Felito, El Gatito

So I wish that I could write about something else right now (chopeando the whole day, for example, cutting down beautiful trees and plants in order to plant a monoculture canuco, a garden of one or two starchy vegetables, or a baseball game played a few days ago in between a river and on a hill, the clear objective hitting it on the hill, shrubbed and totally indefensible, or the stoning of a beautiful baby bird by a grou

p of Dominican adolescents) but my cat, Felito—on my lap,          ````````````now on the keyboard (yes, his contribution), now back on my lap, now eating the computer wires—has made an exploration of any other subject impossible.

This is my first cat (he’s now licking his privates), and he serves the indispensable purpose of keeping the rats away (he’s the first defense, the mosquito netting, I’ve heard, is not for the mosquitoes).  But the cost of his being here could outweigh a visit or two from Ratatouille.  Let me explain:

1)  He eats through my mosquito netting, creating holes for who knows what to get in at night.

2)  He “does his business” in the shower and then, I’m convinced apologetically, curls up in my lap, leaving behind on my shirt evidence of his indiscretion.

3)  He jumps on my head while I’m sleeping, trying to get into my bed, a right reserved for my dog in Chevy Chase, Shadow. At first, terrified that a giant animal was eating my face, isn’t it amazing what human beings can become accustomed to?

4)  He enters our food container every time we open it.

5)  His cat food, in that very container, has made everything else smell like dried disgustingness, or whatever it is these creatures eat.

6)  He’s too smart: every time I throw him out of the house, he finds some way to get back in (we do have various holes in the house, but we can’t figure out how’s he’s entering).

7)  He’s not a dog.

OK cat lovers, give me your best shot.  Why should I keep him around and not give Felito to a group of Haitians whom, according to Dominican lore, will cook him for dinner?  As Ratatouille would most certainly say, “bon appétit!”  He’d also surely have a great recipe…

Two Roads Diverged

Oh fair and gentle reader! Thou hast choices to make!

In a world of competitive cable news and innumerable Internet sites, one simply lacks the time to pursue all his fancies.  But trust my honest and unbiased opinion: my site is your all-in-one destination for the latest news and opinion. DrudgeReport and Washington Times be gone!  Choose to spend more time on In the Arena.

I had to make a difficult decision with my time today, but unlike yours, I’m still not so sure that it’s the right one.  Down to my last pair of pants and second-to-last shirt, the inside-out trick just couldn’t cut it anymore. The solar panel on my house is not quite big enough for a washer and drier, not even one of those two-in-one energy saver models (I know, right?), so I instead began to wash the clothes by hand.

I started at 7:00, the perfect time to wash clothes.  It’s not so hot early, and it gives you the whole day to let the clothes dry in the sun.  Today was a clear and, never knowing when the rain could envelop the mountains and refuse to depart, I took advantage.

I can imagine the scene well through Dolores’ eyes.  She, a 55-65 year-old-woman who lives across the street, was sweeping her immaculately clean dirt front yard when a tall and awkward gringo, clothes spilling from his laundry bag (what she could not have known was that the bag was from the Middlebury laundry service, to which I subscribed for two years) onto his trash-ridden dirt yard, tried to be a campesino.  He filled his ponchera, or bucket, with too little water, stared at the back of the detergent, scratched his heads, sorted his clothes, began talking to himself, dropped his now wet clothes on the ground, and spoke louder to himself, this time in short, anger-laden words, and looked puzzled as clothes once brilliantly white now had streaks of red, green, and orange.

Dolores offered to help,  but I tried to be a tigre, the word that Dominicans use to describe a player, someone who doesn’t need help, a little distant, always cool.  She, as well as most people who have ever met me, saw through that thin, thin façade.

She took a break from sweeping and grabbed the clothes out of my hand.  “Tiene que hacerlo así,” she told me, as she rubbed the clothes more vigorously than I ever could.  Laughing, completely incredulous that I hadn’t ever done something like this before, Dolores was clearly looking for an explanation.  My possible defense consisted of two options: 1) I had washed my clothes by hand before.  I spent 8 weeks living with an indigenous community in México, and there I had to wash clothes by hand, too.  There, however, by the end of the trip, the clothes had taken on a what would turn out to be permanent mildew smell which made me, I’m convinced, sicker then I think I’ve ever been; or 2) I had always used a washing machine.  Both answers seemed less than convincing, and I remained silent.

The short of the story is this: Dolores taught me how to wash the clothes, I did so, it took the better part of the morning, and I doubt the clothes are really even that clean.  Now, at 12:30 pm, knuckles raw and biceps soar, I’m finally on to other things.

What’s a man to do?  And would partial dependence, paying someone else to take care of my dirt laundryy, be OK? 

Your thoughts, oh humble reader, would be greatly appreciated.

El Cambio Grande

Well here´s a thought: time flies.  I know you´ve heard it before, but it bears repeating once more.  

The last time I wrote, I was probably grading papers, coaching cross country, and yelling at 7th graders (I hope all is well, Mr. Miller).  It would have been cold: February in Connecticut is not an easy month.  I would have been thinking of the promise of another Orioles season -- that this is would be the one -- and cheering for Hillary Clinton, who still seemed to be the sure fire Democratic nominee (Barack who?).  Finally, I would have been thinking about people and situations that, for better or for worse, have long left my daily thoughts.

As I write now, I´m currently on Calle Prim in Madrid, Spain, in the headquarters of Middlebury´s Spanish program.  For the greater part of the past four months, I have sworn to speak only Spanish, and I have done so.  This post, the final in my mother tongue (at least for some time) is to tell you that, in order to read my insights from here on, you will have to follow me in my quest to master the Spanish language.  And I´m asking you to do so, more for your sake than for mine, because in your learning of another language, you will be able to read Borges and Cortezar and Cervantes but more importantly me.  And this, I tell you, is worth every cent you pay to Rossetta Stone (or, if you´re interested, I can provide you material).  So let´s just get this straight: I´m not asking you to walk 1,000 miles.  I´m asking yo to straighten up, fly right, and pick up that 9th grade introductory to Spanish book that has been gathering dust under your couch and to learn some Spanish.

What can you expect from  En la arena con Eli Berman?  Well, the same that we can expect from a Sarah Palin/John McCain presidency -- or change that, McCain/Palin: more of the same.  I will continue to deliver you wonderful, insightful observations as I have ¨consistently¨done.  I will, of course, comment on the upcoming elections.  I will also try to explain a grammatical concept or word of the day that has captured my attention (this is as much for graduate students as for a 72 7th-10th graders in Fairfield, CT).  And I will fill you in as I continue to understand my first language, the language of love.  So, my friends, this edition of In the Arena With Eli Berman will now sign off and a newer, better, and far more exciting edition will herefore commence.  Entonces, mis amigos, disfruten esta nueva avenutra.  Abróchense, tengan cuidado, buena suerte y buenas noches.

A new post

So much has happened over these past few weeks -- or is it months? -- I don't even know where to begin. First and most importantly, I apologize to my subscribers that I haven't written sooner (but i have been able to cash those checks.) For some reason -- does anyone else have this problem? -- I can't write on the computer. Just can't do it. I try and try but always wind up reading about Barack Obama or how terrible the Orioles are. But even when I'm not distracted, there's something about the white screen that interrupts the message from head to hand. So I have to copy that long-thought-exinct, laborious drudgery of writing down my thoughts in illegible long hand and retyping them on the computer. And that's exactly what I'm doing right this second.

Which brings me (or brought me a few minutes ago) to a thought: however unique (or odd?) I may be, I know that I am not the only person in the entire world to suffer from typetile dysfunction (you don't have to laugh), and I wonder how much creativity is lost because of this "problem." I mean really, who's going to take the effort to handwrite notes and then type them up? Most of the people I work with don't even know how to use a pen. And looking at their handwriting and my own -- it's an art that seems to have had it's hey-day.

At a recent conference I attended, a speaker called computers "imagination machines." I think that for so many things this couldn't be truer. When I open up Google Earth, when I type anything into a search engine, when I listen to pandora.com, when I see kids programming computer games, I couldn't agree more. But with so many games online and articles about Brittney Spears, computers may have become just another means to escape from our imaginations, rather than something that could spur us to actually think. And we spend so much time staring at the computer screen, we miss all of the wonderful things going on around us...

OK, I can't read my writing anymore. But I'll check in again soon.

What we've all been waiting for...

A poem I came across the other day:

The Quality of Love


In the throws of the affair
I was surprised to learn
I could love two women
With intensity
At the same time
One with whom I’d spent many years
And one recently met

Now
The quality of these loves
Is best described by the difference
In my bathroom behavior—toilet procedure
At home
Though the room was occupied
(my wife in the tub)
when ya gotta go
Ya gotta go—and I always went
But in an apartment near chicago
I would carefully close the door
Run the water
And turn the fan on

During this time
If a doctor had informed me
I had but six months to live
Looking back
I think
I would have chosen
The apartment
For the first three months
But I know now
I would have wished to go home
To die
With someone who knows just
How full of crap
I really am

And an excerpt from the book, Still Life With Woodpecker, by Tom Robbins:

"Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.
Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious questions is whether time has a beginning and an end.
Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay?
Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself."

Who am I? Let me tell you...

In my first ever visit to the social networking site "myspace.com," I learned some interesting things:

• Tash is a 35-year-old single woman. Her faith in God is only paralleled by her love of the Denver Broncos. At this very moment (as I can tell from her recent last login), she is feeling thankful (probably because the Broncos haven't lost yet this week).
  
• "Mizz Tina Marie" is just divorced, even though she's only 21. She lives in Connecticut and is interested in using myspace to find a potential date. She does warn, however, that "I'm flattered that my page is so entertaining, that you come by everyday to see it, and you aren't even on my friends list, can you say STALKER!!!"
• Finally, there's Elvis, 21 and from Bridgeport. One click on his page and Vodka bottles start falling from the top of the page. One of his buddies said that, in a conclusion I have yet to understand, all of the alcohol on his site makes Elvis' profile "gay." Maybe such a comment fazed the young man and pushed him to the bottle. Right now, he's listed as "drunk."

Tash, Miz Tina Maria, and Elvis' profile in no way standout; the three do not provide more information than other people (in fact, they were the first three profiles that I looked at before I got bored). In what the Economist calls a "dictator's dream," people are putting more and more information about themselves on the Internet for all to see. Relationship status, sexual preference, likes, dislikes, groups of friends, telephone numbers, location, status -- listing personal information online is not the exception but the rule. Never before, the Economist continues, has so much personal information been in one place. And people are doing this voluntarily.
Social networking sites like facebook are not the only venues in which information we provide personal information. Each search we enter into Google is saved, possibly forever, so that the company can, at best, market to us better and at worst, sell information to curious governments spying on its own people. (In China, Google has been accused of "collaborating" with the government over search results.)
Each purchase we make with a credit card is stored on company servers. Not only do we allow these people to know what we're buying (which for some is scary enough), but also where we frequent.
Some of these conveniences make our lives better. We just need to make sure that we know precisely the consequences of using these services.

Facebook Fiasco

Well, I've always been wary of facebook, but now I'm wary of our whole generation. So much has changed in the way we communicate with each other, and based on responses I got to an email the other day, I'm convinced that we aren't quite aware of what exactly these changes mean.

The original email is the one pasted below. I sent it to Facebook, and I blind carbon copied many of my closest friends. Instead of outrage, the common response was, "who cares?" Over the next few weeks (not tonight, I'm going to bed), we'll explore first why the changing ways we communicate are so important and second why I'm now shifting from online back to the hand written letter.


To Whom It May Concern,

Facebook disabled my account last night because I would not submit additional personal information about myself, namely, my birthday. I write today so that the operators of Facebook might reconsider both its recent actions and also the overall direction of the site.

Here's the story: for months, Facebook has sought my birthday for “security reasons.” The site placed a yellow box at the top of the "newsfeed." Such a request was fine: I simply ignored it. Last night, however, Facebook's approach became more intrusive: a popup box appeared on each page I clicked. Incredibly obnoxious, I grumblingly submitted to Facebook’s incessant requests by setting my birthday as “January 1, 1910,” making me a young and healthy 97 and eagerly awaiting my 98th birthday. For whatever reason, the site rejected my submission. I then tried a date a little bit closer to my real birthday (how much closer I still will not say) -- “January 1, 1976” -- but Facebook still somehow knew that this was not quite right. I tried again, and again, until I could try no more; Facebook disabled my account. Whether this action will be temporary or in perpetuity, I now inquire.

To what ends Facebook wanted personal information about me, I do not know. Maybe the site will claim that it simply wanted to confirm that I was over 13, the minimum age which Facebook allows membership. But maybe – and much more plausibly – Facebook sought my birthday because such information is useful for, at best, making money and, at worse, because it understands that users’ favorite books, movies, and education, which profiles people look at, their sexual preference, and their religion is information valuable in its own right. What a far cry from the original aim of Facebook, and how very, very scary.

In writing this letter, my goal was to ask for my account to me reactivated. But I am now more seriously considering, especially as new networking sites are born, whether I want to be part of the Facebook community even if reinstated (I think that I do). Kicking me off sets a bad precedent, and worse, makes me -- and I'm sure when others hear about this and other similar actions (and they are already hearing) -- concerned that Facebook is no longer an online social networking community but instead a marketing, money-making, information-collecting machine. We will see whether, if it ever reaches that point, Facebook will even be trusted with a valid email address.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best,



Eli Berman
eli.berman@yahoo.com