Happy Fathers Day!

Today is Fathers Day in Bolivia.

I began my day with a blissfully muddy 25-minute bike ride to school (Fathers Day and the end of the rainy season still coincide), past cows and corn, with a singing first-grader seated on the metal rack behind me. I was also the happy recipient of a set of very nice tiny drawings on tiny scraps of paper, with tiny flowers.

There is some commercialization of Fathers Day here, but beyond a few ads for neckties and dress shirts it isn’t much. In some years my family and I end up being in the U.S. in June, when Dads’ Day is celebrated up there, and I get two! But this year one will be enough.

When school is out I am waiting at the door. You can tell something is different. Some of the other fathers have also managed to escape from work, sneaking into the usual crowd of mothers who congregate around the muddy entrance.

My six-year-old daughter and I head into the city with an afternoon’s worth of plans ahead of us. We lunch on pizza at the restaurant with the plastic playground equipment that she has played on since she was a toddler and which she has now nearly outgrown. Then we are off to the movies, a rare father/daughter treat for us.

The center of Cochabamba is dotted with signs of a special day. Many tiny hands reach up to grasp large ones as they walk down the street. A man I know who runs a restaurant stops his work to chat with me a while and then announces he is off to rejoin his elderly father at a table in the corner.

Fathers Day is a funny holiday. You start out in life with it being about your own father. In my family, when I was little, we marked both Mothers Day and Fathers Day by getting up early and scotch taping a fistful of homemade cards to my parents’ bedroom door.

For me there were a number of years when Fathers Day was just a time of hard remembrance. My father died 20 years ago next Friday. But soon after I became a parent in my own right, three times, and I became the lucky recipient of little notes written by little hands.

At the movies, after carefully studying the posters for what was playing, we settled on a new movie called Hotel for Dogs. We laughed so hard we almost peed our pants. In the movie the young boy who saves stray canines across downtown Los Angeles (my hometown) also makes inventions to keep them happy. The best was the one that let the dogs watch films of a road whizzing by, while sticking their heads out of disconnected car door windows and having fans blow air in their faces. We liked that.

We agreed that our dogs would have liked the movie as much as we did. But dogs aren’t allowed into theaters here. At least I’ve never tried.

Happy Fathers Day to all our readers who are fathers, in Bolivia, and everywhere else.

Grateful for the Holidays

This holiday season in Bolivia I am grateful for…my family being together…rains that have painted the Cochabamba Valley green…turkey leftovers…falling on my bike into a really large pond of mud…the friends that have come by to say hello…my daughter’s fabulous pumpkin pie…the comparative lack of commercialism surrounding the holidays…the look on my dogs' faces when they get to share in the turkey leftovers…the cool hammock my wife gave me…the rubber band gun my daughter gave me…time to read…all the great lights in Plaza Colon, complete with 267 simultaneous Christmas songs (different ones) playing from those strings of lights…relative peace in Bolivia…getting woken up at 7am on Christmas morning by a six-year-old…the CD I made with five different versions of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" (especially the Bruce Springsteen and Pointer Sisters versions)...talking to family in the U.S. on the phone…not screwing up the mashed sweet potatoes…the pumpkin pie (worth mentioning twice since there is a whole pie still left)…not much email…walks with my dogs…that the guys who I saw in the woods this week weren’t actually cutting down trees but planting them…hope…and a week without Blogs.

Happy holidays to all our readers from all of us at The Democracy Center!

Notes from the Road

Airports: 13
Cities where I at least stayed overnight: 5
Hours of jet lag: 9
Number of movies seen in theaters: 3
Number of movies seen on tiny airplane screens: 9

Washington DC

Portrait of a typical conversation among people interested in politics in Washington:

Obama...the weather is cold...Obama...have you noticed the economy seems to be melting?...Obama...I wonder if I can rent out my house for the inauguration...Obama...isn't Christmas soon?...Obama...I know someone who knows someone who knows Obama...Thai or Vietnamese food?...Obama...

I walked by the Bush White House. It was kind of nice to think that he might be packing boxes inside.

They have bagels in Washington, round ones or square ones, your pick. I like that.

New York City

I fulfilled my lifelong ambition in New York City on Thanksgiving Day. I confess it here. It wasn't eating turkey, thought that was a good thing. It wasn't seeing the name of my grandmother etched on a wall at Ellis Island, though that was moving. No, it was something else, something I had dreamed of doing since my eyes first locked onto the image on a small television screen as a boy in Southern California (where cranberry sauce is often served in short sleeves), an image of giant balloons as big as a house floating down a street of skyscrapers.

On Thanksgiving I went to the Macy's Day Parade. For real!

The massive blue and white Smurf scared me a little. A floating Buzz Light Year the size of an apartment building was truly impressive. Seeing an inflated Horton larger than an airport lounge reminded me of another life achievement -- when I had a convention of 5,000 PTA parents in California read Horton Hears a Who aloud together at the Orange Country Convention Center.

But it was Sponge Bob Square Pants I will remember. He was huge. He was inflated. He was obviously gay. And he was dashing as he dodged light posts along Broadway, his giant yellow frame bordering on terrifying. But I think the young girls really cared more about someone named Hanna Montana.

Tibilisi, Georgia

When I was a kid growing up during the Cold War a common expression said only in partial jest was, "The Russians are coming!" It was one of the reasons we had to spend a certain number of minutes each month laying under our school desks with our eyes covered listening to the comforting sound of an air raid siren. Just in case the Russians actually did come.

In Georgia in August they actually did come, in a conflict that hangs over the nation more darkly than the meltdown of the economy does in the U.S. Pick a point of view: Option 1: The newly aggressive, oil and gas wealthy Russians decided to teach "the west" and its former forced satellite state a lesson by bombing it as it was being considered for entrance to NATO. Option 2: The inept and not especially bright Georgian President provoked the Russians by bombing a small town on the disputed border, unleashing a needless war against his people.

I was only there for less than a week, so I have no real expertise to offer on which one is more true. But that's the debate. I did notice that there are four new luxury hotels since I was there last in 2002 (I did not stay in one of those), and that the Beatles Bar where I once over drank and danced was still there. Why was I there? Option 1: Doing a training for UNICEF and its partners in child advocacy. Option 2: Spying for the C.I.A. You pick.

London

They still have that whole monarchy thing going on over there. Looks like they are sticking with it.

We did two public events for our new book on Bolivia. Many people came. Many questions were asked. Many books were sold (we make zero pounds per book under are carefully negotiated U.K. publishing contract. And Bolivia still continues to intrigue and inspire people abroad. And some in Bolivia too.

One night when I couldn't sleep from jet lag (which is pretty much every night after you have traveled across both the equator and nine timezones) I watched a British comic on television do a routine about the U.S. It went something like this.

I mean, in the world the U.S. is like just about the worst flat mate you ever had. He breaks everything up and then says, "Hey, it wasn't me!"

I am just passing that along.

The Miami Airport

Since I pass through this airport with a good deal of frequency certain things have become ritual. Like visiting Starbucks (my daughter in college is a barista now, so don't hassle me) and buying a New York Times and sitting outside in the little grass-less park outside Terminal E. Hey, after nine house in a plane I'll take any real air I can get.

And then there is my bagel sandwich. The guys at the bagel store and I have a long relationship. He's from Jamaica and he used to always call me John Kerry back when Kerry's face was still on TV every day. He makes me tuna on a toasted seedy with roasted red peppers. In my rush between flights on my way into the U.S. three weeks ago I accidentally left behind by lovingly prepared tuna on a bagel, a sad fact that I did not discover until I had crossed the wide Rubicon of airport security.

This afternoon when I went for my ritual sandwich he immediately told me that he had discovered the meal left behind and saved it for me that evening, expecting me to return. He then proceeded to recreate it from memory, free-of-charge.

And that is what I truly love about America, the kindness of the basic people who live their lives behind bagel counters in airports, or in any of the zillions of other low-status gigs in this country (immigrants mostly). Thank you all for the little kindnesses you have shown me along the road.

And now back to Cochabamba!!

I hear that nothing much has happened while I was gone.

My Bolivian Commute

My trip from home to work this morning began as it usually does, leaving the front door of my house hand-in-hand with my 5-year-old daughter for the walk through the countryside to her school. If I walked it alone I could do it in just over 5 minutes. With my daughter it takes almost 20. There is a lot to see.

"The cows aren't there today," she says to me as soon as we reach the dirt road in front of our house. The cows who eat in the open field next door to us have been a subject of speculation between us of late. For a week they have been there every morning, two of them, chomping on wild plants and grass. We wondered if they actually slept there, or just got dropped off really early. Last night, at least, they slept somewhere else.

Along the way we watch a small bird bathing itself with tiny splashes in a small puddle that remains from the rains. I tell my daughter that I bet the bird's Mom made her take a bath. She agrees that is probably the case. Then she suggests that we try to walk by only stepping on the big rocks. Then we pass the purple morning glories growing along the side of a field where one of our neighbors – a woman in a wide dark skirt and white straw hat – is harvesting the spinach and alfalfa. The flower my daughter picks for me gets planted into my shirt pocket, just peeking out.

Then we spend 5 minutes assessing a very big dump truck full of dirt that is parked by the side of the road. Then we debate if the ancient and beat-up Chevy pick-up parked across the road ever actually goes anywhere.

"At night I think it moves," she tells me, "and then they put it back early in the morning in the same place."

"Maybe so."

By the time we turn the next corner to her school, I can tell by the absence of kids at the entrance that we are very late. I don't mind all that much. Punctuality, I think, is overrated as an organizing principle for the universe, especially if it comes at the expense of observing cows and picking morning glories. I think this belief may make me Bolivian.

When we arrive the gate is locked.

"I know, how about I throw you over and then you flap your arms really, really fast like a bird and just float down on the other side?"

"NOOO!"

"Okay, maybe we can just open the gate and let you in."

She disappears into a tiny sea of small children, who are kind enough to greet me by name as I wave goodbye. I spent yesterday morning, Father's Day in Bolivia, in their class reading them (in poor translation) The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, teaching them to make paper airplanes, and engaging in finger puppet warfare in which Superman is challenged by a pig – "Chancho-man!" With small children, I find it best to make things up as you go along.

Now I am alone, walking up a narrow dirt road that eventually takes me to the Tiquipaya-Apote Super Highway. Okay, it isn’t a super highway, but it is paved. It is also where I catch the Taxi Trufi #106 that takes me into the city.

A minute or so goes by and along comes a white 1980s vintage Toyota Corolla station wagon, that shows its age along with a plastic sign "106" fastened to its roof. It pulls over to pick me up and I squeeze my body carefully into the front seat next to the driver and an enormous Bolivian man sitting in between us.

"Que bien que es flaco!" booms a voice from the back seat. "That's great, he's thin!"

I look back and three more enormous Bolivian men, looking like large sardines, are squeezed into the Toyota's back seat. Soon the largest of them, the man in the middle, is engaged in a full-on conversation with the driver.

"It's the Japanese, they are all skinny. So there cars are made for skinny people."

"Of course they are skinny, they eat nothing but fish and rice, fish and rice."

Images of Sumo wrestlers come to mind, but I decide I am better off just listening.

"So that's what you need to do, starting tomorrow, fish and rice, fish and rice," says the driver. The large man in the back seat laughs.

By this time we are making our way south down what is called Avenida Ecologica. My friend Ismael pointed out to me the absurdity of the name a few months ago. "Look what there is all along 'Avenida Ecologica' – field after field of cut logs. 'Avenida Ecologica is a cemetery for trees!"

During the taxi-trufi ride into town my seatmates in front change three times. The round man next to me leaves and is replaced by a well-dressed young woman in remarkably pointy shoes. A few blocks later she leaves and a father and young son pile in next to me, each wearing baseball caps. The boy's is on backwards. They are headed to the bus terminal to travel for Easter.

On the radio two voices discuss the steep recent rise in inflation, a topic on everyone's lips here. They announce the good news that Piromani brand milk remains priced at three liters for 11 Bolivianos.

Entering the center of the city we pass the statue erected in the middle of a large fountain at the edge of El Prado. It is an abstract pair of faces looking upward, but I agree with the local reviewer who said it looks more like a big concrete salteña. I think a statue of an actual salteña would have been even cooler. But what do I know about art?

I get off along El Prado to walk the last few blocks to my office. In Plaza Colon Doña Elsa sits, like clockwork, with her trademark wide-brimmed bright red hat, changing dollars into Bolivianos and visa-versa. Through rain, civil uprising and falling currency rates, Doña Elsa is always there.

On Calle 25 de Mayo I pass the young mothers from Potosi, who sit with their children asking for change, and give some coins to the one I know by name.

I stop at a newspaper stand where all the local papers are pinned up, unfolded, letting anyone who wants, to read the front-page stories. Both Los Tiempos and Opinion lead with the story of the Morales government sending out letters to 1,000 media outlets in Bolivia threatening them with closure if they publish materials aimed at inciting insecurity and fear – about inflation in particular. This is just the latest in a string of recent examples of how the Morales government is becoming more and more paranoid and authoritarian in its manner, a subject of genuine concern here by both right and left. It is also a really stupid move politically. Is there really a sane politician anywhere in the world who believes that his or her political standing will improve by completely pissing off every media outlet in the nation? Another article reports on a government decree banning the export of cooking oil, again ostensibly an anti-inflation measure, but again, a really stupid one.

Setting politics aside I wander into a store where I go to buy my morning bananas. I walk past some new graffiti (translated): Neither God, nor love, nor country – Liberty!

On the corner I stop at the nut cart operated by a short man named Gusto and buy some almonds. From there I walk up the stairs to my office, where one of our youthful staff is practicing her Quechua homework on a blackboard. I fight open a balcony door that has been swelled shut by the recent rains. In the distance I hear the sound of exploding fireworks, the telltale signal that a protest is underway somewhere in Cochabamba's center.

I push the "on" switch on my computer and sit down.

"You know," I think to myself, "All of that wouldn’t make a bad Blog." And I start to type.