The fact that I am on a Caribbean island, easy to forget sometimes when you’ve been inside all day, was driven home this morning, the first hours of a hot, sunny Sunday that found me wandering down to the small shopping center to read the Sunday paper, when the air suddenly cracked with a violent thunder that set off hundreds of car alarms across the city and the sky opened to a torrent of rain and wind.

After standing outside of the market for half an hour, grocery bag in hand, I decided to break down and buy an umbrella from the scruffy fellow selling them – he had been watching me, tempting me, patiently waiting as my capacity to wait out the storm gave way to my boredom. In any case, by the time I made it back home I was soaked anyway, and, due to the inadequate drainage in Kingston that sees the streets turn to rivers at the slightest precipitation, my shoes gushed with water.

It was a good morning none the less, though. I found, to my great pleasure, a nearby cafe that not only had wifi, allowing me to read the Sunday NY Times, but served up the fabulous Blue Mountain coffee.

Oh yeah, I guess it is a weekday, isn’t it? One day in Minnesota, and time does funny things.
I am using the few days of leave that I have accumulated in the first few months at my job to take a timeout in my home state minnesota, to see the friends and family that I have not seen for too long and probably won’t see for a while – at least two years, anyway, the length of my tour in Kingston.

Arriving early Tuesday morning, it was a day of Minneapolis, of my favorite people, my old haunts. Even in those moments that I was simply alone, I was in physical locations that have left their images, smells, feels burned on my soul. Much has changed here in Uptown, of course, but two years is not enough to wash away the aesthetic, pace, and people that make this place more “home” than most places.

And today, after a far too short breakfast with sister Katie before she is off to her new job, it is North, to my REAL home, to the lakes and forests of Ottertail.

What kind of a Muslim would blow himself up in a crowd? A misguided one, many Muslims, including nearly every Muslim friend or acquaintance of mine from around he world. What kind of resident or citizen of the United States would protest the construction of a mosque? A majority of Americans, I sorely want to believe, would also answer, a misguided one.

The protesters do, and should, have the right to protest whatever they want – just as Muslims, Christians, or Jews have the right to practice religion in whatever way they choose. However, fear, even hatred, of the changing demographics of the United States, its flows of immigrants, its changing culture, is a betrayal of a complete lack of understanding of what it means to be an American. Our country’s relatively brief history is nothing if not a continuing string of dramatic inflows of people and ideas, and often irrational and violent reactions to them. However, the history of America is also the story of a nation’s ever growing understanding of its own diversity and the drive to not only accept but nurture it.

A true American knows his or her country’s true comparative advantage in a global world is its diversity and its nature as a place where people from every corner of the globe can arrive and know that they have access to the same rights and opportunities as every other person.

A recent taxi ride, the driver being a Somali immigrant, made me more proud to be an American than I have ever been before. “Here, I have rights. I know what my rights are, and there are consequences if people try to deny me my rights. In Africa, and many countries, you might be thrown in jail for no reason, and there is nothing you can do about it.”

Musings inspired by a front page article in the Sunday NewYork Times,

Across Nation, Mosque Projects Meet Opposition

There are “Washingtonians” and there are DC residents.  The members of one group considers themselves “local” if they manage to stick around for more than two years, they go to cocktail happy hours in the rooftop bars of hotels, they discuss the political drama of the day. Members of the other group  vote in local elections, worry about the local drinking water and the local schools, get incensed about DC’s lack of Congressional representation. They are proud of the DC flag.

Unfortunate fashion statement at the National Gallery of Art. Japanese tourists get a pass, however, as their often unapologetic adventures in clothing result in as many “awesome’s” as it does “ugh’s.”

Sitting and Standing, American tourists enjoy the modern art in the Smithsonian.

DC even has good coffee, and pleasant places to drink it while reading a book.

Tunnel between art museums, National Gallery of Art.

My black and silver Parker ballpoint pen, hiding from the unscrutinizing writer with its pacifying curvature, simple lines and basic colors, is nonetheless a thing of beauty. Unapologetic in its utility, it also expresses its own sort of architectural confidence, even arrogance.

Mightier than the sword

This pen was tucked in the sleeve of my backpack, at the ready in the pocket of my jeans, or resting in the pages of a notebook the entire time I traveled through South East Asia, assisting me as I circled landmarks and planned convoluted routes on coffee stained Lonely Planet guides or wrote down my thoughts on a long train ride through Vietnamese mountains.

The silver Sheaffer pen is a new acquisition and, while very nice, does not spin quite as well in my hand.

As departure for Jamaica draws ever nearer, I am finding more ways that my old life, connections and interests are and can be a part of my new job. Cooperatives and the cooperative business model have long been an interest of mine, of course, and my job as a Labor Reporting Officer will give me a special opportunity to see how coops fit in to the community of workers and larger economy of the island.

Here is a piece done by Farm Radio International, about “A Successful Cooperative in Jamaica“.

I spent the past five days meeting people and learning about conventions, practices, international agreements and organizations, etc that are consequential to labor, both in the United States and around the world. Today, at the Solidarity Center, the focus was on the international labor movement, especially how labor activists in the US were not only forging and maintaining bonds with communities of workers in other countries but how they are supporting labor movements in countries where labor standards are not as well enforced as they are in places like the US, Canada, and many others.

China was always an interesting caveat in these discussions, since the government controlled union is one of the world’s largest and because it is illegal to form private unions. While this poses challenges to the broader community of workers seeking solidarity with the workers of China, that is not to say that labor plays a small role in the country. On the contrary, despite the controlled nature of much of China’s news media, labor activists that I talked to today said how prominently workers issues, working standards, and worker actions against unacceptable work conditions were featured in Chinese media.

Even Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping remarked recently on the importance of labor unions in the country – see “China’s labor unions play unique role: Vice President” in The People’s Daily, a national English Language news source from China.

Here is a post on the newly retooled Writing the World, a new venue for me to share my experiences in my new job with the U.S. Foreign Service.