Category: Writing

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A Usable Past

Angelus Novus —Paul Klee. Labelled “The Angel of History” by Walter Benjamin

In her book Future Histories, Lizzie O’Shea credits Van Wyck Brooks with coining the term usable past. Brooks wrote, “The present is a void and the American writer floats in that void because the past that survives in the common mind of the present is a past without living value.”

O’Shea goes on to point out that, for young people in particular, the past can feel like a dead weight, there to hold us back from creating our future. But she warns us not to ignore the past. If we do, it survives “…as a default genealogy, a mere reflection of the status quo, fixed and irrelevant.”

That term default genealogy struck me as much as the concept of a usable past.

Default means our choice is already filled in for us. That’s why the vast majority of documents generated on MS Word all look alike, Calibri font, 1 inch margins, single spaced. Default also means failure to fulfill an obligation or a debt. By choosing the default history, we are defaulting on our obligation to create and harness a usable past.

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Remain in Mexico

View from La Roca Shelter

 

Getting to the La Roca shelter took some doing. A steep street followed by sets of steps to get us to the rock on which the shelter was built. Francisco (Pancho) Olachea Martin loaded our group into his ambulance, named after his daughter Cristina, and drove up the street. He even used the siren for kicks. That’s the kind of guy he is. The ambulance was tight for nine people, a couple of benches and a stretcher. In the front, a few drawers with bandages and a bin labeled “Various Meds.”

The fun of the ambulance ride evaporated the moment we saw the first room at the shelter, reserved for women and children. It was a dim, narrow space, maybe ten feet across. It looked like it was occupied before it was ready. Some wiring hung loose. An old stove provided some heat. Bunk beds took up most of the floor space. The remaining floor space was taken up by belongings and blankets. If the ambulance was tight, this room was even more cramped. The women and their children spent most of their days in this cramped space waiting for their turn at the border. There was an outdoor rec space, but we were told it was unsafe because of cartel surveillance. Continue reading “Remain in Mexico”

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La Roca Restaurant and Bar

This is the first of a series of pieces I wrote, reflecting on my time at the Conference “Common Ground on the Border” and in southern Arizona.

Visiting a nice restaurant seemed a strange way to end the Nogales field trip to visit migrants, asylum seekers and deportees in Mexico. Sure, it was past lunch time and I was hungry. Maybe a taco stand would have been more appropriate. But La Roca Restaurant and Bar it was.

The place got its name from the rock grotto that forms one side of the dining room. The carved stone arched up to a high ceiling where massive wooden joists held up the roof. Night blue walls cast the room a somber light, and dark amber woodwork of the doors and windows further added to an ambiance of history that probably never happened. Continue reading “La Roca Restaurant and Bar”

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No War With Iran

No War With Iran

At the beginning of a new decade, we find ourselves, again, at the brink of war with Iran. This time, the inciting incident was President Trump’s assassination by drone of Major General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

This assassination represents a major escalation in the ongoing conflict between the US and Iran over the future of Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Setting aside the legal questions relating to the assassination—the administration was quick to add the words “imminent threat” to all its press releases in a feeble effort to invoke some notion of self defense after the fact (never mind that the UN Charter allows self defense only when an attack occurs)—the more important question here is yet again a US misreading of the larger dynamics in that part of the world.

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