Years of therapy

A pal posted a blog about being able to spend one more day with someone you loved who's no longer with us. My Grandma B & Grandpa K came to mind. When I thought about how I'd spend a day with Grandma, I didn't have to think long. If I could have one day with her, it wouldn't be at church, it wouldn't be at their old house in Parma, and it wouldn't be on some Caribbean beach.
It would be at old Cleveland Municipal Stadium. We'd eat dogs with Ballpark Mustard. We'd complain about the Indians ineptitude and rail about the Yankees. Somewhere along the way, I would find a way to ask her about the inner strength she had to manage the family the way she did and have each of her eight children grow into the most amazing people I've ever known - my dad and his brothers and sisters.
So after that, I was psychoanalyzing myself. Why in the heck would I want to go back to the dumpiest stadium in the AL? And I started realizing that I think I know why I fell into Cleveland athletics ass over applecart. What my grandma was to the Tribe, my grandpa was to the Browns - die hard, and always hungry for information. The Indians and Browns replaced my grandparents when they died. Going to games was just like visiting their graves, but more alive. Anytime I sit in the stands for an Indians game, I remember my first game in 1986 (Indians v. Brewers, for those who care) with my grandma at my side wearing her new-ish Indians visor over her gray hair.
I also realized that this is why I cried more when I saw Cleveland Stadium being torn down than I did, say, when my dog died. The Stadium wasn't a dump, it was the place I always associated with my grandma. And this is why I will always despise Modell and the Ravens - not because of the team or what they did for the city, but because of what they replaced in my life.
I suppose this is also why I have zero tolerance for people who just adopt some team out of the clear blue sky, then jump the bandwagon when times get rough. People like Yankee Fan.
Well. That was therapeutic.

Viva la Revolucion

This post could go a number of ways. It could be a post about how we take our blessings as Americans for granted. It could be a post about how I never understood the depths of poverty until I breezed through the slums of Mexico City. Maybe it could be a post about how bad I feel for Mexico’s poor. Perhaps the turn most appropriate would be about the lack of coverage Mexico’s politics gets in the American press.
Most of that would just be covering up, though. This blog, necessarily, has to be about fear. I spent the weekend in Mexico, and but for the time spent in our "fortified compound," the emotion that came to the surface again, and again, and again, was fear. Fear for our safety. Worry for the horrible fates many of those we saw faced. Concern for what they endured. Fear for what would happen if People Like That finally got upset enough with People Like Us to do something about it.
Some of you have heard the weirdest of the stories already; But though the salacious details give the story a visceral punch, it’s the small things that make Mexico a terrifying lesson in geopolitics, faith, and finding oneself.
A few vignettes:
- It is never easy to go to a place where you don’t speak the local language. But I think, in the wake of NAFTA, we all think of Mexico as “our” linguistic backyard and assume that, like Puerto Rico, everyone will be able to speak English. I brushed up on my Spanish a bit before leaving just so I would have a little language. But even that wasn’t enough to get me through the small things – like how to make a call home.
- Crushing poverty is visible at every turn in Mexico. As we drove past the tent cities off the Rio Churubusco, a fellow traveler and I wondered out loud if there is any answer to this. Will Mexico ever lift itself out of this? I can’t imagine how – it would take the rise of an intellectual class, a domestic manufacturing base, and a shift from looking at workers as an expendable commodity to seeing them as an irreplaceable resource. One thing I know for sure: If I lived there, I would not think twice about getting through the Sonoran desert to the U.S. and relative wealth.
- There is nothing funnier than overweight, elderly Mexicans dancing to the club remix of Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita.” Trust me.
- America is still paying the price for election-rigging throughout the Third World in the 1950s-1980s. Few of the masses in Mexico actually believe that Lopez Obrador lost, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Lies are only powerful if they have a relationship to reality, and since we actually did fix a number of elections in the past (and, who knows, maybe in the present) our credibility is essentially zip among furners.
- America needs more vaguely-Stalinist monuments. We went to this town called Cuautla, and there was a giant statue of Jose Morelos that looked like a big old Stakhanovite statue from Petrograd. Awesome.
- Political protest is a lot different in Mexico than the U.S. It includes things like mobbing the streets, occupying public parks, and graffiti covering the city. What they call “protests” I like to call “riots.” But then, I live near Detroit. So it ain't no thang.