Mormons X: Beehive House

Sister Amador had promised details about plural marriage at the Beehive House, so I made my way east from Temple Square.

The Beehive House was one of Brigham Young’s two primary residences in Salt Lake, the home to his most prominent and senior wives. The house is named for the beehive sculpture that sits atop the roof, otherwise the white columned front porch and plantation shutters on the sandstone and adobe house resembled an antebellum mansion with a southwestern flair.

Inside an elderly man in a black suit gave me a hearty greeting, and by golly, I was just in time for tour! He directed me to a row of benches where the other visitors were waiting. The benches looked identical to the white pine pews from the tabernacle, though these, we would learn, had been made from the parts of broken down wagons and handcarts the first Mormon settlers pushed across the prairie.

The tour was a few minutes away as the greeter was trying to lure a couple of Brits who had walked in looking for the restaurant next door. No sale. A couple of 19th century city maps caught my eye from across the room and I got up to investigate. An older woman got up from the information desk came over to see what I was interested in. She also liked the old city plans. She wanted to know where I was from.

“Are you a member of the Church?” she asked.

“Well, my parents aren’t that religious.” I said.



Perhaps she mistook the way I stare at maps for a reverence for this city built by the Mormon pioneers. But it was just my love for maps, and my best strategy for evading unwelcome conversions project myself onto the wall and disappear for hours. A map of transitioning Eastern Europe in the back of my Marianna, Arkansas Special Education classroom was one my favorite places to wait out the bells once the kids stopped trying to run me out of the county every afternoon, or kill each other, and settled into the malaise that was our ship of the damned.

I could feel the eyes of docent were still on me, and without disengaging from my favorite of the old city plans, an ambitious grid that stretched out far beyond what the settlers of the time could have populated, I gave her a little more. “My grandmother was a saint. She died a long time ago.”

I hoped my grimace gave her rest of the story she was looking for. It’s not that I imagined my elliptical suggestions would give cause for my hosts to drop the official slant and pull me into a room where I could look at the real artifacts left behind by the Mormon Moses and his 55 wives. I wanted something other than what I was going to get from this tour. An invitation to the singles ward, a family story, something more than the friendliness that substitutes for any interesting conversation with these missionaries who are under the constant surveillance of their peers.

The greeter ushered me back to the pew and gave us his practiced introduction about Brigham Young and his (Young’s, though the guy seemed old enough) role in the Mormon exodus and the building of Salt Lake City. He asked us to imagine this front room as it might have been in the early days of the Utah settlement. A dozen secretaries would have worked here on the ground floor of the Prophet’s home. They crammed in back to back at desks squeezed into this waiting area, the official bureau of a burgeoning theocracy. They worked like the busy bees Young wanted to name his territory after.

Two young missionaries entered on cue from a back room and introduced themselves as our guides for the next half hour. Sister Sessions and Sister Slight were both Americans, from Michigan and Pennsylvania, respectively. Slight was built like her name, slender and with a mousy voice. Placed next to her, Sessions with her muscular frame looked like Slight’s bodyguard. Sessions did not have her partner’s sweet demeanor, what might have been intended as a smile came out closer to a scowl. I noticed Sessions suspicious eyes in my direction while Slight welcomed us to the tour.


From what little I know about the Mormon mission placements, it is a distinction for a young man to be placed for service overseas, the more exotic the higher esteemed the candidate. As for the second class part, all female missionaries seem to be a wrung below their male counterparts, their numbers are fewer, their expected service shorter, and their roles usually in the auxiliary. Men hunt for souls, women lead tours. Then again only women serve as guides at the Temple Square attractions, and as they hail from all over the world perhaps it is an honor to be a hostess of Zion.

I guessed Amador hadn’t seen that LDS commercial, “you tell one lie and leads to another,” that played everyday during the afternoon cartoons of my youth. Her claim that we could get some answers about polygamy at the Beehive House was full of shit. They admitted that polygamy took place, but in the same hokey way that fox of a kindergarten teacher explained it to me all those years ago. This was a shrine to Brigham Young, and anything that took away from his glory was not appropriate on a tour of his first Salt Lake City residence and his franchise of families.

Sessions and Slight worked in the same alternating paragraphs as my guides at Temple Square. They took turns showing us Brigham Young’s cloak and a cane that lay across his bed, with bits and pieces of the mythology built up about his founding of Salt Lake City. During their back and forth they peppered the spiel with anecdotes that impressed upon us Young’s great parenting skills.

As they led us through the house, they only identified the room of one wife, his first plural wife, surprising considering 50 more lived with him at some point in his Salt Lake City homes. All the other rooms along the corridors turned out to be for his many children. I kept a little back from the group since it was easier to take notes away from the crowd, but this drew attention from the sisters. Sister Slight dropped back to keep an eye on me, nervous with all my scribbling.

“Are you writing a research paper?” she asked.

“Something like that,” I said as I leaned in to take a look at the spines of the old books on a hallway shelf. Two books jumped out from the bland offerings of the 19th century canon, Darkest Africa by Henry Stanley and Livingstone’s Last Journals. For a man who preached that God had punished ancient heathens with the curse of black skin, these books must have read like pornography. When does a man with 55 wives find the energy to beat off? One of the many under examined downsides of plural marriage.

“You like books,” Sessions asked, just behind my back shoulder.

The bad cop of this duo wanted to know about my family history, this grandmother I had mentioned to the docent. It was more a challenge than a question, but I just mumbled that she had died when I was too young to understand. In an old reflex I was drifting away from her, the old titles after all were a map of the Prophet’s world, he had held these now dusty spines as he escaped for a time to a world outside the confines of Mormon theology.

Her scowl edged into frown as she directed me to keep closer to the group.


The sisters kept trading off, one leading the tour, the other trailing just behind me as if I were a black man browsing in a record shop. I looked up to find Sister Sessions next to me at the velvet rope separating us from one of the second floor bedrooms.

It was a modest room with a single bed and pine dresser with a dark varnish. A child’s dress was on display in front of the dresser.

“This was Clarrissa’s wedding dress” Sessions said.

“That’s a wedding dress?” I said.

I had guessed the white lace dress might have been for a baptism. Mormons baptize after a child’s eighth birthday. Sessions saw my thoughts.

“She was 21 years old when she married,” Sessions said.

“She was so tiny,” I said.

“21 years old,” she repeated.

Maybe Clarissa’s diminutive stature is so well known in Mormon lore that there is there is nothing remotely scandalous about her child sized wedding dress. I consider myself pretty well informed for an outsider, and I had never heard of Brigham’s midget bride. This was a tour for outsiders after all.

Accounts of modern polygamy repeatedly expose the institution as cover for predators who slake their desire for adolescent flesh under the cloak of religious sacrament. Judged by Sessions reaction to my reserved astonishment, and by Latter Day Saint’s universal hatred for their polygamy practicing backwoods cousins, one would think they’d just find a bigger dress to display to the world.

But the tiny dress fits the Temple Square’s presentation. This was the second tour where they provided an inquisitive person just enough to ask the uncomfortable questions right as the half hour time limit expires. Is this part of the Mormon missionary experience, galvanizing the believers through the skepticism of outsiders, however blatantly provoked?

Now I had provoked Sisters Sessions. She was on my right elbow for the remainder of the tour. She kept close to me as her partner handed out the honey candies. Slight explained would leave us sweet memories of our time in the Beehive House. Her words made me tingle with the memory of from my last mnemonic honey candy, the afternoon I touched the hand of that brunette storyteller all those years ago. Puppy love in a fourth grade classroom.

One of the other tourists approached me asked if I was here working on a project. His tone was sufficiently conspiratorial that I told him I was a freelance journalist. He handed me a card.

“I support independent research”, he said, then in a hushed tone he gave me the name of a website and a movie that I had to check out.

I told him I’d look for them on Netflix.

“You won’t find that in any video store,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder, then continued in a whisper. “Temple Rituals. I have a friend who spent over a year looking for this one.”

I could feel Sisters Sessions glare on me even though she had already left the room. I told him I’d look for the movie.

Maybe if I had more than a day in Salt Lake I’d have asked this guy for his story. But I am here for the stories of the believers. I decided to go back to a Temple Square tour, this time in Spanish.
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No Hitter

It is 730 on a beautiful summer evening, clear and a little cold with a steady wind whipping off the Pacific. Tie for my first baseball walk of the season. I do not need the exercise, but I had found my pocket radio earlier today, turns out it was hiding under the unmatched socks in my clean clothes hamper.

Jon Miller’s Giants play-by-play has always been the perfect accompaniment for a twilight walk through the hills of San Francisco. I tuck the radio into my coat pocket and start west to the top of Alamo Square Park and its classic view of the painted lady Victorians across the street that are framed by the downtown buildings in the distance.



It is the top of the second inning and Jonathan Sanchez is on the mound for the Giants. He had come into the season as the fifth starter, but has since been demoted to the bullpen after a disappointing two and a half months. He is now back in the rotation filling in for an injured Randy Johnson. Miller announces his crisp 1-2-3 top of the second inning.

Looking across to the green of another hilltop park, I decide I want to watch the sunset from there, so I head north, down into the dodgy blocks of Western Addition and then uphill to posh Laurel Heights to Alta Plaza Park, a peak atop the ridgeline that looks down upon the Golden Gate, the Marina, and the Bay. The low sunlight is painting fiery colors on the city skyline to the east and colors the fog rolling in south of Twin Peaks a deep mauve.

The wind is strongest on these hilltops, but with a sweater and a jacket and the body heat from my uphill walk, I am warm enough to sit on a bench with a view to the water. It helps that the Giants are now up 4-0, and Sanchez is off to his strongest start of the year, he has retired his first 12 twelve batters. It is the bottom of the fifth and Dave Flemming has relieved Miller for a couple of innings of the broadcast. Sanchez is throwing more pitches now, and Flemming notices that he has lost his release point, He is not hitting his targets as he battles with Adrian Gonzalez, the Padres’ one feared slugger. Gonzalez chases a ball in the dirt for strike three, and Sanchez retires the next two Padres.

Sanchez has a perfect game through 5 innings. I get the hunch that as long as Sanchez keeps retiring batters I might as well start walking in the direction of the stadium. I can always turn for home when the Padres get a hit. It’s a little bit silly as it sounds like Sanchez is already showing fatigue and he hasn’t started in nearly three weeks. But this is baseball, and you never know what might happen.

I figure will have plenty of chances to turn back, as it is just over 3.5 miles from Alta Plaza to the free views from behind the right field fence at the Phone Booth. I figure I might be able to get to the yard by the bottom of the eighth, depending on how quick the game goes.

I head east down Jackson atop the spine of Pacific Heights. I had forgotten how clean and quiet it is up here amidst the mansions that must still run into eight figures.

It is a long bottom of the 5th, Pablo Sandoval is up to bat with two men on. The Panda crushes a ball, and Flemming calls the shot as it rockets over the 20-foot high arcade and the 421 sign in the deepest right center field in the majors. By all accounts it is one the longest home runs hit to that part of the yard. It is 7-0 as I approached Russian Hill, still about 45 minutes away from the stadium. Sanchez regains command after the lengthy top half of the inning. Strike out, fly out, strike out, he has retired 18 in a row. The bottom half of the inning passes just as quickly, I am about to crest Nob Hill and it is suddenly the 7 inning.

At the top of the hill a young man tried to stop me on the sidewalk. He had a full beard and was wearing a dated suit that looked vaguely like an Hassidic Jew.

“Are you Jewish?” he asked?

“No.”

“Then have a nice weekend.”

Hassidic indeed. Whatever he is up to he reminds me of those old men who approach the tourists at the Wailing Wall. If you are Jewish they help you with the prayers, if not, they tell you to have a nice vacation. I chuckle and tell him this without breaking stride.

He shouts at my back, “In Israel?”

I can hear the electricity building in the crowd as Sanchez strikes out the side in the 7th. His pace is quickening, his stuff must be phenomenal tonight. I too quicken my pace. I am crossing the filthy streets of Chinatown as the Giants go quietly, and too quickly, in the bottom half of the 7th. I am still at least 20 minutes away. I can’t get a cab, I’ve already crossed Grant and there are no taxis around. Besides, I’m superstitious, and I am positive that as soon as the meter drops, a Padres bat will produce a ground ball that squeezes through the infield.

I am now close to a jog, heading south through the Financial District as Adrian Gonzalez is leading off the 8th. If Sanchez can get Gonzalez, he has a real chance. I don’t even want to think it, but there have only been 17 perfect games in the 132-year history of baseball. Gonzalez hits one to deep to left, but Bowker runs it down at the warning track. I can hear the crowd buzzing as the anticipation of something historical begins to build.

As I am crossing Market Street, now within minutes of the game, Chase Headley hits a grounder to the left side that Juan Uribe cannot handle off what Miller describes as an awkward bounce. Uribe had shifted to third base when Pablo was taken out in the 6th. The Panda would have fielded that one, for sure.

The perfect game is over. Sanchez fires the next pitch to the backstop. He is laboring. But he gets a flyout and then a strikeout on a ball that actually hits the batter. I am now within blocks of the yard, and I notice a few groups clad in Giants paraphenalia walking in other direction.

Bad fans. Very bad fans.

The Giants add some unnecessary runs in the 8th, though they give me time to get to the right field fence without having to run for it. This is where I used to eat lunch during day games when I worked downtown. It was exactly 22 minutes from my chair on the 24 floor of 44 Montgomery to the second archway behind the right fielder. Usually it is possible to lean right up to the chain link, but tonight people are backed four deep behind the fence. It is a good thing I am tall.

Everyone is on their feet. The first batter in the bottom of the ninth hits a sharp ground ball to the left side. Renteria runs deep into the hole to the snare it and has to throw a perfect strike to Ishikawa for the out. Two more outs to go. Adrian’s older brother Edgar is up to bat. Sanchez misses badly up, then bounces one over the plate. The next pitch is a strike, but too much of a strike, and Gonzalez crushes the middle-of-the-plate offering to center field. Sanchez doesn’t even turn around; he is sure it is a home run. The crowd behind the right field wall surges forward to keep Aaron Rowand in sight line as he races back to the centerfield fence. Rowand takes a last step on the warning track, jumps, and stretches out as he crashes into the wall for the second time this week. He holds on for the second out.

The knothole rowdies are now jumping up and down and banging on the chain link with such force that it wobbles like a slinky. On the first pitch the batter contemplates a bunt. The crowd showers him with boos. the next pitch is in the dirt, 2-0. A strike on the outside corner, 2-1. A foul ball evens the count. The next pitch is a curve that breaks down into the zone, called strike three.

The last time the Giants threw a no-hitter was almost 33 years ago when I had just turned 4 months old. And Sanchez’ effort is actually a “no-no”. Though the term is often used interchangeably with no hitter, a true no-no means no hits and no walks, a much rarer and more difficult feat.

It is a great story for Sanchez. A pitcher who has struggled with command problems all season, who has been undone by the walks he allows, comes back into the rotation and throws the most dominant game of his career. More special still, his father flew in from Puerto Rico to see him pitch, the first time Papa had seen Sanchez start an MLB game.

Hopefully this night portends good things for the Giants season. They have far exceeded anyone’s expectations, and with their dominant pitching in a mediocre National League, it could be a special year in San Francisco.
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Mormons IX: Temple Square

I’d like to think I’d be fascinated with Utah even if those missionaries way back when hadn’t seeded powerful religious visions in my dreams. I am historian as much as I am a wanderlust nut job, and history of Mormonism illustrates so much of what I love about American history. The revivalism of Second Awakening, the 19th century Immigrant experience, and the internal migrations across the prairie to the frontier are all integral themes of the early Mormon experience. A Trip to Salt Lake enhances an understanding of all these aspects of this American religion. The hundreds of Europeans I saw walking around downtown must have come to a similar conclusion, or at least their guidebooks had, though some of them may have needed a place to stop over on the long trip to the West Coast.

I was met at the gate to the Temple Square by a pair of smiling missionaries. These were not the black suited duos trolling for baptisms on dusty streets the world over. First, they were female, and second, instead of the black and white nametags I can spot from two hundred yards out, these women had softer looking nameplates that included the flag of their native countries. Judging by the nametags of the hostesses leading tourists around the grounds, this was a veritable United Nations of Mormonism. My greeters were an oddly matched pair, Sister Khalium, a short, soft-spoken Mongolian, and Sister Amador, a plump, dour faced Mexican who looked like she had stepped out of a Oaxacan convent.

I asked Sister Amador if she would do the tour in Spanish. She told me no, but that I could find the Spanish tour near the seagull statue. She told me to first take her tour and then take the Spanish tour. She insisted it would last no more than 30 minutes. She was oddly intimidating. If she had dressed in a habit with one look she could have scared a classroom full of the rowdiest special ed kids into compliance.



A couple from Florida was also waiting for guides so the three of us started off into the grounds. The sisters led us into the tabernacle and explained that virtually everything from the dark wooden pews to the faux marble columns had in fact been made of white pine. Khalium began with the story of the building, but her heavy accent and was difficult to understand, so I tuned her out, though careful to appear attentive as Amador had a sharp eye on me. I scribbled some notes for her approval. I wasn’t much interested in the empty tabernacle was already wondering when they would show us the talking statue of Jesus. I probably had to wait till the end as what else could possibly follow a talking statue of Jesus.

In her baritone, sister Amador demonstrated the perfect acoustics of a building that was ascetic even by Protestant standards. What had convinced this woman’s family to leave the colorful world of Mexican Catholicism, with its holy days and magical saints, the thinly veiled continuity with a colorful and awe inspiring Aztec priesthood the Spanish had so masterfully assimilated? According to the book of Mormon, her dark skin was given to her ancestors as a curse on their people.

The Florida couple asked a few polite questions and soon the tour moved into a museum that looked like a Smithsonian devoted to the Mormon foundation myth. Though corny, it was probably a necessity that a young faith curates its stories in this way. Foundation myths are difficult to sustain in the era of the printing press. The possibility of detailed and mass produced historical record puts new religions at a disadvantage to the more ancient traditions. In spite of the limitations of operating within a scrutinized historical space, the Mormons have been able to incorporate their history into a foundation story that echoes both the Old Testament and the unique historical experience of a growing United States.

The first gallery was designed to set the Judeo-Christian mind at ease with floor to ceiling action paintings of the Jewish prophets as they conned pharoahs, parted seas, crossed deserts, and pacified hungry beasts. We climbed a staircase to a large room with a 25 foot ceiling. The walls were covered with a celestial mural of stars, planets and far away galaxies. In the middle of the room was a large statue of Jesus. Was this the talking Jesus? I felt slightly ridiculous asking the question, fearing Sister Amador might slap me with some Hail Mary’s. I kept my mouth shut, so did Jesus.

The next room had a series of exhibits with wax statues reenacting the stories unique to the Mormon faith: the prophet Mormon himself inscribing his book onto gold plates, Joseph finding and translating the plates hundreds of years later, Brigham Young asserting authority over a the tested flock, and handcarts, the man powered equivalent of the covered wagon and icon of the Mormons exodus across the Great Plains.

Sister Amador declared our 30 minutes had expired almost as soon as we reached the last room, though she invited us to continue looking at the exhibits. The woman from Florida looked disappointed, and suddenly she let go with the question that had been gnawing at her since Sister Khalium had garbled us through outer space.

“What about the Polygamy?” she asked.

Until this point I hadn’t been sure if the couple were Mormons on holiday, so I had kept my questions to a minimum out of respect for their experience. But now the gauntlet was down, I too turned to Sisters for an answer. Khaliun disappeared down the hall and Amador made a motion with her hand and led the three of us to some chairs at the center of the exhibit. For a moment I felt like she had just given us a timeout. But then Khalium reappeared and handed us some brochures to the Beehive House, Brigham Young’s former residence down the street, and Amador explained that the tour there would give us more details on the history of plural marriage. They were out of time, Amador said, and abruptly bid us a good rest of stay in Salt Lake. They left us to find our way out of the museum.

I was just as disappointed as the woman from Florida. There had been no talking statue, and no talk of polygamy, though the question had been asked. Even the LDS Kindergarten teacher who presented her Mormonism in sing song one afternoon to my fourth grade class, as she handed out Bit O Honey’s and captivated me with her warm hazel eyes and long brown hair, even she mentioned plural marriage. It was a historical necessity in her tale. Precious few men who pushed those ill-conceived handcarts across the prairie survived the 1000 mile journey from Iowa to Utah. All the surviving women and children needed roofs to sleep under.

It was probably unfair for my tour guides that my expectations for Temple Square were the equivalent of a six year old’s for Disney World. Disney World and Temple Square in the same sentence may seem suspect, but there is an analogy there, both Mormon and Mouse have attracted the masses as markers of dreams. The early Mormon Church grew through immigration from northern Europe—where the populations were suitably white and non-Catholic—as early missionaries fished for converts in soot stained mill towns of England and hardscrabble villages of Scandinavia.

Joseph Smith’s first missionaries offered a new brand of Jesus Christ and taught that the world’s miracles had not dried up with the bones of the old prophets. Their message dovetailed perfectly with their strongest selling point, a bountiful new land across the ocean. These first converts, whatever their convictions for the teachings of Joseph Smith, would have had visions of the American Dream and the promise of a better life to pull them from their bleak surroundings. The new Zion by the Salt Lake must have sounded like a city from a fairy tale, a place free of menacing smokestacks, a community where the community did not let individual families starve in the winter. They sold the American Dream, 19th century style, and they built this square with these new pilgrims in mind.

If the Orlando theme park is the 20th century version of the dream, perhaps I would have been happier the days of the frontier. Disney begins marketing to kids before they say their first word and then shamelessly holds toddlers’ happiness as a ransom to suck every last cent out of befuddled parents. If attractions around Temple Square aren’t quite Magic Mountain, at least they were free. They want your soul of course, but will ask for your address only if you volunteer interest in a Book of Mormon and a visit from the missionaries. If I had to choose between the story of a prophet who believed in a god considerate enough to pay my country a visit, and a bug-eyed rodent who schemes to brainwash my future children in order to reach into my pocketbook— well, screw the mouse.
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Mormons VIII: Miss Utah, Swine Flu, Dead Babies

It is the penultimate day of my journey back to San Francisco. It has been a long, meandering trip.

Barranquilla by minivan to Cordoba, truck to Turbo, launch to Capurgana, walk to Panama, xx? to Colon, bus rides up the Pan Americana to Mexico, the Swine flu tour of Veracruz, Mexico City, Laredo. An old friend and a few Pogues CD’s on the car ride to Austin and New Orleans, a barge to Natchez, a bike ride to Nashville, a road trip to Richmond, New York City, and Middletown, Connecticut, and an Amtrak ride up to Rochester, over to Chicago, and on to Salt Lake City.


I have traveled over three months and 8,000 miles, and I am now so close to San Francisco that I can taste the California current in the cold rain which I am told is highly unseasonable for a Salt Lake City June. My body is worn down and I know my immune system must be on the brink of capitulation. But I have one day left for Salt Lake City, my last pilgrimage site where I will embrace the role of camera-wielding tourist. I even read the guidebooks for this one. My plan must be executed with a marshal pace, I’ll leave the Clark W. Griswolds in the dust, yet must be time for whoever pops up during the day. There must be characters here in Salt Lake City, and I must find them.



The people and the religion that founded this Zion have weaved themselves into my life story. If nothing else, I owe it to the story to have a look around.


After two days and a night on the train, I got in just before 1am. I was met at the station with a cold steady rain and not the hotel shuttle I had arranged to pick me up. I called the hotel to see what the matter was, and the midnight receptionist was so friendly on the phone it was impossible to be angry even though he had no trace of my reservation. Maybe they had checked the central database after I had booked the room.

A couple hours out of Denver I started calling Salt Lake hotels. The first was not yet open. At the second a honey-voiced receptionist named Pam offered me an exorbitant rack rate, yet before hanging up I asked if there were any cheaper rooms. She paused, then asked me why I was visiting.

“Well, I’m coming to see the sites. My family isn’t from Utah, you see.”

Two short statements both true, but she was free to see whatever she wanted was some deeper meaning connected with my visit, a search for roots maybe, or a return to the homeland. I wanted her to see that I needed a cheaper room. This pilgrim was not about to spend 185 dollars at the Shiloh Inn.

“How much were you looking to spend,” she asked.

“Uhh, a 100 dollars… maybe I should look for another place.”

Pause.

“What about 104 dollars,” she replied, “It’s our introductory rate.”

Open Sesame, a nearly full hotel knocks almost 40% off a single night for a guy who has come to see the Temple.

But eight hours later there is no reservation, no record in the computer of my conversation with Pam. The Shiloh Inn was either full, or did not take guests after midnight. The night clerk found me a room at another inn without a shuttle, so I only spent a few more minutes in the rain before a taxi arrived.

The breakfast buffet at the Crystal Inn was a more auspicious start than my arrival. I had slept through my alarm and woke with 5 minutes to get down to the lobby before the end of breakfast. I was resigned to scraps, frozen bagels halves and frosted flakes, but there was a fully loaded hot bar, fruit, granola, yogurt, fresh juices, and of course, local honey, this the state of Deseret. A banner overhanging the lobby announced the Miss Utah Scholarship Pageant, and there were 25 contestants rearranging little bits of food here and there on their plates while their families and the rest of us tried not breath too deep for fear of asphyxiating on overpowering hairspray fumes.

I sit down to tuck into some eggs and hashbrowns and I notice what’s been following me, though we’ve been onto each other for a while now. From Veracruz to Mexico City, Monterrey, Laredo, Nashville, New York City, Chicago, and now Salt lake, for the last 5,000 miles it has been keeping a few days behind, or to keep me of balance, skiping a few days ahead. Today it has caught up with me in the Crystal Inn, while I breakfasted with anorexic, hairspray huffing beauty queens.

The headlines of the morning Tribune screamed Swine Flu, or least they should have. They’re now printing H1N1 in place of Swine Flu. This is a mistake, first because the pigs are clearly to blame, ask the Egyptians, though more so because acronyms aren’t nearly as frightening as the prospects of rogue farm animals. It’s as if the print industry has already given up, how else are they going to sell papers if they don’t even try to scare people anymore. The hospitals weren’t even testing for Swine Flu in Salt Lake City as they’ve assumed all the cases are of the porcine variety.


With a map in hand I set out for the Genealogy Center where the LDS Church sponsors one of the most comprehensive family research libraries in the world. Between the Center and the Granite Mountain Records Vault a few miles outside the city and beneath 600 feet of nuclear blast proof bedrock, the Saints possess over 3 billion pages of family records. They are now working to digitize this vast collection, but for now the records are available on microfiche.

Right beside the door of the Center there is a desk occupied by a Walmart-style greeter. “Hello! I can just tell you’re a first timer!” the woman with a white beehive hairdo said.

Beaming, she offered me a first timer’s-VIP name sticker and called another white haired woman who directed into a room with a surprisingly helpful introductory film.

The film even included a line that hinted, however obliquely, what the LDS intends to do with all of this genealogical work. In LDS Temples, the Saints conduct post mortem baptisms as a part of their sacred rites. This practice drew some scrutiny when it was reported the church was baptizing from lists of holocaust victims. I am impressed with the backdoor effort, though I wonder if they realize what they are getting into here. One of my ancestors was the last man to be ordered branded by the state of Tennessee, our long line of sinners might need any help they get with the celestial parole board. They might prove regrettable picks as eternal neighbors.

I climbed the stairs to the North America record hall where I sought some concrete connections to “Uncle” Walker. Three years ago, based on a conversation with a living uncle, I had pegged the Grey Eyed Man of Destiny as Grandpa Walker. It did not take genealogy to discover he had no children of his own—that was a matter of the historical record. But what about his brothers and his sister, or even his parents brothers and sisters, where can I find a Walker that fits into our tree? There is a great x4 grandma Walker who was born in Virginia. It’d be nice to have more than speculative ties. I have spent too much on this little tyrant to find out that my great grandfather made up the connection to add luster to his own legend.

After a half hour it sank in why I was the youngest person here by a solid three decades. Genealogy is slow, tedious work requiring geriatric patience even when the records are available. Going back the holes in the county records swallow entire generations. In the colonial period and the in early republic, churches were often the sole repositories of vital documents. Churches were also typically made of wood, and many burned. A burned down church in North Carolina had stymied my paternal grandfather’s pursuits of our family tree, though the Walker line supposedly ran back through my father’s mother’s line.


Even if I had the whole day, or week for that matter, I’m not sure what I would have found what I was looking for. There were no records for Davidson County births in the 1820’s, but I had the names of William Walker’s brothers and sister along with her husband with whom she moved to Kentucky. I checked both Paducah and Louisville, different accounts placed her in both cities, yet nothing jumped out. I searched the lines I suspected that might have linked us in Virginia, again no luck.

Genealogy is not just tedious old fart work, turns out it is also depressing. Where the church sees opportunity, I just found endless lists of forgotten souls. With a few names, locations and dates, one can reel the microfilm and squint through record after record of the reproductions of barely legible scrawl. Some of the poor penmanship had a morose quality. Instead of buzzing through the names, I stopped and read a few. There was a reason for the sad ink, many of the records were for babies that didn’t survive their first day. As a historian I should have realized that records were kept for living and dead births alike, and that infant mortality was extremely high in the time before antibiotics and the germ theory of disease. There was something about reading these records that hammered in both points, and after this little discovery I had a hard time just zooming through the records in search of a single last name with noticing all the dead babies, dead leaves on the family tree.

The sadness of the premature loss was not only evident in the wilted penmanship, but in the abruptness of the half completed records. Judged by the motley styles, these were probably filled out by the grieving fathers themselves. The yellowed reproductions are stuffed 8 to a slide and serve as the only evidence of a child who may or may not have taken a first breath outside his mother’s womb.


If William Walker is in fact a relation, I will have to slog through hundreds of more reels to prove the connection. I didn’t have the stomach for it, and it wasn’t the mission for my only day in Utah.


I crossed the street to Temple Square, which was geared something in between a tourist attraction and an establishment presentation of the Latter Day Saints. The skyline as viewed from the entrance to the square was an impressive juxtaposition of ancient and modern. The towering white granite of the six-spired Temple and the rooftop garden atop the matching granite of the LDS Conference would have been at home on the Mesopotamia plain, yet both buildings are framed by the vertical lines of Salt Lake’s modern skyscrapers that rise up around the square. The silver, turtle back dome atop the tabernacle might well have dropped down from outer space.
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Mormons VII: A Note for the Faithful

Before I post my report from Salt Lake City, I’d like to explain my position a bit further regarding my longstanding interest in Mormonism. I’ve been impressed with how many Mormons have tuned into my blog, and this little foreword is for you. If you are not of the new chosen tribe, and if I haven’t offended you previously on the subject, no need to read on. Check back in a couple days.




Religion is a delicate subject, but an important and fascinating one, especially in a country that embraces a plurality of faiths. I do not mean to be disrespectful of the sacred, yet as a historian this can be tricky, what I may see as historical narrative, others see as god given truth. There is no bridging this divide; critical examination necessarily runs counter to the lion’s leap taken by believers in the miraculous.

The timing of Mormonism compounds these tensions of faith and fact. Joseph Smith established the Church of Latter Day Saints in the first half of the 19th century, so the bulk of the Mormon creation myth is subject to an historical scrutiny not possible with older faiths like Judaism and early Christianity.

As a student of American history, I couldn’t resist exploring the Mormon narrative and the character of Joseph Smith, perhaps the most underappreciated character in American history. Yet because the more colorful dimensions of Joseph Smith— Joe Smith the drinker, gambler, con artist and womanizer extraordinaire—are aspects not easily incorporated into the latest prophet of Jesus Christ on Earth, the history itself is necessarily provocative to the believer. The Mormon story of the New World, though sufficiently ancient to be safe from the historical record, does little better against what we know of pre-Spanish America.

If the historical examination weren’t bad enough, I also bring an echo of the Gonzo journalist to my subject matter. This is where the ice of objectivity begins to crack—I am putting myself into the story, and I’ll push a little if I think someone’s going to add to the tale. It probably doesn’t help noble objectivity that the people out there willing to talk to a guy with a notebook in hand at religious sites are either recruiting souls or are total nut jobs.

So there are obviously limitations to my approach. Sometimes I stumble onto a story, sometimes the fanatics find me.

In the case of the Latter Day Saints, it was a bit of both. For those of you who read this blog, you know that the Mormons first found me in grade school. Years later the hamsters and I drunk dialed an LDS ad. Several years after that I spent my last month in Slovenia with two missionaries, themselves converts to the new gospel as revealed by Joseph Smith.

There is benefit to this Gonzo route. While I have a rough sense of what I am after, I’m not setting out to prove anything. The stories are the experiences. This doesn’t like much, but with this approach I’m abandoning years of schooling and professional training. From high school themes to my first college newspaper assignment, to my first paid clip, I’ve been encouraged to write and think as a determinist. Determinists make a thesis and then seek out the facts to prove the thesis is correct. It is a method hoisted on professional journalists and academics of all stripes in this country. Not that everyone takes the bait, yet most cannot afford not to, it pays to write the story an editor expects or with the slant de jour of the academe.

Thank goodness this little forward isn’t supposed to go anywhere. I respect believers of all faiths, maybe even Scientologists, even if it doesn’t always come off that way.
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New Museum, Old Tricks

As you might have guessed from the dead space here, I’ve been in a bit of a rut lately. Where does the self-doubting writer turn for a pick me up?

This time a trip to New York City and the conceptual art world did the trick.

I went to the New Museum for their exhibition Younger Than Jesus, a collection of works from 50 artists under the age of 33 from 25 countries. The exhibit promises to demonstrate how the best and brightest are defining the latest generation from atop the shifting foundations of the information age.

A worthy aim, but the execution is lacking. For a museum dedicated to being at the vanguard of the global art scene, the curation of Younger Than Jesus relies on a tired sensationalist formula. Had PT Barnum latched onto Dada, they’d call this show retro.





I understand that an exhibition looking to engage the i-generation must embrace the conceit of making art out of the internet. Unfortunately, the internet inspired art was the weakest link in a suspect show in spite of the reaches made in the curators’ descriptions. The placards were more ambitious, sometimes more interesting, than the pieces they introduced.

Take Gutherie Lonergan’s Myspace Playlist, composed of two side-by-side video screens playing looped clips of teenagers’ video introductions from the social networking site. I was seized by the question off limits to critics of conceptual work. What was Lonergan doing that makes this art?

According to the curator, the work is “based on the appropriation of material that he finds online and reconfigures and re-presents in ways that speak to the issues of identity, originality, and creativity in the digital age.” A squat to the floor revealed that these “quasi-anthropological documents” demonstrate the “world altering paradigm shifts in the nature of self presentation.”

Myspace and Facebook have scrambled the delineations of the social and private spheres, paradigm shift or no. It does not take an artist to make this point. Perhaps a careful observation of the paired teens, using their webcams to project into cyberspace, reveals some clever little ironies unique to the medium. Yet there is nothing in the presentation of this footage that enhances the content or suggests the artist's mastery of this driftwood churned out of the cybernetic sea.

I wonder if an art student could have submitted this work for a passing grade. Maybe so, but there are more appropriate forums for Lonergan’s work than a university or, for heaven’s sake, prime museum space in SoHo. Youtube might have been the better fit.

A rule of thumb for the exhibition: the more suspect the concept, the longer the rectangular placard. Some of the postmodern run-ons stretched down to within inches of the floor.

Liu Chang’s Buying Everything on You was accompanied by an especially long placard. At least the process was evident behind Liu’s work. Liu approached individuals on the street and offered money for everything on their person, purses, keys, cell phones, jackets, underwear. The artist then took these possessions and laid them out on plinths. Absorbed in the curators’ thorough explanation of where to find the art amidst the detritus of faceless hipsters, I fumbled my pen and just managed to bat it away before it fell on the nearest plinth and merged with the exhibit.

Where my eyes saw junk, the curator found, “arrangements that call to mind both taxonomical research and funereal rites…a snapshot of contemporary consumer proclivities in an era when personal and social forces encourage us to define ourselves by the things we own.”

Consumerism wants me to identify with the shit I am buying.

Imagine.

My snickering was premature. The omniscient voice on the placard was just building to the punch line. The artist, it explained “is providing us a portrait with an empty center: while his subjects may be defined peripherally… they necessarily remain elusive.” No double speak here, the hipsters have eluded the display table, we have only their knick-knacks, and knickers, to gawk at.

It’s a pity Liu didn’t collaborate with Chu Yun, Chu took no chances that her subjects stay put—she drugged them. The curator lists the medium for Chu’s This is Danielle as a female participant, a sleeping pill, and a bed. As advertised, a naked woman slept fitfully under a white comforter in a white bed in the middle of an exhibit room.

This piece merited the longest rectangle of all. The placard explains that the work “utilizes an economy of means to evoke a rich panoply of associations… the participants…are less real life, modern day Sleeping Beauties than islands of enviable calm. Unperturbed by the frantic pace of contemporary life, or by the exhibition around them, they seem to exist in a charmed atmosphere. There is an inherent irony in the participants’ supernatural tranquility: That they are only able to maintain their state of sleep with the assistance of sleeping aids, suggests that, perhaps, their state is not one of relaxation, but of withdrawal and extreme vulnerability. Provocative, and slightly sensational, This is XX not only brings up questions concerning the role of the female body in the history of art, but larger ones that ponder the museum as a platform for self-display. Furthermore, in the context of this exhibition, This is XX can be read as a counterpoint to, or even a protest against, the stereotyping of this generation as hyperactive and hyper-aware.”

I was sitting Indian style next to the bed so I could copy the end of that paragraph without my legs falling asleep. As I turned my head back to the bed, where the mattress was now at eye level, XX, in this case a mid-twenties, ivory skinned brunette, elbowed at her comforter so that for a moment I pondered a half moon of nipple and a satellite freckle adrift on a heavenly breast. Provocative, and slightly sensational. I have spent sweet time pondering the role of the female body in the history of art, though perhaps I haven’t given conceptual art a fair shake.

It was almost as if Luke Fowler’s short film, what you see is where you’re at, was included as a preemptory rebuke for the curmudgeons who hadn’t been softened by the throws of the sleeping beauty.

The placard in the dark screening room explained that Fowler, “frenetically pastes together footage- much of which has been exhumed from obscure sources—in a manner that evokes rather than explains, his subjects.” I sat in on the last five minutes of the film, and yes, nothing was explained. There was nothing to explain, no subject, no image at all, just occasional grains that flickered as light passed through the overexposed film. The evocation would follow, my reward for waiting for the credits and through to the next loop of the film. It opened with a shot of a brick building, a dreary London skyline, another brick building, and then a cut into a lecture hall with the conclusion of some sort of presentation, circa 1970. A student came to the microphone placed in the aisle to ask the man behind the podium if he expected the audience to accept his rambling and incoherent presentation as art for arts sake and simply applaud him. The lecturer/artist replied “You have been culturally conditioned for a very different sort of lecture.” This line was met with wild applause from the audience. He then goes on to chastise the questioner for having the presumption to challenge the artist or the art.

I’ll spare the details of four other exhibits--a melted chair, three record players stacked on the floor, a wall sized panel in a single hue of an Adobe Photoshop program, and an Atari-style throwback video game. I liked the video game, though I’m skeptical of the curator’s conclusion that, “the compositional elegance…simplistic objectives and Spartan graphics are redolent of a simpler time.”

One sensationalist in this baffling collection struck a chord with me. Brendan Fowler, a musician and conceptual artist, exhibited a show poster with the text of a back and forth between Fowler and a band called AIDS WOLF. Fowler had made a poster for a show he was supposed to do with the band, where he calls out AIDS WOLF for having a horrendous and stupid name.

The band took offense at this tongue-in-cheek attack, and posted a barely literate diatribe against Fowler and the “edumacated (AIDS WOLF’s spelling) trying to pull one over on the pleebs.” From there it spirals into the ever more ridiculous, with Fowler’s mocking commentary of both AIDS WOLF and himself providing the laughs to the end.

Unlike the curators, one gets the feeling Fowler never takes his own bullshit too seriously.
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Erik Roland Larsson

In an episode from The Simpsons' golden years, Homer's new boss, the congenial super-villain Hank Scorpio, asks him which country he likes least, Italy or France, before targeting his doomsday device.

Homer shrugs. He picks France.

It was a false choice. The real answer, of course, was Sweden. That self-righteous slice of Scandinavia wedged between the stoically agreeable Norwegians and the delightfully quirky Finns.

Some might say it is just another of my eccentricities-- a vegetarian with minimal affection for animals, a guy who holds the razor in his fingers rather than shave with the stick and who seldom uses shampoo.

My hatred of Sweden cannot be dismissed as eccentricity.

Mind you, I am mostly talking about the Swedish government. I could not be a hater of a people that produced Anita Ekberg, Ingmar Bergman, or the music of ABBA. Wait, I don't care much for ABBA, but that's just a matter of taste.

I am adamant supporter of Swede Sven Goran Eriksson. I am thrilled that the hapless manager has decided to focus his talents for underperfomance on the Mexican national soccer team. Don't let El Tricolor convince you it is your fault, Sven, even if you do manage to bungle their World Cup qualification for 2010.

No, it is not the people. It is the Swedish government I despise. News items like the following are constantly vindicating me on this point.

On May 16th, 2007, Swedish national Erik Roland Larsson was kidnapped from his farm near Tierralta in the department of Cordoba in the north of Colombia. Larsson had worked as an engineer for a Swedish firm commissioned to complete a number of hydroelectric projects in the area. After a finishing a job in Tierralta, the 68 year old man decided he liked where he was and settled down for a happy retirement. Life was good until the morning when eight FARC guerrillas stormed his property and took him hostage.

It's been nearly two years, and still the Swedish government refuses to acknowledge the situation. Before last week the Swedish press hadn't reported the kidnapping. It was only until Larsson's family forwarded photos to the press that they had received from the guerrillas that anyone believed it was possible-- a Swede held hostage by the FARC.



No one understands why the FARC would knowingly hold hostage a citizen of one of its few remaining allies. While the rest of the world has acknowledged that the FARC long ago degenerated into a narco-terrorist outfit, drug traffickers whose hostages act as a human shield and the last bargaining chip with the Colombian government, the Swedish government clings to the line that the FARC is still a legitimate guerrilla movement fighting for social justice. On this point, Hugo Chavez and the Che Guevara T-shirt wearing Swedish public agree. This from the country that booted The United States off the UN Commission on Human Rights in 2001 yet didn't raise concerns over the seating of human rights stalwarts Sierra Leone, Sudan, and Uganda in the same year.

When the Colombian military seized the PC of former FARC leader Raul Reyes in a cross border raid into neighboring Ecuador last year, they found emails on the computer indicating that Sweden had been providing refuge for the guerrilla fighters. This isn't a case of a couple of squadrons sneaking across a porous, jungle cloaked border. The Swedish trips were R'n'R getaways for high ranking kidnapper-murderer-drug lords who flew first class before waltzing through customs and immigration at Stockholm-Arlanda Airport. It was also discovered that the server for the FARC's web page has been operating in Stockholm. The Swedish government also refuses to discuss these issues.

It was embarrassing for Colombia that this news surfaced in a week that saw the liberation of four hostages, the first releases in nearly a year.

Last week the Cordoban newspaper El Meridiano printed an article discussing Sweden's insistence to directly contact the FARC in order to negotiate for Larsson behind the Colombian government's back.


Because neither the FARC nor the Colombian nor Swedish governments will publicly address this curious kidnapping, we don't know the full story. Meanwhile, Roland Larsson languishes in captivity.

The old man doesn't look good. A doctor who saw the video said it appears that Larsson suffered from a stroke. His right arm, leg and parts of his face were paralyzed.

So, for the Homer Simpsons out there who still think France is the enemy, think again. The cheese eating surrender monkeys helped America get her freedom. She gave us a cool statue, taught us how to kiss, to drink wine, and to shrug.

What has Sweden done for you lately?

Update: Larsson released.

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People Watching

I promised myself I would not write about politics on this trip. But it´s hard not to think about what's going on in a country that's had an on again off again civil war since the Spanish left. The past five years have seen a dramatic return to peace that no one could have predicted.

I wrote about this transformation last year, the tireless efforts of an executive who refused a conciliatory stance to the guerrillas, about the enthusiasm of the people who could drive on their highways without fear.

Order is probably a better word than peace, human rights groups would argue. The army is everywhere, and the current Pax Romana has had its share of victims. The "false positives" for starters, innocent villagers shot by the military and then claimed to have been guerillas to up the body count in the war against the FARC. President Uribe, who saw unprecedented levels of high support even a year ago, is slipping badly in the polls, perhaps because he is testing the waters for a constitutionaly prohibited third term or because the links to the para-militaries keep surfacing ever higher in his administration. He might also be losing popularity because people have had enough time to take the new security for granted. The problem with a law and order ticket is that once you succeed, the people want to know-- ok, now what next?

In a country where cocaine is the major industry, order from on high will take a constant and tremendous input of energy. This solution will prove impossible without public support. Unless the narcotraffickers are complicit in the order, it is hard to imagine peace can last. To some extent this could be the reality here, who knows and only a fool or suicidal journalist would want to find out. Short of a near simultaneous legalization of cocaine in both producing and consuming countries, the alternatives are sure to be murky compromises.


From a security standpoint a single mafia is less problematic than competing mafias. United States drug enforcement strategy is to go after cartel leadership with the assumption that their substructures will then be unable to function and lose potency. The result been seen a shift to more atomized criminal networks, increasingly the likelihood of a future of competing mafias and a return escalating the violence. That is, once the populace tires of the overwhelming military and security presence that maintains the current order. And the people are getting weary. For the first time in ages, the homicide rates in are pushing back up in the traditional seats of the drug industry.

So, if you´ve had a desire to travel in Colombia, I suggest you visit now before things change again.

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A few of chance encounters in country of over 40 million people should not reflect on a country. That would be akin to judging a baseball player on a single at bat. Unless the baseball player's name was Babe Ruth or Barry Bonds, chances are that one at bat is going to make an out. Still, it's fun to people watch.

Chris and I were getting out of a cab at the bus terminal in San Gil when a woman approached us and asked us if we'd like a ride in a car to Bogota. More comfortable, and only 40,000 pesos (the bus is 50,000). We were both a little cautious but she was a good looking woman with long brown hair, a maintained figure and nice skin. She was about our age and was well dressed. She didn´t look like a kidnapper. We dropped our guard when we saw the car, a four wheel SUV with her boyfriend at the wheel. A young couple wanting to pick up some extra cash on the way home from vacation.

I don´t remember much of we talked about. They were not a memorable couple. He had just started a wine importing company, so far the wines were coming from Argentina. She had just opened a store for baby clothes. They were headed to calle 70 in Bogota, the heart of Alto Chapinero, a tony district full of 30 something yuppies. A neighborhood in Bogota where it is safe to walk around at night.

They asked if we needed to stop for anything and I mentioned it would be nice to get a paper for the ride. The conversation turned to the papers in the country and how some were very ideological. I asked what was the best paper, and he naturally replied El Tiempo, Bogota´s nationally circulated, center-right press. But his description of why it was the best paper was the interesting part.

"Because El Tiempo is just the news," he explained. "It doesn't have a political ideology. It is owned by one of the best families in Colombia."

A paper without political ideology? Could it just be that paper shares his politics, the climate that he grew up in, the 'maybe if everyone else will just be reasonable and let the best families do what is right for the country we'll all be better off' ideology?

Politics weren't their game. No worries here, politics make for boring conversations at best with people one hardly knows. But I assumed that this couple would at least be good at being yuppies.

They invited us to have lunch with them at an Italian place near their apartment building. Bogota is one of the few places in Colombia where the food is consistently good, especially if you are willing to pay international prices for high cuisine.

Their restaurant pick had the international prices, a bit unusual for pizza pasta joint. Good pizza is not that hard to come in Colombia, one of the few dishes they consistently do better than in America outside of New York City.

The pizza looked like it had been baked in its glass serving dish. Flotsam and jetsam of vegetables floating in a mess of cheese and runny sauce. I can't say if the crust was tasty or not. The dough had all drifted to one side of the dish and had set like cement. The dish looked expensive so I did not ask for a chisel,

I don't write up the place for its pizza. I would go back for the decor. The walls were covered with blown up photos of the casts of every 1980's American TV show you wish you could forget. The crown jewel was the flat screen behind our table playing a constant stream of 80's New Wave music videos. An altar toVH1's Dada-inspired golden age.

If I had grown up in the projects and only had music videos to know them by, white people would have scared the hell out me. Just type New Wave Music Videos into YouTube and check out the freak show for yourself. Those people were truly creepy. I would love to interview some of the creators of those videos.

If it wasn't for our new acquaintances and that it was Chris' last hours in Colombia, I might have vegged out all day and basked in the decade of my childhood. We asked the couple for some must dos in the city. Maybe one day I'll write up the place they claimed was an obligation, a steak house/disco/vaudeville circus.

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Last week I visited an American school. I had met a teacher from the school at the beginning of my trip and he had offered me the chance to observe some of his classes. Teaching at an American school has always been one of those paths I've kept in the back of the mind and I didn't want to pass up the chance to see the reality of a day in the life of a teacher abroad.

Nothing really to report from my observations. A typical k-12 private school. The demeanor in the faculty room suggested a usual range of teachers,some good, a few outstanding, and a couple of real weirdos--more Unabomber than the kind you'd put in a music video.

The high school social studies teacher was a frail and nervous looking man amazingly white for someone living in the tropics. He did not look thrilled with his current life, and was clearly more interested in fruit salad than in making any new friends. But he was my ticket to the high school history classroom, so I did my best to make conversation. After some prompting by my acquaintance, he reluctantly invited me to watch his class the last period of the day.
When I arrived at his classroom at the beginning of the period, the door was locked with no evidence of anyone inside the room. I waited a good 20 minutes, no one showed. It could be he got his schedule wrong, or maybe he just didn't like being observed. No matter, I had my blog to attend to. I went to the teacher lounge and then to the administrative offices and said my thank yous. The school day was almost over by the time I started walking out the main gate.

Past the gate and on the other side of the campus guard house I heard a girl was screaming at the security officer at the end of the school's semi circular driveway. She was standing next to the open door of a new Mercedes sedan that was blocking the end of the drive. She was an attractive girl, maybe 17, though it was hard to notice anything about her besides loud mouth and her alarming breasts. I would later learn it was her brand new Mercedes that her father had given her because the trauma she had suffered the first day back from break when she was suspended from school for hitting a girl. I didn´t ask what offense she had committed to get the over sized implants.

The guard was trying to get her to move the car, forcefully at first, but with less conviction once she started threatening him. I couldn't follow it all, though I can assure you it was nasty. She repeated several times that her father was her boss, and that the poor man was going to be fired. The girl already had her cell phone out and apparently Daddy answered as in a breath she transformed from monstrous bitch to crying little girl.

I had nothing to do, so I figured I might as well take a seat in the shade and watch whatever was unfolding. In less than five minutes Daddy´s Land Rover pulled up to the guardhouse. He was yelling at the security guard through the driver's side window before he was out of the car. The guard waited for an opening and tried to explain his case, that the girl was blocking the drive with her car, but the father cut him off. Meanwhile parents were starting to lineup their cars and a balding man in a white Polo shirt was exiting the front gate. The man stopped a few paces from me to watch what was happening.

The father was threatening the office. Apparently, it was his security company, and how dare he yell at his little girl. The guard pleaded with the man, how were the parents going to pick up their children with a car blocking the driveway´s exit.

"You can figure that out somewhere else," Daddy said. (or at least something like that)

"Excuse me", the balding man said, speaking to the father, "I'm a director of this school. If you fire this man the school will find another security company and your daughter will find a new school."

No one had recognised the man in the white Polo. I learned that he was the school's chairman of the board, and was in a position to follow on his words. The father told his daughter, crying again, to move the car. He made a curt apology to the Chairman, and made a quick exit without so much as a glance at the security guard.


I was lucky to work in a private school with a reputation for reasonable parents and in a public school where at least no one was looking over my shoulder (ever). In the Delta, you had to go looking for the parents, who, if not too cracked out or fall down drunk to speak, would ask you heartbreaking questions like, "Can you tell me what to do with this child?" In both cases there was respect. Even the worst war stories I've heard from other teachers don't come close to those five minutes on the sidewalk outside the American school.

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Barranquilla Redux

The sign on the wall reads: This facility has public restrooms, please use them. Do not use your own containers.

Where am I?

Well, start with New Orleans. Remove the Quarter, the tourists, the excellent cuisine. Exchange the columned mansions of the Garden District for Moorish villas of Prado Viejo with more bougainvillea. Uproot the Live Oaks, replant Ceiba trees. Pound more cracks into the sidewalks and elevate them at least two feet above street level. Overlay neighborhoods of shotgun shacks with concrete blocks and corrugated roofs. Swap incomprehensible Cajun drawls for incomprehensible Spanish creole. Turn up the heat by day, add a sea breeze (January and February) at night. Refer to Mardi Gras as Carnaval. Get your Yellow Fever jab.

I present you Barranquilla. Another rotting port town beneath the waters of a dirty river.



First, the river. The Magdalena is Colombia's equivalent of the Mississippi and served as the country's primary commercial artery well into the 20th century. Anyone who has read Gabriel Garcia Marquez will be familiar with Magdalena's importance to Colombian history. In the General and his Labyrinth, Simon Bolivar takes his last journey in South America down the Magdalena to his intended exile. The romantic steamboats of Love in the Time of Cholera plied her waters for generations, and the environmental destruction through the deforestation to feed all those wood burning engines is still in evidence. In many places the tropical canopy never returned, rendering one of the river's silted branches unnavigable for commercial vessels. The setting of Chronicle of a Death Foretold was a victim to the river's strangulation. Cut from its commercial function, time stopped in the colonial city of Mompox. It is now a sweltering time capsule of late 19th century life.

A storied, filthy river. But why again Barranquilla?

It's hard to find a town with any interest these days that is off of the gringo trail. Mompox will give you an idea to the extent of the trail's far reaching tentacles. I thought I got off the beaten path for a moment in Mompox last January. Finally a place for that outstanding adventure travel piece I've always wanted to write. But I had no clips to pitch it with, no matter, within days I found scooped by a Harper's article from that February, "Go Before You Die". the piece was about a writer's trip from Bogota to Mompox in what he called the 'New' Colombia, a place where it is safe to travel just about anywhere. Eleven months later even Mompox has become an established outpost on the backpacker trail.

There still aren't any roads that go all the way through to this South American Timbuktu--you get there by a combination of bus, taxi, boat and tuk tuk--but there is a brand new hostel. Not that I would have cared to stew in the staggering humidity of malarial swamps with all the terrifying insects longer than it takes to see the sites. The churches and graveyards are outstanding, but the best visit is to the villa and courtyard that doubles as a retirement home and an insane asylum where blind man Jose Pupo, both old and insane, will take your hand and ask for the year and date of your birth. He'll then tell you about that day in Mompox, in my case a Friday when in rained in the afternoon. Then he'll break out his harmonica and his old and/or insane colleagues will gather around to dance or at least to rock in their chairs to the music.

This can all be done in a day, or in the Harper's writer's case, a morning--he didn't know to look for Jose. Then the reality of the dead river port creeps back with a sunset that brings mosquitoes but no relief from the staggering heat. No, I've logged my year in the Mississippi Delta, thank you very much.

People know about Barranquilla, but they only come here for the four days of Carnaval. Backpacker Bibles The Rough Guide, Footprint, and The Lonely Planet, all write up Barranquilla as a dusty, noisy cauldron of a place without a single permanent tourist attraction.

Excellent work, ladies and gentlemen. Your readers have listened, and stayed away. I didn't know that some of those South African lads could read. But thanks to your descriptions, I am free to roam this town in total obscurity. The people here aren't clued in to what a backpacker is or looks like.

In a city where many people have never met a foreigner outside of Carnaval, people don't know what to make of me when they do notice. Sure, I speak a little funny, too slow for a Costeña, for a coastal person's patience. But then who from out of town doesn't when they pronounce every last little syllable. When I open my mouth what registers in some people's eyes is not so much foreignness as, 'is this guy retarded?' When my mouth is shut I don't look retarded. So I get asked for directions on the street, which is doubly funny in a country where all the cities are on exactly numbered grids. By appearance I'm just another variation of the many European and Middle Eastern immigrants who chose this town when it seemed like it might have had a future.


Those travel writers were on to something. Aside from hosting the second largest Carnaval in South America, Barranquilla hasn't had much going for it in a long time. Not that it doesn't try, in a developing world sort of way. Following the lead of Medellin and Bogota, Barranquilla raised the money for a rapid transit bus line similar to a subway in that it has special lanes and boarding platforms at stations along the route. The mayor promised that the first line would be ready to open at the beginning of 2008 with more to soon follow. One year later and not only is there not a single rapid transit bus on the street, as far as I can tell there is only evidence of one partially completed station along the route. The city did find a way to spend all of the money.

Last summer a local newspaper broke a story that toxic waste dumps had been discovered on vacant sites throughout the poorer districts of the city. The estimated 10 tons of toxic material had been delivered from a consortium of Colombian hospitals, six in Medellin, three in Barranquilla. The companies contracted to dispose of the material had been making easy money on this fraud for as long as 4 years, maybe longer. Health experts are surprised that there don't seem to be any repercussions yet, at least no deaths have been attributed to the dumping. The mayor demanded explanations, as if he weren't already in on the take.

It is slightly less crazy than it sounds, that the perpetrators could have thought they might get away with dumping 20,000 pounds of toxic medical waste in a major metropolitan area, Colombia's 4th largest city. Every summer and fall the slums of Barranquilla function as an above ground sewer. Barranquilla does not have a drainage system, so when the heavy rains come the city streets become rivers, thus the high sidewalks.

The streets whose swift running rivers have rapids are called arroyos. Dogs, children, cars, buses, and the occasional home gets washed away with the arroyos (check out this footage). Since, like New Orleans, the poorest neighborhoods are in the lowest lying and most flood prone neighborhoods, much of the waste dumped there would be expected to wash out into the river each year. It begs the question how much was actually dumped before the waste was discovered. Then again, in a country run by drug lords, what does one expect will happen to a 'waste management' company for dumping some garbage on a city already acknowledged to be shit hole. Perhaps a fine, if the mayor can pocket a piece of that action too.


So I'm here because it's a surreal place to pick up the paper in the morning. I like dysfunctional port towns and the kinds of characters that wash ashore here, or in Barranquilla's case, to sea.

With every year it gets a little more difficult to learn new language. They say the drop is precipitous after the age of 35 or so, and I'm already losing my hearing. So I´m on the clock if I´m ever going to see my goal of fluency in another language. In the next few months I hope to absorb as much as much Spanish as possible. I figure if I can understand the dirty, half-swallowed Costeña Spanish they speak here, I can understand it anywhere. I don't know if I could survive once the breezes stop (late February or March) and I'm not particularly interested in Carnaval, but for the next few weeks Barranquilla will do me just fine.


There is one place I was immediately recognised. Not just as a foreigner, but as an American. I attended Game One of the Colombian Baseball Championships that opened on Saturday. It was a full house, 8,000 capacity in the single deck stadium. A peanut and cigarette man outside the park produced a ticket for me then ushered me to the front of the entrance line.

For 3 bucks I figure i was headed for the cheap seats. Turns out my 'VIP' ticket landed me on the first row in between the plate and 1st base. Like everything in Latin America, the experience was a little louder and took a little louder than the equivalent back home. The crowd cranked their noisemakers and a couple of sections drummed African beats while the organist blasted an amplified truckers horn to rattle the opposing pitcher throughout the 5 hour, 9 inning affair. The 90 cent beers helped to pass the time, as did the old guys behind me who announced the batters and the pitching changes. They took pride in schooling the Yanqui on the nationalities of the players, mostly Colombians.

My local nine has a couple of links to the game here. AA Prospect Jesse English was at one point on the roster of the visiting squad, though I can not find his name on the recent box scores. New Giant Edgar Renteria's foundation sponsors the Colombian baseball league and contributes to the development of Colombian talent. The talent is not overwhelming, thought the mascot was Big League material. The guy dressed up in the gator outfit managed to be the bat boy, field foul balls, chase around kids in the between-inning promotions, and dance to the organ without once tripping over his ground length tail or passing out inside his foam head on a steamy Caribbean night.

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Cousins

There is something eerie about a city of 8 million empty of its people. It is Saturday night in Bogota and there isn´t a single car or person on the streets. We are in La Candelaria, the city´s charming if crumbling historic neighborhood that seems more like an outer barrio for students and starving artists than a central district even on a busy night. Only a few hungry dogs are wondering about. It is a heavy quiet, broken only by the odd short bus blasting full speed from nowhere and not even slowing for the dark intersections. How can the middle of a capital city be so empty and depressing?

The barman where we got our last drink warned us to take cabs tonight, and that was in a much posher area of town. This is the weekend of the festival of kings when many smaller towns have their annual fairs. Anyone with family outside Bogota and with the means to leave the city does so this weekend.

But there aren´t even any cabs about in La Candelaria, and no radio taxi is going to drive from across town to take us a block or two to the nearest open corner joint. Maybe the muggers have taken their machetes on holiday too. But it doesn´t matter. A mugging might be better than this claustrophobic hostel.

I´d choose these foreboding streets to Anandamayi tonight. Not that it´s a bad hostel. I´d recommend it as one of the best places to stay in Colombia. The bathrooms are spotless. The dorm where I have been sleeping for the last 5 nights is cavernous, and until Sarah arrived it was me and 11 empty bunks. The floors in the dormitory are dark, shiny hardwood and the ceiling is an A frame that easily reaches twenty feet high. Last year there was a fireplace in the room that they have now removed for fear that some moron like myself would burn the place down. It is cold at night in Bogota, at 2,600 meters it often falls into the 30´s, and last year I would fall asleep right in front of a full on blaze. This trip I´ve had to steal blankets from the empty bunks. With five wool blankets, four up an one down on the mattress for insulation my teeth stop chattering and the cold on my face is a nice contrast to warmth of the bed.

A cold, beautiful place, what looks like a farm house nestled the middle of a national capital. There are two spacious courtyards, one whose every inch is filled with flowers and herbs, the other has poi pond, lush plants, trees, more flowers and benches to sit and read in the afternoon, or at night to huddle under a blanket and contemplate the moon. The kitchen has a wood burning stove and there is always a pot of tea ready for the guests. No fireplaces, but they do have hot water this year, I´m not sure how I stayed in a place so cold without hot water (by taking showers at 2 in the afternoon).

But it is the people here that we have to get away from tonight. Sarah and I had holed up in our empty dorm room but we´ve both seen the shadows of faces as they attempt to peer through the thin curtains that don´t quite cover the windows on the door.

Perhaps I shouldn´t have introduced Sarah as my cousin. That is their interest, in the cousins. It was the only way she could share this beautiful room with me, the young girl in charge this holiday weekend wouldn´t permit friends in the dorm, and she was sure we were more.

It is sort of true that we are cousins. Our stepfathers are brothers.

For the past few days we´ve been getting those sideways glances and rolling eyes from everyone, the staff and especially the Americans, an older would-be businessman and a younger eagle scout type who are both staked out in the warmth of the kitchen. The older American who claims to hail from northern Wisconsin was the model gringo yesterday. Under a Panama hat he smoked cigars in the courtyard all afternoon while pitching a real estate scheme to a middle aged South African. The latter is a happy-go-lucky type who sails catamarans across the ocean for an Australian company. He seems very interested in the American´s scheme. I can only hope he is being polite. I asked the old gringo about his business and he mentioned something about ´flipping´, something else about a four unit complex in Minneapolis, and having been out of the market for three years, before changing the subject. He is full of shit.

The eagle scout is a nice boy. I wonder how long he´ll last teaching in Bogota. He´s acted wounded since the first night Sarah arrived and we went out to the Zona Rosa, the club and nightlife district. I think he has a crush on her, though I do not think Sarah was impressed that out of the hundreds of places he took us to an American styled brew pub and sports bar. Whatever the matter, the whispering begins as soon we leave the room.

So tonight the dark, empty, freezing streets of Bogota are more appealing than the sideways glances and forced conversation in the warm kitchen at the hostel. But what can happen in a block? Surely the bar down the street is open on a Saturday night just past nine.

The cafe is closed. So is the restaurant another block down the hill. Another block and more of the same. I haven´t been too many places where I didn´t feel comfortable walking the streets, but I´m thinking its best we turn back. We take another street to return the hostel and we pass a bodega that is open. There are a few tables and chairs squeezed into the floor space along the counter. Sarah gets some cigarettes. We order beers and a man offers us a table across from the register. We sit and talk a little. A man one table away is staring at us. His eyes are big and bloodshot, but I don´t notice this at first, only that he is smiling. I smile back to be polite. I imagine they don´t get too many foreigners at the tables of this little corner store. He takes my gesture as an invitation and jumps from his seat to one at our table with a suddenness that does not seem natural nor sane. Now I notice the bulging eyes. I´d peg him for a meth addict were we back home. This being Colombia, he is probably just a coke head.

He tells us he is from the poorest barrio in Bogota, apparently the one that sits just above La Candelaria. Sarah knows this type, says there is a guy like at any party in South America, especially one with gringas. She is hardly listening to him. He is focused on her, wants to dance with her, in what space and to what music I do not know. I try to divert him by talk of football, I ask him about the national team. He says something, then repeats himself, again and again, though I can´t understand him, and can´t help but notice his spittle flying from his mouth and into my beer.

A second man at a table nearer the street is interested in us, in a saner, where are we from?, kind of way. He knows about football and we talk a bit, at times over the head of the coke addict who again is focusing on Sarah.

¨She is my cousin,¨ I tell him.

This makes him pause for a minute. Sarah and I begin talking in English. We are enjoying the fact that we may as well be speaking Thai. It is a rare place these days where English can be used as a secret language, but no one here understands a word of what we are saying. The coke head is now grabbing at Sarah. The second man seems embarrassed but says nothing. I tell Sarah in our code that it is time to leave.

A block away and we notice that the coke head is following after us, but he is either too drunk or too blasted to make anything of his pursuit. We stop in front of the first open cafe we´ve seen all night, with what sounds like a live jazz piano, and our friend waddles by us and on up the hill.

The kitchen is empty save for Eduardo, the boy who serves as the night guard, nodded off in front of the television. We sip tea and look through the cards in Class Struggle. I remember this Marxist board game from my last trip here. The box has a picture of Karl Marx arm wrestling one of the Rockefellers. The object of the game is the alliance of the non-ruling classes to overthrow the capitalist system. The professor who wrote the game recommends it as a classroom tool. I must get one of these games for my friend James, I remind myself.

Finally back to the dorm. It would be so much warmer to share a bed tonight, but Sarah is my cousin. Sort of. Click Here to Read More..