Lessons over, now off to the movies
Halfway through our monthlong Colombia trip, here are my latest notes:
12:58 p.m. July 3 - Lessons are done for the week, and we have the afternoon off – unless somebody shows up and wants us to hear a presentation on Colombia’s national park system or something (which actually was sprung on us Wednesday evening).
Not that I’m complaining. The more Spanish I hear, the more likely that some will stick. But after three full hours of Spanish class this morning, this Friday afternoon has most of us begging for some time to recover our senses.
It’s the end of our second week, and we face a daylong excursion tomorrow to a nearby town – Popoyán – so we’re all more than a bit tired.
Which is why we’re heading out later for a 5:40 p.m. showing of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” at a nearby shopping center. We could see it, “Terminator: Salvation” or “17 Again” all in English with Spanish subtitles. Or we could see “Up” in Spanish.
We opted for the Michael Bay Extravaganza. When you just want to envelope your brain in mindless entertainment, Bay’s the man.
97-year-old Malden completes trifecta
The third one hit. Death always seems to come in three, especially when we’re talking about celebrities. So after Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson were reported dead, it was only natural that someone else would join in. And today that third death hit Karl Malden.
It wasn’t exactly unexpected. After all, Malden was 97. In fact, I’d be willing to wager that many fans who recognized the name – a dwindling crowd, no doubt – thought that maybe he’d died years ago.
Malden’s death does, though, represent another passing of Hollywood’s golden era. Malden was a peer of, among others, Marlon Brando. Despite being a dozen years older, Malden appeared with Brando in such films as “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “On the Waterfront” and “One-Eyed Jacks.”
I was never a big fan of the man’s. I thought his acting often was hammy and obvious, traits that he depended on during his 5-season tenure on “The Streets of San Francisco.” But he did have a long career, and he starred in a number of excellent films. Following are a few of my favorites.
“A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951): Malden plays Mitch, one of Stanley’s drinking buddies who falls for Vivien Leigh’s Blanche DuBois. Did he think she was a well person?
“On the Waterfront” (1954): Malden’s Father Barry is the guy who guilt-trips Brando into testifying against the ironically named Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb). Though overall a testament to friendly witnesses, those who named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee, this is a masterfully made film by Elia Kazan.
“Kiss of Death” (1947): Though he has a smaller role as a cop, Malden was part of a decent cast in this classic noir, which included Richard Widmark’s classic performance as a psychopath.
“One-Eyed Jacks” (1961): This is one of the strangest Westerns ever made, with Brando directing Malden and himself as a pair of friends who end up hating each other. Malden plays a guy named “Dad.”
“Patton” (1970): Malden starred as Gen. Omar Bradley in a role that caused one critic to dub him “the potato.” Enough said.
“Meteor” (1979): Kidding.
Below: If you have to watch a Karl Malden film, it might as well be a great one, which “A Streetcar Named Desire” certainly is.
No noise ordinances for the animals
It´s day 11 in our Colombia stay, and the time is passing quickly. Today, Tuesday, was nothing like our action-packed Sunday - or even our far more relaxing Monday, which saw us eating at a brand-new local, Italian-themed eatery called Anttonina's.
The food was better than average, the prices were cheaper than similar types of Spokane eateries and the service was super amable. So we give it seven thumbs up.
Anyway, that was yesterday. As for today ...
5:36 p.m. June 30 - I startled an iguana today, causing the yard-long lizard to scurry through a row of bushes and up the side of a nearby tree. Holy Godzilla, I thought, there is wildlife here in Cali.
Not that five minutes of any day doesn’t provide some sort of reminder. From the red squirrels to the birds that screech like tortured human infants to the choruses of dogs barking as if someone were removing their claws with pairs of pliers, the sounds here are varied and … well, loud.
Nothing was as loud as the rain that fell in a torrent last night, rain that was accompanied by so much lightning and thunder that it seemed as if Thor was in the house. This raised the humidity to the point where people actually were complaining about it this morning.
But to tell you the truth, I’ve found the weather to be far more pleasant than the guidebooks led me to believe. It cools off at night (thanks to those Pacific Ocean breezes), and even the sunny weather hasn’t proven unbearable.
I don’t think the birds agree, though. One of them is screeching even as I type.
Maybe he’s warning his pals that an iguana is in the house.
Or in their tree.
Coffe fantasia: Innocence rules the day
This is part two of our trip to the Parque Nacionál del Café:
12:31 p.m. June 28 – They call what we’re about to watch the Show de Orquídeas. It’s a theater in the round, with we audience members sitting on planked seats that rise back from the stage in four equal sections. The room is dark, but we can make out shapes (are they smiling?) that line the ceiling, and where the stage should be more shapes loom … a bit, yes, menacingly.
This is, finally, where the kids come in. Because there are several of them in our audience of 150 or so, ranging in age from preteens to those still riding in strollers. It’s the preteens whom I watch, especially a number of young girls who sit in the first row to my right, laughing and giggling with what I assume is excitement.
Sara, Oscar’s daughter, is here, and she seems pleased, even if she doesn’t seem quite as giddy as her peers.
“How many times have you been to the park?” I ask her in Spanish.
She pauses, as if counting in her head, then answers: “Ventidos.” Twenty-two. “And how many times have you seen this show?” Every time she’s come, she says, so, again, “Ventidos.” Du-uh.
Heading to a coffee-themed fantasia
When in doubt, follow the children. That might not be a good tactic when, say, you’re waging war. Or paying your taxes.
But it certainly works when you’re fighting a battle with your own emotions during what might be the longest day of your life. Especially when, during that day, you’re being bombarded with a vision of life that is so far from your wildest expectations as to be surreal.
That was yesterday for six of our group, only one – Mary Pat – having the confidence to say, when invited to go on a daylong excursion to what we thought was going to be a coffee plantation, in a word … no. Or, in her pidgin-Spanish, “No, gracias.”
That left the rest of us to rise in time to catch a 6 a.m. minibus to the Parque Nacional del Café. In the vehicle waiting for us were our intrepidly sunny handler Maribel and new driver (our regular one, apparently, not wanting to work on Sunday).
Following is my chronicle of the trip:
June 28: Part One
6:17 a.m. – On the road to what we think will be a coffee plantation, though some of us have an idea that we’re going to visit a coffee-themed amusement park. MP has opted out, saying that she will think of us riding on roller coasters in cars shaped like little coffee cups. She so funny.
6:32 a.m. – I begin to think that she is right when we stop to pick up one of our teachers, Oscar, and his incredibly cute 8-year-old daughter, Sara. Soon, Oscar and his daughter engage Megan, Holly and me in a card game in which, when cards with particular letters are presented, we have to come up with thematic words to fit each one. Example, the letter P: pájro (or bird).
7:50 a.m. – At this point we’re passing through the village of Buga, where Maribel tells us that an important cathedral exists. It is one of supposed miracles.
But at least two of us feel as if a miracle already has occurred. Both Marilyn and Jonathan were watching the road ahead and had to endure a moment when it appeared as if we were going to run head-on into a coming car. The rest of us discovered what was happening only when Jonathan yelled, and I looked up just as our driver swerved, the other driver swerved, and we seemingly missed each other by centimeters.
It happened so fast that it didn’t seem to have any real impact on most of us. And we continue on. But Marilyn and Jonathan are both shaken up. No telling about the driver, who looks as if the whole Valle de Cauca could disappear in a rain of plantains and he wouldn’t notice.
8:57 a.m. – We stop at an outdoor cafeteria, a road-side rest stop that caters to travelers of all types, those riding in huge buses, those (like us) riding in minubuses and even those riding the various kinds of motorcycles that Colombianos seem to love (none of which go much over 50 mph)
Think of a hispanic Howard Johnson’s, only open-air.
We sit around a table, imbibing a variety of drinks (I have not one but two cafés con leche) and eats (rolls such as pandebono or a fruit-salad type drink called a salpicón), as the road-side community whirls around us.
Jonathan is nowhere to be seen, and when I talk to Marilyn I understand why. “I really thought, ‘This is what it is like to die in a head-on crash,’ ” she says.
10:21 a.m. – But we continue, some of us joining Jonathan and Marilyn in paying more attention to our driver’s driving abilities. And, finally, we begin to approach the park.
As our minibus nears the entrance, right away it seems that MP’s fears were correct: This is Disneyland Goes Juan Valdez. Dozens of the giant buses already have beaten us there, and hundreds of people are massed at the entrance trying to get in or shopping at the small shops that line the sidewalk opposite in both directions as far as I can see.
Maribel hands each of us a pass, part of the $90 fee that each of us paid to go on this excursion, and tells us to stay together. The park, apparently, is huge and easy to get lost in. Whatever else happens, she says, pointing to a wooden structure that towers maybe 60 or 70 feet over the entrance, we will meet under there at 5 p.m.
Say again, 5 p.m. Really?
And then we’re off, each of us set in various stages of preparedness to embrace the world of … Juan Valdez.
The Big Apple discovers Hoopfest
My friend Ken sent me a link to a New York Times story about Hoopfest. Click here to read it
Hollywood gives us a short break from Cali
More notes from our monthlong stay in Cali, Colombia:
8:28 p.m. June 27 – Any day is a good day if you get to watch a movie … speaking of words to live by.
And after a morning spent at the local mercado, trying different fruits and vegetables and buying souvenirs, MP and I in the afternoon took a cab across Cali to a little cine set next to the Mueso del Arte Moderno, which turns out to be just down the road from the Cali zoo. We’d read in the newspaper – yes, the newspaper, not online – that a retrospective of Robert Aldrich’s 1967 film “The Dirty Dozen” was playing. In English with Spanish subtitles. So we said what the hell.
First we walked through the exhibit at the museum, whose theme involved masks (or máscaras) and all they represent, thematically, literally, etc. So there were KKK masks hanging from the ceiling, photos of Amazon tribal members wearing face paint, sculptures and even a video installation … that, unfortunately, wasn’t functioning.
The theater itself was across a plaza, and admission was 4,000 pesos for two – or just over $2. Cheap at any price. And the theater was larger than I expected, fully capable of seating 150 or so people in seats set at a steep rake, not unlike the IMAX. The screen, though, was far smaller, and the sound system was barely audible. So good thing for the subtitles.
Before the film played, Cali’s answer to Bob Glatzer spoke – in Spanish, of course – telling us of the importance of the film, at least in terms of John Cassavetes’ career. One of the films that Cassavetes had directed, “Faces,” had played the week before, though he only acted in what the Colombianos call “Los Doce del Patibulo” (or “The 12 on a Scaffold”).
This is at least the third time that I have seen it all the way through. And while I wouldn’t claim it as any great achievement – even though it boasts a cast that includes Cassavetes, Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson and Jim Brown – it will keep you occupied for much of its two-hour-plus running time. My favorite sequence: Donald Sutherland passing himself off as a general inspecting the troops.
Much more entertaining was watching MP, in the middle of the film, try to find the bathroom, which involved her having to go outside, talk to two different people and then basically be hand-led down a flight of stairs. Her sign language and pidgin-Italian does serve her well.
Afterward, we walked down the street to a hotel and hailed a cab. The driver turned out to have worked for eight years in Queens, N.Y., as a driver for a private car service. But he spoke only a few words of English.
But he praised my Spanish, so I tipped him extra.
I need all the props I can get. I don't want to have to go begging grannies just to find the bathroom.
'Transformers,' less than meets the eye
Here's my movie quote for the day: "The French filmmaker Jacques Rivette once described an auteur as someone who speaks in the first person. (Michael) Bay prefers to shout."
That was critic Manohla Dargis, writing in the New York Times a devestating review of Bay's new film "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen."
Nosotros hablamos la lengua de Fatherhood
Here are the latest notes taken from my journal concerning our monthlong stay in Cali, Colombia:
2:28 p.m. June 26: This morning I learned a Colombian saying. We were in a minibus, bound for central Cali, when the discussion turned to male-female relations both in Colombia and the United States.
After the point was made that many men (in both countries but especially Colombia) have extramarital relations, one of our Colombiana handlers, with a smile, said that women did, too – but secretly instead of openly.
Ah, so telenovelas do represent some semblance of the truth.
Anyway, the discussion – again, primarily in Spanish – turned to whether it was OK to look at the attractions of the opposite sex if you did nothing else. And our handler repeated the following dicho Colombiano:
“Ver y no tocar se llama respetar.” Or, in English, to look and not touch is called respect. And those, certainly, are words to live by.
We ended up going to two museums. First up was the Museo del Oro Calima, a natural history museum focusing on artifacts from the early existence of the Calima tribe.
Our guide, a little guy dressed police/military style, gave us the grand tour, telling jokes and acting out certain rituals – for example, shamans dreaming after having ingested hallucinogens – all in Spanish. We saw gold fishhooks, which were plentiful because gold, to a certain extent, was just another kind of metal to the Calima.
No wonder the Spanish explorers thought the streets of the Nuevo Mundo were paved with the stuff.
My favorite part was when the guide showed the figurines that blended several types of creatures, then explained their genesis by pantomiming a shaman making one of the figures after having suffered a drug-induced nightmare. As a survivor of the early ’70s, I’ve had a few such vision quests and know what the poor guys went through.
But that’s just between us, OK?
We took a break, which allowed some of us to eat some pandebono (their spelling of pan de buono) and gaseosas de Cali called Popular. Then we headed for another museum, called – I still have my ticket here – Museo Arqueologico la Merced, whose origins as a church date back nearly five centuries.
We strolled though the various rooms, full of more artifacts, and our guide, a women this time, recited – in clearly pronounced and perfect, at least to my uneducated ears, Spanish – the significance of everything we see.
But what remains with me these hours later? One, the tattoo on her backside that her jeans couldn’t quite hide and, two, the coca plant growing in the museum’s courtyard that some of us insisted on photographing. Ver y no tocar, remember? Se llama respetar.
Oh, and one other thing remains memorable. Standing in line at an ATM, I watched an unsmiling young Colombiano wearing a baseball cap, waiting behind us. What made him stand out was that he was with the cutest little girl that I had so far seen.
Like many young men, he projected an attitude of toughness. But when I asked him, in Spanish, if the little girl was his daughter, he smiled. “Si,” he replied.
“¿Como se llama?” I asked.
“Angie,” he said.
“Ella es muy linda,” I said, noticing her red and white sun dress and baby Adidas sneakers. “¿Cuantos años tiene?” I asked.
“Tres,” he said.
And then, despite our many differences in terms of age and culture, we stood there in silence, like proud fathers tend to do, reveling in, even marveling at, the beauty of the innocence we’ve brought into the world.
We were one in … well, let’s just call it the brotherhood of padres del mundo.
Salsa time - and a tribute to the King of Pop
More of our ongoing adventure in Colombia. To Start at the beginning, scroll down to the heading “A Life in Cali, Colombia.” To pick up with this afternoon’s exploits, read on.
6:12 p.m. July 25 – There’s a bird crying like Adam Morrison outside my window. And, like Morrison, he (she? it?), too, has an attitude.
Lo que sea, it’s early evening here in Cali, which mean that night is already beginning to fall. That’s hard on those of us who live in the Pacific Northwest to grok. At home – there goes that bird again … or is it an obstreperous child? – it won’t get dark for another three hours.
Here, though, this close to the equator, 12 or 13 hours of light is about all you can expect.
There was plenty of time, though, for some of us to embark on a 90-minute salsa lesson. I held back, using my bad knee(s) as an excuse, but the real reason is because I had to suffer through two years of what my parents called “cotillion” lessons when I was in junior high.
Two years of the fox trot, waltz, cha-cha and other dances, most of which I have long forgotten. So give me some beer and The Knack singing “My Sharona” – the best dance song ever written – and I’ll get out on the dance floor, moving as best as I can. Play salsa and expect me to adhere to some specific steps, and you can forget it. I’ve served my time in dance hell.
The others, though, were fearless. The lesson was supposed to start at 3 p.m., but for one reason or another that got delayed. As we used to say when things went wrong in Kosovo, “It’s the Balkans.” We’ll have to come up with a new saying here. “It’s Colombia,” though, just doesn’t have the same poetic ring.
But by 3:42, the others, plus two of our teachers – the tiny terror Consuelo and siempre agradable Oscar – were practicing as if auditioning for Simon Cowell. And even nasty Simon might have been impressed, especially by the way that Holly from Seattle was moving. The woman has grace.
As always, the instructor – a smallish woman who moves as if her joints were greased with butter – is speaking only in Spanish. But as the lesson goes on, this whole incident becomes like a scene out of the movie “The 3th Warrior.”
That film, you’ll remember, features – there goes that bird again – Antonio Banderas as a Muslim traveler, traveling with a group of Vikings, who sits with them around a fire, listening. And slowly, gradually, ultimately, their language becomes clear to him.
Something similar happens here as the instructor acts out everything she says, which brings her instructions into clear focus. A la izquierda? Yeah, that’s to the left. A la derecha? That’s to the right. And so on.
Maybe if all language lessons were necessarily paired with action it would be easier to learn a new one. Even Finnish, which is what one of my new classmates, Walter, speaks. Of course, Water thinks English is easy and Spanish hard, so what does he know?
I left the room long before the lesson was over. But I joined the would-be salsa stars when they emerged, sweating and smiling, only a little sad that I hadn’t had the nerve to take the plunge. But I got over it.
And now I’m here, typing, waiting for the dinner gong, listening to MP Skype her father, Bud, back in York, Penn. I might hear her better if that damn bird would only shut the hell up.
I wonder how you say shotgun in Spanish?
P.S. … It's now 7:39 p.m. and we're just finishing dinner, which included another bottle of Carmenere and, more important, a serenade by Michael Jackson.
The youngest Jackson, the one and only King of Pop, died today - or so say the newspapers. None of us can believe it, having been charmed so long by his music.
So the serenade was a tribute. Michael Jackson, dead at age 50. As Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, so it goes.
Colombianos love their 'Caliwood'
I learned something movie-related about Colombia this morning, which is fitting considering the name of this blog. One of our teachers, Oscar Mora, said that Cali has a nickname – un apodo, as they say in Spanish – which is “Caliwood.”
The name comes from the fact that the people here love movies and because, apparently, they have many more alternative filmmakers here than Bogotá. Or at least that’s what I understood from what Oscar said in Spanish. I’ll get him to talk more later.
As for class this morning, our teacher Harry Córdoba took us through more language basics, explaining the basic symbols that hablantes de español use, such as the tilde (or accent) or the diacrítico (the squiggly line above the ñ), and other aspects of the basic structura de la lengua.
I wish I had taken classes from this guy 40 years ago.
Then we sat through an introduction to Colombian economy given by a professor named Alejandro Castro Zuleta, who tried in 90 minutes to gives us an overview that some students might spend a whole semester learning.
Here are some high points:
Colombia is the 25th largest country in the world (in terms of land area).
Colombia boasts an average temperature of 22.5 degrees Celsius (about 72.5 degrees Fahrenheit, though, to be honest, no such temperatures were apparent this morning. In fact, the classroom was so cold it felt as if we were sitting on an ice floe).
With more than 43 million inhabitants, Colombia ranks third in population density among America Latina nations (and 29th in the world).
Some 76 percent of Colombianos live in urban areas (the four largest cities are Bogotá, Medellin, Cali and Baranquilla).
The average monthly salary of a typical Colombiano amounts to about $300 in U.S. currency.
Ten percent of the richest Colombianos make 53 times more that the poorest 10 percent of Colombianos. In all of North America, by comparison, the top 10 percent make only 20 times as much as the bottom 10 percent.
(BTW, Sr. Castro took these figure from the textbook Introducción a la Economica Colombiana, written by Mauricio Cárdenas.)
One of the most interesting statistics was this: While it takes an Australian eight minutes to earn enough money to buy a kilogram of rice, a Colombiano has to work 16 minutes to purchase the same thing. A Kenyan, by contrast, has to work an entire hour.
All things, then, are relative. Besides, I once read that 50 percent of all statistics were wrong, and that the remaining half were made up on the spot.
I think that statement has about a 60 percent chance of being correct.
Farrah is dead, long live Farrah
Farrah Fawcett has passed. Today, a generation of men, those who draped her famous poster above their college-dorm beds, are embracing moments of silence.
A guy named Charlie, no doubt, is among them.
10 Best Pictures? How about one!
I'm going to take a second from our Colombian adventure and make a movie-oriented note: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has apparently found a new way of promoting itself - or, more exactly, the art of cinema that it tries to represent.
It's going to allow 10 Best Picture nominees to be named for its 2010 ceremonies.
OK, I'm not sure about anyone else, but I can't remember a year in which I thought that there were 10 films worth naming as Best Picture. Some years I'd have been hard pressed to name five.
Ah, well, now maybe Steven Seagal will have a chance.
Kidding, I'm kidding.
Life in a Cali classroom: It ain't Steven Seagal
1:32 p.m. June 24 – I’ve learned many lessons over the years from the movies. Here is one: Never trust movie trailers. That lesson carries over into real life in how it applies to the old saw about never trusting snap judgments.
One of my snap judgments proved to be, this morning, about as wrong as it could be.
But first about lunch. It looks as if my 34-year vegetarian diet is over. I say that after having consumed the potatoes out of a soup that has clearly been made from chicken broth. Looks to me as if their idea of a meatless soup is to pull out the big pieces, though I found even one of those on my spoon.
Ah, well, when in Colombia … still, I flicked the piece of flesh in MP´s direction. The papas cocidas taste good, though.
Back to our morning … Mako and I split off from the others to head for the intermediate Spanish class (Marilyn has taken ill and stays behind at Villa Javier). There we join a Finnish student named Walter and a Japanese student named Kyo for a class taught by Harry – you have to trill the double-r – Córdoba.
Harry comes from a small pueblo on the western coast, and he is the kind of teacher you love. Upbeat, energetic and excited about teaching “la forma de español,” he guides us through 90 minutes of explanation about the language that is both informative and interesting. The four of us have to give a short biographical talk, and each of us doesn´t embarrass himself (in Mako’s case, herself), at least too much.
After a short break, during which I have to pay Maria Consuelo 500 pesos (about a quarter) for speaking English (I told you she was a tiny terror), we head to a class taught by Beatriz Roldan. I wasn’t looking forward to this because the day before Beatriz was one of our guides, and she seemed to treat us like babies – looking at a tree, for example, and saying as if to someone with a mental disability, “Este es un ARBOL, un ARBOL.” Uh, really?
But we aren’t 15 minutes into her explanation of Colombia’s governmental structure before, with each of us providing questions, we’re talking about the revolutionary group FARC, the revolutionaries-turned-political group M-19, the various paramilitary groups, narco-traffickers, the various benefits (and controversies) involving the administration of President Alvaro Uribe, the roles played by each of the three different parts of the Colombian government (that are similar to those in the U.S.), the country’s class structure, the need for taxes (impuestos), how the poorest groups of Colombian society have free medical care, etc.
In other words, we don’t just holds hands and sing Colombia’s version of “Koombaya.” We talk about real-world issues as adults are supposed to do.
And 98 percent of it is in Spanish. We even enter into a discussion about race, what with Mako being black, Beatriz being mixed-race (in Spanish, mulata), Walter and I whiter than the pieces of paper on which we were all taking notes. And never have I had a conversation about race that's been more comfortable.
Americans don’t usually talk about race without someone’s feeling getting hurt. But it doesn’t happen here.
We end up going an hour over when class is supposed to end. It's that interesting. So along with everything else, I learn something that the movies have tried to pound into my head time and again: Don’t prejudge.
Unless, of course, we’re talking about a Steven Seagal movie. Then go ahead and assume that it’s going to suck.
Seagal´s movies almost always do.
Of Colombia, marketing taglines and tasty vino
Another chapter in our ongoing adventure in today’s Colombia:
8:27 p.m. – Our third full day drags to a close, and a phrase – a cliché, actually – comes to mind: When life hands you lemons, go ahead and make lemonade.
I’m thinking about that saying because I’m staring at a cloth bag, a bag that was just given to me, which has Colombia’s new marketing tagline emblazoned across the front of it: “Colombia, el riesgo es que te quieras quedar.”
Translation: “Colombia, the risk is that you’ll want to stay.”
Marketing types across the globe should learn something from this. Colombia is a country with, there can be no argument here, a violent past. And especially a violent near past, what with the narco-traffickers and revolutionary groups (FARC, M-19 and others).
But defining Colombia by those dictates is so narrow-focused as to be myopic. One look tells you how beautiful this country is. A few conversations tell you how friendly the people are (or, at the very least, can be). A mere moment’s thought allows you to imagine just what a paradise this place can be, would be, will be … if.
I’m thinking charitably because I just finished a dinner with the rector of Javeriana University, Jorge Humberto Peláez Piedrahita, S.J., and several members of his staff. And after a few glasses of good red wine, and a few dishes of Colombian cuisine, I’m in a good mood.
But while moods can fluctuate, the truth usually does not. And the truth is that there is so much potential here, if only the people who live here are allowed to discover it. And if the outside world then will make itself open to that same possibility.
But … enough. As I used to tell my daughter when she was small, that’s the end of Lecture 377. Tomorrow I will be in a classroom trying to improve my Spanish beyond, “Oye señor, yo quiero una cerveza.”
Entonces, hasta mañana – y que te vaya bien.
First day at Javeriana: It's showtime!
This is our third full day in Colombia and our first day of what was supposed to be language classes. It became something else, but that other thing was no less educationsl:
1:31 p.m. June 23 – We began our morning in Cali with a show. Not a movie or play or concert but a show nonetheless.
First, it was a show of formality. We were gathered by our teacher, a tiny terror named Consuelo Martinez – just kidding about the terror part – who took us on what turned out to be a morning-long tour of Javeriana University.
My first impression: UC Santa Cruz without the granola.
The entire university, whose buildings are constructed almost primarily of red brick, are set amid what is a virtual arboretum. There are, Consuelo said, plants growing here that come from all parts of the globe. As my beloved brother-in-law Stevie likes to say about Italy, everywhere you look it’s a freakin’ postcard.
We ended up in a meeting room that boasted a city view spoiled only by the haze that sat heavy on the landscape that was spread out before us. After the six of us (I, Mary Pat, Megan and Marilyn from Gonzaga, Mako and Holly from Seattle U.) were seated, more and more newcomers kept filing in. I stopped counting at 18 Colombianos, all of whom seemed in awe of the most respected Jorge Humberto Peláez P., S.J., university president.
This was a second kind of show, one of respect. And it proved to be mutual between the Colombianos and us. After Father Peláez spoke in his authoritative baritone, and we sat through a promotional film about Javeriana – professionally made and hip, or as they say here “chévere” – the obligation passed around the room for each person to introduce himself or herself.
This was a lot easier for the faculty and staff of Javeriana to do than we English speakers, who had to stumble in our respective broken Spanish, trying to describe who we were and why we were there. “Uh, me llama, uh, mi nombre … what? Oh, sorry … Dan y soy, um, periodista y gracias muchos por la chance, um, oportunidad para estudiar español, uh, yeah, gracias.” And then I spent the next 15 minutes thinking of what I should have said.
But then this was another kind of show, one of kindness, because no one burst out laughing at hearing adults mangle a language once and always spoken by European royalty. Seemingly as a reward, we were served juice and pastries – why aren’t more of these people fat? – that we consumed as if we were Bear Grylls downing insect intestines (and Bear, you know, loves insect intestines).
Afterward, we took a tour of the larger campus, from the bookstore (where, like true estadounidense, we bought souvenirs) to the library and every office in between. We even hit the university theater, a beautiful setting boasting inlaid wood and a stage where you could fit the entire cast of “Les Miserables” with no effort.
Here is where we witnessed our final show, which one of our hosts – Oscar Mora – put on. There in that beautiful theater, with each of us thinking our respective thoughts about what we were seeing, Oscar began playing a mouth harp that he’d pulled from his backpack.
The effect couldn’t have been more pronounced than if he’d started singing “Music of the Night.” But it was tinged with something Andrew Lloyd Webber has never learned how to convey: subtlety.
These Colombianos know what makes a good show: Less is almost always more.
In Colombia, life is just a day at the lake
This is chapter 5 in my ongoing description of our adventures in Cali, Colombia.
8:06 a.m. June 22 – This is supposed to be a time of sunshine and warm temperatures, or so say our extremely pleasant handlers. Too bad the weather didn’t agree with them last night as it rained, hard, nearly the whole night long.
The good aspect to that was that the thrumming of the rain on the roof nearly – nearly, I say – muffled the sounds of the music coming from the house next door, sounds that lasted nearly as long as the rain did. Dude likes to party hearty. Just saying.
So I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep. Which meant that 7 a.m. came even earlier than usual, 7 being the time that Adriana – I think that’s how you spell our housekeeper’s name – rings the gong, literally, for breakfast. This morning there were six of us: Megan, Marilyn and I, three of the four Gonzaga faculty; Holly and Mako, the two Seattle U. professors; and Jonathan, Mako’s significant other.
My wife, Mary Pat, the fourth GU representative, slept until just before the bus came to pick us up at 8. Which is typical of her, not being Little Miss Sunshine until nearly noon.
Anyway, we´d been up late the night before, following an afternoon that saw us touring around Cali, checking out the statue of Cali´s founder, Sebastián de Belalcázar, which overlooks the city, and then the Cali Zoo, where we saw everything from lions and tigers and bears to an elderly woman wearing a green shirt with the words “Hot Chick” emblazoned across her chest.
Then, after dinner, we watched the end of the Cali-Baranquilla futbol match, which ended up tied 2-2 but that resulted in the Baranquilla team advancing to the tournament finals, we were told, because of a point differential. Come to think of it, maybe that´s why it rained so hard.
On second though, nah. Life isn’t always a Sylvester Stallone movie.
Our bus (minibus, actually) came, along with three of our handlers – whose names I ultimately will learn, I promise – to take us on a daylong tour of Lago Calima, an artificial body of water that was created, we’re told, 20-some years ago to provide the area with hydroelectric energy.
One of our guides told us about how the lake flooded several settlements of indigenous peoples, including the Calima tribe, all of whom, presumably, were moved somewhere else. This kind of flooding out of towns, of course, is something Washington residents understand well enough, especially those who live near Grand Coulee Dam.
I asked the woman if there were any ghosts around, and she just laughed. But it seemed to me that her laughter betrayed a slight bit of … nervousness?
10:02 a.m. – We´re stopped at a roadside eatery, where they don’t serve coffee – what?!? – but they do serve a delicious kind of pastry, a pan dulce, that we scarf down with no effort. I find a piece of what looks like mystery meat in mine, no pleasant surprise for a vegetarian, but I slip it onto MP’s plate. No harm, no foul.
10:31 – The driver negotiates a narrow road off the main drag down a steep hill toward what we’re told is the restaurant Entre Pájaros y Flores (Between Birds and Flowers). The owner gives us a tour of the property, which she says has been in her family for 80 years. She shows us everything from an ancient phonograph to a pet monkey named Juana (though, apparently, he is male) before accompanying us down the hill to a boat.
That’s when we take a short tour of the lake, getting a lecture on the area history and a few interesting facts from a young woman named Jenny. Problem is, Jenny speaks only Spanish, and with that and the sound of the boat’s engine, it’s hard to understand anything. We do discover, though, that the winds that hit Lago Calima, usually in the afternoon, are supposed to be the strongest in Colombia and – we find this hard to believe – third strongest in the world. Ooooookay.
1:09 p.m. – We’re back at the restaurant, sitting down to a meal that would fill an army of Polish engineers. And it’s delicious, too, even for the two vegetarians in the group, who are served a tasty salad of various vegetables surrounding a pile of potatoes and guacamole. The others have chicken and soup and other stuff that I didn’t bother to study.
2:33 – We reboard the bus, heading around the rest of the lake on our return home. On the way, we make a short stop at the pueblo Calima Dorién where MP pays both to use the bathroom in a bar (for a quarter) and, at another store, for a pair of tennis shoes (less than $10). Her shopping jones quelled, we flag down the bus to make the trip home.
And that’s where we end up, just before 6 p.m., tired and ready to rest. But some of us have to swim, others have to head for more shopping, and still others have to write.
But that’s all finished now. So we wait for the dinner gong.
You think I’m kidding, don’t you? You haven’t met Adriana.
Welcome to a bit of heaven: Villa Javier
This is chapter four of our planned monthlong stay in Colombia:
10:01 a.m. June 21 – There are supposed to be 1,700 species of birds living in Colombia. And at least one from each species was, I think, camped on the trees outside our room last night. Singing. To each other.
Even so, after two nights of three-plus hours sleep, the long days of travel broken up only by occasional naps, I was able to dream my way through the chorus of aviary arias. MP, who wears earplugs to bed, is still unconscious.
To pick up, we were met by a trio of our hosts from Javeriana University, and what a pleasant surprise. Despite the fact that they speak no English, and my Spanish wouldn’t pass muster in a Tijuana preschool, we were able to communicate well enough.
We even convinced them to stop for coffee on our 45-minute trek to our new digs near the university campus (during which we ate scrumptious pieces of what they called, I think, Pan de Buono, supposedly named after the Italian cook who invented it).
The woman driving our car, which included me, MP and our friend (and MP’s GU Law School colleague Megan Ballard) gave us a tour-guide look at everything we could see en route. This included vast sugar cane fields, the tips of the western-most chain of the Andes (which we could see in the distance), the various factories (Cali is a big industrial spot), hospitals, museums, the city transit system, Exito and La Catorce (two of the giant retail chains, both of which put anything in Spokane to shame) and much more.
I could understand much of what she was saying, except of course for her name. That, though, will come. I know because I’m notoriously bad with names, in any language, at first.
When we arrived at Villa Javier, we were surprised at how luxurious it is. It’s a virtual estate (or retreat), located in a compound that offers a garden setting, complete with swimming pool, and is set next to a grassy field beyond which lies the university proper. We all have private rooms, with bath, telephones, televisions and private ground-floor balconies. This, clearly, isn’t going to be hardship duty.
As if to emphasize that, we were served lunch with more food than any of us could consume. And then left for a couple of hours to unpack and relax.
At 5, our teacher and her husband – again, my phobia about names kicked in – arrived to take us on a walk to a local supermarket, where we picked up supplies (just the necessities, deodorant soap and several bottles of red wine). Afterward we had a light dinner, said good night to our hosts and, after finishing off a bottle of Carmenere, took to our rooms.
And sweet, sweet sleep … despite the birds.
Cali now: Warm, comfortable and welcome
More on our continuing adventure in Colombia:
2:51 p.m. June 20 – Which brings me back to Villa Javier, where I’m enjoying the warm (not hot) and humid (though hardly unbearable) weather while the others nap.
As you can imagine, our getting here remained a struggle. After getting up before 6 a.m., all to check in at 7:15 for our scheduled 8:15 flight to Cali, we arrive at the airport only to find that while the Delta representative did his job, the info never got passed on to Delta’s partner airline, Avianca.
So we spend the next 45-plus minutes going from one office to the next, showing our boarding passes, our passports and, I swear on one occasion, our permanent records – you know, the ones that our high school teachers swore would one day come back to bite us on the derriere. Sorry, Mrs. Voss.
Whatever we do, it seems to work as we end up being among the final passengers who board the Avianca flight to our final destination: Cali. And although I don’t get the cup of coffee that I requested from the friendly flight attendant, I do receive a complimentary bottle of what looks like rum for a Father’s Day gift.
Being a father is, I gather, a pretty big deal in this country.
And when we finally arrive, not only are all our bags here, but so are the people from Javeriana who have been assigned to pick us up.
There’s nothing quite like walking into the arrival waiting room of a foreign airport, exhausted and wearing the same clothes as the day before, and, amid all the hand waving and catcalls, seeing a sign with your name on it. Some things, it seems, do come as promised.
But … more on that another time.
Bogotá at midnight: Time for beddy-bye
Chapter two of my account of our monthlong stay in Cali, Colombia:
6:51 p.m. June 19 – I just noticed on our onboard “moving map” that our route takes us over Cuba. This may be the closest I ever get to visiting Fidel’s country, at least while the old dictator is still alive.
But as we approach the Cuban coast, it seems fitting that the island is enveloped by a thick bank of clouds – a fog that, even at 36,997 feet, keeps us from seeing anything below. Bummer. I wanted to look for the Bay of Pigs. By the time the clouds pass, it’s too dark to see anything … except some lightning off to the east. Uh-oh.
7:47 p.m. – We’re now passing over Jamaica. Then the lights – is that Kingston? – fade into the darkness of the Caribbean Sea.
9:25 p.m. – Coming into Bogotá, we pass by an even more intense lightning storm, and the sky is ripped by big bursts of jagged electrified streaks. I mumble my surprise, and the guy sitting behind me says, “Did you see THAT?” Dude, yeah, I did.
Eleven minutes later, after an approach that makes us all feel as if we’ve been battered in a blender, we touch down. Gracias a lo que sea.
Made it this far, ma. Maybe not top of the world but certainly the top of Colombia.
6:12 a.m. June 20 – I’m exhausted. After getting bounced around the Bogotá airport, my basic Spanish skills proving about as effective as my ability to teleport gerbils, we finally make it to the Delta Airlines office.
We’re told, a bit too matter-of-factly it seems, that, yeah, we missed our Cali connection. Du-uh. Instead, we’re going to have to stay the night in a Bogotá hotel.
A Delta official, who speaks English better than I do – god bless MTV – processes us through, giving us our hotel and transportation chits and promises us that all will be taken care of when we show up the next morning.
Can you see where this is heading?
Then we’re taken on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride through the streets of the Colombian capital city, horn honking at any vehicle nervy enough not to be going twice the posted speed. Finally we arrive at the Hotel Bacata, in the city center and, we’re promised, “situado estratégicamente en el Sector Gubernamental, Turístico y Cultural más importante de Bogotá.”
We’re too tired to care. We check into our room, which actually is a suite, and collapse into bed.
Buenas noches, muchachos.
A life in Cali, Colombia: The trek there
I’m typing this in the sala of Villa Javier, a residence set just off the campus of Javeriana University in Cali, Colombia. I’m here with five American university professors, three from Gonzaga University and two from Seattle University, to study Spanish and do other stuff that I’ll get to in a minute.
So no pithy remarks about movies for a while. My intent is to document my experience as well as I can over the next month, trying to bring a little of life as I experience it here in South America’s northernmost country. I’ll begin with the notes that I took during the long trek here from Spokane to Seattle to Atlanta to Bogotá to, finally this morning, to Cali.
6:33 p.m. June 19 – Soaring above Atlanta, having taken off in a packed Delta 757-200 (Flight 443), I notice that we’re running about 90 minutes late.
So much for our connection in Bogota. The culprit: not weather or equipment failure (as in the airplane) but the computers that Delta uses to keep track of the baggage loading. Because of the computer failure, they have to do everything the old-school way. By hand. So we sit on the tarmac long after our scheduled departure.
The good news in all this is that MP (my wife, Mary Pat Treuthart) and I have been, unaccountably, been bumped up to First Class, which means that MP has been drinking some cava before we take off, an activity that smoothes out the late Georgia afternoon as she reads her trashy movie/gossip magazines (“the scandals,” as she calls them).
Now we’re off, though, and I can see far off into the distance, only a hazy cloud cover and the occasional cloud clumping to spoil the view. I turn on Delta’s personal entertainment system and switch on ESPN to catch the closing moments of the U.S. Open’s first round. I’d been watching the early play on the flight from Seattle and was anxious to see what had developed (looks like Mike Weir has taken the lead by shooting six under par).
We’re on our way to Cali to spend a month taking Spanish courses at Javeriana University. We’re here courtesy of Javeriana and Gonzaga University, where my wife teaches at the law school and where I am an adjunct writing instructor. Gonzaga is interested in pursuing a partnership with Javeriana that – everyone hopes – will result in some sort of ongoing series of exchange programs between the two Jesuit schools.
I have hopes of starting a project that will result in a bilingual journal of students from both universities writing in their respective languages. I hope to pair it with a class that GU journalism professor Susan English will be teaching in the fall. In any event, that proposed project, plus my relationship with MP, got me here on my way to Cali.
Now all we have to do is complete the journey.
Do you know where Cottage Grove is?
I’m just watching a special on the making of “National Lampoon's Animal House” on the Biography channel. And I just heard the announcer say, “Cottage Grove in Eugene, Ore. …”
Huh? Cottage Grove is its own town, situated at least 20 miles south of Eugene right off I-5. It is in the same county, Lane County, as Eugene. But it is not a suburb, as the announcer suggested.
I know this because I was taking journalism classes at the University of Oregon as the film was being shot. So, yes, I got my master’s degree at Faber College. Knowledge is good, right?
And my first newspaper job was at the Cottage Grove Sentinel.
Cottage Grove never did get any respect. Food fight!
Below: The food fight scene from “Animal House.” Excuse the Italian.
TV shows and classic films are DVD choices
The top DVD releases for the week include a couple of wide releases, “Friday the 13th” (the 2009 version) and “Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail,” there are far more interesting rental choices to check out.
Here are some suggestions:
“Burn Notice Season 2”: Jeffrey Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar and Bruce Campbell star in this Miami-based series about a former spy (Donovan) who spends most of this time either trying to find out who “burned” him (and why), dodging old enemies or helping the occasional person who can benefit from his intelligene skills. All 16 episodes are available, plus the typical extras, including commentary and a gag reel.
“The Seventh Seal”: Having just seen a 2004 documentary titled “Bergman Island,” which is an intimate look at the late, great Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, I look forward to again seeing Bergman’s atmospheric 1957 look at death. This is the famous film that features a knight (Max Von Sydow) playing chess with death. This one includes an introduction provided by Berman himself, recorded in 2003.
“SpaceBalls”: Mel Brooks’ humor isn’t for everyone. This 1987 lampoon of the “Star Wars” films is Brooks at his most ridiculous, utilizing the talents of former SCTV cast members Rick Moranis and John Candy.
“Sergeant Preston of the Yukon: Season Two”: I remember watching this season as a kid. This collection of 23 episodes, which were broadcast between 1955 and ’58, follows the adventures of a Royal Canadian Mountie and his dog, Yukon King, during the Alaskan gold rush of the 1890s. On you huskies! (Re. the YouTube link below: The "Sergeant Preston" intro is the last one of several shows from the 1950s, including "Sheena" and "Fury").
There may be more worth watching. But it all seems like a crap shoot.
Happy viewing.
Friday should add laughter to your life
Easy laughter is the sign of summer success. That, of course, and exploding cars. The latter is nowhere to be found in the movies opening around Spokane/Coeur d’Alene on Friday, but there should be a fiesta of the former.
“Year One”: Jack Black and Michael Cera team up to deliver their respective trademark performances – Cera the clueless loser who ultimately prevails, Black the clueless clown who does the same as Cera – in this comedy set during the time of Jesus, Rome’s legions and all things anachronistic. That last word there, the five-syllable one, reflects the modern sensibilities of Cera and Black dropped onto the quintessential biblical era. If the trailers are any indication, always a shaky assumption, this could be one of the funniest films of the summer. Special note: Look for David Cross as Cain, Abel’s brother with an attitude.
“The Proposal”: Ryan Reynolds plays the assistant to a high-powered executive (Sandra Bullock) who is roped into a marriage agreement to save the executive’s U.S. residency and, consequently, her career. Of course, by doing so he will save his own job. This is the ultimate suspension of disbelief, matching weenie hero against harridan boss, which will work only if director Anne Fletcher (“27 Dresses”) is able to get convincing performances out of her principals. Could happen.
“Easy Virtue”: Brought to us by Stephan Elliot, writer-director of “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” this period piece (set just after World War I) features Jessica Biel as an American woman who’s just married into English gentry. Biel plays the sexy, alluring, daring woman, married to the younger son of the family matriarch (Kristin Scott Thomas), whose presence sets off all sorts of family implosions – some of them beneficial, as to the shell-shocked older son played by Colin Firth. “Elliott has created a wonderfully rich battle for propriety in ‘Easy Virtue,’ ” wrote L.A. Times critic Betsy Sharkey. “The humor might sting, but the pain is worth the pleasure.”
Happy viewing.
On Saturday, trek on down the boulevard
One of the things that my friend and former colleague Tom Bowers used to enjoy more than anything else – except for, maybe, fronting his former band, The Triumphant Returns – was a pub crawl.
What’s going to happen on Saturday along a stretch of Spokane’s Northwest Boulevard isn’t that kind of event. Still, if Tom were here, instead of living with his fiancée in Portland, he’d likely enjoy it.
The event is being called A Day Down the Boulevard, and it involves six different businesses that, according to a PR person named Erin Arai, are teaming up to offer “a day of promos, freebies, classes, a cooking demo and more.”
Example: a 10 a.m. cooking demonstration at the Downriver Grill. On the menu: sausage puttanesca
Besides The Downriver Grill, the participating businesses include, west to east, Little Garden Café, Polka Dot Pottery, Judy’s Enchanted Garden, Hartwell’s and Uniquely Chic.
To find out more about the event in general, click here. To get specific addresses of the businesses listed above, click here.
It actually sounds like fun. And if I weren’t going to be already in Cali, Colombia, I might check it out.
As would Tom – though likely with a drink in his hand.
