Blackbeard and Osama: King Makers
I found a great piece in the opinion section of today's New York Times that shows just how easily it is to convince freedom loving citizens to surrender their freedom and liberty for a little security, and how difficult it can be to reclaim that freedom. This is nothing new. As addressed with respect to ancient Rome in this piece, extraordinary powers were given to England's Colonial Royal Governors with virtually no oversight from Parliament ( a condition of William II of Holland to ascend to the thrown was an agreement that all true power resided in the hands of Parliament rather than a Dutch King. His successor and sister-in-law Anne changed this dramtically in her 16 years of reign.)
Royal Governors were given free reign to grant pardons or contract hunting missions in the Caribbean and the American colonies, primarily utilizing the "terrorists" themselves who, through their pardons, had just been granted free reign to now plunder in the name of the England. This gave Woodes Rogers the incredible power to take over The Bahamas as a pseudo-viceroy and to fuel the ambitions of Governor Spotswood of Virginina to launch an invasion by land and sea into North Carolina sovereignty to capture Blackbeard. This unlawlful invasion from an ambitious colonial governor, who likewise dreamed of being the Regent of America. This led to conflicts between the colonies, starting with North Carolina, that fought against the growing power of the Crown to infringe on American life. Over the next 56 years, led to our declaration of independence from England.
Americans historically despise emperors with limitless power for it contradicts the fundamental reasons why we fought and bled for our freedom. The following Op-Ed points out how this is nothing new...and continues to this day. Isn't it interesting that an
Englishman has to point this out to us?
Enjoy your weekend...
September 30, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Pirates of the Mediterranean
By ROBERT HARRIS
Kintbury, England
IN the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.
The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.
Consider the parallels. The perpetrators of this spectacular assault were not in the pay of any foreign power: no nation would have dared to attack Rome so provocatively. They were, rather, the disaffected of the earth: “The ruined men of all nations,” in the words of the great 19th-century German historian Theodor Mommsen, “a piratical state with a peculiar esprit de corps.”
Like Al Qaeda, these pirates were loosely organized, but able to spread a disproportionate amount of fear among citizens who had believed themselves immune from attack. To quote Mommsen again: “The Latin husbandman, the traveler on the Appian highway, the genteel bathing visitor at the terrestrial paradise of Baiae were no longer secure of their property or their life for a single moment.”
What was to be done? Over the preceding centuries, the Constitution of ancient Rome had developed an intricate series of checks and balances intended to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a single individual. The consulship, elected annually, was jointly held by two men. Military commands were of limited duration and subject to regular renewal. Ordinary citizens were accustomed to a remarkable degree of liberty: the cry of “Civis Romanus sum” — “I am a Roman citizen” — was a guarantee of safety throughout the world.
But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the 38-year-old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as Pompey the Great) arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus Gabinius, to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new law.
“Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over everyone,” the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. “There were not many places in the Roman world that were not included within these limits.”
Pompey eventually received almost the entire contents of the Roman Treasury — 144 million sesterces — to pay for his “war on terror,” which included building a fleet of 500 ships and raising an army of 120,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. Such an accumulation of power was unprecedented, and there was literally a riot in the Senate when the bill was debated.
Nevertheless, at a tumultuous mass meeting in the center of Rome, Pompey’s opponents were cowed into submission, the Lex Gabinia passed (illegally), and he was given his power. In the end, once he put to sea, it took less than three months to sweep the pirates from the entire Mediterranean. Even allowing for Pompey’s genius as a military strategist, the suspicion arises that if the pirates could be defeated so swiftly, they could hardly have been such a grievous threat in the first place.
But it was too late to raise such questions. By the oldest trick in the political book — the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as “soft” or even “traitorous” — powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire.
Those of us who are not Americans can only look on in wonder at the similar ease with which the ancient rights and liberties of the individual are being surrendered in the United States in the wake of 9/11. The vote by the Senate on Thursday to suspend the right of habeas corpus for terrorism detainees, denying them their right to challenge their detention in court; the careful wording about torture, which forbids only the inducement of “serious” physical and mental suffering to obtain information; the admissibility of evidence obtained in the United States without a search warrant; the licensing of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an enemy combatant — all this represents an historic shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the executive.
An intelligent, skeptical American would no doubt scoff at the thought that what has happened since 9/11 could presage the destruction of a centuries-old constitution; but then, I suppose, an intelligent, skeptical Roman in 68 B.C. might well have done the same.
In truth, however, the Lex Gabinia was the beginning of the end of the Roman republic. It set a precedent. Less than a decade later, Julius Caesar — the only man, according to Plutarch, who spoke out in favor of Pompey’s special command during the Senate debate — was awarded similar, extended military sovereignty in Gaul. Previously, the state, through the Senate, largely had direction of its armed forces; now the armed forces began to assume direction of the state.
It also brought a flood of money into an electoral system that had been designed for a simpler, non-imperial era. Caesar, like Pompey, with all the resources of Gaul at his disposal, became immensely wealthy, and used his treasure to fund his own political faction. Henceforth, the result of elections was determined largely by which candidate had the most money to bribe the electorate. In 49 B.C., the system collapsed completely, Caesar crossed the Rubicon — and the rest, as they say, is ancient history.
It may be that the Roman republic was doomed in any case. But the disproportionate reaction to the raid on Ostia unquestionably hastened the process, weakening the restraints on military adventurism and corrupting the political process. It was to be more than 1,800 years before anything remotely comparable to Rome’s democracy — imperfect though it was — rose again.
The Lex Gabinia was a classic illustration of the law of unintended consequences: it fatally subverted the institution it was supposed to protect. Let us hope that vote in the United States Senate does not have the same result.
Robert Harris is the author, most recently, of “Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome.”
The End Of The First Trimester
Writing any massive work is truly like giving birth and, tonight, we completed the first trimester of this baby we call Thatcher.
A word of advice to anyone writing historical fiction... don't! Straddling the line between the real and the make believe is like balancing elephants on a waterglass... totally possible but equally stupid! If you can't talk yourself out of historical fiction than pick an era where there is a lot of data because I can tell you there ain't shit on the French and Indian War and the the War of Spanish Succession! You can find more data than you will ever need for the colonial era leading up to 1699 and the period leading into the American War of Independence but the early 18th Century? All I can say is, thank Gaea, for the ananchronists for without those small groups of the historically obsessed I would have been totally screwed.
Props to the geeks of the world. Thank you. There are a small sliver of people who actually care enough about small segments of history, along with the Star Trek and Star War nerds, the Highlander Freaks and a huge body of pirate fanatics that are so passionate about their interest and possess such a profound capability to extrapolate on points of pure fantasy or conjecture and make it absolutely plausible.
We're going to take a couple of much needed days off to recharge our batteries and come back roaring into the second trimester. Metaphorically, this is usually the easy part as you get to feel the baby growing and you're over the morning sickness. Abortion or miscarriage are less likely now and you actually start to relish what you're bringing into the world. Writiers and mothers deserve and desperately need this little interlude because our minds and bodies are preparing for that last trimester when the swelling and back aches and the desire to just get this damn thing out of you is all you think about. You know that the labor pains are just around the corner and you constantly ask yourself why you ever wanted this baby in the first place until, at last, you deliver a 10 pound bouncing book.
Thanks to all the love and support we've received so far. Hopefully over this next trimester we'll be much more pleasant, less emotionally erratic and actually easier to reach.
That way, when the beastliness returns you can, if nothing else, shake your heads and marvel at our insanity and know it's almost over.
PLAN B
In our modern world where almost all problems are solved by a phone call or mouse click, it is good to be reminded that life is not so simple in much of the rest of the planet. Let's face it, with online banking, 24 hour customer service lines with people who speak your language, ATMs and virtually every merchant in America taking credit cards, it is hard to remember what life was like before automation.
The first lesson learned was my failure to exchange dollars for pesos the moment I crossed the border. As a rule I never carry much cash, usually $40 or $50 dollars, as most of my purchases are with credit cards or ATMs. Here in Mexico, that can leave even the richest man in a world of hurts because, except for those multi-national companies or tourist driven retailers, few businesses take credit cards. Let's face it, the costs for equipment are expensive, and Mexicans typically price their items at a reasonable rate. To now incur the cost of equipment and the commissions to the banks would force these small retailers, more often than not family owned enterprises, a sizable portion of their profit or force them to raise prices to the detriment of their cash customers just to keep their head above water. Now, I've grown used to carrying a few thousand pesos when on bigger shopping trips. I still don't like to carry cash, but I've yet to feel the least bit threatened for either Pen or me to have to be cash rich.
Mexico is a very gas rich and dependent nation. It has been years since I have given much thought to the importance of natural gas lines. While I may have plumbed in my younger days, I take pride in my reliance on skilled mechanics and servicemen who make their living catering to the mechanically inept such as me. It took me a few weeks to grow accustomed to monitoring my tanks and giving them a good jostle every now and again to determine their contents, switching out my natual gas tanks whenever they run empty, bleeding the lines of air before attempting to light my stoves and water heater and all those little necessities to make sure I had ample supplies of my primary energy source. When I sprung a leak while switching out tanks, I was concerned because I didn't know how to contact the gas people, so one of my neighbors showed me what was wrong with the line and off to the Ferroterro I went to purchase a pigtail, the length of copper tubing that connects the gas to the house (the Spanish word for this item in just that - pigtail - not requiring me to find the translation coleta, which made them want to direct me over to the mercado across the street ... it's "pigtail" in any language I guess). I began to feel that little sense of do-it-yourself pride as I awaited the gas man, who couldn't understand why I didn't just replace it myself rather than stake out the stoops with my lovely new pigtail in hand.
Mexicans take great pride in their conservation efforts. Nothing goes to waste in Mexico, from food to packing materials, as everything has a dual usage. One thing you quickly notice is that Mexican retailers, even the big chains, tend to take energy conservation very seriously. In small retailers, they use very little lighting as, not only is electrical relatively expensive but it is also heavily subsidized by the Mexican government. We've come to the conclusion that conservation is instilled very young in both home and the schools as you do not see people wasting electricity. In the big retailers and most homes, the skylight is a common feature. On that rare occasion I allowed myself to go into the Morelai Walmart (side note: if you find yourself in a U.S. Walmart, play a game. Try to find American made products. Good luck.Every item in a U.S. Walmart is made in a democracy-free third world nation. In Mexico? I had to hunt high and low to find cheap Chinese goods. Most items, including about 95% of the clothes, were made in Mexico. Talk about pumping up your manufacturing sector. I find it interesting how Walmart can be compelled to carry domestically manufactured items in Mexico, but the U.S. can't seem to compel the richest corporation in America to help our manufacturing sector by buying American made or at least making NAFTA and CAFTA wothwhile to our trading partners and featuring more manufactured goods from Canada and Mexico or the Caribbean and Central America. But I guess slave labor wins over fairness to the American consumer. But, I digress...) I was not surprised to find it much more brightly lit than the typical Mexican retailer,but the secret to that brilliance was that the roof was almost entirely one big skylight of white corrugated plastic. This became obvious as a rainstorm rolled in and the American Pop Music blaring through the speakers was drowned out by the clatter of the rain on plastic (thank you, Gaea) and, as the dark clouds dimished the natural light, additional light was turned on to keep the store American bright. But no sooner did the rain cloud depart and natural light return in ample amounts that, one by one, unneeded artificial light was extinguished. Now, think about the cost savings. Rather than running every refirgerator and freezer to maximum levels, rather than keeping the air conditioning blasting at 65 degrees and burning thousands and thousands of watts per hour in unneeded lights so that every big box retailer's floorspace shines with a timeless incandescence like Las Vegas, what about conserving? Perhaps they could then have less operating capital being spent on non-recoupable expenses like energy and maybe they could afford to channel those dollars toward higher wages and comprehensive health care.
Maybe, instead of all of us forcing every item's cost to increase by forcing retailers to accept credit cards, we should return to the simple practice of spending cash and buying only what we can afford. Maybe if we were a little more pragmatic in our purchasing habits and demanded retailers carry domestically manufactured goods, we may spend a little more and I buy a little less but we would reinvigorate U.S. manufacturing. But again, I digress ... because I received a crash course in manual bill paying. We receive our first power bill which came to a whopping 90 pesos (about $9 U.S.) but we didn't bother to notice the date it was due and headed off to Leon to shop for boots for the girls (Leon is the "Shoe Capital of Mexico"). When we got home, we were without electricity, and by the time I stopped cursing and trying to figure out what to do and how I was going to address the coffee isssue in the morning, I gained the presence of mind to head down to the Electricidad. To my chagrin, they closed an hour before I got there, but the soldier posted out front smiled and told me in great English to come back in the morning at 8:00 and they'd solve the problem immediately. So we played cards that night by candlelight, and I resolved the coffee dilemma with a trip to the OXXO, a U.S. like convenience store that let me fill my thermos for about $2.00 U.S. (plus we were able top put in a bit of work before bed with about two hours of battery time on the laptop). And the next morning I didn't have to endure some surly attendent who hates his job and grimaces at me from behind bullet-proof glass. I was instead directed to a nice desk and greeted by very sweet and apologetic ladies who spoke no English and were very forgiving of my poor Spanish and arranged for power to be restored that day. But here's the deal. They treated us like adults. No two or three notices in the mail warning us that we were late paying our bill. It was late, I ignored the deadline and we lost power. It was nothing personal. And when I paid my money, they were kind and gracious and very service-oriented, despite the fact that I was just another ignorant alien who didn't speak the language or understand their protocols. It was an eye opener about what a bitter, superficial nanny culture we have become.
My most recent eye opener occurred today. Last night we ran out of water around 10 p.m. It was too late to call anyone, so we used our bottled water to flush our toilets and brush our teeth and resolved to discover the source of this latest snafu. Our tap water comes from a central plant in downtown Patzcuaro and, apparently, it blew up last night. But they worked on it through the night and got it back on line this afternoon. In the meantime, my neighbor Arturo showed me a little trick. We're both middle aged men, but we threaded our way onto the roof where he showed me three tanks that provided service to the apartments below. Both apartments beside us are presently empty, so he produced a length of hose and got a siphon going, and we began to drain water from one of the two full tanks. "This is the Mexican Way," said Arturo, a 50-ish Mexican artist, permanently adorned by a rally hat and leather vest. "We always have a Plan B."
I climbed back onto the roof just before starting this blog and saw headway on my tank and moved the hose to the fuller tank, drawing with all the strength my smoke blackened lungs could muster to start a very impressive siphon from the other full tank. I sat on the roof for a moment, marvelling at the beauty from my precarious perch with its miles of mountainous view. I realized how lucky I was to be someplce that forces me to be part of the process of my life. It's my responsibilty to monitor my gas, conserve electricity so I don't further tax the Mexican people, relish the cash in my pocket and the good it does for that family who sold me a product at a fair price, to pay my bills on time and not expect a wake up call for delaying, to figure out how things work and to put my hands to the wrench or my mouth to the siphon hose and solve the problem myself. It forced me to get out of our apartment, put the work aside for a few moments, heft my oversized body up onto the roof and take in the majesty around me.
And thank Gaea for Plan B.
It has been a busy couple of weeks and I have much to detail. Tomorrow is Mexican Independence Day which I will write about over the weekend. But all throughout the country are seas of Mexican flags in anticipation of tomorrow's big day. There is a big festival planned tomorrow in Patzcuaro which we will photograph and post with the updates. But on the cusp of Mexican Independence, I read a story today in the New York Times that can be a moment of pride for the Mexican people which I've pasted below.
Viva Mexico, y'all!
September 15, 2006
Writing May Be Oldest in Western Hemisphere
By
JOHN NOBLE WILFORDA stone slab bearing 3,000-year-old writing previously unknown to scholars has been found in the Mexican state of Veracruz, and archaeologists say it is an example of the oldest script ever discovered in the Western Hemisphere.
The Mexican discoverers and their colleagues from the United States reported yesterday that the order and pattern of carved symbols appeared to be that of a true writing system and that it had characteristics strikingly similar to imagery of the Olmec civilization, considered the earliest in the Americas.
Finding a heretofore unknown writing system is rare. One of the last major ones to come to light, scholars say, was the Indus Valley script, recognized from excavations in 1924.
Now, scholars are tantalized by a message in stone in a script unlike any other and a text they cannot read. They are excited by the prospect of finding more of this writing, and eventually deciphering it, to crack open a window on one of the most enigmatic ancient civilizations.
The inscription on the Mexican stone, with 28 distinct signs, some of which are repeated, for a total of 62, has been tentatively dated from at least 900 B.C., possibly earlier. That is 400 or more years before writing was known to have existed in Mesoamerica, the region from central
Mexico through much of Central America, and by extension, anywhere in the hemisphere.
Previously, no script had been associated unambiguously with the Olmec culture, which flourished along the Gulf of Mexico in Veracruz and Tabasco well before the Zapotec and Maya people rose to prominence elsewhere in the region. Until now, the Olmec were known mainly for the colossal stone heads they sculptured and displayed at monumental buildings in their ruling cities.
The stone was discovered by María del Carmen Rodríguez of the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico and Ponciano Ortíz of Veracruz University. The archaeologists, a married couple, are the lead authors of the report of the discovery, which is being published today in the journal Science.
The signs incised on the 26-pound stone, the researchers said in the report, “link the Olmec to literacy, document an unsuspected writing system and reveal a new complexity to this civilization.”
Noting that the text “conforms to all expectations of writing,” the researchers wrote that the sequences of signs reflected “patterns of language, with the probable presence of syntax and language-dependent word orders.”
Several paired sequences of signs, scholars said, have even prompted speculation that the text contained poetic couplets.
Experts who have examined the Olmec symbols said they would need many more examples before they could hope to read what is written on the stone. They said it appeared that the symbols in the inscription were unrelated to later Mesoamerican scripts, suggesting that this Olmec writing might have been practiced for only a few generations and never spread to surrounding cultures.
Stephen D. Houston of
Brown University, a co-author of the report and an authority on ancient writings, acknowledged that the apparent singularity of the script was a puzzle and would probably be emphasized by some scholars who question the influence of the Olmec on the course of later Mesoamerican cultures.
But Dr. Houston said the discovery “could be the beginning of a new era of focus on the Olmec civilization.”
Other participants in the research include Michael D. Coe of
Yale; Richard A. Diehl of the
University of Alabama; Karl A. Taube of the
University of California, Riverside; and Alfredo Delgado Calderón, also of the National Institute of Anthropology and History.
Mesoamerican researchers not involved in the discovery agreed that the signs appeared to represent a true script and that their appearance could be expected to inspire more intensive exploration of the Olmec past. The civilization emerged about 1200 B.C. and virtually disappeared around 400 B.C.
In an accompanying article in Science, Mary Pohl, an anthropologist at
Florida State University who has excavated Olmec ruins, was quoted as saying, “This is an exciting discovery of great significance.”
A few other researchers were skeptical of the inscription’s date because the stone was uncovered in a gravel quarry where it and other artifacts were jumbled and possibly out of their original context.
The discovery team said that ceramic shards, clay figurines and other broken artifacts accompanying the stone appeared to be from a phase of Olmec culture ending about 900 B.C. They conceded, though, that the disarray at the site made it impossible to determine if the stone was in a place relating to the governing elite or a religious ceremony.
Dr. Diehl, a specialist in Olmec research, said, “My colleagues and I are absolutely convinced the stone is authentic.”
Road builders digging gravel came across the stone in debris from an ancient mound at Cascajal, a place the discoverers said was in the “Olmec heartland.” The village is on an island in southern Veracruz and about a mile from the ruins of San Lorenzo, the site of the dominant Olmec city from 1200 B.C. to 900 B.C.
That was in 1999, and Dr. Rodríguez and Dr. Ortíz were called in, and they quickly recognized the potential importance of the find.
Only after years of further excavations, in which they hoped to find more writing specimens, and comparative analysis with Olmec iconography did the two invite other Mesoamerican scholars to join the study. After a few reports in recent years of Olmec “writing” that failed to hold up, the team decided earlier this year that the Cascajal stone, as it is being called, was the real thing.
The tiny, delicate signs are incised on a block of soft serpentine stone 14 inches long, 8 inches wide and 5 inches thick. The inscription is on the stone’s concave top surface.
Dr. Houston, who was a leader in the decipherment of Maya writing, examined the stone with an eye to clues that this was true writing and not just iconography unrelated to a language. He said in an interview that he had detected regular patterns and order suggesting “a text segmented into what almost look like sentences, with clear beginnings and clear endings.”
Some pictographic signs were frequently repeated, Dr. Houston said, particularly ones that looked like an insect or a lizard. He suspected that these were signs alerting the reader to the use of words that sound alike but have different meanings — as in the difference in English of “I” and “eye.”
All in all, Dr. Houston concluded, “the linear sequencing, the regularity of signs, the clear patterns of ordering, they tell me this is writing, but we don’t know what it says
Gratitude
We had just completed Chapter Four the other morning around 4 a.m.
As is often the case, I have a difficult time shutting down after a long night of writing, so after laying in bed for about a hour and a half I got up, grabbed a cigarette and headed out to the porch of our house. It was an eerily still time of morning, a rare treat as Mexican life tends to run non-stop. As a tourist destination, Patzcuaro has a very active nightlife. Plus Mexicans just seem to celebrate life as every night, just before dark you can hear the explosion of fireworks ringing from all corners of our town, easily discernable from our hillside perch. Birthday and confirmations, engagements, weddings and yes, even deaths are causes for celebration in this deeply Catholic, deeply Indian town. The final announcement of a President, despite the rumblings from Mexico City, was greeted with a sense of celebration and relief as representatives of the three parties wrestling for power – the incumbent PAN, whose candidate the courts have certified as president despite the strident activism of the PRD, the liberal challengers whose candidate has vowed to keep up the fight (though I sense that is unlikely to continue on this issue) and the PRI, the party who had held absolute power for over 70 years and lost their grip with the election of Vincente Fox – are coming to grips with the confirmation of Mexico’s desire for a new way as reflected in these last two elections.
Due to my limited Spanish proficiency, I had to piece together the contents of Felipe Calderon’s victory speech, but what I picked up was that, in accepting the ruling of the judges and the awesome and sometimes overwhelming resistance from his foe, Calderon impressively made the point that, despite why he was elected, the points of his competitor, the need to address the poverty of Mexico was much more important than appeasing the desires of their more powerful neighbors to the north. I think that PAN sent a message to America and our political parties that, sometimes, it is more important to care about what your opposition thinks than what your loyalists think. As the party of the nuevo riche and the upwardly mobile, PAN and Vincente Fox attempt to reflect the style and will of the Republican Party which operates on the premise that government can do little to help solve the problem of poverty. I think, over the last five years, they’ve come to realize that this is not necessarily true or acceptable. They had come to power as a viable alternative to the class regimented PRI and, over six years, became more of a reflection of the party they replaced than the party they promised to be. I think Calderon and the party leaders realize how critical it is they unite a sharply divided country and, rather than sticking out his tongue and insisting the losers accept the victory, he is telling his party that they need to do all they can to reach out to the opposition for the good of Mexico ... not just themselves. While this may eventually revert to politics as usual and we could see a shift toward serving the party over the people in the months to come, Calderon’s message seemed to resound here in Patzcuaro. Calderon is a native son of the State of Michoacan, but the state and its poor Indian masses are decidedly supporters of Obrador but are long ingrained with the ever-present power of the institutional PRI which still controls the politics and life of so many small communities. What I saw happening was an acknowledgement that, for at least the short term, there are no losers and, here in Patzcuaro, they are putting the people first as all three parties have began to wave only one banner ... the flag of Mexico, which bedecks the street crossing and balconies of all three party headquarters. They are putting their nation first, and we can learn a lesson from that. This unity led to more fireworks, more celebration and for the short term they are celebrating life and Mexico.
So on this quiet morning as the people of Patzcuaro were just stirring from their beds to begin another long day of labor for the moment, I was thrilled by the silence as the lights of the town of Patzcuaro and the island lake of Janitzio twinkled with light. The sky was clear and the stars formed a bespeckled blanket above my head...and I was overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude that still sustains me today.
I am grateful that I was raised by parents that sacrificed their time to drag their kids all over the southwest every weekend to view and appreciate those historical aspects that told the story of our corner of America.
I am grateful that my dad taught me how to read a map at a very early age and to make me wonder in fascination at those unique and wonderful sounding places that dotted those small roads off the Intertstates.
I am grateful that I grew up in a home that never stopped bickering, not because we despised each other but because we were all so passionate about what we cared about and would not surrender our points for peace.
I am grateful for excellent public school teachers that indulged my passions for history, politics, commerce and music and how much more inspiring and memorable they were than any over-paid college professor I ever encountered.
I am grateful for the kindness and tenderness of my mother’s heart. She could never turn away anyone in need and served as "mom" to dozens and dozens of Marines who shipped off to Vietnam, many never returning but knowing someone loved them.
I am grateful for my time in service to my country as a United States Marine and how it so dramatically reshaped my views of religion, race and politics.
I am grateful that I possessed true talents recognized while still in my teens that opened doors for me, providing a reasonably satisfying career in music and media management despite my absence of a college degree.
I am grateful that my parents implanted in me a strong sense of myself and those 20-plus years in "the business" didn’t change me for the worse.
I am grateful for every heartbreak and disappointment I experienced over the years, for they revealed to me the true nature of humanity and taught me valuable lessons about myself as much about the source of my misery which, despite my feelings at the moment, are temporary and vital for growth.
I am grateful for the twist of fate that accidentally connected me to that hippie southern chick that made me realize there is a life beyond L.A. and whose siren song lured me to Dixie.
I am grateful for those two beautiful girls she gave me who make me smile every time I think of them.
I am grateful that I have a wife and children who love, understand and believe in me much more than I believe in myself sometimes.
I am grateful for every argument I have ever had with anyone where sometimes I have been enlightened, sometimes I have enlightened and sometimes I have had to walk away realizing that sometimes, despite your best efforts, "what we have here is a failure to communicate."
I am grateful that my wife supported my decision to have a mid-life crisis, sell the house, quit my job and actually go live a dream ... and she and my girls came with me!
I am grateful for their hugs and kisses and their high loud voices that break my concentration and force me to stop fixating on this thing that forces me to respond to it rather than them.
I am grateful for having married a woman who is much smarter than me but lets me believe how much smarter I am.
I am grateful that I found a real partner ... not a playmate, not a helpmate, but someone who truly balances out my love for chaos and cacophony.
I am grateful that, for 14 years, this cast of characters have invaded my dreams and finally forced me to yield to them and tell their story.
I am grateful for true friends that love, support and encourage us in this crazy quest to actually put my philosophies into practice and know that these efforts will bear real fruit.
I am grateful that coffee and cigarettes sustain me for the late night writing sessions and then bring me back to life the next morning to continue the battle.
And I am grateful for the awesome silence of a pre-dawn Mexico sky.
