Thursday, 3/27/08, More reflections? Yes, but that´s it folks. Going home now!

Each semester I make sure that each student sees me individually, for as small as the classes are, some students and I don´t find the opportunity to assess their overall progress. Among many questions we try to answer, I always try to make sure to ask them to reflect, and share if they want to, what they´ve learned about themselves as learners.

I´ve been asking myself that same question: What have I learned these three months?

a) I´m tenacious, probably stubbornly so: I don´t think 40 years ago I´d have continued to force myself to climb the mountains to the top.

b) No matter how adverse some situations appeared, after calming down or a decent interval of a night´s sleep, I was able to see things less frantically, think them through, assess whether or not I needed or wanted to proceed and act.

c) The reasons for a lot of discomfort we feel in life result from formed and perceived notions learned in a plush environment: couches, cars, washing machines, beds, etc., gives us a sense of security. But given other circumstances, the differences are really minimal, tolerable and the action is more enjoyable than the inaction. For example, I know that I don´t get to read as much because it takes longer to wash clothes by hand rather than by machine. But I feel like I´m doing something worthwhile when I do it by hand, whereas I feel it´s a chore when I use the washing machine (I know reading is also worthwhile).

d) I haven´t worked it out fully yet, but I know, better than before I left, how differently I can feel about something personal and difficult one moment from another. Outside of true emergencies, I´ve learned to defray important decisions for those days when I feel well and I sense I can make a reasonable choice.

e) I learned mostly that you take yourself wherever you go, yet: That I´d make such a rip again. Than I´d take more time in each place. That being in different places with different people may make one more tolerant and loving of people all over, except those that don´t like me.

This is not “une blague”, the blog is over.

(Pictures will follow)

Albert Hepner

Tuesday, 3/25/08 Post cards and reflections

I hope the ten post cards I sent will get to their destination. The Internet Cafe I use, seconds  as a post office.  Five of the first six days I was in BA were holidays. Good Thursday and Friday, Saturday and Easter Sunday, and Monday, the 24th of March, so I couldn´t mail the post cards I´d written the second day. This morning was finally a regular work day. The Internet clerk looked at the post card addresses to Israel and the USA. He said, “4 pesos each that will be 40 pesos.” I stood there waiting for the estampillas; he stood there holding the post cards and repeating “quarentas pesos”. I gave him the money for which he thanked me holding the cards and not putting stamps on them. In all the other countries, they couldn´t wait to sell you the stamps and made sure you did the licking. All I could do was smile and think: why wouldn´t he mail my post cards? What is he going to do? Pocket the $40 and wallpaper his garage with them? He must have a special person in the back that has the job because he or she has an enormous tongue and lots of saliva and is willing to live on minimum wages. 

If you ever visit BA and are at or near San Martin Plaza, at the end of Avenida de Santa Fe, don´t fail to go into the American Express office under any pretenses and then ask where the baño is. It was funny to me, but you gotta do it for it to work. My meanderings finally took me to Modero Diques (boardwalks) along an ecological garden and some restaurants that were converted from factories. I had been told about a nice museum in the Edificio Catolica de BA, a Catholic University at the end of the diques. The receptionist apologetically explained that the museum was to have been closed Monday, but since it was a national holiday, they´d opened it, so they had to close it Tuesday. It sounds like Miller´s book, Catch 22, doesn´t it? But she asked the guard to see if a teacher explaining the drawings to a class of children would mind if I walked around. These two lovely people let me in. The show was by several painters, unknown to me; the general theme was about active working life in Argentina, all charcoal etchings beautifully representing working life. 

There´s nothing like being in a country to get a sense of the people, as dangerous as one encounter can be when you generalize from it. Two days earlier I had lunch in a modest  restaurant.  A family of four were eating across the way. The younger of two teenage sons began carousing with his brother and as he got louder, their mother gestured for him to lower his voice. He did. I concluded that Argentinians as a rule respect other people´s privacy in a restaurant. The proper middle class behavior until the next day when another family of three had a bit younger child screaming at the top of his lungs in a rather chic and expensive restaurant and neither parent did anything about it. I guess the only thing I learned from those two instances is that you really can´t generalize and feel you´ve learned something about “a” people, and that people are pretty much the same all over with very slight variations.

The two teenage girls walking out of a Maxikiosko with ice cream they´d just bought discarding the plastic cover and disdainfully flipping it over their shoulder in what appeared a contemptuous gesture (this was one of the richest looking neighborhoods) made me think that whatever they´d learned home or in school (it was 3pm) did not include that the street belongs to them also.

Monday, 3/24/08 Diario Del 24 De Marzo

Since I don´t really know if diario is indeed diary, that´s how I am loosely translating it as a double entendre. Firstly, in memory of those who disappeared in 1976 and its anniversary. Secondly to write about my special day.

This morning I realized that I was running out of cotton swabs and tic tacs, so I decided I´d better go home. I´m sure I´ll be thinking about the meaning of this lengthly adventure as I continue to walk the streets of B.A. and  get to know the city better.

Today has been a truly adventuresome day. It started by a new bus trip to the Centro Cultural Borges, which is a gallery in downtown B.A. on the the second floor of an extremely elegant mall. The entire second floor in dedicated to this gallery. It has four seperate spacious rooms with four different artists well represented in eacch. The one I went to see is Rene Burri, a photographer fro Zurich, who has made it a point to photograph symbols of war since the 1950´s without showing any human atrocities. But wherever there have been serious military incurgents, whether domestic or international, he has participated as other photo journalists have, ecvept he photographs the pliticians, the events that lead to killings and the physical aftermath (not bodies). As many photos as I´ve taken, they haven´t made me a connoiseur of good photos, but his are poignant. Part of his show also included phtos of politicians, moveir stars, and symbolic social commentaries of as far back as the 1950´s.

For lunch, I ordered what I thought would be salmon salad. It was, except it was smoked with a dab of cream cheese on the side. How nice! An inadvertent reminder of how good things can be. Maybe this will give my daughter Mindy a clue. I´ve saved her lot of money all these weeks by staying away. Usually she visits me with a care package from Russ and Daughters full of my salt fix. (I hope she still reads this blog, for it´s so embarrassing to keep asking her.)

Then I went to Plaza de Mayo thinking that that´s where the HumanRights March was to begin. Fortunately I was wrong. That´s where it ended, so I wound up in the middle of the crowd where the speakers were and where the mile-long curtain of photographs of the Disappeared was being unfolded and rolled up again. It took all I had not to burst into tears. The photos were of people of all ages. The hundreds of people that were holding this long drape were certainly relatives and , of course, several kept pointing tearfully at a picture of someone they knew that passed.

Since I wanted to walk the kilometer, I walked toward the back of the parade all the while taking pictures of all the political parties that participated. I think I walked with Communist Party of several provinces, the Socialist Party, the Party of the Sur South) and certainly with PSOL (Partido Solidario). I´m not sure which I´d belong to if I were Argentinian, but that last one sounded like what I was really doing, being a party to solidarity. When we reached Plaza de Mayo, I noticed a woman in our group with two flags. I asked her if I could haveone. She said quizzically,”if you want.” I felt immensely grateful.

I found the open entrance to the subway after a while. It was free today.

Sunday, 3/23/08 Easter in Buenos Aires

Most stores were closed but cafes and restaurants opened by 11am. Many people sat with coffee and a newspaper this Sunday as if it were any other. Most streets were quieter than they had been during the week. I was heading towards Avenida Del Libertador and El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes when I stumbled on an outdoor artisan market. I turned out to be quite large and spread out. Since several tables had similar objects d ´art for sale, it  took any pretense of hand made crafts away. Several people did seem to have made their own designed shawls, trinkets, jewelry, etc.

The museum seemed to follow the same pattern the Santiago museum had. Rooms were dedicated to particular centuries rather than the influence period had on the art form. This was an orderly presentation only a confused observer like I would appreciate.

Saturday, 3/22/08 Tselochnikes

Today was a pretty good day. I had sent so many pairs of pants home and sent one to the cleaners, that I had few left, so I bought a pair that has removable legs. . More importantly, I walked to the Malba Museum. A beautiful museum and a wonderful presentation of South American political artists as well as some impressionists. At first I thought the museum was too small, but it helped me slow my pace. Often I feel I´ve rushed through because I wanted to see everything. Here I knew I´d get it all in.

I also went to the opera to see La Boheme. I was tired and it had been recommended that I could see the opera well from the nose bleed section because the theatre is small. I could see, but the bench was hard and after a long day,  I was too tired so I left after the second act. The production was fine. I just wanted to experience the opera in Buenos Aires as I had in Sydney. It´s like Chinese food; I always try Chinese food in every country; I like to see how the native country influences the foreign cuisine.

Out of  ignorance or memory malfunction, I´d thought the opera would be in French so that I wouldn´t need subtitles. It was in Italian with Spanish subtitles. It was a struggle reading Spanish so fast and also understand it.

On the bus on the way home, the bus driver´s ignoring my request that he let me know when we got to the corner I needed but knew I wouldn´t recognize, reminded me of something an Argentinian told me about a cultural quagmire (my word). She said that there is a prevalent attitude in Argentina (or she may have said Buenos Aires), that if something is expected even if it´s  a law, the temptation is to do the opposite or something else. It´s as if it is expected that one have a chip on one´s shoulder. She expressed the common phrase in Spanish, but I didn´t write it down. The closest I could come to it was in Yiddish, tselochinike. Not a pretty cultural picture if it´s true. I haven´t ascertained that except when the driver ignored my simple request three times. I finally changed the street name and said it in an angrier tone. So I walked an extra two blocks, but still.

Perhaps if Ignacionr, who may be from Argentina, is still reading this poorly written blog, could comment on what I heard about Argentinians, it would help us understand this phenomena better.

An Argentinian pointed

to Ignacionr

Thank you for your observation of the grammatical and spelling mistakes. This is my journal that I´m sharing. I did write at the beginning , in January, that I reserved the right not to go back and review any possible mistakes. Grammatical errors irritate me as well. As time permits, I´ll be more careful since you´re the second anonymous person who seemed annoyed. Let´s hope I don´t make more important mistakes: factual ones.

A. Hepner

Friday, 3/21/08, Dino Saluzzi

Writing and reading, tuna in a tiny pita, and a walk in the Botanical Gardens, were just the ticket for a day of rest. Let´s not forget a needed  nap in anticipation of a full evening.

The evening started out by being concerned about winding up in a neighborhood that was mentioned as not very safe at night, La Boca. Because every map I´ve received has a different orientation, north, west, south on top, I´m totally confused. I couldn´t tell until I got to Plaza de Mayo, that I was about to walk through that dangerous section near dusk. I think I was saved by a thunderous storm that wouldn´t let up. I´d left my pancho in the B&B, of course.

My first refuge was Basilica San FranciscoÑ would you know it. Mindy´s partner, Jackie, is probably being helped to the ´bagno´laughing hysterically right now. She no doubt thinks we pagans need a little humility once in a while.

When it stopped for a moment, I ranto my next refuge, an expresso bar, where I drank two while it poured. A man at the next table who was watching the weather channel told me to be careful because the winds promised to be vry strong. Great! Now I had two things to worry about.

A break in the weather got me to a charming and busy looking restaurant. You know how it is: once it´s charming, even though you read the menu in the window, you really don´t know what you read. It turned ou be be a sufficeintly de-classe pizze cafe to have ambiance aplenty.

A broad assortment of pizzas, ensalades, postes, and Johnny Walker Black, which I used to drink excusively forty years ago. The hot snack they served with the drink resembled the pizza I had ordered. When I finished it, they served the white pizza. It looked just like the free hors-dóeuvre. By the time I finished the pizza and Quilmes, I didn´t care if it rained. It was, and I ot wet on the way to the concert that I had understood my host to say was a song and dance tango show starting at 10pm (my usual bedtime).

Dino Saluzzi is evidently well known and liked in Argentina. His orchestra and he played a combination tango/jazz. He played with a Yitzrak Pearlman emotional outlay. It gave one a good sense of Argentinian classical guitars and the bandagno (spelling); it looks like a concertina, which Maestro  Saluzzi played extraordinarily like a finely tuned instrument, certainly a counterintuitive expectation from a poorly acquainted observer like myself. The guitarists, drummer and wind instrumentalist accompanied him very effectively. It felt like a special Argentian experience. Sometimes it just pays to walk through the rain and not stay home and give up.

Thursday, 3/20/08 – Argentians must not be litigeous

Both hosts are professors and offer a quiet environment a bit south of the center of town, nothing a one hour walk won´t take care of. It was nice to be greeted by him with “how is the US going to hold up its economic end of the world´s expectations as a world power?” My  pat reply is another question for these types of questions, “why is the word not coming up with ideas rather than sit and wait for the US to decide?” She greeted me by suggesting a visit to a special book store in B.A. She also ask if I enough books to read. Only my children would be so good to me, I thought.

I will visit the bookstore, but today I just wanted to get a feel for the city and walk as much of it as was reasonable. I walked the principal avenue to the center, Avenida de Santa Fe, which is quite commercial but not in an obnoxious way. The sidewalks are wide enough to give you elbow room. Most buildings are refurbished old ones, with a few exceptions. Periodically a groccer´s shop seperates two fashinable clothing stores. For me, tha´s more tolerable. Store keepers tried their English with me whereas inSantiago few spoke English.

Although statues of heroes dot the ciy, it didn´t feel as overwhelming as in Santiago, where you thought every street had een saved by some general.

From the center of B.A., I followed The Lonely Planet´s suggested walk. Mostly it took you through pedestrian  mlls and some government bildings. The that B.A. has not demolished all the old buildings helps give it character. The Lonely Planet tauts it as a European effect, perhaps that´s a stretch. It´s  apleasant enough city. Many sidewalks are tiled, sort of . Some time ago, this city thought well enough of itself to use what apear  to be ceramic tiles. These break, but they haven´t been replaced. Also the ground under the tiles and cobbled streets have moved so that the sidewalks are very uneven. One needs to step softly all over. There must be a law that sides wth the side of the store keepers or the city that states: Walker Beware! You´ll break your neck at your own risk. In our litigeous country, these sidewalks would cost someone a lot of money. Since I don´t like to sue anyone, I walked softly.

My walking tour included a synagogue. I rang the bell of the Judeo Museu next toit. After a while, an armed guard camt to greet me. He asked for my assport, where I was from exactly, and if I attended synagogue somewhere. Everybody knows I don´t, so I told him the truth. The docent filled us with a lot of interesting information. In 1860, an English Jew, of some means, wanted a quiet place to pray and meditate. He knew of no other Jews. He went to a park and did so for several weeks. o and behold, a French Jew of some means, had a similar desire and used the same park. They met weekly in the park and as more Jews moved to B.A., some joined them, andd by 1862 they formed a congregation. The first bld. right across the street from the park was built in 1897. Baron de Hirsh helped with current building in 1922. He and several others influenced a French stule architecture.

Bu 1970, there were a hlf million Jews in Argentina. Now there are 300,000.

Of the 30,000 people who disappeared during the eight tragic years in Argentina, two thousand were Jews, a despropertonate number to the size of the population. All the responsible people have stil not been prosecuted.

Monday is the anniversary of those tragic years. I hope to join a human rights march to protest human abuse by authorities.

Wednesday, 3/19/08 This is the real one- the previous one was an impostor from Tuesday

Where´s my ticket should be the title of this one.

The Lan Chile crew was runnng behind getting our baggage. They rushed us through. It wasn´t until I got back to Santiago that I realized I never had gotten my around the world ticket back. No biggy! I got another one printed, but it was scary for  amoment. I´d never be able to get home.

I manage to squander a coupe thousand Chilean pesos; not enough for anything real interesting leaing me with some coins. I asked around for where the donation box ws. None of the Lan emplouees knew what I was talking about. (Every country, excet the USA, that I flew out of, has a colletion box for poor people. Many of us wind up with change we really don´t need in foreign coins. A woman overheard my question but asked me again what I wanted. She spoke authoritavely enough that I thought she worked for the airline. Sh ointed  in a general direction and said, “if you oun´t see one here, just leave it on he sink in the bathroom, that´ll be good enough.” I did leave the coins in the bathroom. She spotted me in line and called out to find out if I was satisfied. I told her I was disappointed that Chile wasn´t taking care of its poor people, whereas all other countries did at least this.

People around her wanted to know why she was upset. She evidently explained it to them. As I was about to disappear into the gangway, she yelled out, “Senor, senor, there it is,” pointing to a box. I´m glad I helped her feel better about being Chilean. Another act of random kindness.

The frantic taxo rode tp ,u B&B took an hour through 6pm Buesnos Aires traffic.

Wednesday, 3/19/08 Buenos Aires here I come

Tomorrow is a travel day; the only good thing I can about it is that I finally found a small room in a B&B and a ride to it. Will be back when I can later this week.