High Times for Uruguayan Wines…
I don’t know if you are a wine connoisseur or teetotaler, but if you have been known to partake of the fruit of the vine, I would encourage you to give this New York Times article a read. It may have you shooting off to the wine store for a bottle, and who knows, maybe calling Matt and Toni to arrange a wine tour in Uruguay.
We’ll leave the light on for you…
http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/travel/19next-1.html?emc=eta1
AFTER several wrong turns through desolate dirt roads, I finally saw Carlos Pizzorno waving at me from the entrance of his vineyard. He is an affable man with wind-worn skin and rough hands, the result of tending personally to the vines. While touring the 50-acre estate, we stopped before two hand-cranked corking machines from the early 1900s, a quaint example of Mr. Pizzorno’s painstaking craftsmanship. Inside the cellar, his 2004 blend of tannat, cabernet sauvignon, merlot and petit verdot had been aging in bottle for three years. “It will be released when the time is right,” he said. “These wines have my family name and I can’t let it down.”
Se busca VOLUNTARIOS para Equipo de Coordinación
Tal vez el acto más primordial de servicio es permitir que otros tengan la oportunidad de servir. Parker Palmer, activista estadounidense, definió el liderazgo como “crear espacios en donde la abundancia human pueda emergir.”
La tarea de coordinación es la tarea de crear esos espacios. En 2009, STC Uruguay procura lanzar iniciativas de voluntariado para ayudar a fomentar una cultura de voluntariado. Necesitamos personas que pueden ayudar a formar los proyectos, hablar con voluntarios, trabajar con patrocinadores, y coordinar eventos, y facilitar comunicación para que los demás puedan encontrar su lugar para servir.
¿Te interesa? Mandanos tu información a stc@servethecity.org.uy, y estaremos en contacto.
Matt,
Coordinador General, STC Uruguay
I like sausages…
The other day I was at a friend’s house, and had to use his computer for something random. He sent me back to the back room of the house where I was, staring at the bright screen in that dimly lit room, and I was overcome by temptation.
I got there, and saw his facebook page wide open. The room was dimly lit, and so I think that contributed to the mischievous deed that came forth from somewhere deep in my bowels.
I saw it, it said “Joe Bloe is” with a blank afterward with grey text that said something like, “What’s on your mind?” I swear, there appeared a thousand imps inside me (no, not Legion, he wouldn’t be quite so funny as me, a lack of sense of humor being one of the chief failures of the demonic host), and they had something on their mind.
“I like sausages.”
So, next to that cool pose and smiling face of my good friend, in a nano-second, there appeared that wonderful phrase.
“I like sausages.”
Bratwursts, Chorizos, Italian, Polish…
The only thing I hadn’t counted on was all the sick, perverted minds in this world that would thing I was attributing a sexual orientation to my friend. May it never be! And when I saw THOSE responses on his facebook, I got seriously embarrassed. How dare they!
So, next time you are having a backyard cookout, and the peppers and onions are sizzling on the grill, and the brats are dripping, and the tops are popping on your favorite refreshing beverage, make sure you don’t leave your Facebook account open. You never know who might drop by.
Islamigood?
My friend Mike laid one of those great quotes on me that forever changed my life. I use it now every day, at least once, so people don’t miss a chance to realize how smart I am. The quote goes like this. It comes from ancient China. “The beginning of wisdom is calling things by their right names.”
For instance… If you looked at me and said, “Hey Bill,” then you would show how unwise you were. Not only that, I wouldn’t say anything back to you. Well, I might say, “You have me confused.” Or, if you really seemed nice, I might tell you about all the times I would respond to the wrong name when I was younger due to a perpetual fear of making people feel stupid. Stupd and bad.
So, I had a thought. Maybe we could go a long way toward stemming Middle East confusion and violence by trying out different names for things. Take Islamibad for example. Aren’t you just asking for trouble by saying Islam Bad every time you mention that fine capital city. Try, “JudaismBad” for Jerusalem, or ChristianityBad for the Vatican (well, you might be on to something with THAT particular example).
So, I am going to try it. At least, give it a shot. Islamigood. Who knows. Maybe militants in safe havens in the mountains of autonomous tribal regions will start beating their Kalishnakovs into plowshares.
If Istanbul was once Constantinople, surely we can do better than Islamibad.
Maybe I’m wrong. But maybe, just maybe, it’s the beginning of wisdom.
Fragment after being at Victor’s
Just give me 3 chairs and a little table
some scraps of paper
a purple pen
we might be inspired
we might talk till dawn
a castle or a cabin
i just need a place to sit
to raise the dogs
to fall into that sleepy space
where we dream of a new world
Dance, if you want to
Dance, if you want to,
Or just lie still.
Compose, if you want to,
but not too loudly,
lest we disturb the dead, in their slumber.
Stretch out from the quiet places,
the still places,
where the giants rest,
where the fear lives,
and where the beauty,
held safe in the hand of the holy,
waits,
until just the right time.
A month ago
A month ago I had some real clarity on some stuff and I laughed out loud and said, “God doesn’t miss a trick.”
Yesterday I was feeling all goofy, in a bad way, and I thought about what I had said a month earlier and a big smile broke out across my face. “God doesn’t miss a trick.”
I am smiling even now.
Immigration
Immigration
by Matthew Zathe Daniels
They make a special hell for businessmen as conniving as Jim Barton. Jim was a restless entrepreneur who had more money than he knew what to do with. His three adult children never talked to him and his ex-wife hated him more than any human being alive. It didn’t stop her, however, from living off his money and fancying herself to be “his girl.” Jim had set up and closed hundreds of illicit business deals throughout a dozen Latin American countries over the course of a career, but was starting to lose his edge.
Toward the end of his last deal, in San Ramon, he wasn’t even sure how he had made it out alive. Only a few details of that three month stretch of his life were clear to him. He had been in San Ramon, had been back in New York, and was now in Montevideo, but not sure of much else. He was getting out of the game, disappearing into a South American landscape where stability was the order of the day. As he sat in the Uruguayan immigration office with his “modified” papers, he hoped the fog would soon lift, giving him back those missing months of his life.
He remembered only that the stress of the work had been wearing on him. He never really understood Read more »
Enjoying my trees…
I am enjoying my trees from another vantage point. I am in my neighbors backyard (don’t worry, I have their permission), and it just occurred to me for the first time that they trees aren’t mine. Not just, “not mine” in the sense that I rent the house and so they really belong to Nene Ferrari, but “not mine” in a bigger sense. They are not mine ALONE. I guess what belongs to me is the unique angle from which I see the trees. They are awe inspiring from where I see them. My back yard is about four meters lower than my neighbors. The leaning brick retaining wall bears evidence of someone’s great engineering feat some 60 years ago.
They tower over the world from where I see them. Standing in a solitary group in a remote corner of my back yard, far from the house, they shoot my eyes upward, sending my gaze heavenward where it belongs in the first place.
But from my neighbor’s yard, it is there immanence that grabs me. What looks like poles of energetic green from my window looks like a party of individual Cottonwood leaves from Ademar’s house. I can almost reach out and touch them from where I sit. I wanted to strap a zipline to them four years ago just so I could convince my then four year old daughter that daddy really could fly.
Now Annie’s almost here, maybe hours away, and all I can think about is building a little nest in them to show my newborn that even big powerful things can be safe.
I see the broken shaft of what used to be the tall one, before the 2005 wind storm that snapped it like a twig underfoot. That day, one hand on my northward bound plane ticket and the other on my suitcase handle, I denied any claim whatsoever to ownership. Another neighbor came wondering when I was going to get the two tons of cottonwood trunk out of her pool. I gave Nene’s telephone number and told her that “the owner of the house” would have to deal with such matters. The tree was seen from an entirely different perspective that day.
I guess the tree belongs to all of us. Heck, the world can see it on google earth if they wanted to. There you learn that even big and powerful things can be small and insignificant if you just get enough perspective.
What else fits in this hole of consideration I am lending to my tree just now?
Heck, I guess just about everything. I don’t know. You’ll have to look for yourself.
old friends…
Got a letter from an old friend today. He lives SO far away. Dang, I miss that guy. Oh, the pain!!! Of all the things that I will always hate about the universe is the pain that is inevitable when the heart is open.
I just hate pain. Perhaps more than anything else. I hate pain.
(I hate it that some people will be like, “he shouldn’t have blogged that,” but I still hate pain worse).
