Vaclav Havel’s “Disturbing the Peace”

Whenever I need a moral boost I go back and reread Vaclav Havel’s “Disturbing the Peace”. This book is a series of essays by the dissident Vaclav Havel that were smuggled out of communist Czechoslovakia and translated by a Havel friend in the West. Vaclav Havel was a playwright who became a Czech dissident who became leader of the Velvet revolution (which ousted the communists) and who finally became president of the republic.

When Vaclav Havel stood next to President Bill Clinton in 1999 the moral contrast could not have been greater. Here was our own president—someone lacking any moral authority whatsoever—standing next to a man who had been repeatedly jailed for challenging the communist government and triumphing the cause of the people who suffer under totalitarianism. Not only was Havel a politician he was a playwright—i.e. someone with the keen eye of the novelist coupled with the political acumen of a statesman. Oh that our politicians would so well-rounded.

Haclav Havel was the foremost dissident under the communist regime. He openly challenged the ruling government with such essays as “Power to the Powerless” and “The Soul of Main under Communism”. (Actually I forgot the name of the latter essay. I think “The Soul of Man under Communism” is an essay written by Oscar Wilde. But Havel did address this theme in “Disturbing the Peace” and in essays he forwarded to the communist rulers.) Havel spent much time in jail. He was further persecuted because his family had been wealthy under capitalism. Such people were usually given menial jobs as punishment for belonging to the bourgeoisie. He challenged the regime when they threatened the rock-n-roll band The Plastik People. That was when he became friends with the American Rock Star Jethro Tull. As president he requested that Jethro Tull become Ambassador. That was derailed by the American Secretary of State James Baker under George Bush. What a prude—I wonder if Baker bothered to read recent Czech history before his knee jerk reaction. Actually I read somewhere that he did this out of retribution. Vaclav Havel eulogized Jethro Tull in The New Yorker magazine a few years ago.

One of the most exciting parts of the book is where Havel describes the dissident community’s efforts to publish a Havel essay advocating that the Czech government adhere to the terms of the Charter 77 human rights accord to which they were a signatory. The story is spine tingling thriller complete with car chases and obscure drop points. It reads like a John le Carre novel except it is real.

Havel’s dissident community operated out of the Praque theater the Magic Lantern. The artists and writers who gathered there were part of the cultural and intellectual community of which Havel was a leader. Some wrote for the government-sanctioned media. Other’s signed Havel’s Charter 77 essay and were consequently tossed out of their jobs and otherwise persecuted.

I have seen two of Havel’s plays performed in Praque. Both were quite good. In ore a rebellious intellectual, obviously Vaclac Havel himself, is forced to work in a brewery because of his recalcitrance. Obviously this well-read person is better suited to working as a editor, writer, or maybe even typing in an ordinary office.

One of Havel’s greatest essays in “The Soul of Man under Socialism” (again apologies for the incorrect title). It’s theme is that while the Czech’s might have not been brutalized like the Soviets under Stalin the Czech citizens lived under a constant psychological burden that slowly wore people down. There was that ever present fear that made people follow the regimen of flying the flag on the proper communist holidays. People’s spirits become dull as they are worn down by the monotony and arbsudity of it all.

Recently Vaclac Havel has been attacked in the press for his marriage to a young beautiful actress. She commited the ultimate Czech faux pas by leaving the family pet at home when they flew to the Canary Islands. This is in a nation of dog lovers. His wife has proven fertile fodder for the gossipy Czech press. The romantic liasions of an aging, great man who is living on one lung do nothing to diminish him in my eyes.

Havel’s first wife died a few years ago. She had helped him with his dissident activities. Their letters during the years he was in jail are published in the book “Letters to Olga”. These are deliberately written so that are difficult to understand. Consequently, Havel’s jailors and censors were too dimwitted to understand the subtle references to dissident activities and follow other secret messages in these notes. This is how Havel kept aprised of the situation outside during his time in jail. No doubt this secret communications with the outside world also gave him a spiritual comfort.

After you read “Disturbing to Peace” I also recommend “The Magic Lantern” by Timothy Garton Ash. This is a first hand account of the fall of the communism as the democratic revolution rolled across Czechoslovakia, East German, Hungary, and Romania. Garton Ash was privy to the inner circle of people who plotted and executed these bloodless coups. (Bloodless everywhere except, of course, in Romania.)

Girl with a Pearl Earring

This novel is reminiscent of the equally popular “Memoirs of a Geisha”. The theme of both books is that beautiful women, especially of an earlier age, are not in control of their destiny with regards to men. Henry James said exactly that in “Portrait of a Lady”.

In the case of “The Girl with the Pearl Earring”, the maid Griet, her beauty attracts the interest of powerful men—in this case the painter Vermeer and his patron. Tracy Chevalier, the author, gives us clues that their interest is dangerous and could lead to tragedy. When a gentleman fondles a maid in 1665 the maid cannot offer much resistance owing to her low status in life. More likely than not, as with Fantine in “Les Miserables”, it is the maiden who is cast into trouble.

The beauty of this novel, for a male reader like myself, is that is draws you into the perilous existence inhabited by young women. Prior to this I always thought young women like Griet were just glittering beauties sailing easily through life on their good looks. It’s kind of like reading the diary of a teenage girl—highly guarded and something to which one would not normally be privvy.

This novel is erotic too, but in a 17th century demure sort of way. Griet, we learn, is loath to let her full head of hair be seen by any man and she would never been seen with her lips held open. When she is intruded upon with her long mane of hair freely unfurled the reader’s heart flutters and it must have for the young girl. And when she moistens her lips and holds them open at the request of the portrait painter Vermeer we are absolutely aghast and tingling with erotic excitement.

The other theme of this novel is the brutality of being poor and female in earlier ages. This is much like “Memoirs of a Geisha” where the two sisters are pushed into the business of entertaining men by their impoverished family. Griet is pushed into working as a maid because her family is poor as well. The women who work as maids of geishas have a brutal pecking order and are quite cruel to one another. An unattractive woman in the Geisha household is call “Pumpkin” because that is the shape of her head. Griet undergoes similar cruelty by Vermeer’s children and the other maids in the large house.

For me, the most thrilling parts of the novel are where the young maid Griet is allowed to go into Vermeer’s studio. This creates much jealously in the Vermeer household--not even the painter’s wife is allowed into the room where the master creates his masterpieces. This is what is meant by the book jacket blurb that she is “drawn into an artistic wakening”. Griet learns the subtlety of light, how to grind various potions from the apothecary into vivid blues and reds, and the way a painting is made. It is assembled not by drawing an initial outline as one would imagine. Rather layer upon layer of color blotches are laid down until the final form takes place.

Fabbioli Cellars

When you start a new winery you can take one of three approaches. If you are well financed, you can hire an experienced winemaker as a full-time employee. If you have been a winemaker for someone else then you can work as your own winemaker. If you have had some winemaking experience, you can turn to the consulting winemaker to fill in the gaps in your knowledge and provide you with guidance.

It is one thing to make wine in your basement and quite another to make a few thousand cases of wine for sale to the public. The home winemaker does not have to worry so much about making instable wines that can turn to vinegar on the shelf or push out their corks as fermentation starts anew. But if your goal is to make wine for profit then you can ill afford to make wines that turn cloudy, form crystals when chilled, or have off aromas. So you need someone with experience to steer you around these problems. This is where Doug Fabbioli steps in.

In Virginia, Doug Fabbioli together with Chris Pearmund and Michael Shaps are the leading winemaking consultants. They work with new wineries to help them get started. The consulting winemaker advises the aspiring winery what equipment to buy, how to write a business plan, and how to design their winery building. Wineries also hire vineyard consultants, but in Virginia many winemakers also know how to grow grapes. So the consultant can help the winery owner decide what vines to plant, how to train and prune their vines, and when to harvest the fruit.

Doug Fabbioli has both winemaking and vineyard consulting clients. He works as winemaker and general manager at Wyndham Winery and consults for Old House and Waterford wineries. He says, “I helped Hillsborough get started. I’ve got a lot of start up and established growers who bring me in as needed.” Now he has opened his own winery: in his basement.

Doug lives with his wife and children on 25 acres of land near Whites Ferry in Loudoun County. The setting is more suburban than, say, a rural winery tucked away in a hollow in Rappahannock County. If it were not for his 5 acres of grapes, his single family home would look like just another corner of suburbia.

It takes quite a lot of cash to open a winery, plant a vineyard, build a winery building, and staff the tasting room. But Doug has his current customers and his position at Wyndham, so he plans to get his winery off the ground slowly and at his own pace. He says, “I don’t have any grand plans to build a winery yet. I will. I really want to do this on my own. I want to do it at my speed, my scale, and grow into it.”

What Doug is saying is that he plans to finance and operate his 600 to 700 case winery himself. He does not want to have a lot of partners in his business. Many if not most wineries in Virginia are some kind of partnership.

Doug has quite a few years of winemaking experience. In 1981 he went from high school in Syracuse, New York to working at a winery in the Finger Lakes area. Then he moved to Sonoma County, California where he worked at Buena Vista Winery. There he worked with a lot of different winemakers including the late Andres Tchelitoff who is a legend in the California wine business. Coming back to the East Coast, Doug worked for Tarara Winery also near Leesburg. So he says he knows how to start a winery and do it at minimal cost. He says, “I’ve been doing this for 25 years.”

Doug’s winery is stuffed into his basement—this year he finished building a crush pad outdoors. He has a handful of oak wine barrels and one stainless steel tank. For equipment he had the foresight to buy a wine press from Meredith winery near Middleburg when it went out a business a few years ago. (One of the heirs to that land said the other heirs wanted to cash out. So the winery closed.) Doug ordered his crusher destemmer machine from Presque Isle Winery, a supplier in Pennsylvania.

One experienced winery owner told this journalist that to make a profit a winery should be 3,000 cases or larger while it would be possible to make a profit at 2,000 cases. Asked how he plans to be profitable Doug says, “This was the 2nd year on the business plan. My first vintage was crushed and processed at Wyndham. I keep my wine there under their bond. Next week I will bring it here, bottle it, and put my label on it.”

He says his winery will have no events and most of his sales will be wholesale. Doug plans to carry his wines at Wyndham Winery, which is permitted under Virginia’s farm winery law. Doug says he will only make red wines, which is unique in Virginia since most wineries include white wines. His Bordeaux style blend will sell for $22 and his chambourcin (a French hybrid) for $14.

Asked how he was able to get a license to operate a winery in his house Doug describes the process. He explains, “I am a farm winery. You needed to be a bonded winery before you become a farm winery. The [Virginia] ABC is waiting for your approval from the feds.”

Doug says the federal government wanted a drawing of his facility and a description of where his “bonded” wines will be stored and how they will be secured. “Bonded” means there is an insurance carried on the wines, a “bond”. If they would be stolen then the federal government would still be able to collect their excise tax. A section of the winery is designated as “tax paid”. The wines in the rest of the winery have not yet been levied taxes. Doug says, “The main requirement has been security for the tax money”.

Doug says he has seen wineries approved for production when they were no more than plans drawn on paper. He says, “They were a little more inquisitive about me being a winery in my basement.” They wanted, for example, letters from prospective customers.

Virginia farm wineries cannot just buy grapes for their entire production as they can in, say, California. There is a requirement here that a winery grows 51% of its fruit either on its own property or on leased land. Of his 5-acre vineyard Doug says he uses it to make wine plus he sells off some to help with cash flow. And then he buys grapes from other growers. Driving out to his winery you pass two small vineyards on busy highway 15. Plus there are a handful of wineries in the area. Doug says his location is well-suited to draw in visitors were to elect to do so.

There is little doubt that Doug will be able to sell his wine for he is well known in Virginia. He says, “My name isn’t household, but I am certainly known in the industry. The local shops know me. They have known me for years.”

(Reprinted from The Virginia Wine Gazette)

Wine Communism and Volcanoes Introduction

Isabelle Allende writes in her memoirs that one Chilean writer wondered if Chile could be sold and traded for something “closer to Paris”. The writer no doubt wanted to be closer to the glittering salons of the 13th arrondissement than the isolation, which is Chile. Surrounded by the Atacama Desert to the North, the Polar Regions to the South, the towering Andes to the east, and the freezing Pacific Ocean to the west, this narrow ribbon of volcanoes, geysers, and towering mountains is a geographical oddity unlike no other. From the point of view of the North American, Chile is upside down. Winter is in June, July, and August. The Southern Cross constellation illuminates the night sky.

The entire region north of Valparaiso down to Concepción in the South appears carpeted with vineyards, orchards, and produce ranging from onions to oranges. The Chilean farmer is perhaps frustrated that it is not possible to plant each and every inch of ground here—so much space is taken up by all those annoying mountains that run from the coast to the center of the country, lay down for a few dozen miles, then resume their march to the border with Argentina.

With irrigation provided by rivers swollen with melting snow and a Mediterranean climate, Chile is an agricultural paradise. The weather is bone dry here which means roses and grapes are free of those molds and rots that are associated with humidity and rains. Cold breezes at night descend from the Andes mountain onto the ¼ million acres of grapes planted here. This cool air causes grapes to retain rather than cast off their acidity—acid is an important component of taste. In the daytime in Chile it is hot, but not so hot that the grapes turn to raisins and lose their flavor.

Chile might be the marketing and winemaking machine to displace the Australians who currently enjoy ½ of grocery store sales in the USA with their cheap wines with cute animals plastered on the label. The whole country of Chile is geared towards exports—drinking powdered orange drink at the winery where I worked for three months I wonders whether the Chileans keep anything for themselves. The country enjoys low costs that cannot be matched by Australian and European growers. California grape growers and winemakers are of course saddled with even higher prices for grapes, land, and labor plus heavy-handed local regulation. The take away message from Chile is you can buy excellent Chilean wine for a low price. But not all Chilean wines are excellent--like Italy, the USA, and Australia there are foul-tasting, sour wines here as well sold to unwitting consumers who perhaps cannot tell the difference.

Beyond grapes and geography, the politics of Chile make it a unique place. Chile is perhaps the only country in the world to have elected a Communist government. President Allende ruled for a few years in the early 1970’s until he was killed in a military coup aided in part by the United States. His successor, General Agusto Pinochet, left a brutal legacy that resonates today.


Today Chile is the most stable, least corrupt, and perhaps most prosperous country in Latin America. Some would say this is because of Pinochet and his policies. These Pinochet apologists would say, “Sure Pinochet killed 3,000 pointy headed intellectuals but look at the prosperity he foisted upon the nation.” Pinochet was such a believer in laissez faire capitalism that he even privatized the national social security pension system.

But the sentiment for Socialism runs strong in Chile. In the 1960s, President Eduardo Frei nationalized a source of great wealth, the copper industry by seizing it from American interests. The Marxist Allende continued this nationalization program seizing banks and taking land from the wealthy. Socialists outnumber conservatives here. In spite of heavy spending by the moneyed interests, in the presidential election of 2006 a Socialist woman, Michelle Bachelet, followed Ricardo Largos, the Socialist incumbent into office.

When Salvador Allende came to power the rich women of the wealthy barrio of Las Condes in Santiago turned out with their kitchenware in a noisy protest of pots and pans saying they would starve to death at the hands of the socialists. The United States at this time was busy fighting the Cold War with the Soviets. For many years the Monroe Doctrine said the USA would not allow a foreign government to gain a toehold in the Americas. President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State, worried at what was happening in Chile, got even more agitated when President Allende invited Fidel Castro to visit Chile. Castro, who is known to be a bit longwinded, stayed in Chile not a few days or a few weeks; for 8 long months he traveled the breath of this narrow country giving speeches to mine workers, students, and anyone who would listen.

To USA decided to act. It is well-documented in various books and declassified papers that the USA began a campaign of destabilization. The CIA funded money to journalists and politicians to upset the status quo. The oligarchs cast their lot with the Americans and persuaded a reluctant Agusto Pinochet to seize power in a military coup. When he came to power vengeance again the communists was swift and brutal. Writers, student activists, and intellectuals were rounded up and tossed into prison, tortured and exiled. Pablo Neruda, the Nobel Prize winning poet, fled over the border into Argentina. Isabelle Allende left with her family leaving behind memories of her uncle, the late president.

Chile is free of military dictatorship today, but the legacy of Pinochet still resonates around the nation. Many of the provincial cities have human rights judges to deal with the 3,000 desparecidos (disappeared persons). And Pinochet—who granted himself lifetime immunity--is finally being brought to justice. The British seized him under a Spanish extradition warrant when he went to England for medical care in 1998. But Home Secretary Jack Straw let him go after a months-long tug of war between Spanish jurisprudence, Scotland Yard, and Chilean supporters of Pinochet. Pinochet often has ducked trial and prison by saying he is too old and sick but today he has been prosecuted for tax evasion, has been placed under house arrest, and even has seen his children brought before judges in Chile on charges of corruption.

This book is a memoir of the three months that I spent working the harvest at VIA Wines in the Maule and Colchagua Valleys in Chile in 2005. Go with me as I take the reader for an inside look at how wine is made in an industrial sized winery. I talk about the people and the process. Beyond VIA Wines I take extended tours of the best wineries of Chile and talk to the most important winemakers there. Listen as the people I meet in Chile talk to me about politics and race; poverty and wealth; Pinochet and Allende. I made a lot of friends there and from them learned about the educational system, how the cell phone and transportation systems work, and the difficulties faced by single mothers. I take the reader into the homes of the poor agriculture workers, on a tour of the Villarica Volcano, and even a visit to one of the legal brothels here.

Wine Communism and Volcanoes Prologo

Isabel Allende escribe en sus memorias que un escritor chileno se preguntaba si Chile podría ser vendido y cambiado por “algo más cercano a París”. Sin duda, el escritor querría estar más cerca de los glamorosos salones de “arrondissement” que en el aislamiento que es Chile.

Rodeado por el desierto de Atacama al norte, las regiones polares en el sur, los gigantescos Andes al este y las gélidas aguas del Océano Pacífico al oeste, esta larga cinta de volcanes, géiseres, y monumentales montañas, es una rareza geológica sin igual.
Desde el punto de vista de un norteamericano, Chile es al revés: el invierno es en junio, julio y agosto y la Constelación de la Cruz del Sur ilumina su cielo nocturno.

Toda la región norte de Valparaíso hasta Concepción en el sur, aparece alfombrada de viñedos, orquidearios y productos variados, que van desde cebollas hasta naranjas. Probablemente es frustrante para los granjeros chilenos el no poder plantar algo en cada centímetro cuadrado de esta tierra – esas enojosas montañas que vienen desde la costa al centro del país y se tienden planas por unas cuantas docenas de millas para continuar su marcha hasta el borde con la Argentina, se toman demasiado terreno.

Con irrigación proveniente de ríos que se engrosan con deshielos y un clima mediterráneo, Chile es un paraíso para la agricultura. Su clima es muy seco lo cual significa que rosas y uvas crecen libres de moho y podredumbre, tan asociados con la humedad y las lluvias. Frías brisas de los Andes descienden por la noche sobre las aproximadamente 101.000 hectáreas de uva plantadas aquí. Este aire fresco hace que las uvas retengan su acidez en lugar de perderla – el grado de acidez es un importante componente del sabor. Durante el día, Chile es caliente, pero no tan caliente como para que las uvas se conviertan en pasas y pierdan su sabor.

Puede que Chile no sea una máquina comercializadora y productora de vinos como para desplazar a los australianos, los que actualmente disfrutan de la mitad de las ventas en los supermercados de los Estados Unidos con sus vinos de bajo precio que muestran graciosos animales en sus etiquetas. Todo Chile está encaminado a las exportaciones – me preguntaba si los chilenos retienen algo de su vino mientras tomaba un jugo de naranja en polvo en el lugar mismo donde trabajé por tres meses. Este país ostenta bajos costos, lo cual no puede ser igualado por los agricultores australianos o europeos. Por supuesto, los agricultores y productores de vinos de California, están atados de manos y pies con precios aún más altos por las uvas, tierras y mano de obra, además de fuertes gravámenes locales. El mensaje de los vinos chilenos es: puedes comprar excelentes vinos chilenos por bajos precios. Pero no todos los vinos chilenos son excelentes, como sucede en Italia, los Estados Unidos y Australia, aquí también puede haber vinos amargos y desagradables que son vendidos a consumidores desprevenidos que, posiblemente no se dan cuenta de la diferencia.

Más allá de las uvas y la geografía, la política de Chile lo hace un lugar único. Chile es talvez el único país del mundo que ha elegido a un gobierno comunista. El Presidente Allende gobernó el país por unos pocos años, al inicio del año 1970, hasta que fuera asesinado en un golpe militar en el cual tomó parte los Estados Unidos. Su sucesor, el General Augusto Pinochet dejó un legado tan brutal que resuena hasta el día de hoy.

Hoy en día, Chile es el país más estable, menos corrupto y posiblemente el más prospero de Latinoamérica. Algunos dicen que esto se debe a Pinochet y a su política. Estos defensores de Pinochet dicen: “Claro que Pinochet mató a 3.000 agudos pensadores pero mira la prosperidad que trajo a la nación”. Pinochet era tan fervoroso creyente del capitalismo “laissez faire” que inclusive privatizó el sistema de pensiones del seguro social.

Pero la idea del socialismo corre fuerte en Chile. En 1960, el Presidente Eduardo Frei nacionalizó una fuente de gran riqueza: la industria del cobre, al recuperarla de manos norteamericanas. El marxista Allende continuó este programa de nacionalización al reclamar los bancos y tomar la tierra de los ricos. Los socialistas aquí son más numerosos que los conservadores. A pesar de los abultados gastos por parte de los aristócratas, una mujer socialista, Michelle Bachelet, ganó en las elecciones del 2006, seguida por Ricardo Lagos, el actual titular socialista.

Cuando Salvador Allende subió al poder las mujeres ricas del barrio Las Condes en Santiago, salieron con sus utensilios de cocina en una protesta ruidosa de ollas y sartenes, diciendo que todos morirían de hambre en las manos de los socialistas en un momento en que los Estados Unidos se encontraban ocupados peleando la Guerra Fría con los soviéticos. Por muchos años, la Doctrina Monroe dijo que los Estados Unidos no permitirían que un movimiento extranjero tomara control de Las Americas. El Presidente Richard Nixon y su Secretario de Estado, se preocuparon por lo que estaba sucediendo en Chile y se preocuparon más aún cuando el Presidente Allende invitó a Fidel Castro para que visitara Chile. Como se sabe, Castro, que se permite ciertas libertades, se quedó, no por unos pocos días o pocas semanas, sino durante 1 largo mes durante el cual viajó por el angosto país dando discursos a mineros, estudiantes y a todo el que pudiera escuchar.

Los Estados Unidos decidieron actuar. Está bien documentado en varios libros y archivos desclasificados que los Estados Unidos empezaron una campaña de desestabilización. La CIA dio dinero a periodistas y políticos para que descontrolaran el sistema. Los oligarcas juntaron sus fuerzas con los norteamericanos y persuadieron al no muy convencido Augusto Pinochet de lanzarse a tomar el poder por las armas. Cuando él usurpó el poder, la venganza contra los comunistas fue veloz y brutal. Escritores, activistas estudiantes e intelectuales fueron rodeados y tomados prisioneros, torturados y exiliados. Pablo Neruda, poeta ganador del Premio Nóbel, voló a través de la frontera hasta Argentina. Isabel Allende salió con su familia, dejando atrás los recuerdos de su tío, el último presidente.
Chile está libre de dictaduras militares hoy en día, pero el legado de Pinochet todavía resuena en la nación. Muchas de las ciudades provinciales tienen jueces de derechos humanos para tramitar los casos de 3.000 desaparecidos. Y Pinochet, quien se aseguró a sí mismo inmunidad de por vida, está siendo traído a los tribunales para responder por sus actos finalmente. Los británicos lo agarraron bajo una orden española de extradición cuando fue a Inglaterra para cuidados médicos en 1998, pero el Ministro del Interior, Jack Straw le dejó en libertad después de un mes de guerra entre la jurisprudencia española, la Scotland Yard y los seguidores de Pinochet. El ex – dictador a menudo ha logrado evadir un enjuiciamiento y la prisión aduciendo que está muy viejo y enfermo, pero finalmente ha sido enjuiciado por evasión de impuestos y ha sido puesto bajo arresto domiciliario; incluso ha visto a sus hijos ser inculpados ante jueces chilenos por cargos de corrupción.

Este libro es un recuento de los tres meses que pasé trabajando en la cosecha en VIA Wines en los Valles Maula y Colchagua en Chile en el año 2005. Le invito a venir conmigo mientras llevo a mis lectores a echar un vistazo a la forma cómo se hace el vino en una viña de tamaño industrial. Hablo acerca de la gente y del proceso también. Además de VIA Wines, tomo tours extensos por las mejores viñas de Chile y hablo con los más importantes enólogos del lugar. Escucho a la gente chilena hablarme sobre política y raza; riqueza y pobreza; Pinochet y Allende. Hice muchos amigos allí y de ellos he aprendido acerca del sistema educativo, como funcionan los celulares, el sistema de transportación y sobre las dificultades que enfrentan las madres solas. Llevo a mis lectores a visitar las casas de trabajadores pobres, a un tour al Volcán Villarrica e inclusive a visitar uno de los burdeles que funcionan legalmente aquí.

Ben Yagoda’s "About Town : The New Yorker and The World It Made"

Since the 1920's The New Yorker magazine has ebbed and flowed in and out of the nation's conscience. On occasion The New Yorker itself is splashed across the front page of major newspapers with stories either by or about the magazine. What other periodical is there whose change in editorship is chronicled with unfleeting attention as was recently the case when Editor Tina Brown was deposed.

The supposed demise of The New Yorker magazine has been chronicled many times and the subject is old hat. It interestingly parallels the decline of our culture brought on by the decline of reading lamented by Alan Bloom, Harold Bloom and other cultural critics. But The New Yorker still survives some 80 years after it was founded by Harold Bloom. To appreciate it's place in the American psyche it is worth revisiting it's decades long history as Ben Yagoda has done in "About Town: The New Yorker and The World It Made".

Mr. Yagoda had free reign of the internal papers and correspondence of The New Yorker and willing participation from many of her former writers and editors. His meticulously researched book is replete with facts and anecdotes that makes for a wonderful read. Further he casts a critical eye at the magazine on it's literary merits and offers a well-read analysis of it's fiction in the manner of The New Yorker's own great literary critic Edmund Wilson.

It is difficult today to appreciate the impact that The New Yorker had on American culture in it's heydays of the 1930s through the 1950s. That a humor magazine lacking a table of contents or photographs and whose articles were often without byline could sweep past such stalwarts as "Life" and "The Saturday Evening Post" is prima facie difficult to understand. In recent years the magazine lost it's poignancy and fell apart with spiraling financial losses (which continue today) and a dull demeanor that was famously mocked by recent editor Tina Brown when she criticized the "50,000 word article on sapphires".

Some of us like to read 50,000 word magazine articles and The New Yorker appears to be the only mass circulation forum to find such lengthy works. Some of The New Yorker's long fact pieces-the distinction between "fact" and "fiction" is made clear in The New Yorker with an editor being assigned to head up each department-have been reprinted as famous books. My personal favorite is the spine tingling murder tale "In Cold Blood" related by Truman Capote. More famous is John Hershey's account of the atomic bomb dropped on Japan in "Hirsohima". These articles read with a breathless pace that is steady and lends itself to reading in a single setting. There is neither wasted adjective nor adverb. These were heavily edited by William Shawn and others and retold in the famous New Yorker voice which reads as if many of the works in the magazine had been written by one person. Some writers, such as Thomas Wolfe, have mocked that aspect of the magazine.

Some New Yorker writers did not appreciate such heavy-handed editing. Vladimir Nabokov, author of the novel of illicit love "Lolita", complained to the editor and founder Harold Ross about Katherine White who wanted to alter his fiction. Mrs. White was the patrician beauty and wife of the New Yorker writer E.B. White. She, James Thurber, Harold Ross, and E.B. White set the pace for the magazine in it's early years. White wrote the famous books "Charlotte's Web", "The Elements of Style", and "Stuart Little".

Brendan Gill in his 1975 book "Here at The New Yorker" openly disparages the fact side of the magazine while praising the fiction. This is quite odd and overboard since Gill as a writer of fiction, Talk of the Town reporter, and the magazine's theater critic no doubt would have appreciated such newsworthy, well-written articles as "The Massacre at El Mozote". This chronicled the massacre of hundreds of civilizians in El Salvador by the American-backed government. This article is not ordinary journalism but is literary journalism such as was written by Truman Capote. The article does not relate the facts in newspaper pyramid style fashion with short column inch paragraphs. Rather the prose is written like a novel and makes a more interesting read albeit a much longer one than would fit into the conventional daily press. Another great work of literary journalism described by Ben Yagoda is Lillian Ross's description of the making of the John Huston movie "The Red Badge of Courage". And it is quite amazing that Edmund Wilson, author of the Marxist History "To the Finland Station" and the book of Civil War literature "Patriotic Gore", learned Hebrew so that he could document the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The import of fiction to the New Yorker seems to have waned. Currently issues contain only one fiction piece while other works are relegated to-or perhaps made prominent in--a fiction-dominated version of the magazine which appears every few months. Gone are the days when eager readers poured over each new issue looking for a story by John O'Hara or J.D. Salinger. Not unfallable, The New Yorker has made some obvious gaffes when it turned down short stories by Flanner O'Connor and rejected a work by J.D. Salinger that would eventually become "The Catcher in the Rye".

Harold Ross was the magazine's founder and served as it's editor until 1951. He is by far a more colorful figure than William Shawn and his legacy is greater. Ross was something of a country redneck, sporting a crew cut, who hailed from what at that time was a rural village: Aspen, Colorado. His dislike of Black people is describe by Yagoda. Ross's gift was surrounding himself with talented writers and editors and giving then somewhat free reign to innovate. Yet even he engaged in wholesale editing. Brendan Gill recalls being called to the mat for using the word "indescribable". "Nothing is indescribable" Harold Ross roared.

Home Burial

William Hodges Juvenal buried his son Julian today in the backyard of his house. Julian had died two days before at St. Judes Hospital after a protracted battle with Leukemia. After two years of chemotherapy and visits in and out of a dozen hospitals the little 11 year old boy finally let go of life and passed away quietly in his sleep.

William Hodges was not a religious man. He and his wife Katherine were bookish intellectuals who had subjected the existence of God to reason and had decided that they there is no God and that religion is a simply a man-made mechanism to keep society from sliding into anarchy. So being non-believers they did not go to a priest when their son died. Rather they held a simple civil service for family and friends at their farm on Long Island. When the guests left William went out into his garden, spent two days digging a hole, then lowered the body of his dead son into the ground and threw dirt over the grave.

Even though she was an atheist, Julian’s mother Katherine had grown despondent about burying her son in her own yard. Something began to stir in her soul—a longing for something spiritual to calm her anguished heart. She had begun to think that perhaps a proper burial with a minister or priest might have been better. As with many people who are confronting death, Katherine even began to think that there might just be some after life so shouldn’t her son go there rather than rot in the back yard.

Wiping away tears from her eyes, Katherine looked up at William as he came into the kitchen after having covered the grave. The way he calmly wiped the mud from his shoes—giving it no more thought than if he had been hoeing his tomatoes—seemed insufficiently reverent to Katherine. It was as if her husband had buried a dead canary or a cat and not his own flesh and blood. Her misery welled up in her eyes again and she began to sob.

“Would you like for me to fix you a Scotch?”, her husband asked. “Sure,” she said, “it will help dull the pain.” Even though he seemed rather nonchalant William was in deep grief as well. Both he and Katherine knew that when you lose a child it is as if a piece has been cut out of you. Where there once was the warmth of a little boy there is now an empty gulf, an ulcer writhing in pain, an oozing sore that would never heal no matter how many years would go by.

Katherine wanted to talk to her husband about their loss. William didn’t want to discuss anything. He preferred to brood over a book and try to reason away his loss by himself. So Katherine called her sister and they talked on the phone for hours.

As the days went by William returned to his study to work on his writing and Katherine returned to her studio to return to her painting. But neither parent could let loose of images of the young Julian at play. William, in particular, thought of how he and Julian would walk hand in hand in the forest of the farm looking for frogs. Julian would get frustrated with his father when he was 4 years old and go hunting for frogs all by himself. That Julian was bold enough to venture alone in the woods made his father proud. It also made him laugh the way the young boy said “it’s not fair” when William said he was too busy to go hunt frogs.

The loss of Julian tore at William’s heart, upended his emotions, and put him into a melancholy state. He tried to focus on his work but thoughts of his dead son cluttered his mind so he could not think clearly. Not all of William’s thoughts of Julian were sad. William reflected warmly on the cute way that William behaved. He laughed to himself when he recalled how Julian would fall down climbing through the brush of the family farm and then blame his fall on his father. He recalled how the boy would lie for hours on his bed talking to himself as all little boys do. “Who are you talking to?” William asked. “Nothing” the boy would answer not understanding the difference between a pronoun and a thing. And then there were the funny faces that Julian made. “Make a funny face for me Julian,” his father implored. Finally there was the way William could change his boy’s emotions from tears to laughter in seconds. If Julian was crying because he dropped his pancakes on the floor or if he had pinched his finger, William would hop around the room backwards on one foot, make funny faces himself and then Julian’s tears would stop instantly--he would then smile that wonderful cherubic child-like smile and burst out laughing. But all these pleasant thoughts dissolved into misery one morning when William walked into the basement and came across the pencil marks he had made on the wall to record the changes in his son’s height. It read “Julian 12/02/1999” and slightly higher up “Julian 10/14/2000”. William broke down and sobbed. He felt slightly ashamed of himself because he thought only women could experience such outward display of sadness. But then again he felt relieved because such outward displays of emotion were the way that one healed oneself.

For Katherine the way she thought of Julian was more, well, motherly. It tended to focus on not what the child did but how the child felt and how the mother felt about the child. Katherine’s her heart ached when she thought of Julian feeding at her breast for the first two years of his life. The life she had brought into the world began it’s first few minutes firmly clamped to its mother and hung tightly there for the first few years. Even as the toddler became a child and the child became a boy he would cling tightly to his mother’s skirts when strangers came to visit or when he was frightened by the dark. Katherine installed a nigh light in the young boys bedroom to keep the frightening dark at bay.

A few months after the home burial Katherine was sleeping in her bed while William read Robert Frost’s poetry while laying beside his wife. He reached up and switched off the lights and then fell fast sleep. Outside a full moon rose and a breeze picked up and the pines swayed in the darkness. From the window of their bedroom you could see the tiny marble headstone that marked the grave of the Juvenal baby.

Suddenly Katherine sat up in the darkness as she heard something or someone crying from the back yard. She listened closely again and thought she heard her dead son crying out “Mommie”. A chill ran across her body and she looked around the room at the moonlight spilling across the bed and the arm chair in the corner. “Wake up William” she prodder her husband. “Get up and look downstairs, I think I heard someone outside.” Groaning, William would not get up. “What? Huh? O.K.” William reached into his drawer and pulled out his pistol. Pulling on his slippers he climbed out of bed .

William heads out to the barn because he sees a shadow passing in the dark. On the way back to the house he stumbles across the grave of his son. With his flashlight he sees tiny footprints in the dirt around the grave. For some reason grass had not grown there.

The mother is not wakened anymore by the sound of Julian crying from the grave. But her mind begins to rethink its atheistic position. Perhaps she could think through the question of God again and either find Him or find spiritual solace. If she found a God then she might find a place for her son in Heaven. If she reaffirmed her atheism then she might at lest find solace from a spiritual awakening if in fact the two notions could coexist.

Katherine then recalls all that is wrong with religion in her mind. It’s a man made device she says and not something created by God. Think of all the wrongs that have been committed by the supposedly pious religious in the name of God. First there was the Insurrection where the Jews were expelled from Spain. Then there was the scandal of Lucretia Borgia, the daughter of the Pope who had an incestuous relationship with her father. The Vatican had been so corrupt for such a long time—selling tickets to heaven, maintaining an army--that Martin Luther grew fed up and started the Protestant faith. But the Protestant zealot John Calvin tossed heretical women into the river at Geneva. Then the Protestant faith splintered into the Anglican Church, the Pentecostal, Baptists, African Methodist Episcopalian, Seventh Day Adventists. All of these religions were just man made devices. There was nothing God like in their founding—only a differing interpretation of the Bible or a man made desire to make legal something with had been frowned upon by another church: divorce, polygamy, drinking.

She decides to reread Dante’s “Inferno”. While Dante’s poem is beautiful it highlights what she says is a flaw with Christianity. In the first circle of Hell Virgil meets Plato and Socrates. They are in a kind of limbo that might be purgatory. They are not subjected to the full wrath of Hell because they lived many years before Jesus appeared on earth and long before the Christian religion began. But what about all the babies and innocent mothers who were also born before Christ? Are they doomed to purgatory simply because of a fluke in the calendar? If God is benevolent why would he be so cruel?

C.S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity” has more of a positive impact on Katherine. In this book length essay Lewis argues that there is a Law of Nature which all men know by instinct. This law says that there is a universal morality—what one culture agrees is bad, e.g. murder, is agreed by all cultures. So there must be a supreme being who put together this notion and implanted it in the minds of all Earth’s citizens. Lewis does an excellent job of arguing that there must be a God. Further he goes on to say that the Christian faith is the only correct faith. While Katherine is impressed by Lewis’s argument she is not yet converted to Christianity.

Then Katherine reads Cardinal John Newman’s “Apolgia Sua Vita”. She fancies herself a scholar but can barely understand this long boring book written in the 19th century. When it was published in England it supposedly caused many Protestants to switch to the Catholic faith. As we’ve already pointed out Katherine does not think much of the Catholic Church. She does however have great admiration for Pope John Paul II for he faced down the communists in Poland and help to bring about the collapse of the evil Soviet Empire.

Katherine’s belief in religion she often compared to that of Ivan Karamazov in the novel “The Brother’s Karamazov”. Ivan argues that logic would indicate that is no God. Moreover he says if there is no immortality then nothing is immoral. But the author of the novel Fyodor Dostoevsky is a devout Greek Orthodox Christian as was his contemporary Leo Tolstoy. So Dostoevsky’s own beliefs manifest themselves in the character of Father Zosima the elder monk at the monastery and in the way that Ivan is crushed by his atheism. Father Zosima says that you cannot reason your way to religion. Rather you must have faith. Yet another character in the novel, the Devil, who of course believes in God, says “Besides in matters of faith, proof, especially, material proof is pretty useless.”

Katherine puts aside this debate over religion long enough to motor over to the local mall to go shopping. She browses in and out of the Gap—the prices there are too high for a poorly paid artist. Looks in the window at Victoria’s Secret—her skinny frame and slight bosom would find no support there. And then runs into two young men dressed in black pants, white shirts, and ties who are giving out literature and talking to passersby. Katherine recognizes them as Mormon so she takes one of their brochures but politely declines their offer to talk at length. “I promise I’ll read this” she says as she walks away thinking “there is no way I will read this”.

Katherine decides to go to the local Episcopal church that Sunday. She notes how the preachers are always smiling. She recalled that Oscar Wilde said that preachers are always smiling because they repeat the same think over and over as they read from the Book of Common prayer. So they are glib idiots. Katherine looks around the church and sees people from the village that she’s know for years. She recalls how she criticized her own parents. They didn’t believe in God she said; they simply went to church because in the rural area where they lived it was just another social club: a place to meet friends and get invited to parties. When Katherine went to her grandparents Baptist church as a teenager all she could think was how cynical these supposedly pious people were. They smiled meekly at one another and said “God is Great” and “Praise the Lord”. But they fornicated, committed adultery, stole from one another, lied, and behaved just like the rest of us. And the church’s dogma fit neatly into their scheme because God said you can be forgiven for your sins if you just ask. So for the petty thief or the abusive husband, the sanctuary was just one great big revolving door of amnesty. Katherine left church that day feeling that much more down on religion. But still she wouldn’t give up searching for the sake of her own soul and that of her dead child.

Katherine goes to her studio one morning in April to work on her painting. Her work is abstract. She dashes colors onto the canvas with her brush and sees what shat manifests itself. After a week of dabbing blue here, brushing red over there, and spreading yellow in bright swirls she steps back from the painting to look it over carefully. She gasps and drops her coffee to the floor when she can clearly see what appears to be the face of her son Julian. His hands are folded like Raphael’s painting of the praying hands and he is looking up at a church steeple. She then begins to think again of what the Mormons in the mall told her about Joseph Smith’s vision in the forest. Could she be having a religious vision? Could she be slipping into some kind of psychosis? Her emotions were beginning to unnerve her.

Katherine is looking about the den a few says later for something to read when she picks up “The New Yorker” magazine. She reads a scathing indictment of the Mormon Church in advance of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympic games. She feels vindicated in her mistrust of religion when she reads how Brigham Young had 57 wives. Polygamy it seems was not scripture but just a way to sanction the many marriages kept by the church’s founder Joseph Smith. But then Katherine’s schadenfreud turned to interest as she read of the Mormon’s belief in the Baptism for the Dead. The New Yorker explained that through prayer a living Christian could cause the soul of a dead person to go to heaven. Hence the Mormon’s interest in genealogy.

Katherine decided to read further. She went Amazon.com and ordered “The Book of Mormon”. Then she visited the Mormon Church and talked with the elders and they agreed to teach Katherine about the Church of Latter day Saints and help her pray for the soul of her dead child.

In the months thereafter Katherine is busy with her painting and her new-found faith in the Mormonism. She wouldn’t call herself a Mormon yet but she did hold out hope that the Baptism for the Dead could help her reconnect with her son or at least spirit her son off to Heaven. That night she crawls in bed, reaches up and snaps off the light, and falls asleep.

William is sleeping beside her when he abruptly sits straight up in a cold sweat. “Did you here that? I can hear Julian crying out from his grave.” He turns to his wife but she is not there. Her side of the bed has gone cold. Leaping up from his bed he throws open the window and looks in the backyard at his son’s grave which is well lit in the full moon. Across the grave he can see a shadow in the spot where grass refuses to grow. William tosses on his bathrobe and dashes down the stairs, pistol in hand, and runs out to the back yard. At the grave of his son William doesn’t find a trespasser or ghost. Rather Katherine is lying there an afghan wrapped around her shoulders and The Book of Mormon lying at her side. She too had heard Julian crying out so she went out to be with him and comfort him.