Dios Tenia Miedo (God Was Afraid) by Vanessa Núñez Handal

Salvadoran author, Vanessa Núñez Handal, who lives in Guatemala, has written an exceptional book about the civil war in El Salvador. Below is a brief synopsis.

The civil war in El Salvador (1979-1992) was perhaps the last to be labeled by either side as a “cold war” conflict. While the Berlin wall was being torn down, and Mikhail Gorbachev was espousing the policies of glasnost ("openness") and perestroika ("restructuring"), the United States government was providing large amounts of military aid to the repressive government of El Salvador to battle rebels it labeled as communists.

Caught in the middle of this conflict were middle class urban families like that of Natalia, the protagonist of “God Was Afraid”. Natalia looks back upon her childhood during the war, feeling shame that her parents rigidly followed the government’s anti-communist line, while also recognizing that doing anything less likely would have led to either exile or death. The story of Natalia, her family and friends is told as a series of essays about experiences during the war and reflections about it afterward. It is an extraordinary in-their-own-words account of the Salvadoran civil war and the open wounds left by it that may never heal.

I found her book so moving, I wanted to share it with my English speaking friends. So I contacted the author and ended up translating it myself, finishing my first draft in February of 2015. So far we have not found an English-language publisher, but maybe some day!

Six Word Poems

Five words are not enough.
Seven are just a bit too wordy.

Some six word poems:

Still, despite my best efforts, here.

If moving then shoot else done

Will, he looked up, you help?

Still you but without the memories.

Believe me, trust me, I lied.

Forgiveness is extraordinary

Hate is commonplace.
I hate the guy who cut me off in traffic.

Violence is the norm.
The arm that wielded the club now cradles the machine gun.

But the love of humankind, despite our flaws,
which allows a person to forgive the one
who murdered their relative or friend.

That is important.
That is transcendent.
That is extraordinary!

Thank you for helping me to once again believe
that we humans might be worth saving.

Latest News on Regents’ Restructuring of the University of Wisconsin - Madison

(The following story is not based on any facts. It is pure speculation and I sincerely hope it does not come to pass. But I didn’t think Act 10 would be enacted either!)

At their most recent meeting, the Board of Regents has ruled that all faculty and researchers of the University of Wisconsin - Madison departments of Biochemistry, Botany and Zoology shall be laid off, effective immediately. The three departments will be combined to form the new Department of Creation Science. A worldwide search for top-notch Creationist academics to staff the new department is already underway.

The University of Wisconsin Department of Medicine and Public Health and the University Hospital and Clinics have been instructed to lay off all researchers and practitioners involved in embryonic stem cell research or any applications of that research. Researchers investigating or using adult stem cells only may be retained at the discretion of the Department and Hospital.

The following words and phrases will not be used in any future University of Wisconsin publications or other documents, including lecture notes:

    evolution
    natural selection
    embryonic stem cell(s)
    climate change
    global warming

Existing publications and other documents containing the above words or phrases are required to remove them either electronically or by covering them with permanent magic marker.

The Morgridge Institute and Discovery Center is hereby renamed the Scott Walker Institute for the Dissemination of Creationist Thought, and repurposed to promote Christian values and creationist theory. Staff changes will be made as appropriate for the repurposed center.

Next week the Board will meet to discuss further restructuring of the University System, specifically in the broad areas of the humanities and social sciences.

Note: Several faculty members attending the Board of Regents meeting pointed out that the University of Wisconsin - Madison does not have a Department of Biology. Therefore the Board's resolution to replace the Department of Biology with the Department of Creation Science was altered to the wording shown above.

The definition of is:

infinitely complex,
profoundly simple,
it depends.

Still Jan, just a limited edition

My sister Jan Jefferson has been diagnosed with Frontotemporal Dementia (her preliminary diagnosis had been early-onset Alzheimer’s). She now lives in a memory care facility in the Madison area because she is no longer able to live by herself.

Unlike the protagonist of the book and movie, “Still Alice”, Jan was never a Harvard professor. Her story is much more blue collar, but equally compelling and equally tragic.

Many Madisonians will remember her as a 25-year Madison firefighter and paramedic. She saved lives, and comforted those she couldn’t save, in their last moments of life. She was part of that first group of women who broke the gender barrier to join the city’s Fire Department.

Prior to that, she earned a degree in early-childhood education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and taught at a local daycare. Later she worked at the General Motors auto assembly plant in Janesville, and played rugby with the UW-Madison club team.

But I mostly remember her as my cool older sister. The one who took the time to try to teach her nerdy brother to dance in grade school, so that he might be just a little bit cool, or at least less nerdy.

She was a highschool cheerleader - what athletic young women did in the pre-Title Nine days. But her passion was softball. She played on a summer 4-H coed team, and was a better player than most of the boys, including me.

When I joined the Peace Corps, after college, she wrote me letters regularly. This was in the pre-internet, pre-wireless days, and the towns where I was stationed had no phone service. She even visited me in El Salvador, and we spent a month traveling, and enjoying each other’s company.

I have so many great memories of Jan! How many memories of her incredibly active and useful life does she retain? It is impossible to know. She can still recite the lyrics to some old songs. She still loves little children, and animals, and visits from her old firefighter buddies and family.

But the bulk of the remembering, we have to do for her, because her dementia has robbed her of those memories. I’m sad for her and for all of us who know her. Too much of Jan has been taken from us way too soon!

Color Blindness

I've been trying to wrap my mind around the political catch phrase "color blindness". I get the basic idea that the phrase suggests, that we should ignore the color of each others' skin (and presumably the corresponding ethnic heritage) in our political dealings. In a utopian world somewhere, it would be that simple to ensure justice and fairness for all.

But in the world of the here and now, it's not that simple. First, how far does this concept extend? Are we also supposed to have "gender blindness", "religion blindness", "gender preference blindness", "disability blindness", "last name blindness", "clothing and jewelry blindness"? If one or more of these extensions strike you as absurd, you are experimenting a bit of the confusion that I experience.

Is the best way to handle diversity to ignore it, pretend we don't notice it, and expect (possibly demand) that others do the same?

We in the USA have always been a diverse bunch. From the Pilgrims, Puritans and Quakers; from the southern plantation owners and northern merchants; from the farmers, fishermen and sailors of our founding times, to the ethnic, cultural and religious diversity of today. Rather than ignore it why not celebrate it? We are the most diverse nation in the world, and should be proud of it!

So let's relegate "color blindness" to describing an unfortunate genetic defect that limits the sufferer's enjoyment of the full spectrum of colors most of us enjoy. And stop the political usage which discourages us from a full appreciation of our glorious diversity.

code poetry?

I’ve always been interested in writing. I even wrote a handful of poems in my pre-computer-geek days. But I never thought I could make a living “just writing” so, shortly after getting married, I went back to school in search of a practical profession.

It wasn’t long before I stumbled upon computer programming, and began a 30-plus year career writing code and being well paid for it. Eventually I even managed to get paid for teaching others to write code!

After retiring from the teaching position, I decided to take up writing again. But wait, had I really ever given it up? No, I’ve merely been writing in different languages (Fortran, C, Perl, PHP) instead of English; and for a different audience (compilers, interpreters and co-workers) instead of the general English-speaking public.

I’ve been writing code prose instead of English prose. I would not say that any of my code has risen to the level of code poetry, but I had no doubt about its existence. This was before I googled “code poetry” and discovered that an entire community and literature by that name exists. One can not question its legitimacy since it has a Wikipedia article, and one can easily find an example on the internet: “Black Perl” by Larry Wall. (Yes, the Larry Wall who created the Perl programming language!)

Still, I believe I will choose to pursue a somewhat larger audience than just compilers, interpreters and the code poetry community. Henceforth the bulk of my prose will be in English (y tal vez Español).

Brothers

A youngest brother had an oldest brother who was harsh and brutal with him.

The youngest labored under the oldest long and hard, winning neither wealth nor compassion.

The youngest gave one hand to his labor, and the oldest returned no compassion.

Long years later the oldest died, and none grieved more than the youngest.

I can’t yet imagine the death of a brother.

What part of divide and conquer didn't you understand?

I used to believe that Governor Walker just wanted to take Wisconsin back to a 1950's economy. I was way too optimistic. His current budget proposal and the initiatives of his legislative allies make it clear he wants to go back a lot farther, like pre John L. Lewis, pre Teddy Roosevelt, back to the golden age of monopoly capitalism. We're headed back to the days of coal barons, railroad barons, lumber barons and those unregulated slaughterhouses of "The Jungle".

I address myself in particular to those of you in the labor force who were perfectly OK with Act 10. After all those public employees had it too good, were too smug, etc. State employees are such a convenient whipping boy!

I bet you didn't think "divide and conquer" meant you, did you? Now there are essentially no public employee unions left to help out in the fight against right-to-work. How can you possibly be surprised?

Governor Walker told his wealthy contributors exactly what he planned to do, and now he's doing it. Of course he didn't campaign on what he actually intended to do. As his buddy Scott Fitzgerald is now saying, you don't want to give those about to be conquered any notice. They would then try to defend themselves, and we don't want that!

I could go on... About how the DNR will no longer have scientists who could disagree with those in the employ of the monopoly capitalist and delay letting him do whatever. About how it is much safer for the monopoly capitalist if we get rid of that pesky Wisconsin Idea thing. A limited amount of training is all folks need to work for the monopoly capitalist, and we sure don't want a lot of critical thinking going on.

I could write my State Senator to complain, but my State Senator is Scott Fitzgerald. So it goes.

I sure hope you non-monopoly capitalists who voted for Walker wake up soon, while we still have a right to vote, even with photo-ID.

Yahoo Being Too Helpful

This reminds me of the infamous Microsoft animated paperclip. It would auto-correct my lowercase to init-caps and then appear on the screen to ask, "Are you writing a letter?" when I was trying to write some SQL code in Word (not having a good programming editor handy) and absolutely did NOT want it to auto-correct anything.

Anyway, it used to be that regardless of where I was in the world, I had access to the US English web page (you know the default one that is just www.yahoo.com). Now the clever Yahoo folks have decided that if their location data tells them that I am connecting from Costa Rica (which I freely admit that I am), I could not possibly really want the US English language site, so they override my selection and give me espanol.yahoo.com . I tried both the Firefox and Chrome browsers. Yup, they've fixed it! No more browsing the US English site from Costa Rica.

And there is not even a visible manifestation that I can direct my anger toward. No animated paperclip, just invisible, anonymous yahooligans busily fixing what wasn't broken. Thanks but no thanks guys!

But ha! I can trick you back, by impersonating either a Canadian (ca.yahoo.com) or a British person (uk.yahoo.com) I can have my Yahoo in English. Though I am left wondering what subtle differences you yahooligans incorporate in the site for the benefit of a Canadian or a Britain that would be different if you were able to treat me as a plain old US English speaker, regardless of my geographic location.

In Love

The two were not young and full of passion, nor old and in need of comforting

But within 30 seconds I could observe from the gentle touch of his hand on hers,

and the smiles of satisfaction she returned to him,

That the two were very much at peace with each other and the world.

Is it possible this is enough for some?

Do not conflicting passions or never resting curiosity upset the balance?

Are they Darwins, bold and never resting in intellectual pursuit yet reserved and content in sexual love?

Or have they made peace with all the universe as they understand it …

… living their lives out sans conflict.

Note: The couple I observed, “In Love” was a middle-aged couple that I encountered on the train during one of my many trips between Atiocoyo and San Salvador in 1975.

Translating is Not as Easy as I Thought

For the first time, I am translating a book from Spanish to English. How hard could it be? I’m a native English speaker, and I read and speak Spanish pretty well.

The answer is, it’s much harder than I thought. First, it is a book that I think is important enough that English-speaking readers should have access to it. So I am motivated to do the best possible translation, not just to be a bit better than Bing Translator (aka. Bablefish)!

Second, it is an in-their-own-words type of book, so there are plenty of slang and colloquial expressions. Fortunately, the author is Salvadoran, and nearly all of the voices she writes in are also Salvadoran, since I lived in El Salvador for two years and thus know much of the slang. But there’s always expressions I don’t know! I found a very useful online resource at: “Linguee” (http://www.linguee.pe/) When I think a phrase might be slang or a colloquialism, I enter it there. It has already helped me out quite a few times.

Third, you have to be careful about translating into slang and colloquialisms in English too. I’m sure there are some expressions I could use that would leave you scratching your head unless you happen to also be from central Wisconsin and within 10 years of my age! Yet you would like the voice in English to resemble the original Spanish voice, and not that of an academic explaining what the guy said!

I found a good Spanish/English dictionary online at: http://www.wordreference.com I find myself looking up more Spanish words than I would have expected. Even when I know what the word means in English, I often look it up anyway in the hope of finding a synonym that fits the context better.

The book I’m translating could be described as a historical novel, so I find myself trying to get additional information about the historical events mentioned. Wikipedia has proven to be a good resource for this, although I’m somewhat shocked at how much richer and better the description of Latin American history is in the Spanish version of Wikipedia than in the English version. If I ever feel like I don’t have enough to do, I suppose I could work on that!