meanderings

Martha was a doer.
How could she sit and listen to Jesus when there were so many hungry men to feed and attend to? How could she let Mary sit there when there were so many hungry men to feed and attend to?
Martha was so good at seeing other people's needs, but not her own.
Martha couldn't imagine Jesus wanting nothing more than her presence.

It's a hard lesson. I come from a long line of doers and caretakers. We are good people. We love our neighbor. But we have a hard time taking love.
My mother broke her other hip on Tuesday. She was picking up clothes in the bathroom. It was just something that needed doing. And she couldn't imagine it needed to be done by someone else when she was right there.
When I came in today from the hospital, my son tried to hug me and comfort me and tell me he loved me. The phone was ringing. There were things to be done. I didn't embrace him and accept his comfort.
Human beings can be such slow learners.

thinking outside the box
Poetry in Motion
Mexico City Subway Aims to 'Elevate Culture' by Lending Books to Riders
By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 4, 2004; Page A17


MEXICO CITY -- Ricardo Aguilar hustled down the subway steps one recent morning and pushed through the turnstiles, straight into Mexico City's newest public library. At nearly two dozen subway stations, officials have begun handing out 1.5 million free books, a novel experiment aimed at promoting literacy and maybe even cutting down on crime.



"We hope this can change attitudes and help people get along better," said Mariano Cruz, a spokesman for the Metro, which organized the program with financial backing from private businesses and foundations. Cruz said the idea originated in discussions about how to make the subway safer. While some consultants argued for placing armed guards on trains, he said, Metro officials decided to try improving the atmosphere with books instead of guns.

Passing time in the underground reading poetry and short stories, Cruz said, is a way "to elevate and promote culture" in a crowded subway system plagued with pickpocketing and sexual groping so rampant that the Metro has separate cars for men and women during rush hours.

"I love this idea," said Aguilar, 37, as he gladly took one of the free books, heading off to his job selling musical instruments. "We don't have a lot of readers in Mexico, and if we had more, we'd have fewer social problems."

Mexico's official literacy rate is 90 percent, but beyond the 10 percent of people unable to read are millions more who barely can. Public libraries are rare and books are expensive in this country, where newspaper and book readership is exceedingly low. Leading national newspapers sell fewer than 150,000 copies a day, and if a book sells 20,000 copies, it is considered a bestseller.

The books in the new program, "For a Quick Read on the Metro," are lent on the honor system: Passengers are supposed to take them as they get on the subway and return them as they exit. "It's a program based on trust," Cruz said.

So, far not everybody has been so honorable. Since the program started last month, 37,000 books have been lent and 64 percent have been returned. But it's still early, said Cruz, who expressed confidence that the return rate would improve.

It is an open question whether lending books will encourage better behavior among the subway's nearly 5 million daily riders.

One security guard on the Green Line said it might have the opposite effect. "In fact, it could promote more delinquency, because if people are reading on the subway, they might not be keeping an eye on their purse or their wallet and become an easy target" for pickpockets, he said, not wanting his name used for fear of being pegged as a naysayer. The guard said he doubted thieves would suddenly be so enthralled with literary passages that they would forget how they make their living. "They are not going to suddenly pick up a book and just stop robbing," he said.

But another city police officer who monitors the Metro, Heriberto Ziga, said he thought the honor system was a great idea that "promotes honesty." Reading poetry has to be better for one's character than looking at the pornographic tabloids sold at many subway stops, he said. Beyond that, he said, if thousands of commuters are all reading the same passages, they will have something to talk about with one another.

Organizers said they would introduce a new special edition of the paperback published for the subway every two months. The first, a 153-page book with a slick black cover, features works by nine authors. They include Vicente Leñero, who wrote the screenplay for the hit movie "The Crime of Father Amaro," and well-known Mexico City author Carlos Monsivais, whose "The Solidarity of the Population" describes the city's response to a devastating earthquake in 1985.

Cruz said the stories, poems and plays are designed to be read in 10 to 15 minutes, ideal for commuters riding just a few stops or all the way across the sprawl of Mexico City.

Nicolas Diaz, 34, returned his book at the Viveros station after reading it on his seven-minute commute to work. "It's stupendous." he said. "I only got a chance to read a little because I wasn't on the Metro for that long. But I'm returning it so someone else can have a chance."

So far, the program has been exceedingly popular. Many passengers said they could not remember the last time anybody gave away anything or trusted strangers. Television stations have been showing passengers reading on the subway, and in doing so, spreading the word about the program to its target audience: those who rarely read but watch a lot of television.

In the hustle of the morning rush hour, Eduardo Jorge Ortega, 22, grabbed a book to share with his girlfriend, Antonia Garcia Zaragoza, 24. He said he had read three books in 2003; she said she had read one. "It's a question of time and money," said Ortega, adding that he was willing to read more this year by participating in the new underground lending library.

Workers passing out books said they were having a hard time keeping up with demand. By 9 a.m. one day last week, three workers at the Viveros station in the southern part of the city had nearly exhausted their supply.

"It keeps you entertained, makes your day go faster, and is a way of educating yourself," said Jose Guadalupe Orozco, 30, a chauffeur. "I don't think it will reduce crime, but it will make people read."

Francisco Javier Quijada, a plumber, said he was a fan of the program, but agreed that it probably wouldn't keep his pocket from being picked.

"The best thieves are probably already good readers," he said.

WHICH PATH TO A SAFER WORLD? Comparing the cost of tools of peace and tools of war.

$100 will buy:
11 blankets for refugees
11 hand grenades

$4,000:
3-day training for 160 youth in peace building
1 rocket launcher

$14,000:
enroll 2 children in Head Start
1 cluster bomb

$40,000:
2 home health aides for disabled elderly
1 Hellfire missile

$145,600:
associate-degree training for 29 RNs
1 Bunker-buster guided bomb

$586,000:
rent subsidies for 1,000 families
1,000 M-16 Rifles

$763,000:
annual salary/benefits for 15 RNs
1 minute war on Iraq

$46 million:
improve, repair, modernize 20 schools
1-hour war on Iraq

$130 million:
WIC program nutrition for 200,000 families
7 unmanned Predator drones

$275 million:
eradicate polio worldwide
3 tests of missile-defense system

$350 million:
best vaccinations for 10 million children worldwide
6 Trident II missiles

$413 million:
childcare for 68,000 needy children
Amphibious Warfare Landing Ship Program

$494 million:
7,000 units of affordable housing
1-year military aid to Colombia

$1.1 billion:
prevent cuts to education programs (FY2003)
1 day of war on Iraq

$1.2 billion:
minimum support to save Amtrak train service
2 months U.S. war force in Afghanistan

$2.1 billion:
annual salary/benefits for 38,000 elementary teachers
1 Stealth bomber

$12 billion:
double federal funding for mass transit
1-year cost of war in Afghanistan (2001/2002)

$16 billion:
healthcare coverage for 7 million children
1-year nuclear weapons program

$38 billion:
save 11 million lives worldwide fighting infectious diseases
1 month of U.S. current military spending

reflections on p.d. james
i think it is something in the english education system, an emphasis on writing that makes a genre such as murder mysteries produce such good writing. i'm ashamed to admit that i need a dictionary still when reading their work, and it's almost a physical pleasure to see such wonderfully constructed sentences.

but that's not what i want to reflect on. it's the level of sophistication that the british have taken to its highest level of dsyfunction. it struck me as i was reading how each character seemed so jaded about their relevance to the world and needed some sort of academic endeavor to rationalize their existence. and then the stark contrast of the sappy country song on the radio where the distant father promises that he's already there in the everydayness of their lives. i prefer the sophisticated british writing, but which holds more truth? i'm afraid i lean to the overly-sentimental country singer... and why do i use that term overly-sentimental?

the universe as we know it and as we realize how little we know of it should humble us. surely in the fathomless ends of the world there exists another place of the diversity of living things that is found on earth.... but it is still not a common thing. we are part of an amazing act of creativity simply by breathing in and out every day. if nothing else, the ability to experience color should justify our longing for meaning. each day of our lives we awaken to such a variety of shades and nuances of color in nature that we can only mimic on our man-made mediums. and what a wondrous gift that is for those who can bring beauty to a piece of canvas or a block of stone. maybe it's okay if we just enjoy this gift of life and the sensual pleasure of our world. maybe it's okay that our relationships are marred with imperfection, because i believe its true that we do exist in some form in all the people we have loved no matter how far away they are. why do we shame ourselves for love freely given? even when it is not returned, or more frightening for some of us, when it is returned too lavishly, why do we berate and suppress those instincts to reach out and experience others. a child does it with natural curiosity and must learn restraint.

i know why. it's because we get hurt. i experienced an encounter with a man at the beach who just threw this incredible amount of garbage at me from his inner hell of anger and aggression, and sad to say i followed my gut reaction and threw it back. and the residue of bad feeling was hard to shake. it was hard to let go of that man's dysfunction.

but life is an ongoing experiment.
i want to err on the side of living it.

analogous rose
with its sweet yet subtle fragrance
traveling a summer breeze
short-lived splash of color
emerging from winter's brown
touched with care
or regret its lesson