As a chronic over-packer, I was left with room in my
carry-on for only one publication (excluding my copy
of Anna Karenina, which took up half my bag). What did
I choose to bring with me to Colombia, South America?
Why, the Rake, of course!
Of all the locations in Medellin to bring my Rake (On
top of the new funicular? At the first goat-cheese
farm in the state? In front of a landslide and
scavenging turkey vultures?), I deemed the special
trip to traffic-filled downtown necessary to getting
the most applicable, typically-Colombian picture
possible. What is more Colombian than Botero? And what
is more Rakish than a huge, bronze derriere? Well, I’m
sure someone will have an answer. I myself think it’s
a perfect match.
So, enjoy! The photo is of me, Giselle Restrepo, in
front of a Botero Sculpture in downtown Medellin, with
none other than my favorite pub, the Rake.
Fernando & Becky at Magen’s Bay, St. Thomas US Virgin Islands, same place where they spent their honeymoon 20 years ago. Second photo: Well, that’s Dumbo reading the Rake at the comfort of his cabin in the Royal Caribbean Explorer
Bharati Acharya [Minneapolis] knew she would have a lot of time to read at Lago
Atitlan, Guatemala. Among her other things, she packed a copy of the Rake in
her luggage. The only way to get around the lake is on one of the dozen,
or so, boat taxis that traverse the waters. But a lot of time is spent
waiting for boats to fill with passengers before leaving the dock at various villages surrounding the lake. Acharya took time to catch up on the latest issue during the wait
time.
Clinton Collins, Jr., clearly defines the problem of the Star Tribune’s reader’s representative [Free the Jackson Five, June] when he concludes that “complaining to the Star Tribune is OK—if it is the right complaint, on the right issue … ” The irony here is that the Star Tribune did have a reader’s representative who was responsive to readers’ comments and concerns. His name was Lou Gelfand and I had a long-standing and cordial relationship with him. When I called him, he was always accessible and attentive. He was never too busy to listen or to return my calls.
It’s been disappointing to me that I’ve been unsuccessful in replicating this relationship with Kate Parry. I enjoy Kate’s thoughtful articles and it is obvious that she enjoys writing them; it’s also obvious to me that she’s not a one-on-one reader’s representative. It seems that the emails and phone calls that really capture her interest are the ones that create subject matter for her articles. She’s a talented journalist, but she has not filled the vacuum created by Lou’s departure. I am still waiting for an answer to the email that I sent to her on December 15, 2005.
The only positive thing about the very creepy Body Worlds exhibit at the Science Museum [The Rake’s Progress, June] is that it’s dead humans and not the usual dead animals that are being violated, disrespected, and exploited in the name of art.
So to summarize your story [“No Way Home,” June]: Cambodia is hot. Cambodia sucks. Boy comes to the U.S. with his parents. Boy joins a gang, and never bothers to get citizenship, despite living here fifteen years. Finally, after being in fairly regular criminal trouble as a juvenile, he’s eighteen when charged with a felony and deported. (By the way, what objective journalist would travel all the way to Cambodia to talk to a criminal and not press him on what precisely he’d done?) Poor fellow feels “betrayed.” What part of this is unfair? This is not a “good kid,” accidentally picked up by The Man on his way to Sunday school. This is a habitual petty criminal, who finally strayed into the big leagues, and got punished. I say “good riddance.”
All those folks said such nice things about him—did any of them perhaps feel that they should intervene? Stop his self-destructive course midstream?
“It’s not right to send people to a country they do not call home without giving them the opportunity to argue for a second chance and to show what they’ve done to turn their lives around.” What? The lack of objectivity at letting this statement stand unchallenged is staggering. This punk got lots of second chances, and third chances, and probably fourth and fifth chances too. Eventually (I would hope much sooner) his chances ran out.
“Should people be deported when the U.S. has been involved in creating the conditions that led to their becoming refugees?” Personally, I’d love to challenge Mr. Hing on the deep racism in that statement. As if it logically follows: refugee, thug, criminal? This country was built on refugees. Economic, war, political, religious—aside from autochthones, we all are refugees and the children thereof. By his logic, we’re all apparently free from culpability for our personal behavior? If the consequences of Moek’s deportation were so severe, perhaps he should have followed a narrower path? The rest of us manage to understand that lawbreaking leads at least to jail, so we don’t do it. Or is your author suggesting somehow that Cambodian refugees are too stupid to understand the logical consequences of criminality? Don’t want to be deported, separated from your family, your home, sent someplace else? To quote a film: “Stop breaking the law, loser.” In fact, the crying shame is that of the 1,500 “caught in the process,” only 145 have been deported. 0.100 is a pretty crummy batting average.
Steve (last name withheld by request), Eden Prairie
Dear Rake,
I was too excited when I saw the cover of the February Rake [“Exposed”]! It was right before I left on my first vacation at a naturalist resort. The experience was great and the magazine was a big hit at the manager’s cocktail party, among the many Minnesotans who “bare it all” at this great resort on St. Maarten.
—Kathy from Minneapolis
The U.S. Embassy in Yemen was only a stone’s throw from my snug, little brick house. Next door, in a smaller home made of mud, lived my landlady Saida, her four young children, and her mostly absentee husband. I was a twenty-four-year-old aid worker, eager to help in any way I could.
Saida’s kids were sweet-faced ragamuffins, fascinated by my red hair and delighted when I sat alongside them on my doorstep, laughing and practicing Arabic. They didn’t have many diversions; their only “playground” was a dusty field in front of our houses that was strewn with rusty cans and rotting food and frequented by scavenging dogs.
Saida’s two older kids attended school, but four-year-old Maisa and five-year-old Abdul did not. Day after day, I watched them play in the dirty lot while, on the other side of the embassy wall, there lay immaculate lawns and an unused swing set. The kids’ friendship meant a great deal to me, and I daydreamed about all the things I would like to give them.
One afternoon, only a few months into my stay, I decided to bring Maisa and Abdul inside the embassy grounds to play. I knew this probably wasn’t OK, but nobody had told me I couldn’t. I wanted very much to offer something special to my little friends, something that American kids took for granted.
Holding onto the children’s grimy hands, I rapped on the embassy gate and then caught myself when I heard a repetitive sound. I always seemed to interrupt the guard during his afternoon prayers. “Allahu Akbaaaar,” God is great, he chanted, and we waited quietly. After a few moments, he opened the gate, prayer rug in hand, and gave me a surprised, slightly disapproving look as I sailed past him with Maisa and Abdul.
The kids didn’t seem to notice the lush grass under their feet, but stood at my side, staring at the swing set. They appeared to have no idea what it was. I walked them over to it and Abdul put his foot on the slide’s ladder. “Yalla,” I encouraged him, go on. After much coaxing he climbed the ladder, and then suddenly curled himself into a ball and went hurtling to the bottom, landing with a thud and a scream. My pride turned into a kind of sheepish alarm as I picked him up and he sobbed in my arms.
I took Maisa’s hand and led her to the swings. Her body trembled as I lifted her up onto the wooden seat, and her knuckles whitened as she gripped the chain handles. I tried to reassure her, but my gentle pushes only seemed to heighten her fear, and after only a few moments, I lifted her off.
The kids had clearly had enough. They both seemed relieved when we walked past the silent guard, out the embassy gate, and onto the familiar packed-mud lane. Maisa stayed beside me, but Abdul quickly let go of my hand and went running, straight through the garbage field and back toward his house.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, so I’ll put it off. I always find plenty to appreciate in The Rake. On picking up 17 Voices [April], I turned first to Robert Bly’s “The Book You Can’t Find,” and then pondered the coincidence of its being immediately followed by Oliver Nicholson’s “Halls of Memory.” Quite a few years ago I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation under Oliver’s inestimable guidance, and I am currently writing a book with Robert’s generous cooperation and encouragement. Then I flipped through the rest, happy to see other writers I admire and enjoy. The photographs of “Written on the Body” caught my eye. It so happens that I have written a fair amount on tattoos in Greco-Roman antiquity (the Nicholson connection) and I love modern poetry (the Bly connection). So I was doubly struck when I saw the photo of a forearm marked with the words of a familiar poem by Galway Kinnell. Now the bad news. One thing I have learned: It is very important to be careful both with tattoos and with words, especially words in poems. Unfortunately, the tattooed poem is missing one word, another “is.” Kinnell’s poem “Prayer” (from his book The Past [1985]) is correctly printed as follows:
Whatever happens. Whatever what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.
That additional “is” turns out to be crucial to the meaning of the poem. And the series of three of them, “is is is,” something that practically never occurs in English, gives this short poem its particular buzz. If the message of this poem, with its attitude of welcoming and acceptance, has gone more than skin deep for the possessor of the inscribed arm, maybe this is not bad news after all. It’s just what is. I mean, shit happens. Whatever. –Mark Gustafson, Minneapolis
Editor’s note: That wasn’t the only mistake on the literary-tattoo front. The tattoo which purported to be John Steinbeck’s Latin motto: “To the stars on the wings of a pig,” actually reads, due to a mistranscription of the Latin somewhere in literary history, “To the stars on the other things of a pig.” We won’t speculate on what the pig’s “other things” are.
Hosannas to the artist-designed initial caps and the stories/poems [17 Voices literary supplement, April] that followed, aimed at lovers of literature and libraries and books and life. Oliver Nicholson’s fragrant essay of ancient library information and memories reminds me to emphasize as well the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, located among the monks of St. John’s U. When Founding Executive Director Julian Plante told me twenty years ago about the project of microfilming the world’s one-of-a-kind monk-illuminated manuscripts, I was skeptical of the need. That was before the bombing of the library at Dubrovnik, then the Iraq National Library conflagration. Homo homini lupus—man is a wolf to man—we know that Roualt image of a hanged man in a charred landscape. But burned books—homo liber lupus? Unimaginable, and yet … So celebrate the new library—and keep it idiot-proof by reading, and reading The Rake.