2012 -- The End

I'd like to talk about some of the ups and downs of my 2012. Because 2012 was a roller coaster of a year. The good parts were incredibly good and those threads keep getting better. The bad is worse than other years, or so it seems, but the good news is that the good outweighs the bad.

The highlight of the year is the birth of beautiful babies. Ian Tzunun was born more than a month prematurely, giving us much to worry about his health, but now, four months later, he is vibrant, healthy, sweet, and much more than any parent could hope for. Ian has not only changed my day-to-day life profoundly, but has helped me to become wiser. Becoming a father again at 51 is great. In my twenties, though I loved those babies as much as I love Ian now, I was insecure in many fatherly respects. A lot of bad decisions grow out of insecurity. Now, even though my free time is sparse, I spend long amounts of time staring into Ian's eyes and delighting in his laughter. I notice tiny changes in his behavior, a little more agility in the movements of his hands, the way he turns his head to one side when he smiles, the confidence in how he holds his eyebrows.

Though an emergency Caesarian was hardly the way we wanted Ian to be born, that is the reality, and Pily will have that scar forever. She woke me up that Saturday morning and said she wanted to go to the emergency room, that she was very worried for her health. She had already gone several times that week, and I asked her not to go. She and the baby in her womb and I snuggled for a few minutes and it was heaven. Then she left and I stayed home. A few hours later I was summoned to the hospital and met my scrawny baby. His legs were very thin with loose skin, and he was amazingly small, but from the first instant, when I touched his hand, there was magic. I didn't see Pily until the next day, which was awful after the way everything happened. She had not wanted the surgery and pleaded with the doctors to wait for her husband, but they said that was too risky and finally convinced her to sign. She and the baby were both likely to die soon without it. Three days later she left the hospital and every day for the next week, made the hour-long trip to the hospital to spend the meager 90 minutes allowed by the hospital (one visitor only, so I was left out that week!) with our son. When he came home ten days after his birth, we rejoiced that we could once again have moments like those few minutes together in bed.

And since then we have been largely happy together. Pily is an excellent mother for the most part. She adores our son and spends nearly all of her time tending to his needs. The fact that he's so pleasant is due largely to that attention as well as the positive energy she shared with him during the pregnancy.

Kaya Juniper made me a grandfather in May. She chose her parents well. Kareena's energy and dedication to her is inspiring and I consult her for advice frequently. It's kind of funny when I think that just a short time ago Kareena was a tiny baby. It's even funnier when I realize that Kaya will soon call me Gramps or something similar. I still feel like a little kid.

Pily and I began our year on our honeymoon, having made a long drive from Tuxtla Gutierrez to Villahermosa. We asked for directions and took the road through the mountains, fog, rain, missing sections of pavement. We got to Lily's house ten minutes before midnight. I was incredibly tense. Here there are two traditions that her family honors -- the color of underwear is important (yellow means money, for example) and each person eats twelve grapes, making a wish with each one. I can only imagine what she wished for in her red (love) underwear, but a few weeks later we knew she was pregnant. I was hoping to wait until after Virginia's July wedding. The thought of showing up with a wife many months pregnant just didn't seem right. Plus we had just gotten married. I told her I wanted to enjoy her a little longer before a new family member takes all the attention. But Ian and God had other plans, and it's no doubt for the best. All the traveling we did in the summer was hard on Pily and we think that may have had something to do with the preclampsia.

Our travels this year were amazing. Tulum, Cenote Azul, Palenque, and Xpujil in January in Souteastern Mexico; Taxco and Jojutla in the spring; Guatemala in June; a soccer tourney in San Diego, Sacramento, Yosemite, Tucson in the summer; and Virginia's wedding in July.

I am very happy that both daughters married well. In my heart David was already my son-in-law, but marriage cements a commitment a little more, makes the couple a little more relaxed about thinking about having children.

That was the last of our travels for a while. Returning we realized that both were suffering from high blood pressure. I have for years but it was never anything like the numbers I saw this summer. And in Pily's case, being pregnant, you have to address that immediately. I started medication in September and measure my pressure daily. Running and hiking help! I'm not so sure the travels had that much to do with it in my case. I realized earlier in the year that my situation at the American School was not good. I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it, that there was some way to get my status corrected, and I was frustrated continually by that. I started looking for a different job in May and that was also frustrating -- no offers. Finally in August I got a call from the US Embassy here offering me a programming position. After three months of background-checking and medical exams (I started taking medication then because they would have cancelled the offer with the pressure readings I had), I started in November. A few weeks later I realized I had made the wrong choice. The job is more of low-level help desk position with inflexible hours where people want to be told formally that you're taking a 15-minute break. So I'm looking again. That's not how I want to spend my life, always searching for work. The lack of stability is stressful...

In early December we took possession of our house in Tlayacapan, and we have spent every weekend since then living there. Ideally, we would be there all the time, but I'm not economically ready for that yet. But it's perfect for the whole family in every other way. I jog or hike every day and continue to be amazed by the beauty of the region. Let us know when you're ready to visit -- we have plenty of room!

I'm sad to see 2012 end because there was so much that was good about it. But the plan for 2013 is that it will have just as much that is wonderful, but without so much negative.

Protests Continue in Mexico City

Here in the Mexican capital, plenty of people are upset with the recent elections. It's common to hear about people receiving $20-$50 for their vote, and poll stations altering data by the thousands. Nonetheless, I actually know people who willingly voted for Peña Nieto. Kind of like voting for Bush in 2000 in the US...

Suffrage with cash does not constitute an election.

Lies and ignorance create a submissive populace. Public education creates rebels.

I said this in 2000...

Shouting "Sin PRI México!" -- No PRI, the "Revolutionary Party" of Peña and Carlos Salinas Gortari, his mentor.

Abortion vs. Drug Violence

I've seen a lot of quotes like this recently here in Mexico:  Son más víctimas a causa del aborto, que aquellas de la guerra contra el narco. There are more deaths from abortions than those from the war on drugs.

Perhaps we can also put it this way: It is hypocritical to want to stop the war on drugs while maintaining abortion should be legal.

But I disagree. Making abortion illegal does not necessarily make it less likely. A person can be in favor of legal abortion, or more correctly, against criminalizing abortion, while still being strongly anti-abortion. If you want there to be less abortions, don't assume that merely making something illegal makes it go away, but instead examine the cause. Why do some women seek an abortion?

I would guess desperation. Fear. Hopelessness. And why do these abound?

Lots of reasons, such as social and economic inequality, the decay of the family and community unit, violent environments, poor education, poor nutrition, a loss of touch with the natural world...

Does it make sense to compare these two measurements? Is any rational person in favor of deaths by abortion, or deaths from the violence related to drug trafficking? And why do the latter exist? Are they related to abortion deaths?

Why do people become involved in drug-trafficking? For some maybe it's the excitement, the chance to become rich. But I'm sure it's more likely that most people get involved because they have little other opportunity. They are afraid for their lives due to the violence that surrounds them so they perpetuate the problem. They have little hope for the future because of their social and educational status. They get involved out of desperation.

It looks to me like these two issues should not be pitted against one another. They both stem from the same problems: inequality, injustice, environmental degradation, and a lack of good public will. Not all of these are easily fixed of course, but one that is relatively easy, one problem to ameliorate first would be to narrow the opportunity gap. In an unjust society in which a small percentage of the population enjoys most of the opportunity, there will be more desperate acts than in a just one.