "words" in Morse's 25 "words per minute" is equal to eight characters then 25WPM is a little over 3 baud. Even if you only have a dial-up Internet connection of 56,000 baud you can transmit around 40,000 words per minute. Wow!

On May 24^th 1844 Mr. Morse inaugurated his telegraph by sending the first message which said “What hath God Wrought”. It is a quote from the King James version of the Holy Bible (Numbers 23: 23). For the next 151 years it was a standard medium of communication in the United States. For 94 years the Coast Guard used Morse Code to send and receive messages via radio on the high seas. But on Apr. 1, 1995, the Coast Guard sent its last Morse Code message from Chesapeake, VA, and the last words were:

“What Hath God Wrought?”.

Yesterday, when I connected with my friend from Australia and the sound was clear as a bell like they were sitting in the same room with me, the words of Samuel F.B. Morse came to my mind like an echo from the past that wouldn’t die. I then realized that the phrase should be change to a new phrase from that same Holy Bible. This time, however, it should come from Jeremiah 33:3:

“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.