Liam's policy

"Atlanta lost part of its future last night. We lost a friend," was said about Liam Rattray, who passed away Monday night after being hit by a drunk driver. He dedicated his life to making communities and food systems more sustainable and had just received a $50,000 grant for a renewable-energy project at Truly Living Well, an Atlanta community garden with organic fruits and vegetables.



Hearing that a person like Liam, a person so motivated and intelligent, a person who not only dreamt of change but became the change he wanted to see, was killed by drunk driving is disgustingly unfair.

In the face of this tragedy (a word I use sparingly) and loss of all he would have done for Atlanta, I ask that policy makers take a hard look at this city’s transportation, one in which the car rules and sidewalks are optional and pedestrians account for about one in eight automobile-related fatalities. To take a look at 331 lost lives from our State alone to alcohol impaired driving.

I want them to know that MARTA is the largest transit agency in the US that does not receive any operational funds from the state. In Governor Perdue's Fiscal Year 2011 budget, he asks for 300 million dollars in General Obligation Bonds to fund transportation projects across the state. While the list includes numerous road projects and port improvements, rail enhancements are conspicuously absent.

Then I want them to know that a more extensive public transportation system, one in which MARTA moves beyond the cardinal directions, is widely accessible, and stays open later, and one where bus routes increase rather than disappear, could help.

According to a 2009 study from Cornell, each additional hour of late night public transportation reduces fatal accidents involving intoxicated drivers by 70%.

I ask you, Atlanta, to do something about this. I ask you, reader, to try to help too.

I will be working with Carly Queen to pressure policy makers to offer safer, more sustainable alternatives to drunk driving because it does not seem right to just stand by and say, what a shame. Liam would have done something and I always admired him for that.

Please visit the Facebook page for Liam and Remembering Liam, a site dedicated to his memory and works, and a site that we all hope "will transform into a living and breathing community dedicated to the ideals, priorities, and plans seeded by the late Liam Rattray." I also hope that in Liam's honor a number of campaigns grow, no matter if it is for sustainability or against drunk driving, because it will take everyone's effort to fill just one man's shoes.

Abrazos gratis

The past three months I have been involved in an epic war of good versus evil, right versus wrong, Mary versus Apple. Having just fought and lost the battle of Reforma 222 the previous day, I schlepped back to the site of my defeat for round two, armed with a CS code and belly full of tasty treat to encourage patience with the same Mexican tech support solider that I had but 24 hours prior verbally assaulted to no avail.

The battle continues to wage but I have faith it will one day end in my favor. At least it better.

I exited the three towered mall onto Reforma and into the street crowd of shoppers, suits and cyclists. Back to Insurgentes Metro for me with no detours, no stops, no mercy. But just before I reached the turn at Calle Génova I noticed the Cultural fair tents were open even though it was 7 p.m. on a Monday. Odd. I had biked over on Sunday at 2 p.m., the height of the Mexican lunch hour, to find the tents closed. I was hungry but no pay de queso or barbecue for me, I had thought. Not that the particular food mattered. I just liked the idea of treating Reforma, one of the biggest avenues in D.F., like your neighbor's backyard with the grill fired up spewing a charred smell from the burned black bits of marinated meat that inevitability fall between the grate and a stranger that looks like your great aunt offering you exotically named deserts or pasta salad (though no lettuce is ever involved) swimming in mayonnaise paste and does anyone need anything from the store? cause I have Jim on the phone and actually, could you tell him to bring some coleslaw if he could because we just ran out and the kids are fussing for more slaw dogs.

But the event lost its luster without the sun on my back and my bike at my will and my friends by my side. So back to the metro, I guessed. But I wanted, always want, a mental piece, a permanent photo map, of the avenue: its art and people and vendors hustling about the road that I am sure I do not go to nearly enough. People lingered around tents and crosswalks and as the light dimmed I should have turned back but was met by a 20-something-year-old-artistic-type-guy holding cardboard with sharpie scratchings that read: "Abrazos gratis" or "Free hugs." This is not the first time that I have seen such a sign but for one reason or another my heart swam through ice that melted when a woman from the crosswalk went shamelessly into his embrace.

Watching him, asking for nothing but, instead, offering kindness to strangers, a spot of happiness in all the dirty, disheartening events that may or may not be your day, well, it got me.

I wanted to tell him. I wanted a hug. But I turned away and walked pensively past the perpetual crowd on Calle Génova and towards Insurgentes metro.

I thought about how I had judged an author but a month ago for a similar act. He had told the story, given the background, done all the research but when the time came for him to act, he gave up halfway through. I had scoffed as I set the book down thinking, what is the point of telling this story with that kind of ending?

Good question.

Metro steps

Little is reliable in Mexico. Actually, scratch that. Loads of things are reliably unreliable, such as anything and everything relating to time, safety of food (whether served from the street, one with many lanes, on plastic that resembles a frisbee more than a plate or from a purportedly fancy restaurant that makes your mother sick when she orders a salad) and prices of anything from a taxi to a steak on a laminated menu with a picture of a steak and 120 pesos written adjacent in comic sans. But in a world of such obscurity and bargaining and dependence on independence I found a constant. It happens in the morning.

It happens when I descend the steps of metro Patriotismo. A man and a woman sit to the far left. She rests on the penultimate step just above the middle platform, where you can see the trains coming and going before your final descent down longer steps, most of them under a "No Pase" sign that no one acknowledges. He, on the other hand, sits one, maybe two, steps above her. They are average looking people, one with a mustache and the other with a mullet. They do not embrace. They do not appear to talk. They look at the metros, coming and going every minute or so to collect more sleepy-eyed commuters and leave a few behind.


I do not know who they are or why they sit at the metro above the trains or if they are lovers or if they are lovers but behind the backs of another. I do not know if they are good people or what would make them good or bad people in my eyes but I can rely on them between 7:44 a.m. and 7:52 a.m., Monday through Friday.

Be a doll and pass the sherbet and painkillers

I cried during the removal of my left-sided wisdom teeth (which side do you want?, he asked me and I said, surprise me, and he repeated the question) not because it hurt but because I imagined the spinnings and splashings and scratchings against my tooth. My eyes, big, betrayed my horror. I tried a pretty thought but thought about what my face should feel if it could.

Majo. Tell her she is going to here a crack, the dentist said in Spanish.
You are going to hear a crack, she told me.
I closed my eyes to avoid the two pairs of arms and hands, one set holding my jaw and the other pulling and breaking and pushing and saying, damn I hurt my finger!, and stopping to check his finger, yes it is fine, and discarding dentin and enamel on soon-to-be-red-imbued-gauze atop a stainless steel tray.

Take them as a souvenir, Majo said to me.

I did. They were in my pocket at the farmacy across the street, the one I frequent, and tried explaining but had to clamp my teeth together on cotton (for at least 30 minutes, Mary). They filled my prescriptions. I took the painkillers before I left the store.

And then I watched and watched and painted too but watched because between the pain and the numbness and occasional nausea I could not do anything but watch. I watched pirated cult classics and television shows from my past.

And I have to go back and do it again.
I can handle the thought of it for one reason: I loved the recovery.

It kind of made me feel like I had been person 12 in a 15 pit bar brawl, where broken chair and pool cue pieces were used as weapons. And I did it alone. Not the bar fight. That took 15 to tango. But the recovery was mine and that is good.

Mazunte Breeze

Mazunte Breeze, a set on Flickr.

I spent Semana Santa watching people get knocked over by waves on the beach of a hippie commune in Oaxaca.

Mazunte is quiet. The roads leading to the beach were just paved with stone last year. I can imagine the dust from what would have been my bare feet commutes to the French bakery but, instead, have the memory of stone, so cool in the shade of exotic green branches. I prefer to forget the same path in the midday sun.

We stayed at the Architecto, run by Guido Rocco - that is, “the Italian” or “the architect” - well known for his eco-friendly cabins designed to blend in with the landscape of seaside rocks. Our room's construction materials consisted of palm fronds, adobe, bamboo and wood. No window contained glass and, therefore, when it rained you knew it. It had a distinct Swiss Family Robinson feel from the outside that only grew once I stepped through the bamboo door. The kitchen area and its wooden table with four chairs, two electrical outlets and one sulfurous sink was separated by a hammock strewn across the middle of the room so that is neatly divided the sleeping space of mosquito-netted-bunk-beds and a queen-size bed attached to twisted rope. After three nights on the bed, which swung with the slightest repositioning, the sensation of perpetual movement, the one you get when you step off a boat that has been home for more than a few hours, stayed with me throughout the day.

Our porch, half concrete and half cliff so close to the ocean that during high tide waves would crash on its face, became home to dominoes, cards, Mazunte breezes (a full coconut plus unmeasured alcoholic additions) and endless hours of watching the ocean and the people and the glorious shit-eating wedlock of the two. Past the porch one found exposed steps, which if followed led to the bathroom - an outdoor shower with one temperature water (cold and lovely) and facilities that overlooked the ocean and beach once you pushed aside the dried palms used as a window cover.

It was, as Jose called it, camping for the bourgeois.

Mazunte is, however, not luxurious in the traditional sense of the word. The little place is trying to make a go at eco-tourism after centuries of being dependent on the now illegal turtle and turtle egg trade. The place still relies on the turtles for income but has traded its slaughterhouse for a museum and sanctuary, funded by the federal government after the official ban of the turtle trade in 1991. At the same time, the community is cautious as it slowly expands: it has building codes that stipulate all constructions must blend with already existent structures; there are strict rules about how, where and what to build in the community, partially to discourage land speculation and over development.

So what are these current structures, you ask? Currently, the beach pueblo is home to
two bakeries, a juice store operated by quarreling lovers, one tortillaria, an astonishing 7 or so internet cafes, four tiendias de abbarrotes, a number of hostels and hotels, a few houses pretending to be hostels, various mediocre restaurants, Cosméticos Naturales de Mazunte - that is, a cooperative of fifteen families that produce and sell their own line of cosmetics founded by the owner of the Body Shop - and shops selling hippie made clothing/wallets/earnings from beer caps/etc.

While the ocean may cover your body in golden specs, Mazunte is just like any other old Mexican beach, in that locals will still attempt to sell tourists food, jewelry, hammocks and the like. The difference in the case of Mazunte's peddlers is that they are all beautiful, dreadlocked hippies. I can only assume Argentinians.