When I Googled "Jack Duggan."
What happened to Jack Duggan?
Growing up it was always Ellen and Joan, the names, the story seemed almost inseparable.
Joan and Ellen were a partnership forged permanently when they lived with our grandmother in St. Louis shortly after Joan was born during World War II. Ellen was 18 months old when Joan was born in March 1942. It’s a tribute to Ellen’s generous nature that they weren’t competitive. Ellen was the senior partner but by the time I came along 4 years later Joan and Ellen were a given. They might have had their disagreements but it stayed between them. Ellen more than anyone else appreciated Joan.
Ellen was the star of the show, the strong character, the tom boy who could hold her own with the boys and shoot marbles better than any of us. At eight or nine years old Ellen wanted the full Hopalong Cassidy outfit and when she got it, wore it with pride. Joan was the background. I don’t remember much about her at all and in those days I think that was as much Joan as it was Ellen, Joan was in the shadow. Joan was a person of strong character and intensity, but she kept it to herself.
After the Barracks, the second bedroom was always theirs. At our new home on Magnolia Boulevard Ellen and Joan’s room was this pristine sacred space, with twin beds, bedspreads, curtains, a book case and a desk. The most precious object in the room was a turquoise Motorola Clock Radio which Ellen kept tuned to KFAC, the classical music station in LA. Today when I hear Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto #1 I’m transported back to the sound coming from Joan and Ellen’s bedroom, The Gas Hour theme.
In school Ellen was everyone’s favorite. In the 8th grade Ellen was the captain of the Bellarmine Jefferson Guards, Monsignor Keating’s doctrinaire and whimsical fusion of devotion and patriotism into a kind of World War I home guard. She and the boy captain led Flag Salute our morning formation, where at attention we recited prayers composed for the occasion and sang the national anthem while raising the flag. We sang Hail Columbia. Monsignor didn’t like that new fangled Star Spangled Banner.
I think by the time Joan started high school she had had enough of always being Ellen’s sister at school. She began to shine as her own star. We Duggans were a bright bunch but Joan was undoubtedly the smartest of us all. She played the clarinet in band, she roller skated at Harry’s Roller Rink, and she became the science teacher's pet, Sister Mary Paul Anthony (Catherine O’Dwyer).. The rest of the world was terrified of Paul Anthony but Joan flourished under her guidance.
In 1959 Ellen left for the nunnery. Joan got her own room and was on her own at Bellarmine Jefferson, winning awards and honors and a full scholarship to Clarke College in Dubuque Iowa. Dubuque was the mother house of the nuns at St. Roberts and Clarke is their college. In those days I filled in as Joan’s ally. Her little brother to Harry’s Roller Rink. She was very pretty. Ellen never had much interest in boys, but the boys noticed Joan and she liked the attention.
Before she started the college sent Joan a reading list of books they thought she should be reading. She shared it with me. I devoured it and let Joan know the ones I thought she should read. Joan was excited about chemistry and I wondered what it was all about so I read a chapter of one of her books. The chapter was Boyle’s law and when I took the entrance exam for high school, the science section was a paragraph on Boyle’s Law and questions on the reading. I was by that coincidence one of the smartest students to enter St. Francis High School that year Later I was a big disappointment to the science teacher.
Joan came home for the summers. She was a young woman, smoking, drinking beer and quite sophisticated. She got a summer job as an information operator at The Telephone Company. I was always struck by the fact that she was a Chemistry major with a Latin minor. Joan had learned to drive on an automatic transmission. The summer I was chafing to get my driver’s license having learned to drive in a few lessons earlier in the year. Joan was looking for a car and realized it would be good to know how to drive a stick shift. I had mastered the basics of driving on our 1948 Studebaker, our second car, our mother’s junker.
She asked me to teach her. Our exchange was after our lesson I could drive the car with her as my over 18 licensed driver. That exchange was a strong element of our growing bond. We had fun together. One time I was walking her through the sequence of making a left turn: slowing, clutching, downshifting. Just then I looked and we were heading directly for the house on the corner, “And steer! And Steer!” I shouted. We both had a good laugh and I had a story to tell.
I think at the beginning of grad school Joan bought an American Rambler. It was not cool or stylish but it was a good little car and had a stick shift. It was practical like Joan. It suited her. I don’t remember all the cars Joan had but they included a big Ford Bronco or Explorer and a big Ford pickup truck, macho cars. It was fun to watch her grip the steering wheel and use the step to climb into them. Joan was short 5 feet or 5 foot 1 but she liked the cars and she played Country and Western music on the radio sometimes. It tickled her sense of irony. Joan wasn’t macho but she was tough.
I began drinking beer at home when I was 16 and stopped hiding that I smoked. So when Joan came home in the summer before she graduated we drank beer together. That was another one of our bonds. I contributed and she bought and we’d bring it home and share with Pop including whatever he had at home. The three of us would drink together, we drank whatever was there and finished it off. These were convivial days and very social. For me and probably Joan too they were the first time that our father relaxed and talked to us. He was coming out of his PTSD shell that had lasted for over 20 years. We reveled in his conviviality.
When I started college, Joan generously offered to share an apartment with me and we lived in a furnished one bedroom apartment on Sepulveda Boulevard near Venice Boulevard in National City. I slept on the living room couch. I didn’t see much of Joan. She worked day and night and had an active social life. I was busy going to college on my own. When our paths crossed we both enjoyed Swansons Frozen Pot Pies. We did quite well together. We were good roommates. I have always been grateful for Joan’s generosity.
The next year she got an apartment near Culver City and I went on campus to the dorms.
And then I met Cathy and joined the Air Force and Joan finished her Masters at UCLA and went on. I was in the Air Force, got married, and then went to England. Cathy and my first summer in Bedford Joan came to visit. I think it was her first time in Europe and before she came to Bedford she went to a language program in Spain. I remember we had another a coworker to dinner at our flat when Joan was there. I can’t remember his name, a little older than me. He commended Joan on being in college and that she should stay in school and work hard in chemistry. He deflated when she said she wasn’t a student in college, but a professor. Joan was very pretty but looked very young, not like most chemistry professors.
That summer Joan had met this guy in the Spain and apparently they were quite taken with each other. Somehow we got the word that this guy Michael was desperate to call her and she was desperate to get the call. Using the phone in England in those days meant going to the red Call Box a block and a half away. Joan and Michael seem to take it personally thinking we were obstructing them in not having a phone. They managed to reach each other.
When Cathy and I returned to California in 1971, Joan and Michael were trying to maintain a long distance relationship between Monterey Park and the Bronx. Joan converted to Judaism and had a ceremony welcoming her to the tribe at a synagogue in Glendale. My parents and Ellen were there. We were all happy that Joan was happy, happy to be Jewish, and she had found her true love. Someone asked me how was it my sister converted to Judaism. I told them when you grow up Irish Catholic, it’s easy to convert to something else; Joan found an intellectual and spiritual home in Judaism.
She took a sabbatical and went to live with Michael in New York. She went to Hunter College for a year. And Joan and Michael got married in Connecticut, and paid my way to the wedding, I was still an undergrad at UCLA. It was a wonderful wedding with hoopa and Michael breaking the glass. It was at a cousin’s of Michael in Connecticut. Michael was very proud of the food, Middle Eastern, Sephardic, humus, pita bread and Michael’s favorite, baba ganush. The caterer was Lebanese. Joan and Michael stayed in New York.
As agreed they came out to California the following year, just for Michael to try it. Michael didn’t seem very impressed by California and he didn’t think they would stay. I remember his conversion occurred with an Orange Tree he bought. When it first bloomed and had fruit during the winter. Michael became a Californian.
Cathy and I and Joan and Michael were friends, we prepared and ate dinners with wine together and cocktails or brandy afterwards. We were their guests for the Chanukah and Passover holidays. One day with satisfaction I realized my boys didn’t think of the holidays as exotic, just something we celebrated with Joan and Michael. They knew to set a place for Elijah, to ask the question and in December to look for Chanukah gelt.
In 1977 we went down to Brotman Hospital in Culver City to be part of their new baby’s birth. Being Joan and Michael I don’t think we saw the baby that day, she was born. Shortly thereafter we got to see Laurie Reyna Pessah. That was a big event. Laurie was Joan and Michael’s special child and very special she was. She was beautiful, talented, very smart and charming from the start and so she is today. She is Joan and Michael’s child and the best of both of them.
Cathy and I struggled in our marriage, there were good times and bad times and 1983 was a bad time. Cathy and I separated. I readily accepted the role of the bad guy and Cathy was the aggrieved party. She made sure all of my family knew my transgressions. It seemed Joan and Michael sided with Cathy and I was left out.
Eventually I was partially reinstated. At that same time I got sober and that became another barrier between Joan and me
Everyone in the family was pretty surprised. Cathy, now Kate, immediately joined Alanon and became a 12 Step Master though gratefully she didn’t have anything to do with me at the time. Her insights may not have been helpful to me at the time. Joan and Michael noticed it and were very interested. By this time, a lot of people knew Joan drank too much, including Joan. Not long after, I think it might have been the that summer when people began to realize not only had I stopped drinking but I was sober and getting more so every day.
One day Michael called and we had to meet downtown to “discuss” Joan’s drinking. Michael was very concerned that we should get Joan sober, she really needed to stop drinking. Around then I gave my copy of Alcohol Anonymous to Joan or for Joan. Of course, Joan and I never talked about alcoholism. It’s makes sense if you’re Irish. I was sober, she knew it and she knew she needed to stop drinking too. She had The Book and I think she had looked at it. Michael gave me updates on how Joan was doing. I learned Joan had tried AA but it wasn’t for her, too religious.
For Joan the Protestant sounding rhetoric of the Big Book was a deal breaker. She’d do it on her own. I was struck by the rhetoric, an artifact from the 1930s but it never bothered me. I was an atheist and just let it go. Particularly in California AA is strong on a Higher Power or “god as you understand him or her,” a big sidestep of the God thing for most of us. It is about surrender, admitting that we can’t do it on our own, that we have to give up trying to control it. Joan couldn’t do that. She tried. Alcoholism isn’t a lack of will power or character. Functional alcoholics are people of incredible character and strong will.
Trudging on, getting up, doing what has to be done instead of giving up, instead of letting go, takes courage and is an act of incredible will. Joan was a strong willed person. She did not give up. She tried and she tried. Joan fought her alcoholism up to the end I imagine.
She was uncomfortable with my sobriety. When I visited she wouldn’t have anything to drink and that was hard. I’d stay for an hour or two. She shared her garden and water course. She showed me her book binding projects.
We were cordial but we were never close again. As we aged Joan had some health problems. We didn’t talk about it but I was very proud of my sister for being a leader and guide for people learning to live with colostomy bags. And then she began to suffer from dementia, I didn’t see that. Michael had problems seeing and driving, so they were a driving team, Michael navigated and Joan drove.
And then Joan passed away. I would have liked to have been a lot closer and there for Joan but it didn’t happen. And she died September 2016. And I miss her.
My daughter Paloma was in the first grade when Joan died. And then Paloma was having problems in school. We looked into it and she was grieving for Joan. We hadn’t thought much about it. We didn’t think Joan’s passing had been important in Paloma’s six year old world. I didn’t realize that Paloma and Joan had bonded. It happened one afternoon when Joan took Paloma aside and showed her all of her bookbinding work, the tools and what she did with them. I felt very bad for Paloma but it also made me feel very grateful that Paloma had experienced my beloved sister Joan and that she loved her, just like I did.
My timeline is to me like the Lakota and Park Rangers history on a buffalo hide at Agate Fossil Beds; not a grand account of every event, but a view of the world from my perspective. My timeline isn’t a record of all that happened in the world, but what was happening in my world. This is mine: how I saw it from my vantage point.
So alongside wars, assassinations, and political turns, you’ll find births, marriages, rattlesnake bites, new jobs, and losses. This is my life; a few broad strokes for the backdrop. Here is what I did and the times in which I did it.
Two notes to my Timeline, I’ve included the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Joe McCarthy, of whom I had no awareness growing up. I include the bombing because like a temple bell it resonated long after it was struck.
McCarthyism is an obvious inclusion but I want to note I had no knowledge of McCarthyism at the time. I educated myself on it as an adult well after college. The adults and teachers in my life who lived through those days never talked about it. In fact the spirit of McCarthyism hung like a cloud over American political life long into the 60’s and even into the 70’s where ideas like the Free Speech Movement, Vietnam dissent and Nixon’s humiliation broke it’s power over American intellectual life.
My Timeline
1945
Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombed
1946 I was born
1948 Marshall
Plan enacted
1950 Korean War begins
1950 Cathy was
born
1952 Tehachapi Earthquake
1953 Eisenhower negotiates
Korean truce
1953 McCarthy chairs an investigative
committee
1957 The FLN insurrection in Algiers
1957 Sputnik
launched
1960 Graduate from grammar school, start high
school
1960 John F. Kennedy elected president
1963 Kennedy
assassinated
1964 Civil Rights Bill passed
1965 Start
college
1965 Rhodesian UDI declared
1966 Join the UFWOC
march to Sacramento
1967 Larry Stephan, St. Roberts classmate,
killed in the DMZ
1967 Join the Air Force
1968 Married
Cathy, go to England
1968 Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F.
Kennedy assassinated
1968 Year of upheavals worldwide: Allende
rises, Tet Offensive, Dubček and Prague Spring crushed, Brezhnev
Doctrine, Nixon elected, Tlatelolco Massacre, My Lai revelations,
Paris demonstrations, Northern Ireland Troubles intensify
1969
Sean born
The Sound of Awakening
The Buddha teaches that enlightenment is not a distant mountain to climb, but the realization that everything—every person, every sound, every breath—is already part of the sacred. The Eternal Buddha is here.
Students are buddhas becoming. The teachers, administrators, security people, groundskeepers, counselors, and parents; we are bodhisattvas showing our children the path. This place, this chapel, this school, this morning is our Deer Park. Sacred not because it is quiet, but because it is alive.
Outside, the school starting another day; buses beeping in reverse, students chattering, cars coming and going, crows calling, bees buzzing. It is not a distraction. It is the dharma in motion.
So we sit. We breathe. We listen.
We are in the center of the world—Bishop O’Dowd at 8:15. It is the music of awakening. Not a moment to escape, but a time to immerse ourselves in the sound of buddha everywhere around us.
Let the breath come in. Let it go out.
Let the beeps of the bus be our temple bell.
Let the laughter be our mantra.
Let the crows be our choir.
Let the quad be our sound of now.
And for this moment may we be present.
The maiden voyage of the Bellamasue—my $299 Pelican kayak—was a quiet success. I’d finally gotten the roof rack, the cradles, the cotter pins, and the straps to work. I slid it into the water at Tidewater Boathouse near high tide and paddled slowly out toward the channel marker. I felt the old muscles in my shoulders wake up as I feathered my strokes. Everything worked. The kayak tracked, it felt right.
Getting it up and down from the car turned out to be easier than I expected. Carrying it from the parking lot to the dock was hard, but manageable. 78 year olds are weaker than we used to be and 10 feet of 40 pounds lugging a distance is pushing it for me now. I wore my wide Mexican gardener’s hat and a neck bandana from Tepoztlán, for sun, sweat, and maybe blowing my nose. Water people don’t look cool but we look like we belong.
A woman at the water on a stand-up at first seemed standoffish, but then a tentative greeting and we had common ground, She’d gone up the creek and seen a big crab, grasses, and other signs of wildness hiding in plain sight. Had I ever done that? she asked. And we swapped quiet stories of urban waterway magic. Junky from the road, beautiful from the water. For a moment we shared an understanding.
Later, I parked in front of a small tiendita in East Oakland to pick up pozole ingredients. The Bellamasue was still on top of the car. The girls at the butcher counter were Salvadorean, the clerk Honduran. They saw the kayak, maybe the hat, definitely the güero. But the moment I asked for pork neck bones and maíz para pozole in decent Spanish, the whole vibe changed. Now I was the local oddball—not a stranger, just another Oakland type. We all belong in one way or another, East Oakland near the Estuary. There’s almost nothing that doesn't fit in Oakland, there's space for all us and things we haven’t seen seen before, like güeros in big sun hats with kayaks outside who speak Spanish.
It was a Jesuit who first opened the door to Buddhism for me. I was a freshman at Loyola University in Los Angeles in 1965 and 1966. One evening I attended a lecture by Father William Johnston, SJ. He was professor at Sophia University, the Jesuit school in Tokyo, a scholar and a mystic who had lived in Japan for years. He said he was a Buddhist and a Jesuit priest and that the two were compatible, that Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion.
It was the first time I encountered Buddhism as a valid belief system instead of some foreign and mysterious religion. I do remember the premise during the Vietnam War that because of Buddhism the Asians didn’t value life the same way Westerners did and why so many died willingly in our war against them, a very Western imperialist attitude toward Eastern philosophy. Fr. Johnston seemed quite alive and in this world as I remember. Sharing his Buddhist insight he planted the seed of Buddhism that grew and flowered in me.
It was nearly two decades later that I got sober using the 12 Steps of AA. Meditation is an important part of the daily AA practice and I began meditating as encouraged by the other members. I heard that “prayer is when we talk to God; meditation is when we listen.”
For years, my meditation was brief. I would tell myself I will do this for at least five minutes or more, and usually it was just five minutes. I used the Hazelden book Twenty-Four Hours a Day: A Meditation Book for Alcoholics. I have continued to meditate off and on using different books for inspiration and adapting it to different opportunities and situations, but meditation has been a part of my life.
In 2012 I made a trip to Japan as a guest of my old boss from Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank. Hayashi-san made sure I visited shrines and temples. It was my first direct encounter with Shintoism and seeing Buddhism in its own environment. I found these places moving, and my Japanese friends laughed at what seemed to them my belief and devotion, but really it was just practicing like the Japanese seemed to do—not worrying about what it meant.
In my hotel room the Buddhist text The Teachings of Buddha was in a hotel drawer like a Gideon Bible. It wasn’t particularly profound—mostly short parables and sayings—but when I returned home I used it for daily meditation. The structure of reading something short, then sitting with it quietly, suited me. Without really studying Buddhism, my daily reading familiarized me with Buddhist thinking.
A few years ago, as I periodically have done, I wanted to renew my meditation practice, to try it more faithfully, and for my daily reading I picked up a book by Thich Nhat Hanh. Years before, I had heard not to fight the “monkey mind” that so plagues us all—particularly when trying to meditate—but to let it be and not follow it or fight it. Thầy Nhat Hanh taught me to refocus on my breath. That was a big help in not getting lost with my “monkey mind.” His gentle and wise discourse opened the door a little wider and made me more curious, and I decided to learn more about Buddhism itself. I realized I didn’t really understand Buddhism in any systematic way. I’d read Alan Watts, Jack Kornfield, and others. I had a sense of the teachings—but no framework. So I bought The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Buddhism. It seemed a little silly to be using that series, but I remembered Suzuki Roshi’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, and the title seemed right.
I studied the lists—because Buddhism, as an oral tradition uses lists: the Three Jewels (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha), the Four Noble Truths, the Five Hindrances, the Eightfold Path, the Six Paramitas and more. The lists helped me structure my understanding and gave me language for what I had already begun to feel.
Another breakthrough came to me at my congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley when Susan Mashiyama gave a talk on Buddhism during a summer service. She told us about the Metta Prayer. I had heard of metta, but I didn’t understand it and had never heard the prayer before.
May I be peaceful.
May I be happy.
May I be safe.
May I awaken to the light of my true nature.
May I be free.
…and repeating the same phrases with You, Them, and Us.
It was simple but moved me deeply and added so much to my practice. After meditation, I recite this prayer, first for myself, then for others—my sons, my daughter, their mothers, my niece, and friends, I’ve added names as needed, including the children of Gaza and people I’ve promised to pray for. I repeat each line until I truly hear it. When my mind wanders, I gently bring it back—no self-scolding, just redirection. Like returning to a trail over and over.
I also began reading The Lotus Sutra, guided by Nichio Niwano’s commentary. I’m now on my second or third pass through Niwano’s book Buddhism for Today. It’s dense and poetic, and I suspect I’ll never fully absorb it. But it deepens my sense that the Dharma is a flowing, living river.
I tried going to a Chan monastery in Pleasant Hill—beautiful grounds, impressive land—but it felt distant. Formal ranks, color-coded robes for the neophytes, a kind of organizational structure that didn’t speak to me. The nuns were kind, but I didn’t feel invited. I didn’t want to be part of an institution. I wanted community. And it was a long drive.
I’ve realized my community, my sangha, is already at UUCB. Twenty years ago I found a liberal community of searchers, wanderers, and misfits like me. People who hold beliefs gently and believe in practice. People who are trying. And it still works today.
Midway through this process I began to describe myself as a Buddhist, a Unitarian Buddhist, but a Buddhist. I study Buddhism and I practice daily, and for me my practice often moves me to be a better person, kinder and more present. I am not yet the Buddha, completely one with all, but I am beginning and trying. And I’m a nicer driver.
This week Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, joined Colombian President Gustavo Petro and South Africa and representatives from 30 nations at the Hague Group conference in Bogotá, Colombia. The Hague Group formed this year to protect and uphold the rulings of the International Court of Justice in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Their aim is to stop the genocide.
Not only is the United States absent from this effort, but our national press—The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and almost everyone else have not even reported on it. The American silence on Israeli atrocities—and on efforts to stop them—is complicity.
I was horrified by the Hamas terrorist attacks. The brutal murder of Israeli civilians, including women, children, and entire families, was close to home. The taking of hostages was horrifying. This was outrageous and it is intolerable.
However the response of the Israeli government is murdering 50,000 people or more and it hasn't stopped. That is not war, that is genocide. The collective punishment of an entire population, the mass bombings of civilians, the displacement of over a million people, the destruction of hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and the starvation of a besieged people—this goes far beyond any claim of self-defense. These are war crimes, and our government has supported them. It is our bullets and bombs that make this genocide possible.
The International Criminal Court has found probable cause to pursue charges against both Hamas leaders and Israeli officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Francesca Albanese’s efforts are rooted in these findings and in the United Nations General Assembly’s vote calling for an immediate ceasefire and full humanitarian access. She is not acting alone—she represents the consensus of international law and the conscience of the world.
Yet the United States continues to supply weapons and funding to the Israeli government—even as that government has shut out United Nations relief agencies, targeted journalists and aid workers, sabotaged U.S. aid corridors by firing on crowds, creating chaos, and making aid delivery unworkable.
As things stand, we are not passive observers. We are active participants in genocide. Our tax dollars are funding the bombs. Our silence is enabling the starvation. Our failure to act is eroding any moral authority we once claimed.
I support the Israeli people. I believe they have a right to defend themselves and to establish themselves as a people and a nation. But I do not believe in apartheid. I do not believe in genocide. I do believe that if Israel is to survive, it must deal honestly with the people who were there before them. It must come to terms with the Palestinian people—no matter how difficult—to create a new state. A state that is just, fair, and grounded in the shared talents and histories of both its peoples.
This is not an easy path. But it is the only path that leads away from permanent war. Northern Ireland is trying to do that now with fits and starts. South Africa prevented a civil war by forming a new Republic. The Republic of South Africa is not perfect, it has many problems, but they are trying. Israel’s current version of a "one-state solution" is not unity—it is genocide by occupation, displacement, and denial.
Somehow, Israel must return to the path that Yitzhak Rabin and Anwar Sadat opened—before it was slammed shut by Likud, by Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon, and now again by Benjamin Netanyahu. I am not against Israel. I am against the policies of its current government—policies of apartheid, permanent occupation, and collective punishment. Israel’s leaders want to label any opposition to their extreme agenda as anti-Semitism. It is not. Israel cannot exist in opposition to justice and humanitarian principles. In fact, it is only by returning to those principles that Israel can survive as a nation.
The path Netanyahu is taking is the path of a pariah state—isolated, illegitimate, and ultimately unsustainable. I believe Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. His motivation is not the survival of Israel but the survival of his own political career—and staying out of prison.
Anti-Netanyahu is not anti-Semitic. Anti-apartheid is not anti-Semitic. Opposing genocide is not anti-Semitic. These accusations are used as a shield. It is a lie.
I condemn terrorism. I mourn the Israeli dead. But I cannot support a government that slaughters civilians and uses American weapons to do it.
The United States must immediately stop supplying arms and funding to Israel. We must join the international community in demanding a ceasefire, full humanitarian access, and a return to negotiations. We should be standing with Francesca Albanese, with the Bogotá conference, and with the global consensus that genocide is never justified.
The time for moral clarity is now. Calling out genocide is always the right thing to do. It is never acceptable—for any reason, by anyone.
The Hague Group
Algeria
Bolivia
Botswana
Brazil
Chile
China
Colombia
Cuba
Djibouti
Honduras
Indonesia
Iraq
Ireland
Lebanon
Libya
Malaysia
Mexico
Namibia
Nicaragua
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Palestine
Portugal
Qatar
Slovenia
South Africa
Spain
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Turkey
Uruguay
Venezuela
The Taxi Trap at TAPO
After nine hours on the road, the bus finally rolled into TAPO—the southern terminal in Mexico City. The ride had taken its time, weaving through traffic and odd little streets, with delays along the way. But we arrived more or less on schedule. I was tired. Groggy, maybe. Not alert.
The terminal looked closed down for the night, or close to it. A few men stood near the exit, directing people toward the street with that friendly-but-pushy confidence that should be a red flag. The locals ignored them. I didn’t. I’ve seen this setup before—in Mexico City, in Puerto Vallarta, and anywhere tourists meet taxis. I should have known better.
But one of them offered to help with my bag. “The taxis are right this way,” he said. I let him take it.
We walked past the actual taxi stand. That should’ve been the moment I stopped everything. Right then and there: “Dame mi maleta.” But I didn’t. I was too wiped out. And that’s how these guys work—on travelers who’ve been on the move too long.
The car wasn’t marked, wasn’t waiting in the proper taxi zone, and wasn’t anything special—just a plain Nissan, unwashed and unremarkable. “Fair price?” I asked. “Yes, yes,” he nodded. “I’ll show you on the phone.” Of course he would. His friendliness was thin, and I didn’t trust it. But by then it was too late. I was in the car, and my bag was in the trunk. A classic mistake.
He didn’t really know where he was going. We wound through side streets while he followed his GPS. I kept glancing at it, wondering what I’d gotten into. Eventually we ended up somewhere near the Zócalo—but not at my hotel. He pulled up outside a different one and said, “This is it.”
It wasn’t. But I got out and asked what I owed.
“Setecientos cincuenta,” he said—MX$750.
For a ride that should have cost MX$100, maybe MX$200 at night. I’d already made peace with overpaying—maybe MX$350, with the tourist tax. But this? I wanted to call him a thief, un ladron, but I didn't have my bag yet.
I told him: “Cuatrocientos. No más.” I didn’t even have MX$750 on me. He grumbled but opened the trunk. At that moment I realized how vulnerable I was. If he’d driven off with my bag, there would’ve been nothing I could’ve done. But he didn’t. He took the MX$400—still a win for him—and drove off.
I looked at the hotel he’d dropped me at. Not the right one. I checked my phone: my actual hotel, El Catedral, was a 15-minute walk. It looked like a short hop on the GPS, but city blocks in Mexico City can stretch out. So I started walking.
The area was alive but not threatening—parents with kids, people heading home, fast food still open. I passed a McDonald’s, a few corner stores, and street vendors closing shop. One group, sharing drinks and laughter, nodded as I passed.
When I finally reached my hotel—through a side door—it felt like stepping out of barracuda-infested water and into calm. A bellboy took my bag and walked me to the front desk. No hustle. Walked back to his post before I could tip him. No angle. Just service.
I was finally where I needed to be. Safe, and reminded once again: in Mexico, the predators are real—but so is the kindness. You just have to get through one to find the other.
The check-in felt like an airline counter—pleasant but complicated. It turned out the reservation I thought I’d made through Expedia hadn’t gone through. What I thought was an email from them acknowledging that the reservation hadn't been made was instead from the hotel. Still, I had already paid for one night, and she was able to add the next three without a problem.
I kept thinking, This is kind of expensive, but when I saw the bill—MX$1,300 per night—I had to laugh. For a clean, modern hotel with bellboys, working Wi-Fi, and a perfect location behind the cathedral, it was a bargain. It came out to about $70 USD. There are cheaper hotels, but not many that feel this solid.
I took the elevator to my room. Still a little rattled, I tried to get the TV going. Took me thirty minutes just to connect the Wi-Fi and enter the password with the remote. In the end, I streamed a show on my laptop. I fell asleep around midnight and slept well enough—until 6 a.m., when my body told me that was that.
In the light of day I reflected on my $35 taxi ride, that I paid $20 for and it was just funny and a lesson, be vigilant; I don't have this down perfectly yet. The whole taxi scam cost me $10 extra. That’s it. A $10 lesson in humility. Not my first. Probably not my last.
It reminded me of Puerto Vallarta, back in 1995—a $3 taxi ride that cost me $38. These guys have been around forever. The “luxury taxi” lie. The fast talk. The phone with the “rate” they never actually show you. The fake friendliness. They know how to spot a tired traveler.
When I refused his ridiculous fare, he got defensive. “It’s the night rate,” he said. Supposedly, everything doubles after 10 p.m. The meter doesn’t exist. The rate’s on his phone. Trust him. Only—it wasn’t 10 p.m. And I never saw the phone. Arguing with a petty thief over the exact amount of the theft felt pointless.
In the end, I paid MX$400, got my bag back, walked 15 minutes, and got some fresh air. I figure I paid an expensive but normal $10 for the ride, $10 for the lesson, and got a little exercise and night sightseeing to go with it.
We’re all God’s children doing our best—even Pepe the ladróncito.
I no longer pray for ladróncitos to burn in hell. I just pray that one day they have a spiritual awakening.
I am in Mexico. I’m staying in Oaxaca, at a small hotel near The Cathedral called El Parador de San Agustín, a block and a half from the Zócalo, the center of town. It’s a traditional Mexican hotel for business people and Mexican tourists, with a few guests from El Norte, mostly from the U.S. The building has a modest street façade with one entrance to the office and another leading onto a broad patio paved in brick. There are tables and chairs for breakfast, meetings, or socializing. The hotel’s architecture is classic; white walls and red accents, woodwork, and a second-floor gallery with iron railings overlooking the patio below.
The staff are warm and informal, often working from a desk near the entrance when they’re not attending to guests or helping other staff members. The small café faces the street with its own entrance, three tables against the wall on the sidewalk, and another entrance leading onto the patio. Two cooks run the café, preparing breakfast for guests and snacks for occasional walk-ins. They also tend a large stew pot with great care; beans and maybe something else during the day. The hotel is quiet and comfortable, shielded from the busy one-way street where police manage traffic at both corners.
Just outside, there’s a book stall: tables against the wall on the sidewalk and in the street, filled with books. Tarps stretch from the building across the sidewalk to cover them—makeshift but permanent, protecting the books from the nearly daily rain that visits Oaxaca during the summer. There’s also a modest clothing shop, a Banamex, and a great Gelatolandia. Foot traffic is constant. The hotel offers a peaceful retreat from that daily hum: a calm courtyard, clean rooms, and reasonable prices. $85 a night or $95 with air conditioning. I opted for a room with a ceiling fan and patio windows that bring in fresh air.
The staff are delightful. David is professional and friendly, a bit reserved. Jiero is thoughtful and prefers to speak English, so I’m happy to help him practice. His English is quite good. Eli, an English teacher at a private school, will not speak English to me at all in the best possible way. When I ask questions, he answers in Spanish and stays there. David does the same. I appreciate it deeply. This is how I learn. Dulce, initially shy to speak English, is a third-year university student studying business administration. Her English is very good, a good accent, and she is happy to practice with me. I’ve decided to speak only English with her in return for the kindness of others who stay in Spanish for me.
I can do almost everything in Spanish now; order meals, ask directions, converse. I have a large but idiosyncratic vocabulary and tangled grammar. But Mexicans are almost always patient and helpful and mostly understand me. They kindly compliment my accent and fluency, though I know I’m far from fluent. Still, I get by. My Spanish may sound tortured to me, but it works. I can talk to people here, and that means everything. In Mexico, the doors are open for Americans who make an effort. And with more Spanish, those doors open even wider. Even the simplest words; gracias, por favor, buenos días, are met with warmth.
¿Habla inglés? will often bring a reply of "Un poco," which can mean anything from three words to near fluency. Taxi drivers and waiters often say it with a smile and will make a good effort to understand you, even if their English is minimal. These days, people are using Google Translate, which is a great tool and I think it’s okay to refer to it, but only as a reference to help you, not waving the phone in someone’s face while it speaks for you. To me, that just looks rude.
Americans are here, mostly independent travelers, not cruise ship tourists or resort guests with packages. In Oaxaca, many are here on their own as part of a language program. Some speak only a little Spanish, but they come anyway. I admire that. It takes guts to travel somewhere unfamiliar and try to learn the language and culture. That’s part of why I enjoy talking to Americans. The tourists have stories, come from all over the U.S., and bring an earnest curiosity and appreciation.
That said, it can be hard to talk to fellow Americans here. We don’t blend in, and most of us aren’t trying to, but we also aren’t always open to meeting one another. I miss the easy camaraderie I had with tourists as a Park Ranger. Without the hat and badge, I’m just another visitor. Still, when I do meet American travelers here, I enjoy it immensely. They’re interesting people—the kind who choose to come here, who take the risk and try to learn. I respect that.
Mexicans, meanwhile, are remarkably open. You’ll never really blend in, even with language and cultural awareness, but you can become almost family. Some of my friends here call me casi Mexicano. I like that. For those who speak English, I sometimes say I’m a wannabe Mexican. It gets a laugh, and it says something true. I’ll never be Mexican, but I’m trying.
Oaxaca, in particular, is a place that encourages that effort. This isn’t Cancún or Cabo. There’s no industrial tourism here. The people are welcoming, the prices are fair, and the sharks are few. It’s not about extracting dollars; it’s about sharing culture. As anyone who’s been to Cancún knows, most Mexicans are helpful, seem to like the tourists and speak English. There are barracudas, thick in the tourist spots, ready to pick your pocket, literally or figuratively. Hotels have American prices when Mexicans wouldn’t pay nearly as much. Usually, it’s a good experience, though sometimes annoying. In Oaxaca, there are only a few sharks and no barracudas. Here, the sharks aren’t so aggressive.
One of the best parts of this trip is being here at the same time as my daughter, Paloma. She’s staying with a local family near La Basílica de la Soledad in La Colonia Centro. It’s the densest, most vibrant neighborhood I’ve seen—a beehive of life on Saturday mornings, with cafes, markets, churro vendors, families, and shoppers everywhere. Paloma is living with three American housemates—one her friend from Oakland and two from D.C. Paloma’s mother is a first-generation American with parents from Panamá. Paloma self-identifies as Afro-Latina. She is the only one of the four who speaks Spanish. Mexicans know she’s not one of them; she has an international school accent, but she told me she passes sometimes. She was very proud that in the laundromat no one suspected she was a foreigner.
The others, sweet and earnest girls, are mostly monolingual, though they’ve studied Spanish in school. Paloma said one, who is Latina but not fluent, has been a little standoffish—even cold. I’ve talked to Mexican Americans who are embarrassed that they don’t speak Spanish, and Mexicans have a rude term for people who identify themselves as Mexican or look Mexican but don’t know the language. It’s not easy. And those who try to overcome that barrier are admirable. Through the embarrassment, they decide to learn the language anyway. It takes courage.
I chose to learn Spanish not because I had to, but because I wanted to be part of this world. I wanted to acculturate. Also, I simply love being here. I love la gente. The people make this place beautiful. It’s a great country to learn in, and a great country just to be in. It’s a writer’s country.
I imagine myself in a room like this one as Malcolm Lowry, Graham Greene, or Katherine Anne Porter, with an overhead fan and a typewriter on the desk with a blank page. In my case, an empty computer screen. I know a lot about Mexico, its history, its culture, the story of La Virgen de Guadalupe, and maybe why Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo as if it’s the national holiday instead of the minor one it is here. I’ve had Mexican friends joke that if you want to know about Mexico, ask Jack. I’ve learned what I can, but I know I’m still just scratching the surface. I’ll never be Mexican, but I keep learning, and I keep coming back.
