blogging plan

So I am searching the web, sort of aimlessly, for random things. I find a couple of places with bloggers touting their membership in the LDS church, and others who seem to have been members of this church but no longer are. The talk is interesting. I guess we all want to have our voices heard. I sort of want that too. I also found some sort of e-book, and I guess there is something about writing and speaking out about stuff that must be part of our church, on purpose or on accident, I'm not sure. I know I have had ideas about stuff I could write about, I've never been good at updating websites or blogs, 'cause I end up sounding pseudo-encyclopedic about stuff I know, but I don't want to have to do any research to really find out the facts, so I just stop.

History, doctrine, international affairs, politics, immigration, philosophy, adventures, entertainment ideas, etc. I did things and studied and tried to learn about these things to serve others, as part of the injunction in D&C to learn the complexities of the nations to prepare to preach the gospel. I see the way other people use them, and then I look at my attempt. Our knowledge is rather similar, and I guess our conclusions are similar too, but are we getting any closer to inviting people to live the gospel? So, at the same time, since I haven't been keeping a journal really, and have had a lot of adventures, and I want to write about that, but it seems less important, so I just don't write anything. Oh, and I tell myself I would probably stay up all night doing it a couple of times and then burn out. Perhaps I will start a blog for each thing, or for like 5 general categories, each with its own point, so as not to jumble or jam the ideas. This one ought to be a journal.

The photo was taken a week or so ago, on my birthday, at night. I went out for dinner with my brother Alma at a weird old early 70's ish restaurant, it was good, but too much meat. It was edited on the gimp 2.2.

Today I spent the entire day removing brush from near where the house is going to be. There are a lot of packrats. They really do keep stuff around, I founf pieces of rope, gloves, a facemask, and most important a lot of little thorns from the Cholla cactus. I guess that is their defense from coyotes.

So, in my first installation of the online journal I will keep on this blog I will look back to 2 years ago, and 1 year ago, in history.

2 years ago.

May, 2004

I'll start with a song I listened to a lot around this time, it was on my main minidisc, and had taken the place of a few other Cat Stevens songs that had sort of been my theme for the previous year (Father and Son, Hardheaded Woman, and On the Road to findout), I guess it was one of them, but the other two were resolved. Not the whole song, just the May 2004 part.

Well I left my happy home to see what I could find out
I left my folk and friends with the aim to clear my mind out
Well I hit the rowdy road and many kinds I met there
Many stories told me of the way to get there

So on and on I go, the seconds tick the time out
There's so much left to know, and I'm on the road to findout
....


At the beginning of the month I remember saying goodbye to some friends, and family at a little party at my good friend Ryan's parents' house. I could go on and on about how the year before that was too, about living at Aunt Liz's and hanging out on Laird Ave, and going to shows, and having a motorcycle, and learning about love. But, that is hard for me now. Not that I forgot, but that things have really changed.

I remember someone at the party saying it was lame, or that I should have made a bigger deal of it, or something to that effect. I didn't regret it, I said, because the people who cared enough to come and just be bored at something small were the people I wanted to see.

I spent an entire day with my brother, eating at an Indian restaurant, for the first time, and talking all about everything. It was really good, and after that I would always eat Indian food when I could in DC, and I always loved it. And then I went to my other brother's to spend the night, and we went to church together before I went to the parents' house. It was also a good thing. It was sort of funny to hear so many sermons on the importance of getting married, and not on marriage, parenting, or parents per sé but actually on "casamiento" itself, at a BYU singles' ward. I had never been to one before, and after 5 years at the U singles' wards I was accostomed to the casamiento topic almost never coming up, unless it was a Conference or something, because that was the BYU thing to do. Oh well. I forgot to mention, and not in too sharp of a critique, that it was Mother's Day. So, as soon as we were out, and had chatted a bit, I was off, car full of all of my belongings, leaving all behind. Job, school (the internship was my last semester), friends and family, for the way out East.

I sped down the Western highway, instead of the traditional I-15 route, mostly for the peace of the drive, but also for the lack of having to ever pass anyone to be able to go fast. That kepy my mind on where I was, what I was doing.

But sometimes you have to moan when nothing seems to suit ya
But nevertheless you know you're locked towards the future

I got pulled over near Delta, I think. That was okay, I guess, it was after all of my old Courier Express tickets had lapsed.

So, I zoomed on down to my Mother's to see her on Mother's Day. It was the right thing to do, we all had a nice visit. My parents are very into travelling on America's roads, and were in full support of my trip. My dad even made me a map of how to do the route I wanted to, from their house to Monument Valley, then on to Aztec New Mexico, to Joplin Missouri, and from there to my older sister's house in St. Louis, and from there to my sister's in Pittsburg. She would take the wheel and drive me to DC, with her youngest, her other two were on a trip to the other Washington. I was sad when I got lost in Colorado, and couldn't find my way on the map he had made. I tried in vain to find roads that the Atlas gave highway numbers to, and the mapping program had called with names. After about 4 U-turns and 3 or 4 lost hours, I decided to just head East, and use the map book.

I wanted to drive through Kansas and see these places, because they all meant something to me, and because I was sure that if I went on either of the freeways I would spend the whole time all nervous, and that was not good, in my state.

Well in the end I'll know, but on the way I wonder
Through descending snow, and through the frost and thunder

I listen to the wind come howl, telling me I have to hurry
I listen to the robin's song saying not to worry

Monument Valley was great. I camped in the sand that night on the side of the highway in northern New Mexico somewhere. The ranger at the "Aztec" ruins said that the whole Aztlan thing didn't add up, and that the ruins were never considered by archaeologists to be of Aztec origin, but people had just said that because they didn't want to over-estimate the skill of State-side first nations. Northern New Mexico was a gem, what a wonderful variety of landscapes, high mountains, southwestern desert, sometimes it did feel a lot like Colorado, but then I guess that is what things should feel like. The next day was my birthday, I missed everyones' phone calls because I was in and out of range. But that does not mean that I wasn't on the range. The whole thing just flattened out. Kansas was really hilly again, later on, but Oklahoma was not, and Texas was not. I was happy to be out of range, I admit. I put in my Texas is the Reason CD as soon as I crossed the border, it had been 9 years since a very good friend of mine gave it to me for my birfday, and it was a joy to hear it in Texas. I filmed that day, for the first time in a really long time, and never have since, a piece of film to show people. It was later titled "Do you know who you are?" after the Texas is the Reason instrumental song title, and submitted to the family film festival. It was taken upon entrance into the town of Texahoma, and was meant as a salute to Texas, in all it's strangeness, and to the town of such fine naming, and was shown later on in Peru, as an intro to my presentation there on the social policy recommedations considering the upcoming possibility of a free trade agreement with the US. I guess I was trying to show the reality of the agri-industry, and how it compared to their poor poor rural areas. I stopped that day to shop thrift stores in the town of Liberal Kansas, because I had to. Wouldn't you? I drove all day, and slept in my parked car out on a dirt road outside the SW Missouri town of Liberal, just to make it a complete day. I got good stuff at the thrift store, for 83 cents, nice old white shirt, belt buckle, 2 ties.

I stopped in the town of Nevada the next day for the afternoon to visit a friend going to school there. Then I went to the town of my first memories, and had to admit to my Dad that I had not kept the maps we had made. I was sorry, but they didn't work. Things had really changed since we lived there.

The strangest part of all was when I went to the place where I first attended school. I was waiting for a call back from my parents and had nowhere to go, the people at the school didn't want me filming when the kids were there, so I took off. With nowheres to go, I felt like I ought to go and check out the George Washington Carver birthplace monument. What a very unique individual, I thought. If only I could dedicate myself like he did to creating jobs and promoting development. I called my friend, and we chatted while I walked around the park. Then I reached the pond. It made me feel so strange I had to hang up, that and I was so distracted I almost stepped on a huge black snake. It was as if I were in a dream. I had dreamt of being there before, because I had remembered going once as a child, and wanting to swim, or stay, but having to go. Perhaps it was around the time we moved. But that was quite an experience. I then got my father on the phone and he directed me to our old house. It was a very nice house, in a strange little neighborhood. Although there had been considerable development of the area, gas stations, a new freeway that went right where the old pond used to be. I was sort of mad about that, I had really wanted to go there, to see if I could catch a turtle to put in a box, or some tadpoles to make frogs out of. . .

Visits with my sisters were both really nice, but I more remember them now all mixed up with other visits that same year to both of their houses. Oh well. It was great to meet the small children, all growing up, and funny as can be in St. Louis. The bigger ones are very interesting people. I was very happy to have a family, and to be an uncle. In Pittsburg she was so small, and smart, I tried to film her on the swing for example, and every time I would record she would stop, somehow she knew.

On May 18 I had just recently arrived to Washington, DC having started my internship just the day before. My sister met 2 of my roommates, and helped unload my things.

I was so happy to be near some friends in town and eagerly searched them out. I met a lot of people on those first couple of visits who I would see over and over again, and some who I later would come to know very well. I was remembering that old job, just today. I was so into the Balkans at the time, because of the research paper I had to write for that class, its title ended up being "Reversing Balkanization". It was the first paper I ever submitted to a journal. Researching in DC proved to be very exciting, with a number of excellent libraries to choose from at top-notch universities, JHU, American, and Georgetown were my picks.

The internship was with ME&A, I had never heard of them, but they were exactly 90% of what I was looking for (http://www.mendezengland.com/home/index.html) in an internship, experience in my chosen field. The first couple of weeks were full of surprises, I think it wasn't until later until I fully realized what had happened.

I would walk every day on a bike path to lunch, and skate to the metro, and to work, and vice versa, that was really nice in the DC simmering summer.

1 year ago,

May 2005

At the first part of May I had the amazing opportunity, well, amazing to me, of going to the Central African island of Bioko. I was there for one week. I remember wishing my luggage had come with me, because I really wanted to just leave the Madrid Airport and go off to Eastern Europe on a train, and bag my plans, I had practically quit the job anyway, and had a bunch of money saved up. I didn't do it. Too risky. It could have been worth it, I'll never know. It didn't make sense, and was irresponsible. But, I did take the bus and metro into downtown Madrid while I was waiting for my connection flight home, that was worth it.

My bags had been left at the airport in NYC, there was just not enough time to go to the baggage claim and make my flight, and was not checked through. It wasn't the fact that I had spent a whole week wearing the same jeans and t-shirt, and borrowing project t-shirts while I was training, meeting with staff, and meeting with people in government ministries. I really wanted to stay longer, and even more, I wanted be able to get them the supplies they needed. I met with the staff, took hundreds of pictures of the supplies, and location, stayed up late at night working on inventory program issues, and PC's, and spent the entire week super tired, but very happy to be there. It all felt close, despite the distance, somehow I didn't feel out of place.

The country was what you can read about, and more and less, I can't say I saw the whole place. I can say that the ministries needed a lot more than they had, and that a US company sponsored the one and only successful public health intervention, and that was our project. The hospitals worked okay, but also needed a lot more than they had. I realized just how complicated everyone's jobs were, and how much work it could take to answer what seemed to be a simple question for the home office.

The office. It was good to be back, after seeing how the results of our combined labor were like. Now that is quite a commodity!

The apartment. We watched the final episodes of freaks & geeks, it was a really good series. We celebrated my birthday going out for late night fast food, and going to a park in our neighborhood, super late. I hadn't told anyone, and did not have a party. I was going away, and I didn't want to see people. The roommates were surprised at when I told them, why not earlier. Just like this year, I guess. My sister came, and I lent her my car, and she kindly took in some boxes of things for me. I was happy to see her family. It made the apartment feel like home to me for a minute. That was nice.

By the end of the month I was in Chile. I took the train from DC to Miami, only $40!, and laughed to see how everyone there speaks Spanish. Not that they have accents or anything, it's not that at all. I met a local kid at the bus stop who had seen me chatting with a Cuban guy I bought a sandwich from, he asked me if I spoke English before asking me for spare change, he said he had been lookin all day for money to use the phone, and that no one in that part of town seemed to speak English. I believe it.

Class was good. The professors seemed to be people who had had real experience in the field, and would have a lot to offer in terms of knowledge, which is what I was looking for. And they really were. On my lay-over in Peru I took a day to go to church in Lima. I made friends with a man there who heard me talking about the U and Heterodox Economics. That frienship would seriously influence my life for the next 6 months, and has already influenced the lives of a few other people. Now that friend is in Provo, but only until August. He invited me to call him when I came back, and he would take me on a tour of his alma-mater, the oldest university in the Americas, The University of San Marcos. I did, and we did, but that is another, mixed, story.

I didn't ever realize time could move so quickly.

I listen to the wind come howl, telling me I have to hurry
I listen to the robin's song saying not to worry

(the wind is howling here in Joshua Tree)