Tongue Twisted Traveler

I look around me now, at more than 100 empty computer stations in a lab that has for the past three months been filled at every moment with what seemed to be twice that many people. It's quiet, and strangely so. By this time every Tuesday I'd normally be hours deep into 20 one-on-one conversations, or perhaps a one-on-20 or five one-on-fours. Mine and three open classrooms around me all competing for the airspace of a 40 x 70 foot room makes for an interesting scene. Tonight, though, there's an odd silence of just 15 or so adjuncts and other part time staff clicking away on their keyboards; conversations are hushed.   At times throughout the semester I felt like a fascist dictator, raising my voice to be heard saying "English only!" It was for their own good, I'd convince myself, remembering how when I visited Mexico to study Spanish I'd laugh at the monitors who'd move through the crowds, even at recess, to remind us it was a Spani...

By Brian Schwarz The ones who come from far away And them, who cross the water near All are welcome here Those whose families plucked them to And them, crossing the river in fear All are welcome here On flights of freedom or walks through hell Or in the beds of trucks, shedding tears All are welcome here Though their equality’s feigned or just Whether the law chides them or cheers All are welcome here

I was born at the southern extreme of Megalopolis. Neither of my parents are from the city or the state where I was born. In fact, my birthplace was just a brief stop on my father’s rising career path with a major oil company. He's from metro New Jersey and my mother's from a small farming community in Iowa. They had met in Washington, D.C., at a party for the alumni of a now-defunct liberal arts college in the Midwest called Parson's and were married in a lovely white wedding in small church resting on the southeastern slope of Watchung Mountain in suburban Newark. They seemed to be constantly on the move during their short marriage; my dad had been transferred from York, Pennsylvania, where my sister was born in 1969, to Baltimore shortly before I was to arrive. Then, ten days after I was born, in 1971, it was on to the next stop. We moved on August 19, while I was still on a diet of mother’s milk, to Orange, a historic, rural community nestled in the foothills of the Bl...

It was the fall of 2000, but it was spring in Santiago where I was visiting the Chilean capital to do a piece for a British magazine on the lasting effects of privatization at the country's ports a decade on. I was to visit Valparaiso and San Antonio, some 90 to 100 miles away along the Pacific coast, but first I was heading to the small municipality of Conchali, in the northern section of Santiago, to pick up a friend of mine named Humberto, whom I met while living in Miami Beach in 1996. From El Centro I drove my match-box of a rental car across a low-lying bridge spanning the Rio Maphocho and north on Recoleta. The lower middle class neighborhood of Conchali is tucked humbly away and neatly hidden from the rich upper suburbs of Las Condes in the east, just across a small unpopulated ridge at the back entrance of the Parque Metropolitana. A small working class barrio, or comuna, that was spurred by a public housing initiative in the mid 1920s, there are small farms there, but ...

After the plane landed in Mexico City's main airport I had no idea what to expect. This was my first flight to another country. I'd been to Mexico before, but only to the border city of Jaurez and never into the heart of the country. It was the summer of 1998, and I was just graduating from a small university in western Pennsylvania, traveling to Cuernavaca for a course in advanced Spanish grammar and Mexican cultural studies. Cuernavaca is a city that lies on the southern slope of the Sierra Madre mountains, just across the continental divide and an hour south of the capital. It's usually called the city of the eternal spring for its normally temperate climate. But when I arrived the land was arid and smoke filled the air for miles in all directions due to out-of-control brush fires that had been set by farmers trying to clear small plots of land for planting. As the bus descended into the upper part of the city, passing a roundabout featuring a noble statue of Emili...

The Fourth of July today represents independence for many, but it's really more about a fight for ownership. At the origin of Independence Day is a group of wealthy colonists, from 13 different places, the colonies--which are now referred to as states but probably more exactly should have been thought of as countries then--who got together to tell the government that founded those places they were no longer going to be controlled by them. These men, who were among an elite minority group of people, wielded power over hordes of others who had no power, nor independence. And by them declaring independence for their colonies they were simply taking control of the dependent people who resided in their domain. There was a shift of ownership, but it was hardly a declaration of independence for all of us, as we are somehow led to believe today. Fortunately it didn't stop there, and a constitution was forged by thoughtful intellectuals who would ultimately give even common people a ...

Waking up in that apartment was never easy. Mice scattered across the room as my feet hit the floor, and before I could muster enough courage to see if the bathroom was free of crazy people I'd already decided I'd be better off staying in bed. But then again, that would be no prize either. Only if I could get to sleep quickly, ignore the fact that the broken spring protruding from deep within that smelly, urine-stained mattress was bruising my back, could I find any pleasure in staying at home. No, it was better to force myself to that shower, so I tippy-toed on my flip-flops across that dirty shag carpet and stepped into the grimy, once-white but never clean bathtub and closed the mildew-stained shower curtain behind me, trying with all my might to keep my backside from touching it or the scummy walls. I was always scared one of my Section 8, loony-bin reject neighbors would come barging in that warped-wood door that never seemed to latch just right. But today I didn't ...