Mi Familia es un Dibujo (My Family is a Cartoon) reruns are back on Channel Telefe

Mi Familia es un Dibujo (My Family is a Cartoon) reruns are back on Channel Telefe (channel 11 on Cablevisión, and channel 123 on DirecTV).  The show is fun to watch.  It as a situation comedy with a little drama thrown in.  The basic plot-line is such:

An Argentine middle-class married couple has four children they are raising.  Two of the kids are teenagers that are going through the trials of adolescence—young love, rock-n-roll, fitting in with their peers, discovering the meaning of “responsibility.” A third child is an 8-rear-old girl who is the “good” child, often acting as the bonder of the family.  The fourth child is, if you are open to the fantastical, a cartoon—the result of his mother watching too much television while she was pregnant (is there a moral in that?). The cartoon-boy, named Dibujo (cartoon) is the  “different” one—the good yet rebel-rouser—maybe you could classify him as the “special” one in the family (you know who that is in your extended family), the black sheep, or if you pushed the symbolism a bit, you could even find him as the “ugly duckling.”  Grandpa also lives with the family, a widower set on making meaning with his life by contributing to the daily lives of the rest of the family.

Stella Maris Closas and Germán Kraus

Stella Maris Closas plays the mother.  This is a great show for Expats to watch in order to practice their Castellano (Argentine Spanish), as the actors are all articulate and the sound track is good quality.  It is also a great show for Stella Closas fans, who are, as they say for the Boca Juniors fans, half the population of Argentina plus one.

Marcela Kloosterboer

Germán Kraus plays the father, and Marcela Kloosterboer plays the adolescent girl—an added bonus for movie and TV fans, as Kloosterboer became a successful adult actress and has often been called one of the most beautiful Argentine women, ever, ever.

Read Donigan Merritt’s Novel in Progress

Mr. Merritt’s Novel in Progress is available to read online.

Read it here, chapter by chapter: RANDOM LITERARY BLOGGING.

Patagonian Road

Here is a Great blog to read that has come to my attention (thank you DM).  Check it out. Read it.  Follow it. I am sure you will find the writing brilliant.

Patagonian Road

 http://patagonianride.blogspot.com/

Author: Kate

About Me

Starting in December 2010, I’ll be traveling from Guatemala to Patagonia, trying my best to make the trip overland (largely by bus). I’m grateful for my funding provided by Wellesley College’s Mary Elvira Stevens Traveling Fellowship, and to Doug Glover, who assigned me Paul Theroux’s ‘The Old Patagonian Express’ and thus inspired this project. I’ll be tracing Theroux’s footprints through Central and South America, learning Spanish, teaching English, and writing along the way.

A Journey to the Past

from Random Literary Blogging

by Donigan Merritt

I’ve been living in the past for the last month or so, and it has been both interesting and confusing — as a writer, in particular.

In the mid-Eighties, Bantam published a trilogy that developed from one of my novels; I usually refer to it as the Hatch Trilogy, based on the main characters name. The original mss for that novel was called, “The Last Island”. It was in the original about 130,000 words. That saga is a familiar story to regular readers of his blog. Basically, succumbing to the temptations (stronger in my poverty days) of triple the advance, I agreed to make three books, a trilogy, from the one. It was a literary mistake, but a wonderful financial windfall.

Almost thirty years after writing the original version, having in the meantime all rights to the trilogy and the original returned to me, I am recreating the original from a huge pile of curling, yellowed typed pages (this was, as well as all the first five of my novels, written with a pen on paper, typed for submission on a Royal manual typewriter, with a single carbon copy, and was never any sort of electronic file).

I began working on this novel while an MFA student at Iowa. The mss went through multiple revisions and versions over the course of the four years I spent writing it. I’ve found a few pages out of order or that don’t make sense (some previous version?), and one entire section seems to be missing. I have three boxes storing ancient typing paper and handwritten notebook versions of all my novels, both published and unpublished. We move often, and much of our stuff remains in storage until the day we stop moving a lot. I have one box of old work here in my Buenos Aires flat, but not the other two, which I assume (and hope) are in storage. It is possible another version of The Last Island could be there.

I remember what the original was like. When making the trilogy, I used from the original essentially all of what would become book one, and most of what would become book three. Book two was crafted from whole cloth and stuck in the middle — the core of the literary mistake. In returning to the original, book two is gone entirely. But trying to make book two work in the trilogy required making a few minor changes to the end of book one, and major, extensive changes in book three from the original story. The key problem returning to the original, without a coherent version to work from, has been getting rid of the add-ons in book three (created to fit with what happened in book two).

That process is now complete. But I want to read it straight through (again almost 130,000 words), because I am sure there remain many mistakes, and not just typos.

This will be an eBook only version, and I hope it will be available in those various formats in two to three more weeks. After I proofread it, my wife needs to do it; she is way better at catching mistakes than I am, plus she knows more accuate English grammar than I do.

What most interests me about this process is continually, happily encountering again the days when I was young and energetic and hopeful and romantic and often enough quite a brilliant stylist (if I may); but counterbalanced by blocks of truly abysmal, amateurish writing. Page after page I asked myself: Where was the fucking editor?

I have always been attracted to this piece by John Fowles, and I have found it to be particularly appropriate during this process.

It is not only species of animal that die out, but whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did. - John Fowles, The Magus

reposted from Random Literary Blogging

Donigan Merritt was born in southwest Arkansas in 1945, and left home at the age of seventeen.  He has worked as a journalist, scuba diver, fishing boat captain, sailing instructor, and university professor.

He has a BA and MA degree in philosophy; the BA is with Honors from Simpson College, the MA is from the Claremont Graduate School. He also has a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers Workshop.

His first novel, One Easy Piece, was published by Coward-McCann in 1981. Since then, he has published seven novels, the most recent being, The Common Bond, published by Other Press in 2008.

He currently lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. With his diplomat wife, he has lived in various places in Central Europe, in South Africa, in Germany, Washington, DC,  and southern California. They have two children and three grandchildren. Their older daughter lives in Houston, the younger in Boulder.

Contact by email: merrittblog@gmail.com

Literary agent:

Kathy Green

The Kathryn Green Literary Agency LLC

250 West 57th Street, suite 2302

New York, NY 10107

212-245-4225

kathy@kgreenagency.com

reposted from Random Literary Blogging

“What it’s like living here” from Donigan Merritt in Patagonia

Trekking on top of the Perito Moreno glacier

An Estancia in Patagonia

Donigan Merritt

Porteños, the people of Buenos Aires, like to refer to their city as the Paris of Latin America. It is not. (Neither was Prague when calling itself the new Paris.) Depending on one’s level of chauvinism, this may or may not be seen as a compliment, but what Porteños can accurately claim is that their city is the most European and the least Latino city anywhere in the Americas.

Buenos Aires is thought to represent Argentina, but it does not. At least Porteños should hope it does not. People outside of Latin America usually know five things about Argentina: Eva Peron’s crying song, the “dirty war,” the economic meltdown and debt default in the early years of the 21^st century, steak houses, and Patagonia. Wise Porteños should claim that Patagonia is representative of the real Argentina.

Somewhat similar to “dude ranches” in the States, an estancia is a working ranch that now takes in guests to make ends meet. Although the word estancia simply means ranch, and many, if not most, are working ranches, not bucolic B and B’s with a few decorative cattle and sheep, plus a couple of decked-out gauchos strolling about in picturesque berets. Many estancias are huge, thousands of acres, particularly in the West Texas flat of the Pampas, where gauchos still work much as they have for two centuries.

The estancia at Nibepo Aike

Not all estancia guest ranches are alike. I have visited two. One just an hour and a half’s drive from the center of Buenos Aires, the other a long flight down the length of Argentina, to the bottom of Patagonia. The former is more hotel (two swimming pools, for example, one an infinity pool), with the only ranching activity being performed as a show for guests; their feature was horseback rides along the creek. The other was a working ranch with a large herd of range fed cattle, and even larger flocks of sheep. That one, Nibepo Aike, located a rough one hour slog on a ragged dirt road from the airport in the town of El Calafate, houses the few guests it can accommodate in a wing of the ranch house that used to bunk gauchos, and offers mainly one service: food and drink. Although they are helpful with directions and setting you up with excursions.

Joined by six friends from Europe, my wife and I spent a few days at Nibepo Aike this past January (mid-summer down here), using it mostly as a base from which to explore the nearby glaciers, in particular, thePerito Moreno glacier, one of the only glaciers in the world that is not receding rapidly; no one is quite sure why it is still expanding. The estancia is, convenient for explorations, on the far edge of the Glacier National Park, at the terminus of the dirt road from El Calafate – terminating because just past the estancia is the impassable Andes range and the border with Chile.

The view of the Andes and one of the small glacier lakes from the Estancia

The rooms are along each side of a narrow, creaking hallway leading away from the large main room, behind which is the kitchen, from where an amazing amount of food is delivered three times a day. Most of the décor remains from the days before guests were taken in, and the few additions fit nicely with what’s already there. My favorite piece was an ancient Underwood typewriter made into a lamp.

There is a large stone fireplace in the main room – a wonderful evening treat even in the middle of summer (it’s not much further down the road to the jump off to Antarctica, it’s worth remembering), to while away the late hours with a glass, or a bottle, of Argentina’s fine vino tinto – Malbec. When we were there, it was full, but that means only two other couples; with our eight people, that took all the rooms. One couple was Swiss, the other from Buenos Aires.

Gauchos bringing in the sheep in the afternoon

Awakening the first morning early, hoping to get in a long hike in the nearby hills, I encountered grazing cattle milling about on the lawn next to our room. The gauchos were already on their horses and at work. On the way in to have breakfast, two gauchos moved a group of fifty or sixty sheep along the road out front.

We spent that day hiking around one of the small lakes just a short walk from the estancia, and in the hills behind the estancia, that grow up to be the Andes on the other side. That night we were treated to a full Monty parilla (it means grill or BBQ), during which Malbec flowed through our glasses like water and burdened platters groaning under the heaping weight of cow and lamb parts, half of which I had never considered edible before. (I still hold that opinion about some of it.)

Only able to eat a bit of yogurt the next morning, we were picked up in a van and driven to the Glacier National Park, where we boarded a boat on Lake Argentina and wandered around among ethereally blue ice bergs and ice islands on our way to Perito Moreno.

Cooking up the lamb

There is no way to write about this that can come even close to what it looks like, up close and personal, and even less to be able to describe the sound of ice cracking within the glacier itself, and chunks the size of buses or houses exploding away from the glacier’s leading edge. The best I can do is say that ice cracking in a glacier sounds like a howitzer firing next door.

To come to Argentina and only see Buenos Aires, is like going to the United States and only visiting New York. What is best about this country, what is best about the United States, for that matter, is not to be found in its signature cities, but in the “out there,” and Patagonia is the most out there place I have ever seen.

—Donigan Merritt

This Post first published on: Numéro Cinq

What Work Is

By Philip Levine
77 pages. Alfred A Knopf Books, $15.00.
Reviewed by Stephen Page

Philip Levine is the voice of the working class, the undereducated, the unambitious. He speaks for those who do not know how to speak for themselves or were never taught how to stand up for themselves. He gives voice to those who never thought to ask, “Is this what work is really all about?” He creates portraitures of laborers and brings them to life, allowing them to communicate to the reader, even if it is only through their actions. Levine, a master artist, after giving the subjects sound and movement, mutes them again, paints them back into their frames.

We are drawn into the first poem, a rendering of man wearing rubber protective gear and a respirator descending the steps into a pickling tank to work with a cocktail of hydrochloric acid and other caustic chemicals. The man knows of the dangers of his job, but continues to go down into the tank twice a day. At lunch he sits apart from the other workers in silence. He is proud that the other workers know him only by his nickname, and proud that his dangerous job gives him reputation and meaning in life.

The second poem, “Coming Close,” mootably the best of the collection, begins with the narrator pausing for a moment to scrutinize a fellow worker to whom he delivers parts:

Take this quiet woman, she has been
standing before a polishing wheel
for over three hours, and she lacks
over twenty minutes before she can take
a lunch break. Is this a woman?
Consider the arms as they press
the long brass tube against the buffer,
they are striated along the triceps,
the three heads of which clearly show.
Consider the fine dusting of dark down
above the upper lip, and the beads
of sweat that run from under the red
kerchief across the brow….
then lifting with a gasp, the first word
of tenderness between the two of you,
then you must bring new trays of dull,
unpolished tubes. You must feed her,
as they say in the language of the place.
Make no mistake, the place has a language,
and if by some luck the power were cut,
the wheel slowed to a stop…she would turn
to you and say, “Why?” Not the old why
of why must I spend five nights a week?”
Just “Why” even if by some magic
you knew, you wouldn’t dare speak
for fear of her laughter, which now
you have anyway as she places the five
tapering fingers of her filthy hand
on the arm of your white shirt to mark
you for your own, now and forever.

The narrator is aghast at the appearance of the worker, thinks it a mutation, an unnatural being. It is only at the end of the poem that he admits she is a woman, with the image of the feminine fingers. There is no direct conversation between them, only their mutual knowledge of work slang, a gasp, her laughter, and a final physical touch. She doesn’t question her existence, would only question why the wheel stopped, if it did, as if her work were her only means of identity. The narrator does not tell but allows you to figure out that it is possibly the work that has changed her physical appearance.

In “Growth,” we have another statement on the dumb self-image:

In the soap factory where I worked
when I was fourteen, I spoke to
no one and only on man spoke
to me…..
where I hammered and sawed, singing
my new life of working and earning,
outside in the fresh air of Detroit
in 1942, a year of growth.

The boy, bursting into adolescence and the age of individuality, celebrates his place in the world by being proud he is earning money, not a bad thing considering it is a time of high unemployment, but he is not even considering the dangers of working in a soap factory. There is only a snide remark on the polluted air of Detroit. He feels no need to talk to anyone. He identifies himself through his newly found job as if it were a badge pinned on him saying, hey, this is who I am.

“Among Children” is a portrayal of a schoolteacher in a fourth grade classroom. His students are the children of the factory workers that live in and around Flint. They are at naptime, a metaphor for how they are inevitably going to sleep their way through life, “so as to be ready for what is ahead,” slaving silently at dangerous jobs until they meet death. The children at ten years old are already being trained as physical laborers, evident by:

…how there backs have thickened,
how their small hands, soiled by pig iron,
leap and stutter even in dreams.

The teacher has no words of encouragement for them, no hope that they will be anything else in life other than what they are, what they were born into. He even reflects back to their births, stating, “not one said, I am sick, I am tired, I want to go home,” revealing personalities that will be perfect for silent acceptance into the working life.

In another teacher-student poem, “M. Degas Teaches Art & Science at Durfee Intermediate School,” the teacher makes a diagonal line across the blackboard and asks, “What have I done?” Several children offer logical answers, “You’ve broken a piece of chalk,” “you have created the hypotenuse of an isosceles triangle,” “you have begun to represent the roof of a barn,” “You’ve begun to separate the dark from the dark,” but M. Degas is waiting for only one answer—hers. This is a statement on conformity, the taking away of free thought that is prevalent in working-class public schools, and perhaps for a reason. How else will these students grow up and tolerate their grinding lives if they are not taught to accept authority. An orange is blue, if that is what the boss tells you. And, you, the worker, will agree, may even come to believe it.

The collection ends with “The Seventh Summer,” a poem about the narrator’s problems with his Jewishness. He receives all kinds of flak for his religious identity, and for several hours one fine summer Sunday, he doubts his teachings and his God. He spends the afternoon enjoying the beauty of the world and life, thinking that it could possibly be the suffering of the Son of God who made salvation possible. In the end, he rescinds into himself and his belief, though he never tells anyone, never stands up for himself. He slips out of the poem in silence, holding his head down with his Christian friends during grace, abstaining from saying the words, most definitely not thankful for what is being fed to him, and not accepting the norm.

Levine is from Detroit, where most of these poems take place. Unlike most of the people portrayed in What Work Is, Levine went to college and received a degree. He, unlike his portraitures, chose to do physical labor because he wanted a non-thinking job in order to free his mind to write. Levine offers no hope for the majority of the working class, offers no solution for the masses. He offers no demonstrations, no sit-down strikes, no cry against working conditions, no ripple in the fabric of society. There is only hope for the individual, not for the group. Does that diminish from the collection? On the contrary, it is non-didactic. By exposing these conditions Levine allows the readers to draw their own conclusions, to learn from the mistakes of others. Yes, Levine deserves the recognition he received for this book. He is a master poet—a maestro of maestros.

This review first published in the Buenos Aires Herald, 20 February 2011.

Expat Women Interviews Maya Frost

The New Global Student: Skip The SAT, Save Thousands On Tuition And Get A Truly International Education Maya Frost  In 2005, Mindfulness Trainer Maya Frost put her creative, “eyes-wide-open” strategies into action by selling everything in suburban America and moving abroad with her husband Tom and their four teenage daughters, Talya, Teal, Tara and Taeko. Without the safety net of a corporate transfer, Maya and Tom, small-scale entrepreneurs, were taking a big leap of faith at a critical time in their daughters’ education. Friends called them crazy, but Maya and Tom followed their instincts, from the United States to Mexico to Argentina, to look for a series of amazing opportunities to enhance their daughters’ learning and creativity – and they found just that. Now, five and half years after they moved abroad as a family: Maya and Tom are empty-nesters who have just moved to Japan; Maya is becoming increasingly well-known for her book The New Global Student (Three Rivers Press, 2009); and their daughters, now 20, 21, 23 and 24, are all happily immersed in their work, chosen fields and destinations around the world – each having graduated with a BA or BS in the United States or Canada, yet none of them ever submitting an SAT score, taken an AP or IB course, or worrying about their GPAs.

Expat Women’s Interview With Maya Expat Women: Maya, when you and Tom sold everything in 2005 to move with your four daughters abroad, what was in your five-year plan? Maya: First of all, there was no five-year plan! At the time, we really just wanted to mix things up and have a family adventure that was enriching and memorable. We already knew that there were other ways to learn, and get into college, besides the typical high school track – our oldest daughter was 18 and a junior in college after spending her junior year of high school abroad. We hoped they would learn Spanish, but most of all, we wanted our girls to have a sense of their possibilities beyond the borders of their own country. And though we were not clear on the specifics, we wanted them to discover their gifts and gain confidence in their ability to navigate in the world.

Expat Women: Looking back, did you achieve what you wanted to?

Maya: Our expectations were exceeded in every way. All of our daughters speak Spanish and have used it in their work. They all graduated from high school, in different ways, and finished college by 19 or 20, without debt. Thanks to our family experience abroad, our daughters now see “interesting challenges” where others might see “barriers” – and they are not afraid to pursue their interests wherever they choose to go. And five years later, we all continue to see life as a grand adventure!

Expat Women: What were some of the key obstacles your family faced abroad and how did you overcome them?

Maya: Well, the initial barrier for all of us was not fear or doubt, but the reactions of others who thought we were making a mistake. People thought our girls would miss out on the full American high school experience, and that we were sabotaging our children’s education or our own financial future. Once we got past that, though, things got much easier!  Of course, that is not to say that it was all smooth sailing. Moving abroad, learning a new language and most of all, releasing old ideas about who we are and what we do – these are not easy to deal with at any age, and the girls had their own struggles with making friends and adapting. But the beautiful thing was watching them recognize their own strength and seeing them create truly unique and exhilarating lives for themselves.

Expat Women: If you had your time again, what might you have done differently and why?

Maya: We would have done it earlier! In our case, we were reliant upon tech tools to turn our typical bricks-and-mortar business into a virtual one, so it would have been difficult to do it much sooner, but I am so grateful we did not listen to those who thought we should wait until the girls were out of high school to move abroad. Going as a family was the best thing we have ever done.

Expat Women: What ‘Top 5 Tips’ would you share with parents wanting to follow in your footsteps?

Maya:

1. Do not wait. Whether your child is 3, 13 or 23, if you have a window of opportunity, leap through it! Get control of your stuff and your finances. You will gain a gigantic sense of liberation that frees you to do things you never imagined; 2. Do not listen to the naysayers. Instead, get advice from those who have done what you want to do, and they can help guide you, every step of the way; 3. Do not think you have to have a five-year plan or even a one-year plan. We did not move to Mexico thinking we would be there forever, but we did not think we would be living in Buenos Aires within a year, either. All you need to know is your first destination and a basic period of time – say, six months. Then, just stay open to the possibilities; 4. Do not freak out when you hear from your friends back home talking about what their kids are doing. Your children might not be playing elite soccer or getting an internship at XYZ corporation for the summer, but you are giving them a tremendous gift by allowing them to learn more about the world and themselves; and 5. Do not try to micromanage your own future. I had no idea I would write a book, and I would have laughed out loud if you had told me that my husband and I would live in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in a studio apartment, or move to rural Uruguay to refurbish an old farmhouse. But things open up and the world continues to offer you new challenges and exciting directions.

Expat Women: Maya, what exactly are your girls doing now?

Maya: Our oldest daughter (24) earned her master’s in urban public health in New York and is the program director for an award-winning nonprofit in Washington Heights. Our second daughter (23) is teaching first grade at an international school in Abu Dhabi. Our third daughter (21) just finished a year and a half traveling around the world as a multilingual events coordinator for Norwegian Cruise Lines and is taking a break before starting a new job in New York. Our youngest daughter (20) lives in Buenos Aires and is an assistant recruiter for a New York agency that places top creative directors at advertising firms around the world. They are all happy and thriving.

Expat Women: Can you please share with us some other students’ anecdotes from your book?

Maya: Certainly. I love the stories of the exchange students who discovered their passion (architecture, languages, art) during their year abroad and I still smile every time I think of the home-schooled young man who grew up in an off-the-grid cabin in Alaska and then spent a year in Thailand – and even did a two-week stint as a novice Buddhist monk – shaved head and all! Even those who are on the competitive science path can benefit greatly – I love the story of the boy who took a “gap year” to go abroad and ended up spending time in several countries and learning several languages even as he completed his engineering degree and went off to Johns Hopkins for medical school. It is important for parents to understand that taking your kids off the traditional track does not mean they cannot get back on it, if that is what they choose.

Expat Women: Finally, why the recent move to Japan?

Maya: Tom and I met as ESL teachers in northern, rural Japan back in the eighties. It is where we fell in love, lived as newlyweds and had our first two daughters. We always said we would go back when it was just us, and so we are heading to Japan for a year to work at a new English-immersion kindergarten that focuses on right-brain learning.  We are especially interested in seeing how imagination, self-regulatory behavior and language skills can be nurtured in young learners. After focusing on teenagers these last few years (as parents and as consultants), we are thrilled to have this chance to switch back to preschoolers. It is a return to our romantic roots – and yet another adventure with all kinds of interesting possibilities!

Expat Women: Maya, we applaud your courage, bold choices and achievements. Congratulations on the success of your book and we wish your family all the very best!

Talya, Teal, Tara and Taeko Frost Maya Frost is a writer, mindfulness trainer and creativity consultant. Her book, The New Global Student, was described by The Boston Globe as “funny, innovative and meaningful – a how-to guide with heart.” She has helped parents around the world find the most thrilling and fulfilling learning opportunities for their children. Learn more at http://www.MayaFrost.com. January 2011 This interview first posted on Expat Women Buy The New Global Student

Expat Women – Follow this Site – Contribute your Stories

Hi Everyone, Welcome to our ‘Best of 2010′ newsletter! For those of you who are new to our community, or those of you who were too busy to keep up during the year, we have put together for you our annual collection of the year’s most popular features. Enjoy!

We would like to say thank you for your support this year by inviting you to download our free Winning Stories E-book, which showcases our winning stories from February 2007 to December 2010! Congratulations to all of our winners this year and we hope that each of you will consider submitting a story for us in 2011.

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The Southern Yankee: A Writer’s Log

Dan Newland

Ohio-born Dan Newland has lived and worked in South America since 1973. Besides free-lancing for major US and British publications for 20 years, he was a reporter, editor and commentator for 13 years with the Buenos Aires Herald, a daily renowned for its valiant human rights campaign during Argentina’s bloody era of military rule. Newland is now a free-lance writer and translator. Based in Patagonia, he is currently pursuing his life-long interest in fiction, on subjects from what he calls his “dual life”, lived in both the heartland of the United States and the southernmost reaches of South America. North American by birth and sentiment, Patagonian by affinity and choice, he is a true Southern Yankee.

Read the blog: The Southern Yankee: A Writer’s Log