Author Archives: Oscar Bermeo

I Speak of the (Nation): Walt Whitman


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Originally uploaded by Tom Andrews

AMERICA does not repel the past or what it has produced under its forms or amid other politics or the idea of castes or the old religions … accepts the lesson with calmness … is not so impatient as has been supposed that the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms … perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house … perceives that it waits a little while in the door … that it was fittest for its days … that its action has descended to the stalwart and well shaped heir who approaches … and that he shall be fittest for his days.

— from Walt Whitman’s Introduction to Leaves of Grass

Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin


Sausalito – US Map
Originally uploaded by Henry Volt

It’s all gonna change, one way or the other, today. With that said, it’ll be interesting in a few weeks, months, or (hopefully) years to look back on the beginning of 2008 and see the state of the union–not from the prostelitizing in the government halls–but from the perspective of some of our best writers.

A nice example of that viewpoint can be found over at Slate’s excerpts from State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America. I’m especially diggin Bagoberto Gilb’s take on the state of Iowa.

From the Milpas of Mexico to the Cornfields of Iowa
By Dagoberto Gilb

This is about the tortilla. This is about corn grown in Iowa. This is about the people who are in the campos of Iowa picking the vegetables and walking the cornfields. Those people are Mexican people. They are of the culture where hand-ground masa was first patted into tortillas and, because of that, it is said that the physical body of any Mexicano is at least half-corn. They are from the civilization that worshipped the corn plant as a god—in some regions, such as what became known as Guatemala, the God, the image of God—and they are from the soil and nation where this corn we all have learned to eat and to feed as grain for healthy livestock was first developed and harvested five thousand years ago. They are the people who now are driven here, because even corn, and the tortilla, is going up in price even more since the ’90s NAFTA treaty, and subsidized corn in the United States is cheaper to import, while its demand increases its value to the corporate farmers in Mexico. Because corn has become an ethanol fuel industry, its hybrid grain is even more highly sought.

But in Mexico, the ordinary milpas—cornfields—are shrinking in size, and those people who traditionally worked them can’t make enough to survive in their villages. So they are leaving, like animals in a drought, going to the big cities to find jobs, and they are crossing the border into the U.S. because that is where most jobs are. They come to Iowa because they will be hired and work in meat-packing plants cheaply, hard, and they work in the fields cheaply, and hard. And as they walk las milpas in Iowa to do as their culture has done for thousands of years, anti-immigration ideologues bash them for spoiling what they see as a field of dreams as clean and pure as Iowa butter, as nostalgic as baseball, as all-American as Kevin Costner.

Read the rest of the story here.

I can’t stand the rain!//’gainst my window


Urban Geyser
Originally uploaded by geminipoet

Another day of on-again, off-again rain here in Oakland. I’m starting to think it’s just a physical manifestation of election anxiety, but that’s just me.

One happy diversion was the spontaneous geyser that erupted on the corner of 9th & Webster this morning. The fire hydrant remains a mystical well for me as it has served as wishing well, drinking fountain, communal shower, and spontaneous storm throughout my childhood. As such, it also has more than one name, Ive known it as the hydrant, la pompa, and the pump.

Seeing this badboy burst this morning let me get in touch with that little kid in me, and I was in full awe of la pompa’s power as cops and firefighters could barely control it and even the hard rain felt secondary.

Just a minute after I snapped the shot, they got the pump under control which led me to start cheering big time for both the 9-to-5 emergency service guys and for the City and its reaction to election anxiety.