It's a regular Food Week around here.

Tchaka!

I've been in Haiti for almost two years, but last week was the first time I ever had my new favorite Haitian food. Serve with a warm sourdough loaf, and wait for the rave reviews to pour in.

A note: this recipe might be for more advanced cooks, since everything is proportional (i.e., I was given no measurements) and therefore everything is to taste.

Haitian Tchaka
Prep time: maybe an hour?
Serves: flexible, but if there are only two of you you're likely to have leftovers.

Pressure cook red, butter, and black beans (choose two) until soft.

In a separate pot, boil chopped pumpkin, scallions/onions, cloves, and garlic together until pumpkin is soft. Puree.

Return spicy pumpkin puree to pot, and add chopped green peppers, carrots, potatoes, and corn* (it seems like you could really add any vegetables you have around). Cook until vegetables are soft.

Add cooked beans and salt and pepper. Let simmer until flavors are blended. Serve hot.

*Our cooks here use dried corn, which I would identify as popcorn. If you choose this route, add the corn to the beans and pressure cook until soft.

Enjoy!

The goods.

Okay, just to counterbalance my recent criticisms about being a foreigner here, following is a list of things I especially like about Haiti:

The trees. The big ceiba/mapou trees, mangoes, avocados, citrus, neem...so many really interesting trees. Here's to more in the future!

Beaches. I've enjoyed some very nice tropical paradises here in Haiti.

Seau Kontrere. The river/ravine in Desarmes. One of the coolest places I've ever been - and I think it's almost completely void of tourists. Except MCCers.

Mountain biking in Haiti. I've been on some really fun sections of singletrack here.

There are more. I do have a tender spot for Haiti, but I just want to be sure the tender spot does not rely upon the poverty of the country for me to enjoy it.

Yumness you don't want to miss.

Last weekend we were invited up to MCC's guesthouse in Kenscoff (yes, our former home) for a tres delicious breakfast of homemade eggs benedict, garnished with edible flowers.


Pancha, Alexis, and Rachel did the heavy lifting in the kitchen, making irresistible piles of toasted croissants, sliced avocado and tomato, poached eggs, and homemade hollandaise sauce:


Bryan, Margot, Joel, and I were the most enthusiastic fan club ever:


Especially Margot*:

* although she would not, could not be convinced to taste even the tiniest nibble of nasturtium.

Since there's always a weekend a-comin', I have re-posted the recipe here for your brunching pleasure. The original can be found at Joel & Rachel's blog.

Egg Benedict with Yogurt Hollandaise Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

1 cup plain yogurt

3 egg yolks

Juice of 2 key limes (or 2 teaspoons of lemon or lime juice)

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon Dijon mustard

Ground pepper

Other ingredients

Poached eggs

Toasted bread (English muffins, croissants, Turkish bread, etc.)

A BUNCH of cooked bacon [I left this in as part of the original recipe, but avocado & tomato are much better...]

Beat together the egg yolks, yogurt, lemon/lime juice in a double boiler. Cook for about 15 minutes until sauce thickens. Keep stirring - it might become thinner then thicker, but just stay with it.

Remove from heat and add the salt, pepper and mustard and stir it in.

During all this I would start cooking the bacon or slicing the veggies. Then poach the eggs and the toast the bread.

Serve like this: Place a piece of toasted bread on bottom, then add veggies (you could also use wilted spinach or a favourite roasted veggie), then the poached egg, then pour the warm hollandaise sauce over everything. Enjoy!

Meet Mother Necessity: A blogpost in five acts.

I promise this is going somewhere, so stick with me...

Part One
Here in Haiti, everyone has to get by with very little. One of the most endearing things about Haitians is the way they can find solutions for almost any problem. A few examples:

1. A car key snaps in two in the door. After fishing the key from the door and realizing that the car can't start with the key in this condition, a Haitian finds a scrap piece of aluminum and a file and starts making a copy by hand. The improvised key works and everyone got home safe and sound.

2. A car gets a flat tire. The passengers realize there is no lug wrench and flag down other cars. One stops and lets them borrow a lug wrench, but unfortunately all four sizes on the lug wrench are too large. Someone finds a large washer and a rock in the dirt and shapes the washer around the lug nut. The lug wrench is pressed on, and after a few tries the nuts are freed and the tire is changed.


The list goes on and on. I love this kind of stuff, and really think it's cool and amazing.

Part Two
Over the last few months, a lot of MCC Haiti alumni have been coming to help with post-earthquake-related activities. They reminisce of their time here, and the question always comes up: Do they miss Haiti?

The most common response I've heard: they miss the daily adventure. Life in Haiti is always so interesting - the examples above happen fairly regularly and most people living here have these stories to tell and retell with great enthusiasm.

Part Three
Often foreigners see the countryside as the "real" Haiti.

- When the paved road ends and the dirt road begins, I hear "Now I'm in Haiti!"

- When we are indoors and the lights go out: "Yup, this is Haiti!"


- When you see a huge truck broken down and the driver has the entire transmission laid out in front of him on the side of the road, a smile comes to our faces: "Now this is Haiti."

- When we watch the tire repairman beat a tire from a rim with an old axle and patch a tube with a few scraps of metal and an old piston into which he pours a flammable liquid and lights it and few minutes later your tube is patched - MAGIC! Haiti is amazing!

My only problem with all of this is that I wonder: do we like Haiti for these reasons only? If Haiti is to develop and tire repairmen become obsolete along with the potholed roads, will foreigners still be interested in the "culture"? Or is the culture so entwined with poverty that the eradication of poverty is the end of Haitian culture? No longer will people carve keys out of scrap aluminum, they will simply go to ACE Hardware down the street and have a copy made.

Part Four
Why are we as foreigners here? If adventure is part of it, isn't it just a little selfish that we are here to enjoy all of the Haitian inventiveness that is in reality a result of necessity (i.e.,poverty)?

And why are we so boring? Why is it that life in North America is so boring we need to come to Haiti to have an adventure?

Adventure is around every corner in the U.S. Buy an old car and when it breaks down, fix it yourself. Instant adventure. Ride a bike to work and I'll guarantee you will almost die at some point.

Instant adventure. Go camping and don't bring a tent - adventure.


Go for a walk in a new neighborhood. Adventure. Is this so hard?

I guess I am just questioning my reasons for being here. Sure, some good is being done, but is that enough?

Part Five
All the sustainable development theory we have learned over the years has pointed squarely at the need to change systems, trade policies, and politics. But to really change Haiti, advocacy is still seen as blah by many North Americans: "Advocacy? Not interested. But if you need something done, like building an orphanage or wiring a church or sending old clothes to Haiti, sign me up."

Theses things are all tangible but also finite. Very finite. I feel like I've seen too many schools/orphanages/churches started by a Generous Gift from a church in North America only to be abandoned a few months after the sponsoring church ends its support (or as we like to say, "hands off the project to local leadership").

Was that real development? No. Am I critical of people that have great ideas and some money but very little skill in planning for the future, for sustainable development? Yes I am.

A friend who visited a few weeks ago pointed out that Haiti is the place Americans come to make them feel grateful for what they have. Pay a couple thousand dollars for a missions trip to Haiti and you return home thankful.

As development tourists, we come, have an adventure, and leave, rich with "souvenirs": these stories of the resourcefulness of Haitians. And apparently we wouldn't want it any other way.

These things always happen in twos.

Sharon has a theory that all bad things happen in pairs. This means that whenever something bad happens (speeding tickets, oversleeping) she's immediately ready for the same thing to happen again in the near future.

So yesterday evening I headed out on the motorcycle. I saw another moto coming, but I saw that I had plenty of time to pull into the opposite lane. As I pulled out, he decided not to continue going straight but instead turned to avoid me. Unfortunately, and weirdly, he veered into my lane...and crashed right into me.

Well, his moto was torn up a bit, and I heard plastic bits hitting the ground and saw a brake line come off his front wheel. My moto and I were knocked over. I stood up and looked it over, and all was fine. A small group of people were ridiculing the other driver for driving into me on my side of the road. Since the only advice I've received about getting into accidents in Haiti is to get away from the scene as quickly as possible, I took the opportunity to start my moto and get out of there before the gathering crowd changed their minds. I hope the other driver is able to fix his bike without too much trouble.

This morning while in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the motorcycle with Sharon, I had to stop behind a tap-tap. These are the small pickup trucks that serve as public transport here, and suddenly the driver decided to reverse...what?...into us. We yelled for him to stop, which he fortunately did. But who reverses in traffic (#1), and if you do embark on such folly, why wouldn't you look to see if there is a car or motorcycle behind you (#2)?

Anyhow, this cycle of misfortune has begun and ended fairly quickly. I'm happy neither I nor Sharon were hurt, but it adds a new level of fear to the daily commute when I can't trust other drivers to keep their eyes open and stay in their own lanes.

Hey, solutions!

Grassroots International has added an updated preface to a 1997 report on Haiti's situation entitled "Feeding Dependency, Starving Democracy." I haven't been able to download the original report yet (thank you, internet - if anyone can download this and email it to me, I'd appreciate it), but the summary is worth reading partially because it briefly outlines many of the issues facing Haiti today AND because Camille Chalmers of the Haitian Platform to Advocate Alternative Development (with the Creole acronym PAPDA), one of MCC Haiti's unofficial partners, actually proposes solutions to problems (!).

From the preface:
"What would a holistic rehabilitation and development plan of this nature require? Much more than money! It would require a reversal of policies which are at their heart counter to healthy, sustainable development. It would mean a stop to attempts to pry Haiti's economy open to imports; it would mean an end to balancing Haiti's budget by cutting health and education spending; it would mean implementing policies for environmentally-friendly food sovereignty so that Haitians can eat the food they grow in fields that hold the soil; it would mean a massive virtuous circle of support for both the governmental and non-governmental sectors so that they can grow strong together."

Biking in Haiti

Ben and I have been mountain biking the past few weekends and this is the result.

Good thing it's my favorite conversation, because I have it several times a week

Haitian: [question in French]
Me (Creole): Oh, I don't speak French.
Haitian (Creole): You don't speak French?
Me (Creole): No, I don't speak French.
Haitian (Creole): What language do you speak?
Me (Creole): English and Creole.
Haitian (Creole): You speak Creole?
Me (Creole): Yes, I speak Creole.
Haitian (Creole): O-oh....

Gas.

Just another day here in Port-au-Prince: a few days ago we heard a rumor that gas was running out at the stations and it would be like $25 a gallon for gas. Ha! we said, but here we are a few days later with very little gas to be had, and even though the price may be under $25/gallon I'm sure it's not cheap.

Just try to imagine for a moment the ripple effects of your city/town of not having gas or diesel. Everything starts to grind to a halt. In Port there are fewer and fewer tap-taps and mototaxis; big trucks are parked; even many private cars are sitting idle, conserving the last little bit of gas they have in their tanks.

Last night we drove home and there was almost no traffic - the sky was clear, flowers bloomed, and the birds were singing.....not the people though, as lots of people waited for tap-taps that were just not abundant enough.

I consider myself someone who is low on the gas-use scale, but when I really look at it - ugh, that's a long walk home (2.5 miles) uphill (both ways) raining (only when walking). And grocery getting, phew....maybe Ben will let me use one of the cargo bikes.

Why no gas? Well, we've heard that a tanker is on the way from our good friend Chavez in Venezuela, but it's late because the Haitian Consortium of Gas Company Owners was mad at the government for trying to force them to lower gas prices, so as a little jab they delayed their fuel order just long enough to make a point.

Taken. But really? here we are in a poor country destroyed by an earthquake and etc. etc. and now they take the time to make a point about who has their hand on the faucet? Well, I guess now is the time to make that point. Airline strikes over Christmas, utilities strikes over the winter months, etc. Do we really have to get to take this moment to puff up our chests and strut around? Apparently we do.

Well, that's where we are, walkin' and bikin' and not drivin' a whole lot, waiting for the magical day the clear combustible liquid we all know so well comes springing forth again.

Back to school

Monday afternoon marked three months since the earthquake. Just this week we've started to see gingham-shirt-clad students headed back to class, and Tuesday MCC resumed teaching classes at a nearby seminary, Centre de Théologie Intégrale de la Caraїbe. Actually, MCC* was teaching three classes before the earthquake: Social Justice Issues, Advocacy, and an Advocacy Practicum. The seminary has decided to cram the rest of the semester into three whirlwind weeks, so each class runs from 2-6pm.

* Meaning Nixon and Alexis, our advocacy department.

I've signed on to work with Nixon to develop our teacher's guide and make the curriculum replicable, so I attended the class yesterday afternoon. The second-year teacher didn't show, so those students crammed into the first-year classroom to take part in the discussion on neoliberal market and governmental policies.

"To change the system, you must first understand it" - and try to understand it they did. I was also encouraged to hear things like:
"We must take responsibility for our problems."
"Haiti's history is different from all other countries, so we need to seek a solution to problems that fits in with our history and our heritage."
"Other countries can't change Haiti; only the Haitian people can."
"As pastors, we are leaders who can make a difference."

Hear, hear. Sometimes I get exhausted with the fact that everyone, but everyone, is more than willing to point out problems, but rarely are people willing to propose solutions. I know this is difficult in any context, but I particularly appreciate any conversations in which participants move past identifying problems and start thinking about responses. Here's to creativity, hard work, and personal responsibility and engagement.

Moving on

This past weekend we moved, again. It gets easier and easier every time, as we shed things that we really don't need. It reminds me of the scene from Up in the Air when George Clooney talks about putting your life in a backpack and how all of your stuff weighs you down. Well, our backpack just got a little lighter.

Before leaving the house in Kenscoff, Ben and I went mountain biking around the area, through dirt roads and on some nice singletrack. We're scheming about making a movie about biking in Haiti and we're looking really great places to film, so we took the video camera along to see how these places looked on film...well, errr, digital film? Needless to say, the locals all have something to say and want you to give them "a little gift of your bike" as you pedal by.

The best part of the ride, though, was one particularly sketchy part of the trail. Ben went down it, and then got out the camera to shoot me coming down. I waited for a woman passing by, who stopped and told me "not to fall down into the rocky chasm to my right." I laughed, said I wouldn't, and thanked her for the advice. I threw my leg over the bike, and as my foot landed on the ground on the other side...there was no ground on the other side. All of my weight had been behind that foot landing on solid ground, and the "ground" I was aiming for turned out to be just a hole covered over by long grass. Ah, the aforementioned rocky chasm! I tumbled down the nasty rocky hole, and by some sheer stroke of luck, mostly landed on my feet some 8 feet or so below where I had been standing a half second earlier. I had cut open my hand earlier in the week, and of course the fall ripped off the scab and blood came pouring out, uck.

All who watched were amused by the white guy on a bike falling off a little cliff, which guaranteed they would watch us as much as they could. They started hiking ahead to the next semi-dangerous-looking section to sit down and wait for us to come by and fall again. It was sort of like NASCAR where the audience is there for the wreck, or hockey where everyone is there for the fight...well, in mountain biking in Haiti, everyone is there for the crash.

Anyhow, we disappointed them time and again since there were no more wrecks to speak of for the day - and we found some really amazing places to get on video. We went back on Sunday to search out a trail to another mountain we had spotted earlier, but when we arrived at the valley it was all fogged in and raining and the visibility was just about 0%. We followed a few trails, but since we couldn't see where we were going, we didn't make it to the correct mountain. We may try to scare up a spare GPS to use or scope it out more with Google Earth.

In other news, the caretaker of Bella made an appearance and left some food for her. The owner is away in Miami and had indeed arranged for someone to take care of the dog. So, no kidnapped dog for us, since she seems to be sufficiently looked after. That, and the fact that when she comes into the house she pees. There are like 12 million rural acres in Kenscoff, and she prefers peeing on the floor inside the house. Go figure. (Yes, I know, I could train it out of her, but along with the fact that she has not been abandoned, I'm not going to spend the time to train her, - also, as you may remember from way back in line 1, we have moved.)

So we're living in Petionville now, in Josh and Marylynn's/Pancha's/Kurt's old place. More on the "new" place later - it has a pretty cool flat roof that we can hang out on and an open sun room out front for plants. Maybe some pics to come - all this reading is probably driving everyone crazy...where are the photos?

Here's one to get you started...

In the doghouse now.

Last night Sharon and I had the pleasure of hosting our friend Jeremiah on his last night in Haiti. He's been working with a program in Gresier outside of PaP. He met us at the office, went to the market with Sharon, and welded with Ben and me. We stopped at the overlook in Boutilliers on the way up to Kenscoff, made supper together, and - but I know all of you are waiting with bated breath for news about our new dog friend Bella.

Once we arrived at home last night she came running (and shaking) up to us. This dog is about as nervous as you can get, and always pretty cautious of humans. Smart dog: most dogs get hit a lot in Haiti so she has plenty of justification for being afraid of us. After she shook her skinny nervous body over to us, she seemed hungry and thirsty so I gave her some water and a granola bar. (Really, it's all we had.) She was totally excited and proceeded to spend the rest of the night curled up next to Jeremiah and the edge of his sleeping bag trailing on the patio. When we went in for bed she cried and cried, and when we left at 6am the following morning there she was eager to greet us... and eat a few pieces of bread.

It looks like the neighbor, also known as the dog's owner, seems to be absent. So there's no one to feed the dog or give it water. Really, who abandons a dog? Anyhow, my new theory is that the owner is MIA and since we love the dog more we should rescue her from her negligent owner. (I just looked at the implications of this possible decision and it is indeed easier for a Haitian dog to enter the USA than a Haitian. Dogs don't take other people's jobs, I guess, but they may unfairly compete for resources at PetCo. Hmmm.)

Well, not to be too philosophical, but it does raise the question: why am I willing to care for a dog more readily than a person in need? Is it just because the needs are so much more finite and easier to address? Is it that dogs don't ask me for help six times an hour? Maybe animals are just easier to deal with than people sometimes. Maybe I should have a softer heart. Whatever the answer is,I'm wondering what it would mean if this is the only life I save in Haiti.

Getting published is so last century...

Yesterday afternoon we stopped to pick up a few groceries at the supermarket. While we loaded up the truck, we were approached by a smiling young man selling photocopies of a poem his brother had written. Well, how could we resist?

After the Night

While we contemplated the tender smiles of the new year
Announcing an arrival
beautiful curves full of gaiety
New horizons of all shades

We hoped for coming days of light
evenings of illumination


Oh! It's too terrible to imagine
that such misfortune draws up,
that the trigger of destiny awaited us
packed away our souls. The hearts of our fellows
collapse, dreams absorbed by despair
shaving a third of the seedlings sown over the years

We are suddenly lost
in the density of shadows
We need a candle
we even lost the stars

When evil was sown
Hope already germinated
We hope for the coming of the dawn

after the night, the sun always rises

Lazy blogger

Since the earthquake I've been pretty reticent to post a non-earthquake-related post. Sharon has really insightful posts about trade inequality, as do A&B. Maybe I'm not quite as philosophical or well-spoken but I know I am earthquake (EQ) fatigued, and after being around post-EQ Port-au-Prince and working for a development/aid NGO I just can't bring myself to then sit down and write about it as well. On that note, and with Sharon's encouragement, I am going to rejoin the blogosphere.

As you may know we are living up in the mountains above PaP, and it's about an hour drive to our mountain chalet. Last night Pancha came up with us to spend the night and enjoy the cold mountain air. We had a good time hanging out, and upon our departure this morning I realized I had locked the keys in the car last night. We poked around the truck for a way to get in, but I coincided my first keys in the truck experience with my first-fully-successful locking of all four doors experience. We tried the ol' clothes hanger trick and then moved on to trying to grab the inside door handle through the seam of the door. After several tries I actually managed to grab the handle and pulled as hard as I could and ....nothing. Apparently it's one of those vehicles that makes you lift the little thing, then pull the lever - I know, so 1990s, right? Some cars don't even have keys anymore, and here I am stuck with one that doesn't pop its own lock when the latch is pulled. What about emergency exits? I smell a Toyota recall here.

After that didn't work, we called down to the office and asked them to send the back-up key up to us. Actually, I asked Ben to bring it up as I could think of no one else willing to drive 1 hour up a mountain just to turn around again. That's what friends are for. We didn't make Ben go down right away - while we waited we made some coffee and offered Ben a complimentary cup of Joe for his rescue services. After the java we made our way down the hill, a mere two hours late to start our workday. Sorry MCC.

While we were drinking coffee and waiting for Ben, the neighbor's dog made her way up to our house to inspect our goings-on with the truck and general laying-about that had then ensued. I have a soft spot for black lab puppies, and although she's not 100% the neighbor-dog is enough of a lab to make you miss your very own skinny lab puppy of yesteryear. We let her in the house - by the way, her name is Bella - and she was super nervous inside, so she's most likely not allowed in her owner's house. We are now the neighbors that spoil the neighbor kids. I'm all ready to buy dog treats for her just to woo her over to our house as often as her owner will let her.

I know I said I didn't want to talk about EQ-related things, but just a quick story about my day to day. Each day we get people that come to the office. They hear people talking on a tap-tap about MCC and that MCC is amazing and give aid that is new (not secondhand goods) and give aid in a way that is respectful to Haitians, with no guns, no batons and no threats.

(First, why are people surprised that we are giving away new items? Shouldn't nice new items be the norm? Obviously not. Also, people are pleasantly surprised we arrive for distributions without a UN security detail. I won't go on, but it's sad when people are surprised by these things, as they should be the norm.)

Back to my story. We get people every day that represent communities throughout the area, roughly 10 per day. Each has a heart-wrenching letter about the devastation in their community and the total lack of aid they have received because they are not in a big camp visible from a road. They have handwritten lists of names of families, with ages, gender, etc. Hand. Written. When was the last time you wrote 5-6 pages by hand? They all ask that we come to their communities to see the need and assure me that once we see their communities there is no way we could refuse help. Ugh. Unfortunately, when you do the math, 10 letters per day X an average of 500 people per community = 5,000 new people in need every day. Not counting weekends, that's 25,000 new people in need each week. You see where I am going. These people are asking for shelter, food, whatever they can find. I am in the delicate position, along with several others, of having to decide who finds and who does not find aid. Ugh.

That's it for now.

Meditations on trade and development (or, please excuse the following preachiness)

Lately all signs point to this topic: the value of trade over aid.

One. A few weeks ago I finished reading The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. While the discussion of disaster capitalism was alarming (and maddening), I was struck more by Klein's depiction of what happens after a country's financial system collapses. Humanitarian aid and relief organizations rush in to address the poverty, lack of educational access, compromised local markets, and host of other social problems that result from privatization and low import tariffs. I support these humanitarian missions (obviously) as stopgap efforts, but how much more effective would we be if we kept our eye on the policy ball? If we preemptively advocated for just trade around the world? If we combated poverty by preventing it?

Two. While at home on stress leave, Bryan and I checked out Black Gold, the 2006 documentary about the international coffee trade. In tracing coffee from the fields of Ethiopia to the espresso cups of New York and Italy, the film's strongest moment is at an international trade forum. Representatives from disadvantaged countries argue forcefully that what they want is trade, not aid: they want the chance to receive a fair wage for hard work.

Three. Last night the Bob Edwards Show featured an interview with Iqbal Quadir, founder of the Legatum Center at MIT and GrameenPhone in Bangladesh. He's an advocate of business and technology as a way to fight poverty, and while there are clear pitfalls to that approach I appreciated his emphasis on developing human potential as a way to create opportunities for people to help themselves. In the interview he advocated market-based solutions that allow people to carefully utilize their time (e.g., Americans can be more "productive" than their Bangladeshi counterparts because of time-saving technology) and that respond to actual needs in a community (e.g, bicycles are welcome in areas not served by public transport). He pointed out that education is often named as a panacea - but that the educated few often leave their homelands in search of opportunities to use those educations when the local markets aren't strong enough to hold them. He also argues that international aid doesn't always reach the populace, whereas microfinance and small business stimulation focuses exactly on that group of people.

Okay, so these are obviously simplistic renderings of complex ideas, and I'm conscious of the need to not conceptualize market-based development or trade policy reform as a silver bullet. However, I like the idea of trying to level the international playing field just a bit through trade reform, and I heartily support the idea of small business development that allows people to find their own, dignified way to support themselves (hint: that does not involve standing in long lines waiting for food handouts).

Yes, the earthquake is different, and material and food aid are highly appropriate and much-needed at the moment. I am just wary of development organizations getting comfortable with giving handouts to Haitians, with not engaging the many Haitian voices that should shape the vision for a reconstructed Port-au-Prince, and with continuing to disregard the structural policies that make Haiti more unlevel than any earthquake could.

(A caveat for those of you agreeing with me: taking on unjust trade policies means reshaping our American spending habits. Are we willing to vote on this with our dollars?)

Last week I heard someone joke that Haiti has experienced two earthquakes: first the one that struck on January 12, and then the invasion of foreigners here to "help." Let's hope the aftershocks of the second won't upstage the terrible first.

"Memory at 'The Modern'"

We had seen bare land
And the people bare on it
And men camp
In the city. The lights,
The pavement, this important device
Of a race, I wrote then,
Twenty three years old,
Remains till morning. Nobody knows who died
On the road of that time, of the fact of roads.
I am a man of the Thirties

'no other taste shall change this'

- George Oppen
from New Collected Poems, page 295