Who Says Librarians Don't Have Fun

See the Pictures!

2005-07-31T06:23:00.000-07:00

Until I migrate to WordPress or something equally cool, see the whole extravaganza and then some at Open Windows - Tales of an Itinerant Librarian

June 26, 2004

2004-06-26T06:31:00.000-07:00

So that’s it. There’s only so much you can do and observe in 10 days. One thing is certain: cataloging is not a simple business. And it is equally arduous explaining to non-librarians why this is so. So often during this project, I was asked what the hold up was—why I couldn’t use cataloging in publication or just make up numbers. Again and again, I found myself looking to my textbooks trying to find support for what librarians know: that CIP is merely a guideline, that much depends on a specific collection and that what one cataloger may describe as a book on mental illness (150 – Psychology), another may describe as a sociological study (304—Factors affecting social behavior). Cataloging practice may be as different as one person’s taste for meat and another’s for tofu. But of course, as a professional, you know this. Being in school we hear it all the time. But out in the world, even people who you think would understand this (and by this I really mean people who’ve been to college or who read a lot), don’t. Still, as many humanitarian organizations seem to have realized, aid is best when the aider doesn’t just do everything for the aidees; that is, we help create a model then move on to help elsewhere. No more is this more applicable than in setting up the library in San Miguel Duenas. I was not there long enough to thoroughly assess the community’s needs. However, I saw a good deal and it is my hope that by giving them a framework such as Dewey, the children will begin to understand the notion of access control, that they will be able to find the books and resources that will help them learn about the world and that they will, in turn, pass on what they learn to their friends and neighbors.
Even if this happens, they will still be poor. Jean told me that one child who comes to the library wants to be a doctor but that most have more modest dreams: enough money buy pencils or vitamins or a birthday present, enough resources to have take care of their own families one day. In short, what I see the library doing is what a library should do: give them a future. Surely every human being is entitled to that.

June 21 - June 23, 2004

2004-06-23T06:32:00.000-07:00

The days pass quickly now in much the same way. A small bit of sight seeing in Antigua, a lot of cataloging and cleaning in Duenas. The last full day of my stay, Jean asks me to go up to the library to bring a new book that’s come via the Airline Ambassadors. It’s mid-afternoon and I’m feeling lazy. Besides, the sky looks as though it’s about to burst and empty all the water that ever was. The night before it had rained buckets and the power was off for awhile. To a hearty Midwestern farm girl like me, this isn’t a big deal. Summer rains are something you live with. What is a bit nerve wracking is that the roads have tendency to wash out here. But Jean really wants me to go and make sure that the folks up at the library know what do when a new book comes. So I go.

I wait awhile until a bus for Duenas arrives. Sure enough it goes past the finca, winds up the hill, makes a few tight turns. Then, abruptly, it stops. I’ve seen this spot before but always as the bus was wheezing its way up towards Duenas. Now, apparently it’s the end of line of this bus. I believe this is Ciudad Vieja.

The few school kids left trickle off. The bus driver and conductor look at me—ah, you thought this bus was going to Duenas, they laugh jovially, it’s not. I’m sure they’re having me on but after a bit of fancy maneuvering, they turn the bus around, point it down the hill and with a small apologetic puff of smoke, it’s gone.

Now, I suppose there might be some circumstance when you’d say to yourself, gee I’m glad to be in Cuidad Vieja waiting for a bus just before the rainstorm of the century—something to do with it being the only place left on earth. In the normal course of events, however, you probably wouldn’t find yourself standing alone staring at the sagging grey clouds with no idea when the next bus might arrive and say to yourself, “Well thank God, I’m here.” There doesn’t seem to be anyone around; few cars pass by. Finally an older man, bent and wrinkled comes around the corner and stops for minute. “Perdon. Senor,” I have been told that begging pardon like this is the way to win friends and influence people in Spanish. “¿Sabe Usted si el autobus por Duenas pasa aqui? The minute it’s out of my mouth, I think wrong! You said saber instead of conocer. Oh maybe it’s right and did I conjugate the verb correctly—was that the familiar instead of the formal? Even after 2 weeks, it is a major transaction asking the simplest things. I am quite sure more than a few people wondered what sort of mental institutions they run in the States.
But the Senor seems to know what I mean and he’s not offended. A light passes over his face, he smiles and says "Si. El camioneta pasa aqui." He makes a sweeping motion with his hands in the general direction of the street. He tells me just to wait, it will be along. He seems pleased to have helped. That’s the thing here, people will help though I’m most comfortable with babies and old men; anyone else and I’m totally out of my league.

As rain begins to fall more earnestly, I try and find somewhere out of it while at the same time remaining visible to the bus. Within 15 minutes, Esmeralda, a Duenas buses comes. This second bus has an older driver and a young fare taker. This fareman is what your Spanish grammar calls guapo (handsome) or at least HE thinks he is. He’s only about my height with slicked-back hair, tight jeans on a wiry build, a white shirt. I give him 1Q and I know I should be getting change-- a lot-- but he pockets the coin and continues hopping down the aisle. I glare at him. I feel my cultural superiority rear its ugly head. And when he heads back towards the front of the bus, I stop him. “Those jeans are a lousy imitation of the ones WE get from China. You think you can rip me off because I’m a gringa. Well, I know how to make change don’t you, you jerk!” Actually, I don’t, but I do give him a pointed stare and a little smirk when I get off the bus.
Here we are at the end of the line in Duenas. I scurry up the street to the library, sheltering the new book “Océano uno color diccionario enciclopédico” under my arm.

It’s busy inside. Lilian is working with some kids. I briefly interrupt to say a new book has come. She doesn’t look especially happy about this, but offers to stop her instruction and catalog it. I know this is what Jean had in mind, but tell her, no, you can do it later. I snap a few pictures and on the way out, see Dalia. I tell her thank you for letting me play in your library and make it a big mess (why do I try these jokes when my Spanish is so poor?) Ae you leaving, she asks, going back to Jean’s? Yes, I’m leaving but going back to my house (mi casa en los estados unidos). I tell her I miss my daughter but want to come back Duenas if they would like me to. Oh yes, she says, and bring your daughter next time, we’ll be waiting to meet her. Dalia is so sweet.

The same driver -conductor team operate the bus back down to Antigua and I’m delighted to report the conductor has dripped his lunch of over the front of his white shirt. This time, I get my change.

June 20, 2004

2004-06-20T06:38:00.000-07:00

Sunday I head back and work for 5 solid hours. At noon, I go out to take a few pictures. When I come back I feel discouraged: it looks as though I’ve done so little but really, this is a big job. Maybe more than one person can do in 2 weeks. Just as I’m becoming maudlin, Claire, Tere’s daughter knocks on the gate. She’s come to collect me with her son Joey, an 18 month old who’s pure delight (I write this because I’m not his mother and thoroughly enjoy his no, no noing to everything and the fact that he speaks Spanish about as well as I do). We drive back to Panorama and I settle in to read a trashy novel brought from the States.

June 19, 2004

2004-06-19T06:43:00.000-07:00

It’s all work and no playing around. Saturday morning I catch the bus about 10. I should tell you a little more about San Miguel Duenas. The town is five miles southwest of Antigua—that’s about an hour’s walk over very busy dusty roads at the foot of Acatenango volcano. Its mainstays were coffee, sugarcane and miscellaneous agricultural stuffs, but now I’m not so sure. You can still see the fincas, but I don’t know how much coffee they actually produce. During the civil war, there was some trouble.

Duenas isn’t a very big: roughly 12,000 people and another 2,000 displaced or homeless. Despite its apparent poverty (many of the homes have no running water and there is a communal washing spot just beyond the library), the mountains are lush and green with many vistas of the mountains, all beneath impressive, sculptured clouds and baking sun. About a mile outside of town there’s an organic macadamia nut farm run by a nutty American. I wondered why travelers were getting off the bus before Duenas in what appeared to be forest. Then I went home and read the guidebook. Apparently, you can go for a tour and learn all the secrets There is a main cobbled-stoned drag right up to the volcano, and even with the cobbles and ruts the trucks and cars manage roar up it. The library is a short walk from the bus station and even inside you can feel the road trembling under the weight of traffic.

Before you even get to Duenas, there is a fine expanse of newly paved road, some glorious scenery and several impossible intersections. That road is a mixed blessing--speed bumps grace the Duenas city limits. In any case, it was apparently awhile in coming. In 1996 when the government and guerrillas signed a peace accord, the government chased in its bounty – millions of dollars from its wealthy trading partners and bought asphalt –tons of it. But some government official or group of them decided to spare Chapin workers the wearisome task of laying steaming tar in the hot sun and pocketed the money instead.

Money and aid in the form of blankets, books and food goes missing all the time here. Someone at Jean and Tere’s house recounted the story of a baker they knew who wanted to donate excess honey buns to hungry children. He contacted the secretary of the Ministry of Culture in charge of these things. She told him, yes, of course she would take care of it, if only he would have the 1,000 or so buns delivered to her offices. Needless to say, the donation was never made. But this sort of story is common in Guatemala. With a parade of corrupt leaders, the country could be a study in mismanagement and oppression. Recently, Guatemala had an hour of glory when it refused Rios Montt, the man whose military regime ordered the slaughter of thousands during the country’s most violent years, the chance to re-install himself as president. In fact, they ran him out of the country. The man they got, Oscar Berger, is perhaps better. But Guatemalans, if you can get them to even speak of politics will look over their shoulders, lean over conspiratorially and whisper that all their politicians are crooked.

Anyway, you need to pass through town to get to Acatenango and since many tourists do just that, residents are used to seeing them. Not that they come in big bunches, but they do come. Also, Open Windows draws its share of volunteers from around the world and I found some of the kids in the library to be what, almost jaded in their outlook on people from elsewhere. So Saturday isn’t too bad. I drag the fan from the computer room into the main library and begin the process of dusting the shelves and books, sorting and cataloging.

By 4.30 I’m beat and though I’ve washed my hands a dozen times, they are sticky and faintly grey from the ashy dust that settles over everything. I head home on a very crowded bus and miss the stop by a few hundred feet. In all the time I am there, I will never, ever get the hang of the bus. Do I tell them Panorama is the stop or Calle de Alianza or San Pedro?

June 18, 2004

2004-06-18T06:49:00.000-07:00

Back to work at the library. Today, Tere and Jean ferry me up. I think Jean fears I’ve made a bigger mess than was already there. To be truthful, I fear that too. Lilian and I work to sort out the English books and pull their cards, an arduous task since one box of index cards is still pretty much out of order. But by day’s end we have stacked them up on one of the big tables the kids use for doing homework. “Lilian,” I ask, “do you find this work too much?” But the words are so garbled and the look on her face so completely blank that I grab the handy pocket dictionary and start pointing to words. Abburrido? Bored? No, she answers simply but hinting at a level obsequiousness I thought only possible from a teenager who wants the keys to your new convertible. Lilian and Professor Lorenzo pull the book-laden table into the bodega, lock up and we’re on our way.
I pass the evening thinking of nothing and watching English-speaking TV. When it’s time to retire, I scout the room for mosquitoes, as has become my habit, whack a few with a printout of the Dewey summaries, read and call it a day.

June 17, 2004 - still later that afternoon

2004-06-17T15:50:00.000-07:00

I missed the library because the entrance is unmarked and under the same roof as the , a small open door in the huge white face, like a mouth missing a front tooth. And though the front of the building is massive, the interior, at least what the public is allowed into, is the size of some dining rooms I’ve been in. At one end of the room there is a huge table with carved wooden legs.

Dozens of volumes are scattered on it. I don’t know if they’re waiting for cataloging, or a place on the shelves, but the whole place has the disheveled look of my daughter’s room. There is a spare collection of English language books, but they don’t seem to be grouped in any way. And those books that do have labels on the spine seem to employ a kind of hybrid Dewey, one that I am unfamiliar with. It’s almost like Dewey meets LC. I scribbled down a few of the call numbers and titles then promptly lost the paper I wrote them on. I still haven’t found it.

Introducing myself to the two people sitting in the place, I say I’m a librarian from the states who’s come to help in Duenas. This gets approving murmurs and then, because I feel like an idiot, I smile and stroll out into the overheated afternoon in search of an Internet “café.” Here’s the thing: it’s not hard to find one because there are three or four on every block and the question becomes more finding the best deal. It’s weird: the government doesn’t have enough money to put in a drainage pipe in townsbut they have enough to wire up the touristy towns like Antigua. Settling on one that’s close to the bus stop, I walk into what appears to be a stationary store, following the signs to the rear and to a space the size of a large closet. Probably it was a closet. It’s about as dark as one, except for the other-worldly glow of computer terminals. There are about six of them, one of which is free if you can wedge yourself into the corner, which I manage. The rest seem to be occupied by pre-pubescent (and not so pubescent) boys playing games. I’m reassured to know that around the world there are kids doing this (in fact, I’m happy to report to you that one of LC’s subject headings is “Geeks (Computer enthusiasts).” (entered in 2000)). But they jab with their elbows and yell in raucous Spanish and somehow I feel that I’ve been plunked back to Miami without my permission. Quickly checking my mail, I pay my Quetzales and head back to the bus and to Panorama.

June 17, 2004 - 2.30 in the afternoon

2004-06-17T14:55:00.000-07:00

Mosquitoes have been snacking on my ankles, it’s a beautiful day and I’m anxious to get out. Rotten Spanish or not, I decide I must go into Antigua alone, without the protection of my kind bilingual friends and prowl around. I walk to the corner and wait for the bus. Two or three of them pass at breakneck speed, leaving a cocktail of dust. The one that stops is moderately crowded, the same jolly music is belting out the windows as the previous two.

The fare into town is a little less than 2 Q but I have only large bills. Some time during the past week, I can’t remember when now, I discovered I’d left my ATM card back in the States. This wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d brought money, but I didn’t. The only cash I had ($40) I’d changed into Quetzales and much of that was already spoken for: the shuttle back to the airport, the exit tax the Guatemalan government charges when you leave the country. What I did have was a MasterCard. But don’t ever, ever believe those commercials that tell you MasterCard is spoken here or that there are some things that money can’t buy and for everything else there’s MasterCard because it just isn’t so. At least in Antigua. With the help of Julia (Jean’s daughter) and Tere (who ferried us into town and then circled the streets while we tried to find a bank that would let me buy Quetzales with the card) I finally purchase about $100 of currency. But I didn’t think to ask for change. So when I hand the conductor a 50 Quetzal bill, he snarls out something to the effect of “why the hell are you giving me such a big bill” but makes the change.

We pass the Antigua Spa Resort a few miles outside the Antigua city limits. Julia has told me that whenever you see a gringo walking along the side of the road between Panorama and Antigua, you can be sure he’s staying at the Spa. I never go into this place but the Rough Guide to Guatemala deems it “a sumptuous environment” with “volcano views and very attractive rooms with pine furnishings and log fires” There are “lots of opportunities for indulgence in the form of herbal wraps, milk almond baths and body massages.” [1] I don’t know about you, but milk is something I’ve always enjoyed drinking not bathing in. I find it strange to travel this far just to get a massage. Oh well.

I get off the bus too early and walk from Alameda Santa Lucia down Cinco Calle Poniente. There are an amazing number of internet cafes and I start scouting for one with reasonable rates. Before choosing one, I wander towards the central square. As one of the first “planned” cities in the Americas, Antigua is built on a grid pattern. Even with limited Spanish, it isn’t too hard to get one’s bearings: the avenidas run north to south, the calles east and west. There are also those three volcanoes. I remember reading that Agua is the one that dominates and that it is to the south.

I find the Ayuntamiento—city hall—a building of heroic proportions. Its walls are one metre thick and it is one of the few buildings to survive the pageant of earthquakes that have disrupted the city. When the capital moved to Guatemala City in 1779, the building was abandoned. But it was too solid to deteriorate. For awhile it was home to the local police. Now City Hall is back and you can find administrative offices on the second floor as well as a great view of the park and the busy street. On the first floor there are several banks and two museums: the Museo de Santiago, a hodgepodge of everything colonial: scraps of pottery, a sword that allegedly belonged to Pedro deAlvardo, the Spaniard who brought slavery and racist exploitation to the country, traditional Mayan weapons and some paintings. There’s an old city jail here where condemned prisoners once spent their last hours before being marched out to the central plaza and hung.

The one I can’t refuse is the Museo del Libro Antigua. (Antigua Book Museum ). In these very rooms, the first printing press in Central America found a home. You might not have thought it, but Antigua was the Mainz of the Central American isthmus, busily pumping out books and other printed materials. In 1600, a Gutenberg-type press arrived from Puebla de los Angles in Mexico, only the third one to find its way into the Spanish American colonies.

Though the original press is no longer there, a charming replica sits in the main exhibition room. The museum itself is only three rooms and a lovely interior courtyard full of lush green growing things and flowers. Within those rooms, though there all kinds of aging books – many religious. Like many things in Guatemala, the whole collection seems under-stated. On the walls, there are aging placards describing the history of printing, the printing process and great moments in Antigua publishing. Third room has what we refer to these days as limited edition art books. These have marbled endpapers done in la manera de Japonés. (“in Japanese style,” though with all the gilding and swirling I would have thought the style was Italian).At one time, I bet they were stunning: the golds really gold, the yellows really yellow. But that’s the thing here, I keep getting the impression that once everything was bright and shiny but that it’s all been worn down by the years of heat, repression and volcanic dust.

Further back, there’s another courtyard which it appears is part of a school. I poke my head in. I’m the only person around. It would be a great place to have a nap, but I decide to look around the city some more, say my graciases to the museum attendant and pass out the door.Directly left is the Biblioteca Internacional de Antigua but I don’t know this and climb up the Ayuntamiento stairs instead. Nope. No library here though the balcony is cool and the view pleasing. After resting a few minutes, I go downstairs again to the street which is crowded with tourists and people going about their business. It’s well after lunchtime and it is hot, the kind of hot you feel on your face when you open a 400 degree oven.

Julia had given me some directions for the library, but there’s nothing I can see that fits her description. So I go back up the Ayuntamiento stairs. There’s someone there now and I ask, begging his pardon where the library is. Only it doesn’t come out that way. It’s more like, “Where can one find the librarian?” He offers a kindly smile and I laugh—do I sound like my Spanish grammar book or what? The librarian, he says, can be found in the library and that is over there (pointing to a huge white-washed edifice that only a blind person could miss). Oh thank you very much, and I’m down the stairs and across the street in a minute

[1] Iain Stewart. The Rough Guide to Guatemala. (London: Rough Guides) 2002.

June 17 - Noon

2004-06-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

Home for lunch. In Guatemala, as in many other countries, this is the big meal. But I am not used to eating so much at lunch. I pick at what’s on the table and help myself to many, many tortillas. After lunch, I set up the computer in the courtyard and being working on notes for the library staff. How to condense two years of graduate school into a short, easy to translate paper? Well, you can view the results and judge for yourself Notes for the Library and Its Upkeep.

June 17 - 10 am

2004-06-17T10:03:00.000-07:00

Up late filing cards and reading material I downloaded from OCLC, so I decide to work from Jean’s house part of the day. At 7 A.M., there’s the work bell. I believe it’s from the finca next door. It’s a tired, windy sound-- as tired and repressive as the colonial institution of the coffee plantation-- and it reminds me of the whistle on a child’s electric train set. There is the smell of roasting coffee and burning trash.

Tere and I meet in the kitchen and she tells me that Thursday is market day. I beg her to let me go because, quite frankly three days of filing and shelving has taken its toll. She agrees, no problem. At 9.30 Tere, Maria (the housemaid), Joey (Tere’s 18 month old grandson), Ana (his babysitter) and I pile into the van with half a dozen shopping baskets. We head into Antigua and drop Ana and Joey at one of Tere’s numerous relatives’. Then we’re off to the market.

The Thursday mercado in Antigua is extraordinary; crowded, noisy, a riot of color. There are narrow covered halls specializing in every imaginable edible thing: red tomatoes, small green tomatoes (militomate), chiles, garlic, a whole hallway dedicated to meat. To the left of the food market, a bazaar of tiny dark cubicles from which people sell all manner of brightly woven cloth, jewelry, and leather sandals. It seems incongruous that people so poor have so much agricultural plenty. But this is the thing I’m finding about Guatemala: it’s a place of sharp contrasts and sometimes they juxtaposed so sharply they crash into one another.

In the meantime, I’m plodding after Maria and Tere. Tere leads the way down crowded little corridors. Maria runs (in heels) to keep up with Tere, weighted down on both sides with the shopping bags. In this place where the women make the most beautiful woven bags, I’m surprised that the ones Maria carries are made of some sort of synthetic. When she puts one down to examine some beans with Tere, I pick it up and nearly fall backwards. Maria wants to take it back but I stagger along behind barely able to keep up. At another stop, I discretely put it down and she picks it up.

At some point after about an hour of shopping, weaving and darting, the load is too much even for Maria and she heads back to the car with two loaded bags. Tere and I each carry lighter ones as Tere makes a final stops at the coconut man’s stall. Here we all get refreshment. The man punches holes in three coconuts, inserts three plastic straws and voila! we have a drink. Tere gets another one for the road—her grandson loves this she tells me. Maria reminds Tere that she needs flowers to lay at her parents’ graves, so we stop and look for flowers. Again, I am amazed at the bounty: flowers of every size and color.

June 16, 2004 - Evening

2004-06-16T19:16:00.000-07:00

After supper, Jean and I talk about the project, the community and her hopes for the library. She tells me that one of the hardest things has been motivating people. I must tell you that Jean, in spite of physical disabilities, is a powerhouse. I don’t think the word “rest” is in her vocabulary. “Guatemalan society is collective,” she tells me. And in a collective society, no one should argue. If no one argues, nothing gets done, but you’ve kept the peace which is really the main point. So, she says, people will often say yes, when they are really thinking no. The other problem is that people seem to have a different work ethic. Since for many, the prospect of a better life is a dim, out-of-focus dream, no one really strives to pull ahead or thinks of the future. Those who do eventually leave Guatemala entirely since unless you are particularly well heeled and in the top two percent of the wealthiest, you have nowhere to go.

Obviously, this has implications for the library. The way people think of education and themselves colors their approach to much of what we hope to provide. In fact Jean says from a very early age kids are taught that books are not really for their use. They can’t take them out of the library like we do in countless communities across the country. Rather, books are brought to you and you sit and read them IN the library. Jean tells me that when they first started Open Windows, the people they hired discouraged the kids from picking up any of the books. “It wasn’t their fault really. It’s what they had been taught.”

In fact, the Guatemalan government does not really support librarianship, though oddly I found that the Ministry of Culture and Sports signed an agreement with the University of Ohio, designating the University as its North American repository and apparently modeling the arrangement after similar schemes involving Malaysia, Botswana and Swaziland. The stated goals of such a plan are:

Enhancing the ability of the Biblioteca Nacional de Guatemala to fulfill its functions as the National Library;
Increasing the visibility of Guatemala and its culture in North America;
Enriching the educational resources of Guatemala materials available for both international and American students undertaking education in North America;
Increasing the accessibility of Guatemala materials to North American users.[1]

Despite Goal 1, the national system appears to be impoverished. Much of the scholarly work on Latin/Central American libraries comes from Costa Rica or Mexico.

I did not visit the National Library in Guatemala City. However, I did call in at the library in Antigua, a small, disorganized room with many titles behind locked glass doors. I couldn’t really find anything there and went mostly to snoop and to see what they were using to cataloging. As far as I could see, it was Dewey. Later, I found out that there are some well-stocked private reading rooms frequented mostly by ex-patriots and retired government workers. To me, this reeks of the old-time patronage prevalent in the US in the 1800s—the Carnegies, the Mellons, the Gettys.

So with Open Windows, we aren’t just providing computers and a place to do homework, we are also trying to educate, to shape the way people learn and perceive their environment. Nothing short of a quiet little revolution and I am reminded of Samuel S. Green and his “Personal Relations Between Librarians and Reader” published in Library Journal back in 1876.

Jean and I talk a bit about the collection and my plan of attack. I tell her I think the collection has a little of everything and that it’s appropriate for ages toddler – sixteen. If they want to grow and make full use of current and potential resources (for example, I am trying to find out about a library twining program through IFLA), they must organize. Of course, this is where I come in. I have been steadily preaching my point to everyone : the “it’s all about access” spiel. So far, I’ve met with mostly with blank looks, probably because I’m not expressing myself well in Spanish but when I try this with Jean, a rocket seems to be launched. She does, indeed, get the point, but doesn’t want to use Dewey beyond the third summaries. I tell her that in most cases that will be adequate for the collection. But, for example, we have a lot of books on mammals. While it may be ok to use 598 for birds, we may need to start using decimals. She does get the idea of notational hierarchy, but urges me to go out as few places as possible. I hesitate and decide not to mention the table of last resort.

[1] Ohio University. “Guatemala Depository Ohio University Libraries” Updated 03/2004. http://www.library.ohiou.edu/subjects/guatemala/gintro.htm#intro Accessed 04/25/2004.

June 16, 2004 - 5.30 pm

2004-06-16T17:30:00.000-07:00

The day ends with a brief, intense cloud burst. It’s fairly typical of this time of year: clear, coolish mornings, thunderheads and biblical strength downpours in the afternoon. We all pile into Professor Lorenzo’s car, an aging Toyota with tinted glass and broken window cranks all around. I want to tell everyone this is just the sort of car you see in my neighborhood back in the States—and that it usually has a radio blaring so loud you can feel the vibrations of bass long after the car has passed. I want to tell them but I don’t because there is no way I can do it and have it interpreted as a joke.

On the way down from Duenas, the rain stops. Professor Lorenzo drops off Lisa, the computer teacher somewhere between Duenas and Panorama. All along the road home, there have been people waiting for the bus. I see them through the smoky windows: women who’ve put down their baskets, kids, young men with bundles of sticks. They are all soaking wet, all trying to get somewhere. Where is there to go in this country? Where is home for these people?

The professor turns down the bumpy stretch of road to Dr. Jean’s, now decorated with crater-sized puddles and drops me off for the evening. I think I hear the distinct laughter of the other two women in the car Lilian and Sara. In my totally myopic way I can’t help feeling they are relieved I’m out of the car and no longer their concern

June 16, 2004 - 4.10 pm

2004-06-16T16:10:00.000-07:00

Cars and heavy trucks have been roaring down the main drag all afternoon. There was even some sort of convoy of cars with a loudspeaker, spewing what I think may be political propaganda but the sound is so distorted and my Spanish so shaky that it’s hard for me to say for sure. The library’s doors are open to the street and I can see the clouds building high in the sky. It’s hot and humid, though nothing like the sticky oppressiveness of mid-July in Boston. Suddenly, and as if by some kind of miracle, an ice cream man tootles by. Helados is what you call ice cream in these parts. And this guy has the most improbable conveyance. Instead of the rusting, dented truck, this ice cream man has a rusting yellow bicycle atop of which he has erected a sort of tin foil hood. It looks almost exactly the way kids draw the roofs of houses—an elongated triangle. Instead of a freezer, he has a cart with an Igloo cooler and then somewhere, a machine playing music to attract the notice of children. What’s most remarkable is that he plays the exact same jingle (“The Entertainers”) the ice cream man in our neighborhood plays. Of course, this version is different; it has a tinny, antique sound but it’s still the same twinkly music that attracts children the world over.

June 16, 2004 - 1.05 pm

2004-06-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

There are two candy salesmen at the store when I return the tray. I recognize them because they’d walked in when Lorenzo was asking for my food. I acknowledge them, Buenas tardes, and they immediately begin speaking English. It’s flawless, of course. I ask them where they learned it. School in the states, they say: Ruetgers, New Jersey. I end the conversation by saying, “pues, si yo hablo como ustedes, no necessito traductor. puedo aprender como ustedes. Adios.” (roughly, if I talked like you guys I wouldn’t need a translator, so I’m going to learn how).

I continue my task of shelving storybooks into the afternoon. Given the number, I decide to try and sort out those that can be considered fairy tales and thus cataloged as 398—Beauty and the Beast, Hansel and Gretel, Anansi the Spider. I start a pile which swiftly becomes a tower. The room is getting more crowded as more and more children come in for homework help or to hang out. The fairy tales are really quite popular so the tower topples a few times. I notice kids are taking books from the storybook shelves. But they are not putting them back in order. In the absence of anything more permanent, I had taped sticky notes to the bookcases and labeled them with the appropriate letter of the alphabet. Those sticky notes are starting to curl and fall off, but I don’t think the kids really understand why they’re there. Ugh. I mention this to Dalia and from this day forward when any child comes in the library, she tells them, “los libros estan en orden alfabético ahora. Si ustedes tomen los libros, marcan con esto.” Esto is an @ your library bookmark with Elmo on it. I’m not sure they understand what orden alfabético will mean at this point, but at least this is a start.

June 16, 2004 - Lunchtime

2004-06-16T12:30:00.000-07:00

At 12.30, the library closes up and the other workers go out to get their lunches. I’m again craving water, though someone showed me a huge bottle of clean water in the kitchen. I am also starving, having had a roll for breakfast. I am also a vegetarian. There’s a tienda a few doors down but it’s not your Store-24, slushy making, self-service kind of place. It’s dark, windowless inside. There’s a small wall of junk food but it’s behind a massive black iron cage. There’s a little window you talk through and the only way to liberate what you want is to ask for it. I believe I’m still in shock: over the trip, over the library, over the heat and not one word of my carefully practiced Spanish comes out. The whole scene reminds me of the bank scene in a spaghetti Western: you give me that roll of peanut butter crackers or your life! All I can limply muster is “Tiene Usted las tortillas?” Of course not, because as I know there are special stores that make them.There are several other tiendas dotting the street, but they are all set up the same way. Defeated, I trudge back to the library and sit for a minute, near tears. Oh my, this is certainly a defeatist’s attitude. Fortunately, Professor Lorenzo, the main person who runs the children’s program at the library is still there. And he speaks some English. I go to him and confess. I’m starving. He goes up to Tienda #1 with me and asks the young lady who runs it to cook me something. All I wanted was a tortilla, but within 15 minutes she’s warmed up tortillas, fried a small fresh fish, made a salad and some exotic drink and set it all on a tray that is nicely, if incongruously lined with a Winnie the Pooh in the Snow tea towel. It all costs less than $1, and I am falling all over myself with gratitude for her, for Lorenzo, for the circumstances that brought me here

June 16, 2004 - Interlude

2004-06-16T11:35:00.000-07:00

A word about names: in much of Latin America, you’ll hear people refer to others by their first names adding Don or Dona to express deference. So for example, I became Dona Audrey to some of the people in the house where I stayed (though one of the maids insisted on calling me La Senora, a phrase so out of synch with my klutzy, unrefined manner, I would always laugh). The closer to Guatemala City you get, people begin to call you by your last name adding the prefix Senor, Senora or Senorita. To complicate matters, nearly all Latinos have two last names: the patrilineal and matrilineal. The formula (usually) is this. The first last name is the father’s family name (apellido paterno), the second last name is the mother’s father’s family name (appellido materno). Thus Timo and Maria, whose father is Pedro Santiago Lopez and whose mother before SHE was married was Luisa Rodriguez Castillo, would be Timo Santiago Rodriguez and Maria Santiago Rodriguez. Male chauvinism being a fine, upstanding tradition in Spanish-speaking countries, these two become Senor Santiago and Senorita Santiago. Furthermore, I’m told that when a woman is married, she keeps her maiden name her mom’s family name, replacing that with de plus her new husband’s family name. So we’re back to Timo’s and Maria’s mom who calls herself Luisa Rodriguez de Santiago.

Now that’s the standard scenario. But some people only use one surname; for example, Augustin Pedro Or you have the oddball with a name like Fabiano Flora Fernandez de Saenz. You might think this is a married woman’s name. But, Mr. Fernandez de Saenz would punch your lights out. This author—a male—would be filed in the Fs as Fernandez de Saenz, Fabiano Flora.
Then you’ve got the Spanish equivalent of a hyphen which is the letter y. This gets you Hernandez y Qunita But y also means “and” in Spanish. You see the problem.

In fact, this will be the source of great confusion in the days to come, since I am used to shelving by the last name. I’m concerned about this, of course, for several reasons. One is accessibility. If I’m shelving a book by Flor Ada Alma under Alma, but the people who use the library are looking under Ada, they may not find her work. The other has more to do with my finding the record on WordCat and with what the international standard is. If Open Windows gets large enough, they may want to exchange resources with another library in Iberoamerica or in the States. If I haven’t chosen the right standard, it could be a problem. And I’m definitely going to have to be the one to put the stake in the ground. I ask the people at the library how they would alphabetize Flor Ada Alma and I’m happy to say I am not alone in my confusion. Unable to unearth any the reference books in the collection that might give a clue and with internet access being unavailable, I tell everyone to pretend they were writing a formal letter to someone and use the name they’d use for Mr. So-and-So as the name to file under.

This plays out too in the way the cards are logged. There have been various volunteers library and nowhere is it more evident than in these cards. I notice varying conventions for entering names. Sometimes Sanchez y Pancheco would be the name of one person, sometimes the name of two. And the spelling of Anglo names seems to pose a problem. I saw pretty funny permutations, which, if I hadn’t been familiar with some the authors , I would never have guessed.

June 16, 2004 - Morning

2004-06-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

Again, I’m the first one up—must be adjusting to the time still. There’s an early morning bird here who sings “Buenos dios, Buenos dios, Buenos dios, Buenos dee.” I creep out into the courtyard and catch glimpse of a long plumed thing flitting away. I know it isn’t a Quetzal, the enigmatic and endangered national bird, but I wish it was.

That bird is legendary, of course for its brilliant colors and improbable plumage. Wrote one ornithologist, “the male is a supremely lovely bird; the most beautiful, all things considered, that I have ever seen. He owes his beauty to the intensity and arresting contrast of his coloration, the resplendent sheen and glitter of his plumage, the elegance of his ornamentation; the symmetry of his form, and the noble dignity of his carriage. His whole head and upper plumage, foreneck. and chest are an intense glittering green. His lower breast, belly, and under tail coverts are of the richest crimson...The dark, central feathers of the tail are entirely concealed by the greatly elongated upper tail coverts, which are golden green with blue or violent iridescence, and have loose, soft barbs. Loose and slender, they cross each other above the end of the tail, and thence diverging gradually, form a long, gracefully curving train which hangs below the bird while he perches upright on a branch and ripple gaily behind him as he flies. The outer tail feathers are pure white and contrast with the crimson belly as he flies overhead. To complete the splendor of his attire, reflections of blue and violent play over the glittering metallic plumage of back and head, when viewed in favorable light.”[1]

Legend goes that the bird was the spiritual protector of Mayan chiefs, tagging along, aiding them in battle, dying when they died. What’ s not myth is that a Quetzal can’t live in a cage without dying. It was living in the cloud forests in the north, when there actually were cloud forests but after years of hunting, deforestation and war the national symbol of freedom in Guatemala is practically extinct. About the only place you’ll see one now is on Guatemalan currency.
So anyway, what I’ve think we’ve got in the garden here is Motmot (Motmotus momota), an indigenous long-tailed bird that dive bombs insects and small, helpless vertebrates, gobbles them up, then perches on a branch coyly swishing its tail from side to side.

Outside I hear the occasional dog bark the and there’s a funny burnt smell. I turn around suddenly to find Winnie, the 100-pound Golden retriever shimming over some times. This dog is so sweet but she is afraid of her own shadow. I go back to my room, which is stuffy from being closed up all night, open the courtyard windows to let in light and air, and turn my attention to my Spanish book, reviewing all the kitchen words I know. In awhile, the maid is up and I hear Tere and her grandson make their way to breakfast. At about 8.30, Tere drives me up to the library.

All morning, I work to shelve cuentos (or picture books) of which there appear to be an endless supply. I try to locate the index cards that go with them, but except for the few letters I managed to put in order yesterday, this proves an impossible task, so I try to just alphabetize the storybooks by author.

[1] Dr. Alexander Skutch in Jonathan Evan Maslow. Bird of Life, Bird of Death. New York: Simon and Schuster,1986.).

June 15, 2004 - 11 am

2004-06-15T11:00:00.000-07:00

Have been working steadily 2 hours or so. Kids have been coming in all morning regarding me with a mixture of suspicion and delight. A few of the girls, probably around eight or nine, come over and shyly ask a question or two. What are you doing, they want to know. Straightening your books so you can find them better, I say. I’ve brought my laptop and a few more kids gather around, mostly attracted by it. They’ve never seen a laptop. One boy is particularly fascinated with the shiny metal cover and tiny keyboard I ask if they would like to play with it. At first, they can’t believe I’m asking. I tell them to go ahead. I must confess I’ve never seen a group of kids so entranced by a computer. There’s nothing really good on it, not even any good games, except I do show them Minesweeper, which they get a huge kick out of. Even so, these kids manage to amuse themselves for over an hour by trying that, typing their names in Word and clicking on every desktop icon they can find. I go on with the books.

It does appear that someone (Jean?) made an attempt to cluster books into categories. It’s just that without labels on the books or any kind of signage it’s hard to tell what exactly the categories are. And it’s certainly a challenge to figure out where to put anything BACK.

It’s getting warm and I’m getting thirsty. I discover with a groan that the water bottle I’d filled with agua pura at the house is not in my bag. There’s nothing like having nothing to drink to bring on a towering thirst. Fortunately, one of Jean’s friends has arrived to ferry me home for lunch. Before leaving, I grab one of the card boxes…the afternoon’s work.

June 15, 2004 Reporting for duty - 8.30 am

2004-06-15T08:30:00.000-07:00

At the library. The library is composed of two main rooms, one with books, the other with computers. There’s a bodega (or storage room), a kitchen and in the back, an apartment for a tenant and his family who live there and do some maintenance.

Despite its diminutive size, the collection is a mess. I did not believe you could take so few books and get them so mixed up, but you can. I have also never really appreciated how much the number 2,000 is. I’m here to tell you: it’s a lot. The room is about 100 square feet. There are about five books shelves and four tables. Books are shelved every which way—some with their spines out, others with their fore-edges facing me. I cannot help but feel prudish about this—it seems obscene. But the toughest part is that no one seems to know where I can find a definitive list of what holdings the library actually has. After a few minutes of confusion, I get a printout of a Word document which it will turn out is outdated and two wooden boxes of index cards. The index cards are supposed to be the interim solution until one of the volunteers, a businessman from Antigua, can get the computer program running. And the cards are supposed to be the master authority. Except that they are all out of order. There are no publication dates or ISBNs on the cards and sometimes nothing but a title listed. So my first order of business becomes alphabetizing the cards and locating the ones for which there is ambiguous information. At the same time, I try to tackle the task of grouping the books. Jean and I had talked the night before and I tell her I think using Dewey makes the most sense. I also tell her I will write up a few directives and produce a scaled-down version of Dewey customized for the library once I figure out exactly what we’ve got.

June 15, 2004 - Guatemala no existe

2004-06-15T05:20:00.000-07:00

I’m up before anyone in the house. Let me tell you about this house though. It is amazing and the size of a small fortress. Numberless rooms, almost every one with a private bath, but in traditional Hispanic style, none of the rooms have windows to the street. Rather, there’s a charming garden on one end, an interior court yard on the other full of sorts of green and blooming things and a fountain. There are humming birds, spiders as big as a fist and Dulce, the resident parrot who occasionally squawks out Spanish obscenities (actually, they just sound that way in his mouth. The only really vulgar thing he says is “butt-brain.”)
I hadn’t noticed all this is the night before because I was simply too tired and everything seemed to smell of mildew. This morning, however, the air is clear and crisp, nothing like I would have expected in The Tropics. This house, a compound really, is like a motel in that there are long covered corridors but the rest is open to the sky. From the upstairs balcony, the tufted nose of Auga, another of the volcanoes that ring the pueblo. There are fantastic murals on the upstairs walls and even a small grotto next to the library. Clearly, this not standard living for most Guatemalans.

The house’s owner, Doctor Jean Uelman, is the reason I’m here. Dr. Jean is a Wisconsin-born child psychologist. For many years, she practiced in California but when it was time for her to retire, she decided to come to here. Thirteen years later, she and her family are well known, a sort of magnet for many of the other resident foreigners.
It was Dr. Jean’s vision of starting a library in San Miguel Duenas, a small, worn town about 10 minutes to the south. She could not have done it, however, without the help of her friend Terese Quinonez. Tere is from Duenas and when Tere’s parents died, Jean and Tere decided to open a reading room, a place where local kids could get help with their homework.

A note about school in Guatemala: Children are not required to attend school, however most do until the sixth grade. At that point, they must pay roughly $300 a year in school fees, a sum unfathomable for the average Chapin family. I was told that a sixth grade education in Guatemala is comparable to a third grade education in the US and that many struggle to even read a newspaper. The school year runs from January to October.

Then the thing just took off. Jean was able to interest the Rudder Foundation, a group whose mission is to “improve the efficiency and quality of charitable activities” and who had already started a rural library project of its own in Coban, Guatemala. Jean has also managed to receive book donations from libraries around the world. Most of the big gifts come from school libraries in the US, particularly from California where most bi-lingual programs have been axed. One California librarian who’s been instrumental in getting the Open Windows library its donations is Janet Claasen, a librarian from Madera, California. There are now over 2,000 volumes in the collection. Approximately, 300 kids from Duenas and neighboring towns use the library.

8.00 am
Dr. Jean has arranged for Lilian, one of people who work at the library, to pick me up. She’s a nice young woman of I’d guess about 21 and she tells me she is a teacher. The bus stop is very close to the house. It’s also very close to the side of the road. In fact, as I soon learn, the bus stops just about anywhere. We wait and because I’m not sure of my Spanish, don’t talk very much. In my opinion, a lot of traffic that passes is perilously close. There are dented Datsuns, pock-marked pickups and every so often a flatbed truck sagging under the weight of its load: people, animals, furniture, all hanging off the sides in a menacingly cheerful fashion. Every car that passes leaves a small storm cloud of dust. I should mention that because of the volcanoes -- two of them are active--there is an implausible amount of black, ashy dust. Even if they cleaned the cities with a giant vacuum, it’d still be back the next morning.

At 8.15, the bus arrives. I’m not sure whether anything can prepare you for the experience of riding a chicken bus. I mean, you read about them, you hear about them, but you have to ride them.

June 14, 2004 - 3.25 pm

2004-06-14T15:25:00.000-07:00

We’ve come down the hills and into Antigua in advance of another cloud burst. Antigua is a stylish town. Apparently, a lot of folks (and really I mean the conservative upper class) got tired of the dirt and noise in Guatemala City and moved here to make it dirty and noisy. There are a lot of resident foreigners and tourists and a lot of traffic. Most of the streets are cobbled and once the driver rolls over them, I have the sensation of being inside a bartender’s mixing glass. Despite 20 minutes of shaking and agitating, I can see the colonial architecture, the subdued colors of rust, washed out yellows and golds. All the buildings seem very low and I suppose this is because of the climate, as well as the fact that the city has been devastated more than once by earthquakes. But wait. What’s this? Internet café? Mayan Petites Sportswear? McDonalds? From all my pre-reading and tour book peeping, I had expected a cross between Disney World and the set to “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” but this is like Carmel, California in a convection oven.Quickly we are out of Antigua proper and on to a much smoother road surface. Ahead I see one of the three volcanoes that ring Antigua, Fuego. To either side, lots of greenery, then the regional college and some sort of tire factory. A little further on, the driver makes a left down onto what appears to be brown corduroy. And finally to my destination: #8 Calle San Pedro, Panorama, Guatemala.

June 14, 2004 - 2.30 pm

2004-06-14T14:30:00.000-07:00

On the way out of Guatemala City to Antigua. To leave La Aurora Aueropuerto Internacional, the driver must make a ridiculous left hand, merging into four lanes of unruly oncoming traffic. After what seems like three years and a million cars beeping behind him, he eases the minibus (called a camioneta) into the left-most lane and eventually on to Calzada Roosevelt. I see a dirty and crowded city. There’s a scrim of grey over everything as the rain has lessened somewhat and the sun is weakly trying to shine. Hoards of people wait for buses. There a people in jeans, women in the traditional traje (head-dress), women with baskets, women without baskets, men with Texas-style rancher hats. And even at this hour, there is traffic, traffic, traffic everywhere. Eventually the camioneta begins to struggle uphill, the dirty air clears and people are not lined up everywhere.

June 14, 2004 - Still idling

2004-06-14T13:18:00.000-07:00

The diminutive size of the airport puzzles me, though. Close to 70 percent of Guatemala’s current GDP is estimated to come from tourism. The US is the country’s biggest trading partner—36 percent of its exports and 30 percent of its imports in 2002[1] Not surprising because with increasing reports of human rights violations, the EU’s relationship with Guatemala is strained. With its 11.3 million people and a per capita GNP of approximately US$ 1,700 (2001), Guatemala is the largest economy in Central America, accounting for about a third of the regional GNP (21.5 billion US$ in 2001). According to the World Bank, it ranks in the intermediate average income group of countries.

Yet, poverty is still a major problem for over half the population. Nearly 25 percent live in extreme poverty. According to the EU, this is because the per capita GDP is increasing too slowly to make a significant improvement in the poor’s standard of living. Moreover, social indicators are among the worst in Central America: social public expenditure, access to health and basic services, education, child and maternal mortality rates, distribution of wealth and land, the list seemed daunting. And indigenous people, who constitute 50 percent of the population (one of the highest rates in Latin America), face the extra burden of racial, social, economic and cultural discrimination. Seven indigenous people out of ten are poor and living on the edge.

I’m thinking all this and a boy of about 10 or 12 comes around for the third time offering to polish my suede shoes. I give him the sternest look I can muster without actually looking him in the eye and say, “No, gracias.” Now I’m fighting off tears. There’s a kid begging for money, which I probably should have given him, I’ve come to place where just trying to stay alive is a major challenge and even if they could afford a book, they probably wouldn’t want to read it. What was I thinking? Suddenly, I want to be at home. Fortunately, the limo driver, a pleasant man with smooth, brown skin arrives.

[1] Europa - External Relations “The EU’s relations with Guatemala” http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/guatemala/intro/index.htm. Accessed 06/23/2004.

June 14, 2004 - Idling at the Airport

2004-06-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

Hungry and headachy, I decide to mill around the airport rather than to venture out. The airport is in Zone 10. I know there’s supposed to be an Effiel Tower clone somewhere nearby and I’m curious to see it. The tower, Torre de Reformador, was built to honor Justino Rufino Barrios, president of Guatemala in 1873. He was nicknamed “The Reformer” (hence the name of the tower) and while in power he began a political revolution. Legislation and decrees he drafted (known as the Liberal Reforms) opened the fertile lands in northern Guatemala to cultivation. He encouraged peasants from highland communities to migrate, which led to the formation of pueblos like La Igualdad and La Libertad. The second major reform period in Guatemala begin in the 1950s with Jacbo Arbenz Gutzman. He tried to expand upon Barrios’ master plan and had he prevailed, Guatemala might have been a very different place than it is today.
I know this, but I don’t make it much beyond the pickup and drop off area outside the terminal. Besides, I remember. I haven’t got any money yet and though I’ve been told US dollars are accepted, I don’t want to risk it. So, I wander back into the building, staggering up a flight of stairs with my bulky luggage.

There is a greasy food court, small darkened shops, some doll-sized banks. I stop at the one with an ATM only to discover I’ve left my ATM card back in the States. The credit card I took doesn’t work and I have only $40. I change this, not remembering to set aside a bit for when I return, then go outside to sit on my duffle. I watch the last few people from my flight get into their tour buses. Another group of tourists is dispatched from the terminal and many, many cars come and go. There is a lot cigarette smoke. Just outside one door of the terminal, there is Within 45 minutes rain begins to fall. This, I remember, is the tropics and afternoon rainstorms are common in summer. Except to the Guatemalans, these months are really their winter. I pull my bag under the overhang, but get dripped on anyway. Now I see that there’s a little television just beyond the waiting area and that people have come by just to see what’s on.

June 14, 2004 - Guatemala City

2004-06-14T12:40:00.000-07:00

12:40 pm Guatemala City.

Arrived into warm, moist air that is hot and unpleasant like a dog’s breath. I walk into the slowest line for Customs, the agent moving at sloth-like pace. When it’s my turn, hardly a soul is left in Immigration. Painstakingly, the official reads all the information from the form I’ve completed on the plane, matching it against my passport, then carefully punches the official stamp on the first page of my passport, fitting it perfectly within the lined box. I’m free to go and collect my luggage, which is waiting on Carrousel 1, (the only carrousel as far as I can tell) along with a mariachi band. Apparently, they are the Welcoming Committee who start up every time an international flight arrives and trickles through Immigration.
Suddenly, everything is rapid-fire Spanish. I’m not sure where I’m supposed to go to change money or to get my ride and because it’s 12.30 pm, the traditional time for lunch, most of the airport is closed.

So I wander towards the one source of light to have a look around. The terminal itself is like an ambitious bus station. You leave it from the ground floor by making your way across a dark, covered plaza, then funnel through one of three glass doors. There’s a railing between you and those waiting to pick you up but it’s not the sort of high-tech, high-wired appliance you see at airports in the States. I see groups of people clustered around, here and there a limo driver with a sign: “Happy Hiking Bus Tours” and “Hotel Quinta de las Flores.” Of course, there’s no one I know.

Just beyond the railing, a huge billboard advertises bottled water. “Guatemala makes you feel good,” it shouts. But I am not feeling good right now. In fact, I’m overwhelmed. A limo service has been engaged to pick me up, but it’s another 2 hours before they will get here. It is fairly obvious who the tourists are here; we are very white and I’m suddenly struck by how it feels to be a minority. A youngish blond man approaches me and asks whether I might be with the Conservation Commission. I’m not. We chat for a few minutes and he pushes on.