I was watching the “Black List” last night, “binging” on the latest season available on Netflix, an obvious US propaganda piece as is most of what comes out of Hollywood and its clones (the reality as far back as Woodrow Wilson’s epoch). But amazingly, in that episode something resonated in a humanistically positive manner.
Imagine that.
For some unfathomable reason, I enjoy the program. Perhaps it’s the acting, especially by James Spader. And it provides insights into the manner in which US propaganda has culturally conquered much of the world with brazen distortions. But I rarely find the really useful human element that permits us to better understand ourselves, and improve who we are. The element essential in great works of art.
I did last night, and it involved a gift, the gift being a very used old portable radio.
Economically, today, I am not well off. But like most among my current peers, I am living well enough, largely because I became an expatriate of sorts, living in a beautiful albeit affordable place, a beautiful city high in the central range of the Colombian Andes. Beautiful mountains, snowcapped peaks, thermal springs, perpetual spring, but no oceans or beaches. A place where social security is a bit more than enough to get by. But where friends and family are a long way off.
I’ve been much better off, wealthy even, in a past where limousines were not an occasional luxury but a normal tool, where the making of an expensive gift was “no big deal”. But I’ve also been much less well off than I am now, and it’s that time in my life that resonated with the “Black List” episode I viewed last night. And it dealt with the character I find least interesting, least credible, most boring: Diego Klattenhoff as agent Donald Ressler.
The resonance involved the realization that the most important gifts I ever made where those that involved something I already owned, something I had to sacrifice under the circumstances of the moment because I lacked the wherewithal to merely “buy something appropriate”. Usually it was a book, but sometimes a keepsake I’d picked up somewhere or other. It involved a sacrifice of something for which I really cared, something I’d miss, but which to me, at the time, seemed important to pass on. I’ve also received gifts like that and last night I realized that I’d not appreciated their worth at the time. I do now.
In this materialistic and polarized world, one where empathy is hard to generate and harder to find, where a touch of humanity seems a rare thing but is actually omnipresent, hidden in the quotidian, especially in the lives of the least well-off. Hidden in plain sight amidst the most vulnerable among us. Hidden among that silent majority where almost everything involves a sacrifice, but where such sacrifices are joyfully made and never regretted, but also, perhaps, as in my case, where such sacrifices are not quite fully appreciated by the recipients. At least not until it’s much too late to express our gratitude.
It made me think, especially of my mother. Eventually a single mom who made the best of what I’ve become and accomplished possible without ever stressing the many sacrifices she and the rest of my family had to make, things I just took for granted until she was gone.
Her case and mine, unfortunately, are not unusual. Especially today when the generational shift is so bitter, and where too many of the young consider themselves ethically and morally superior, while concurrently entitled, and view their parents and their parent’s generation as out of touch bigots. A generation that has no idea what the adage “it’s better to give than to receive” means, or worse, that it even exists. Where giving is something that’s done with the taxes other people pay, and mainly given to industries dedicated to legalized murder on a massive scale, in the name of liberty and peace and equality.
Amazingly, the episode made me think, rather than just react and enjoy the action and the acting.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Pipes, a variety of pipes, large ones, long ones, meerschaum pipes, water pipes, he’d had many, and brandies too, although mainly fruit brandies, peach and apricot especially, but sometimes cherry, and of course, the good ones, Cardenal Mendoza in the corked box, and once in a very long while, two or three times perhaps, Gran Duque de Alba. He’d preferred the Spanish brandies but the best one had probably been an Armagnac, 25 year old Cles Des Ducs. It came in a beautiful crystal decanter in a wooden cigar box, both of which he still had. He also loved Grand Marnier, although somehow, it seemed to get sweeter as he aged, and then, too sweet. But his current wife still enjoyed it. And of course, wines, especially those red wines from the Bordeaux region he’d loved when he lived in New York, but could now rarely obtain.
He’d enjoyed symphonic music, classical, especially Beethoven, but Mozart as well, and Tchaikovsky, and Brahms, and Vivaldi, and Shubert. And all of the foregoing because his mother had led him to believe that his long-vanished father, whom he’d eventually located, late in life for them both, had favored them. Perhaps he had but it was just as likely that his mother had invented the specifics as part of a virtual profile, one she’d created to guide him into becoming the man she’d hoped he’d be. And for the most part, perhaps she’d succeeded. But not totally; he was pretty deeply flawed in too many ways. His sons had told him so, … eventually. His mother had been an amazing woman in every positive sense. Not perfect, her insecurities made that impossible, but then again, she’d somehow overcome every obstacle life had thrown her way, and there were many of them, among which, were his father, and his step father, and who knew who else. Perhaps him as well.
The pipes were all gone. His lately returned father had appropriated a few, his favorites, and his second son’s friends had stolen the last ones during a party of sorts at his apartment, they used them for pot and hashish and who knows what. And the alcohol came and went, but it was not all that important to him, thank goodness. And the music, … well that stuck, but supplemented by classical guitar and flamenco works which created another virtual world for him, an Arab sort of world fading into Iberian imagery set in Granada, and Valencia, and the Alhambra, and even Johnny-come-lately Aranjuez.
Cigars had been a stage all their own, one he sometimes used to market his law firm, and when that was gone, his strategic consultancy, and when that was a memory as well, his writing, but never his university academic endeavors, smoking had become anachronistic by then, and although he tended to love anachronisms, that was not one.
It was a sort of strange day in early spring high in the central range of the Colombian Andes where he now lived, as usual, in a home reminiscent of a museum, a large apartment full of old books already read, many several times, but some, not at all. The Quimbayas Cumanday, a snow-clad volcano that overlooked his tenth floor apartment was no longer quiescent, but not altogether active. It seethed and spumed ash and shook the surrounding mountainsides several thousand times a day, but the tremors were slight, at least for the most part, and neither he nor his wife were very troubled by them, at least not any more. If it were to erupt, the magma would slither down the other side of the glacier, although streams of mud might prove troublesome to nearby towns. It was over fifteen thousand feet high, and the city in the sky where he lived was above the seven thousand foot mark, leaving a great deal of space to be filled before magma ever became a problem, or before beaches were created through global warming, which to him would be a blessing; he missed the ocean.
He loved seeing the Quimbayas Cumanday, now called something else, the name of some bureaucrat or other, and the other three chains of snowclad ranges visible from the windows in his bedroom and his library and his guest room, and he wondered what it might look like, should it erupt, and what it would sound like, and whether it would be during the day or would waken him and his wife in mid-night, or whether it would really ever erupt at all. The small constant tremors made that less likely as they constantly released pressures that would otherwise build up. Quimbayas Cumanday seemed to know just what it was doing. He wondered whether referring to Quimbayas Cumanday as an “it” was insulting, but then again, how to know if it was a “he” or a “she”. Divinities are sort of strange that way.
The day was drawing to a close and soon the sun would set, pretty much behind the tall gothic cathedral that graced the city, the second tallest in the hemisphere, as he understood it. The sun set there during the periods closest to the equinoxes, then moved in a range, left and right for a while, and beyond the sunset he knew lay the Pacific Ocean, lightning and thunder there making the view of the west visible from his apartment’s long corridor, decorated as an art gallery of sorts, a periodically entertaining spectacle. Not that he could see the Ocean, it was too far away, but he knew that was where the sun set, and that it was from there that the thunder and lightning played.
Soon it would be dusk and the moon and the very few constellations and stars and planets visible, Venus and Jupiter among them, would come to visit. He loved the view of the night sky as seen from distant oceans or from desserts where billions of lights and stellar clouds created insuperable cyclical works of art and prompted speculation on the natures of divinity and time, and of eternity and infinity, and of mathematics and physics, and perhaps, of other distant species. But little of that was visible amidst the light-pollution generated by the city.
He loved the instant of transition that twilight turned dusk represented, as purples and oranges and lavenders and greens darkened and slowly became indigo. To him that was a magical instant repeated twice each day, a cycle reminiscent of the only two times during each day when broken clocks and timepieces were perfectly balanced.
He often thought of his three sons at dusk, now grown and estranged, living far, far away, and wondered at might have beens, and of all the people he’d known and somehow wronged, and of how he’d change things, if he only could. And of his father, gone for good now, and of those family members he’d treasured now gone as well. And of his many former classmates and students now scattered around the world, and of those curious people who read the articles and stories and poems he published, and wondered whether they took them seriously, or, like his sons, took him for a fool.
And he wondered what was to become of a world that in so many ways seemed to be headed headlong towards perdition, but also, gratefully, of the southern hemisphere which seemed to be finding its own way, learning from the many, many mistakes of its northern brethren, the self-proclaimed elder brothers and bearers of the “white man’s burden”.
And finally, he knew, his wife would soon call him to bed and that he’d lie pleasantly at her side, trying to fall asleep, fitfully at first, and that he’d eventually dream strange and entertaining dreams of far-off places and strange things, and of people and places he’d known, and then, as he woke, he’d wonder which realm was real.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at https://guillermocalvomah.substack.com/. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
It’s March 19, 2023, a Sunday and a day purportedly designated internationally to honor men, but as a holiday, it’s sort of a flop. It’s not a great day for florists or restauranteurs, or for retail sales or for holiday bookings. But perhaps it’s meaningful if we take a moment to recognize our less fortunate male brethren. And there are so many. And holiday’s all too often, rather than being happy days, are those most filled with regrets, and nostalgia, and melancholy.
So, … today, I’m thinking of all of the men who work diligently to support and protect their families, but who are deprecated for not spending enough quality time at home, and of those men who, through no fault of their own, have been sundered from their families and have lost everything they ever accumulated, who are left to live out what remains of their lives alone, and to those fathers who, after an unsuccessful relationship with their wives, find themselves estranged from their children.
Of course, there’s another side to that dismal coin, men who are appreciated and beloved by their families, loved by their wives and admired by their children, but sadly, in today’s dysfunctional world, they’re the exception rather than the norm. And of course, there are plenty of men who, because of their conduct, deserve their fate; but also, too many who don’t.
It’s an issue that’s not impacted by race, religion, national origin or political tendencies, … it just is, and there are few support groups to help these victims cope, nor any entertainment series to highlight the issue, nor any visible champions to highlight and ameliorate their plight, or legislators looking for legal and judicial reforms to resolve the social tragedy they represent.
Just a few of us who, from time to time, remember and reflect.
Something to think about as this purported holiday fades to grey.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at https://guillermocalvomah.substack.com/. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
After a bit over three quarters of a century, the “sounds of silence” have acquired a new meaning, one no longer political. They now represent the realization, one often addressed by many of all ages, regarding the importance of appreciating the value of solitude and self-reliance. Not because others have let us down, that would be merely reactive, or because our health is failing and mortality seems near (it’s not, or doesn’t seem to be), but just because, after so many experiences, good as well as bad, we may finally realize to whom we owe ultimate loyalty, perhaps even love, although love seems to become more nebulous as I age, something I know is different with many, perhaps most others.
In my case, I’ve come to realize that “hello darkness my old friend” is not a rhetorical use of an oxymoron, but a realization that the person I am, the person I’ve been, really is an old friend, one who will not abandon me regardless of how often I criticize myself, and how frequently I’ve regretted paths not trod as well as turns I’ve taken.
The friend in the mirror does not look as he once did, but subtly diminishing eyesight makes the site at least tolerable, as does the care I’ve taken of the body we share, at least usually. Our conversations are more wide ranging as well as more profound, and rather than seeking answers, we now more frequently enjoy the expanding range of fascinating questions which experience permits us to explore, the new dimensions of our perceptions, jokes now finally fully understood. Old books reread with new meanings found. Poetry, finally making more sense, at least sometimes.
The world, as it seemingly aways has, seems bound for hell in a handbasket, and I keep trying to make a dent, however small, in efforts to salvage it. Although now, I’m not as sure as I once was, why. I really think I understand Cassandra’s primordial frustrations, perhaps those of the primordially long chain of parents as well, and, of course, to some extent at least, my own.
From the shadows I think I hear Ebenezer Scrooge whispering “bah humbug”, even when Christmas is long past and not yet near. And I smile, perhaps even chuckle. Perhaps he had a point. Perhaps he was right and the three angels sent to devil him were wrong. Or, perhaps not.
Cycles seem concerning. How does one break free? Do I really want to? Or would it be awesome to be able to start anew, this life’s lessons not just learned but remembered too.
“The sounds of silence, I’ve loved that song, the words, the tune. Meanings I once thought I’d grasped. And I wonder, … how would I write that song today, … if I only could. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
International woman’s day falls on March 8 this year, 2023. A Wednesday, smack dab in the middle of the week. An interesting coincidence given the nature of this article.
It is, of course, more than anything, a commercial holiday. One designed to induce men to spend more money or else be considered inconsiderate, insensitive cads. But as superficial as that reality is, there is an underlying verity and it’s not limited to one day. It involves the transcendental importance of the feminine in our lives, and that is true whether one is a matriarchalist-feminist (possibly a neologism) or patriarchialist-misogynist (also possibly a neologism). I wonder if rather than concentrating on the superficial requisite compliments, obeisance and, of course, gifts, one might not consider the challenges being faced by women not only from men, but now also from men who have decided to compete directly against women through gender reassignments of varying degrees. Most noticeably in athletics, but also in areas of aesthetics formerly the realm of women and, when one considers the issue seriously (as it deserves to be considered), in a number of much more important areas.
The transgender issue is highly volatile and controversial with purportedly “woke” cancel culture warriors (dedicated to ever increasing polarization and avoidance of empathy) forbidding serious discussion concerning its controversial aspects. Aspects such as how it relates to the rights of minors versus the societal duty to protect them (e.g., the concept of statutory versus assault based rape). Aspects involving quota based allocations in the area of employment, political candidacies (in Colombia for example, half of all candidacies are reserved to women), economic and employment set asides and commercial opportunities. I believe the transgendered, whether male to female of female to male, have a fundamental right to be free of official discrimination but how does that conflict with the special set asides to promote the ability of women to compete in diverse fields? Whose rights should prevail? How valid are the arguments on both sides? Is there an area for reconciliation? What date has been set aside to honor the transgendered, one might ask, and then, is one day enough, shouldn’t there be two, each based on the original biological gender? And what about the non-binary?
There is now an ideological as well as practical battle among liberals and progressives between feminine oriented feminists on one side and transgender activists on the other, a fundamental rift involving a number of critical areas, a conflict as serious in many ways as is the battle between feminists and misogynist, perhaps, in reality, even more so. This is an issue former Congresswoman and current army reserve lieutenant colonel Tulsi Gabbard has raised, firmly supporting the side of the feminine oriented feminists (Tulsi, whom I admire, very much exudes the aroma of a presidential candidate wannabe). But, of course, there’s another side to the argument. One with its own champions although their arguments appear poorly articulated, appealing more to woke ideology (if it exists) than to reasoned logic. A seemingly objective and charismatic spokesperson akin to Tulsi on that side is essential if any equitable resolution is ever to be attained.
The foregoing is easy to ridicule, but ridicule and calumny are really the toys of the purportedly woke, not of those seriously interested in fairly and equitably resolving important societal problems (rather than using them to promote personal political agendas). These issues have profoundly serious as well as superficial components and perhaps, on this day, a day dedicated to honoring women, they merit serious consideration and active, objective discussion.
Something on which to reflect in a non-judgmental fashion, one free of censorship, on this eighth day of March in 2023. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
There are transcendent days in one’s life, for good or for ill. Day’s when everything changes, when new paths are trod and old ones abandoned. The month of October for some reason has been transcendent for me.
October, in the northern hemisphere: browns and gold and oranges where green had been. Not yet snowflakes but storms of cascading varicolored leafs accumulating in deep drifts. Closer to the equator, the weather doesn’t change seasonally but rather, daily, and leaves tend to stay green, albeit in myriad shades, and flowers bloom all year.
October, as it shifted into November, was my son’s favorite holiday season as they preferred witches and ghouls and werewolves to robust old gentlemen dressed in red, riding in sleds pulled by eight, or sometimes none reindeer. But they did like the gift giving aspects that followed on the heels of the winter solstice.
For me, October has had special meanings all my own. Rites of passage seemingly. Especially on two very different albeit perhaps complimentary occasions.
In 1952, on October 12, then Columbus Day (now a day to revile old Cristoforo and those Europeans who followed him and devastated what to them seemed like a new world), I left the beloved city of my birth to join my mother in what was to become our new home, or a collection of many new homes, all too many new sort of homes, in the United States. First in Miami and Miami Beach in Florida; then in Charlotte, North Carolina; then back to Miami; then on to New York (in numerous places over the years including Ozone Park, Hollis, Queens Village, Flushing); then on to Charleston, South Carolina; then back to New York, for many years in the old Otto Khan palace in Cold Spring Hills, then to “the City”, then in Glen Cove; then back to Florida, Fort Lauderdale that time; then Hendersonville, North Carolina; then Florida again, various places in Marion County; and then ….
October 16, 2007, was another such day for me, although it sort of started on the afternoon after the Ides of October, a sort of 48 hour long day. It started in Charleston, the Holy City to those closest to me. The day before had been the end of Parents’ Day weekend at the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, my alma mater. My eldest son, Billy, had just received that ornate band of gold that made us brothers, as well as father and son. It was his senior year, as it had been mine forty years earlier. Our family was really together that weekend, together for one final time. And it may be that we all sensed it. My marriage to Billy’s mother had been over for a while although shards still prickled and stung, but I’d hoped then that something of family could be salvaged. I was wrong. It was a day for endings. But the next day was a day for beginnings. A long day that started on Monday morning at the airport in Charleston, then continued with a layover in Atlanta, then possibly one in Panama City (in Panama, not Florida), then one in Bogota, in Colombia, and finally, ended on Tuesday, in Manizales. Manizales where I’d been born sixty-one years earlier. Sixty-one years, two months and twenty-two days earlier. In a sense, I was going home, but to a home that had vastly changed since I’d last lived there as a young child, as I’d changed, as had my life.
The flight was long, but not just in distance and layovers, but metaphysically long, as though I were travelling to an alternative world, perhaps one of those posited in quantum hypotheses and M Theory. Or in the imaginings of Nikola Telsa concerning fairies and changelings, long before electric cars brought his name back from the grave.
Since that Tuesday in October when I arrived, arrived knowing virtually no one, and with no idea how long I’d remain or what I’d face, my life has changed completely, but echoes of my old life linger. Most I savor and treasure. I’ve not abandoned it, not really, only now, it’s lived primarily in virtual space, that strange new reality, neither inner nor outer, and all too often impossibly unreal.
Improbably for many, many reasons, my life has blossomed in Manizales. I was welcomed by hundreds of strangers as a sort of prodigal son returned, but not an impoverished and needy prodigal son, but rather, as one who had a great deal to offer, a great deal to share and a great deal to learn. I was on an incoming tide of returning members of the Latin American Diaspora. One long overdue. I spent over a decade as a university professor in Manizales, and my voice echoed all over Colombia as for some reason, the media, print, radio and television, found me interesting. Or perhaps just strange. Students taught me as much as I taught them, perhaps more, and I was able to perceive realties concerning the sort of foster homeland I’d left, that are not visible there, but need to be. And I managed to make my voice heard there as well.
Life in Manizales has been a great deal better than just good. Good and talented friends abound and hope fills the air. Beautiful verdant mountains surround me with skies full of birds and, above them, snowcapped peaks from which flow volcano heated thermal springs. Spring is perpetual and, half an hour away, so is summer, and an hour in the other direction, first fall and then winter await, whenever I need them. And I’ve found family here as well. Beautiful, intelligent and talented cousins, but also the kind of family that is formed with bonds of shared intimacy and love. I’ve perhaps had too many intimate encounters here. Too many which just didn’t work. But most have mellowed into beautiful friendships. And one has prevailed and perseveres. Manizales is a city full of learning and culture, an oasis for students and artists and writers and actors, and a city filled with real civic awareness, with a citizenry dedicated to a future where equity and justice prevail, and where empathy trumps polarization, unlike what is happening in the beloved land I left. Which perhaps explains why there are so many, many expats here.
Of course, it’s not perfect. Or rather, my life in Manizales is not perfect. My sons, now estranged (estranged as all too often happens in today’s impermanent world, one where dysfunction is the norm) are far away, in both time as well as space. And I don’t know my grandchildren, or more accurately, I know them only from infrequent photographs. And so many friends from my youth, brothers really, especially those with whom I shared Spartan moments that made us who we became, are only virtual images on social media, although always in my heart. Too many of them are passing beyond the veil well before their time, or so, we their grieving survivors believe.
I guess when one has lived and loved in so many places, as I have, no place ever seems wholly home. More so when one has lived long and fully. As have I. But Manizales is as close as it can get, at least for me. Although Charleston would not be bad, not bad at all. Nor would Manhattan. Nor Cold Spring Harbor.
But I’m not complaining.
Unlike Elvis and Frank Sinatra, “regrets”, I have many. And had I the chance, there are many, many things I’d change. I’ve inadvertently hurt too many who deserved better, especially women who’ve loved me. And although I tried my best, I was apparently not as good a father as I’d hoped I’d be, or as good a son as I should have been, or as good a brother. And probably, life has been kinder to me than I deserve, for which I’m grateful. But now I’m definitely doing my best to redress that imbalance so that when I’m no longer here, the world will be a better place than it would have been had I never been born. And I think that time will be on my side. My family is long lived, very long lived, at least a century is not improbable, so perhaps I have quite a while yet to not only make amends, but to leave a healthy credit balance on karma’s scales.
I wonder if more transcendent days await me?
I hope not.
It would be difficult for any of them to be more full of opportunity than those transcendent forty-eight hours that started right after the Ides of October, a bit less than fifteen-and-a-quarter years ago today. On the other hand, that Columbus Day in 1952 was not so shabby either. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Leonidas (Leon) Theodore Kokkins (1916-1973), my stepfather. I called him Pop.
Crumb buns, jelly doughnuts and Kaiser rolls on Sunday mornings along with the Sunday papers and perhaps a ride along the causeway in Miami Beach in our black Pontiac convertible, circa 1949, with the top down of course (1952 through 1954). Then, on to Charlotte. We had a different car, perhaps a 56 Chevy, but it was not memorable. Charlotte, the city, on the other hand certainly was. I became Billy Kokkins there, long story but it never stuck. We left all too soon, back to Miami Beach, briefly, then to Colombia where I was born (and my baby brother Teddy’s infamous famous hunger strike; … he missed Pop).
So, … on to New York City! Pop’s home town. Queens: first Ozone Park, then Hollis, then Queens Village, then Flushing, all in the space of four years. In New York, the routine was similar but the car was a sky-blue 1959 Chevy with a sort of split trunk and a hard top. I liked the Pontiac better. Actually, I loved the Pontiac.
But childhood ended in New York. In the fall of 61, boarding school, separation, college at the Citadel in Charleston, and suddenly, I was an adult on my own.
Way too soon, everything was gone and we were scattered, barely still a family. Disfunctionality had fast become the norm and we were trend setters.
1973, Pop’s final year. He passed away in the early spring, very young (57). A beloved enigma, at least as far as I was concerned, but like all enigmas, a mystery. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Autumns follow summers as summers follow springs and springs follow winters, cascading through rainbows and shadows amidst the echoes of a seemingly perpetual rite of passage.
Memories, ….
I was born on an early Monday morning in July, the year after the end of the second war to end all wars (as unsuccessful as the first). It was the Chinese year of the Dog (although I’d hoped for the Dragon, or at least the Lion). The setting, a beautiful city in the central range of the Colombian Andes, … Manizales. Manizales del Alma.
Superficially, the world seemed hopeful, if just for an instant. Kind of like it did much later in 1991 (when the first Cold War supposedly ended), but in 1946, in Colombia, discontent, disharmony and polarization were seething below the surface and would violently erupt about twenty-one months later when the newly organized United States Central Intelligence Agency (following in the footsteps of its predecessors) arranged for the assassination of Colombia’s most beloved leftist leader, populist presidential candidate, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala. That day, April 9, 1948, the day after the birth of my sister Marina, all hell broke loose. Perhaps, after seventy-four years Colombia is finally back on the path Gaitán tried to blaze.
Because of the ensuing fratricidal violence and the dysfunctional nature of my parents’ relationship, my initial Colombian sojourn was brief. My parents had married in secret while my father was underage (my mother was three years older) and had me almost two years later, two years after his family had disowned them and they’d been taken under the protective wings of my maternal grandmother, Juanita, a prototypical, self-made matriarch. But she’d not exactly approved of the marriage, she’d merely accepted its reality for the time being, and at an inopportune moment, she swept in and swooped us all out, perhaps having interpreted grievances by my mother in an exaggerated fashion, complaints my mother regretted having made ever after, although she’d not been wrong.
My mother, then an aspiring actress, quickly realized that dream shared by so many Latin Americans, that strange diasporic quest, and found herself in Miami after having abandoned a flight to Chicago as a result of an in-flight fight with her friend, Mercedes (with whom she was supposed to have moved in). Somehow or other, knowing no one but full of courage and hope, she survived in that city; in that country which has always been overtly xenophobic. My sister and I’d remained in Colombia where, presaging future misadventures, we were moved from place to place, sometimes together, at other times apart, possibly to assure that my father would not find us. Or at least that’s what he long claimed. His veracity, however, did not stand the test of time. He planted a series of different families with different women, moving on when, according to him, his altruistic intentions towards other women in need were misinterpreted by his in-laws. Consequently, I have many half-siblings whom I barely know but with whom I’ve managed to establish and maintain loving relationships. We all wonder if, in the future, more of us will pop up. My father’s life, which ended on November 1, 2021, seemed a harbinger of how our world was changing with dysfunctionality becoming the norm. I guess we were trendsetters.
In the early fall of 1952 my mother remarried and asked my grandmother to have my sister and me rejoin her in Miami Beach, a city with which she’d fallen in love. I’d just turned six at the time and was educationally pretty advanced. I’d learned to read, write, and even to play chess by the time I was four. But, except for the chess, that was in Spanish. My sister and I arrived in Miami on what was then Columbus Day (it is now a much different sort of holiday). I had very strange expectations concerning something called television, and the size of my stepfather’s hands (I’d confused length and width with thickness), and the difference in the nature of meals. In Colombia, lunch and dinner involved various courses, one involving soup and the other vegetables, salad, starches and a protein. My first United States meal was a good cream of chicken soup. Campbell’s of course. And then, … nothing. I was a bit surprised.
Still, those initial confusions were superficial. Real confusion hit the next day when I was enrolled in first grade at an elementary school in Miami Beach whose name I don’t recall (but it may have been Riverside) and where my name was abruptly changed from Guillermo to Billy. I didn’t understand a word of English and, to top it off, we moved midyear and I was sent to another school. Utter and complete confusion were the rule, chaos reigned, and it was no surprise that I did not earn promotion to second grade. At least not then.
That summer my stepfather did his best to teach me English, although his methodology would probably be frowned upon today. Errors were punished by a mild slap and correct answers rewarded with smiles and praise. Television helped as well. Only three channels back then and, as I recall, programming was only televised for about eighteen hours, but the patterns when programming was off the air were interesting, or at least, better than nothing. Well, actually, pretty boring. I recall sign-off in the evening involved playing the United States’ national anthem. Not as pretty as Colombia’s.
By the start of my second attempt at first grade my English was much improved. Notwithstanding his somewhat “tough-love” teaching methods, I quickly grew very fond of my stepfather, a fairly simple man who led a complex but short life. He passed away when he was about to turn 58 and I was 26 years old. He was a short order cook and a sometime partner in the “diners” or restaurants at which he worked, but his principle avocation seemed to involve gambling (at which he was not very good). Damned Greek social clubs! Still, somehow or other, he seemed to manage to make ends meet. At least usually. Sometimes with help from my grandmother Juanita (as I’ve noted, the family matriarch).
Perhaps thanks to his crude but effective teaching methods, I only spent part of one day repeating first grade. At the start of the first class that year we were asked to draw something and I had a bit of inherited artistic talent (my paternal grandfather, Rafael Maria Calvo, who I was never to meet, was an accomplished sculptor and artist). I drew a cow in a field of grass and flowers which amazed my teacher. I can’t recall her name as our interaction was very brief, but I’ve always been very grateful for her role during that one half day. She immediately took me to the principal’s office (not all visits to the principal are negative) and I was advanced to second grade on the spot. I wonder what ever became of that drawing.
That year I was, at first, not a very good student. I’d not grasped reading and writing in English, frustrating given my related abilities in Spanish, but over a one week period during the second month, things just clicked and I advanced from the poorest student in the poorest reading group to the best student in the best group. Thank you Mrs. Mary Dunn, a teacher I’ll never forget: patient, kind, talented and loving. Second grade proved a delight. I remember my first crush (in the United States, … seemingly, I’d always had a crush on someone), a little girl whose name I still remember, Marianne Bass (or maybe Mary Anne). She’d been left back too, albeit for a full year, I don’t know why, but that gave us something in common (although I never really got to know her). She must have been older than I was, but that didn’t matter.
Then it was move again and another change in schools. This time to Central Beach Elementary (subsequently renamed in honor of someone named Leroy D. Fienberg, not exactly anyone well known, then … or now). The change in name saddens me. I only attended third grade there, but I fell in love with my teacher, Ms. Zigman, albeit unrequited love as that year she became Mrs. Something-or-other. I’d hoped she’d wait for me to grow up. Anyway, a beautiful fellow student, Hellen Mansfield assuaged that experience, although, as in the case of Marianne, I never really got to know her either. I was interested in girls, but a bit shy, they seemed a bit too mysterious to deal with. That was also the year of my great goldfish disaster as, during Christmas vacation, Chanukah to Ms. Zigman and to Hellen as well, I was entrusted with the care of one of our class pets, I don’t recall its name (never was sure if it was a he or a she) and apparently overfed it to death. I was traumatized and deeply embarrassed as I returned the body to Ms. Zigman, who proved more than just understanding. It was only one year, but I loved it.
As happened at least once a year back then, we moved over the summer and I started fourth grade at Biscayne Elementary School, also in Miami Beach. I liked it as well. Mrs. Johnson (definitely a Mrs., a sort of strict but kindly more mature teacher) was my teacher and I enjoyed her class where, as I recall, she read to us from Gulliver’s Travels, or perhaps, had us each read excerpts. We moved during the year though (what a surprise) and I finished fourth and, amazingly, fifth grade at Wesley Heights Elementary in Charlotte, North Carolina. That was among the best periods of my childhood as we lived in an actual house and I had my own room. Previously, at least since I came to live in the United States, we’d always lived in apartments and I’d slept on either a sleeper couch in the living room or else had shared a room with my sister Marina. I also started but didn’t really finish the sixth grade at Wesley Heights. That was because, first, my sister and I were kept out of school because of that era’s pandemic, the Asian Flu (strange how pandemics seem to start in Asia), but then, there was some sort of a crisis where we lost everything and returned to Miami Beach (or maybe Miami). My stepfather, however, for some reason remained behind in Charlotte to close things down. He did not return for quite a while as he was apparently injured in a car accident on the way back, or at least that’s what my sister and I, and our little brother Teddy were told. Since then I’ve grown a bit suspicious.
I think I returned to Biscayne Elementary then because my sister complained that her teacher there was always talking to her about when I’d been her student, something Marina disliked. It was a bit traumatic without our stepfather. His well-to-do sister, my aunt Mary, used to bring us groceries I remember. My mother cried a lot of the time and I had to assume a bit more responsibility at home than I’d been used to, especially worrying about what to do at Christmas for my younger siblings, but, much to my delight and relief, my stepfather surprised us on Christmas Eve, like a real live Santa. Although we had very little in the way of presents, it was the best Christmas ever as far as I’m concerned (although later Christmases, when my sons were little, were awesome as well). Shortly thereafter, my mother, sister, baby brother and I were shipped back to Colombia where I’d been born. Evidently my mother needed to recuperate from that year’s trauma and my grandmother Juanita, who owned a hotel and beautiful country home there, was, as she always had been, more than happy to help out.
I attended school in Manizales that year, at least for a while, my third school of the year. The school, “Nuestra Señora”, still exists. It was a great period as two of my classmates there had been early childhood friends, twins, Carlos Alberto and Luis Enrique Garcia, from a family that was as close to mine as it was possible to be without being related. Then, 1958. Another paradigm shift, New York City, but in Queens, in Ozone Park, in an apartment over the Circle Restaurant where my father worked. My mother and little brother returned first, then I returned. My sister, however, remained in Colombia for another six months, I never really understood why.
In New York, my stepfather’s whole family (the Kokkins clan) lived nearby. I recall my step father’s Uncle Sam and Aunt Hellen, and of course, his parents, Demitra and Theodore, and his brother John and John’s three daughters. I especially remember Athena on whom I developed an early crush; the other two sort of cousins were Deedee (who I think had been named Demitra after her grandmother), and Lynn. Their mother’s name was Frances.
So, … in New York I first attended PS 124 for seventh grade near what was then Idlewild Airport. I remember that we saw the first passenger jet flight take off from there. It was a Boing 707. It was a strange year given that I’d never really gotten to complete sixth grade but I muddled through. I think my teacher’s name was Mrs. Steinberg or it may have been Setterberg. Then, as had become traditional, we moved again, this time to Hollis, also in Queens, and eighth grade was at St. Gerard de Magella, a Catholic School which I loved despite the fact that the nuns kept emphasizing to my female classmates that they could only marry someone who was Catholic (I’d been baptized both Catholic and Greek Orthodox, my stepfather’s religion). In Miami Beach, it had been Jewish men little girls were told they should marry. Seemingly I was viewed as a multicultural threat.
Upon graduation from St. Gerard’s (in those days elementary school ended at the eighth grade) I started high school at Jamaica High School although I’d earned admission to Bishop McClancy High, one of the most prestigious Catholic high schools in New York City at the time. My mother had been involved in an accident and had not been able to submit my acceptance notice on time. I didn’t care, I loved Jamaica High where some of my classmates from St. Gerard’s also attended, and girls there did not have to marry Catholic or Jewish boys. But, of course, we moved and midyear I was transferred to Martin Van Buren High School, at which I finally rebelled, although discretely, or so I thought. I first kept going to Jamaica High but when I was no longer admitted there, I rode the subways all day. I was waiting for a response from DC Comics to an employment application I’d submitted, along with a proposal for a new comic book hero, Ultraman or something. Weeks later I received a rejection letter, my first, advising that they had their own in-house artists, thank you, and wishing me luck. Shortly thereafter my rebellion was cut short. I’d been found out.
Damned truant officers!
I had to start attending Van Buren High where I did terribly and had to attend counseling sessions with a psychologist. There and then, I was finally able to express my exasperation at having to constantly move and to lose friends. Losing friends and having to make new ones is a common experience for the children of military personnel, but even they tend to stay in the same place for several years. In my case, I had no military support group to help me adjust, or cadre of other children with shared experiences. It was just my sister Marina, my brother Teddy and I. Still, in hindsight, I’d perhaps planted memories in a great many fellow children scattered over the East Coast. I remember many of them fondly, and sometimes wonder whether any remember me as well. It would be awesome to somehow find some of them again, perhaps through Facebook. I especially remember one named Bobby who lived across Hillside Avenue in Queens from us, between 214th and 215th streets, when I was doing my time at Van Buren High. He was a great friend with a wonderful family, Italians. They even convinced me to eat roasted bovine testicles, … Once. Yuck!
Ninth grade was the end of my wandering, at least until I became an independent adult. It also, sadly, marked the end of my home life. It was boarding school for me after that, and usually summers with friends. My mother and stepfather had separated. I didn’t focus on it that much then, but as I grew older, I came to wonder how my mother almost miraculously managed to pay for all the expenses associated with my subsequent education. After her separation she’d borne our entire financial burden alone, as is the case with so many single mothers everywhere. Anticipating that her marriage to my stepfather was failing, she’d attended cosmetology school and after a brief stint working for my stepfather’s parents at a large beauty salon on Northern Boulevard (in Flushing), she opened her own one woman shop, innovative in that smoking was not permitted. It was somewhere in Flushing. We lived nearby in a large apartment building, it may have been called Abbot Arms. It seemed somehow mysterious, a gothic sort of building. But I was seldom there.
So, anyway, … at fifteen I was enrolled as a boarding student at the Eastern Military Academy in Cold Spring Hills in Long Island (in the township of Huntington). It became my home and more than a home. My sister Marina was also enrolled in a boarding school (Sag Harbor I think it was called), as was my little brother Teddy, in St. Basil’s Greek Orthodox school, a bit upstate in New York. Amazingly, I finished high school at Eastern, very successfully, so much so that after I graduated from the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina in Charleston (the Holy City as we thought of it, and still do), I was invited back to teach, which I did for nine years while concurrently earning a law degree and then an LL.M in international legal studies (from the graduate division of the New York University School of Law). Unfortunately, my brother and sister did not experience as much success, perhaps because my mother elected to subsidize my education at the cost of theirs. Something which was never expressed but which I now suspect, and which saddens me.
Anyway, my gypsy days had, at least for a while, subsided. Subsided but not ended as after my sojourn as a member of Eastern’s faculty, I’ve since lived in four different places in New York; in three places in Fort Lauderdale; in Hendersonville, North Carolina; in Belleview and Ocala, Florida, and finally, full circle, back in Manizales, the city of my birth. Here, apparently, my wandering has ceased, at least for the present, I’ve lived here for the past decade and a half. Still, had I the money, I’d love to spend a part of each year again in New York, and in Charleston. Both cities I love.
My professional life? Well it followed a somewhat similar pattern, a motley of surprising successes amidst incomprehensible polemics, but I always remained true, I think, to my beliefs, at least usually. I’d not characterize my professional life as one but rather several, following three main tracts, academia, then law and finance, and finally civic and cultural endevors. But that’s another story.
Complicated? Yes. But not all bad. Perhaps not even mainly bad. I’ve learned a great deal. Less from my successes than from my failures. Our own errors are the best of teachers. And they’ve made me an integral human being, burning off my naiveté and replacing it with a profound sense of empathy. It’s a process though, not a series of isolated events, and one that continues. Thanks to Facebook (which I otherwise despise for its use as a tool to control us), I’ve kept in touch with many of my classmates, former students and colleagues from Eastern (which we refer to as EMA) despite the fact that the school has been inoperative since 1978, and with my Citadel classmates and other Citadel graduates, the best people I’ve ever met.
I lost my mom in 1990. I lost her just before the birth of my third son, Edward. I’d married in 1981 and had three children: in addition to Edward, my first son Billy and my second son Alex. They all live with or near their mother, now my ex, in Marion County, Florida. Not a terribly successful experience. I’m now remarried to a wonderful woman who has two daughters of her own. They live nearby with their father, preferring the rural life on a small farm, to life in a city. I’m now semiretired but remain active in academic, civic and cultural affairs, sharing my perspectives by consistently writing and publishing articles in media spanning the length and breadth of the Americas. Until I recently fractured my wrist, I’ve remained very active in sports as well. Mainly tennis but at times, football (as a coach) and softball as well.
It’s not been a bad life, not a bad life at all, and while unusual, it’s always been interesting, although, admittedly, at times all too interesting (in the sense of the Chinese curse). It’s been strange but very full. Very full of diverse experiences, experiences through which I’ve interacted with all kinds of people, from presidents to the most humble people, the latter being those I most admire as they remind me of my mother in their struggles to provide for and educate their families. My constant moves were difficult but have given me broad perspectives which I think gifted me with the empathy I referred to previously, a quality all too rare in our polarized world. Indeed, in a sense, I guess I’m a sort of perpetual student, with an open mind being my greatest asset. At least I aspire to keep it open.
Sooo, ….
I’ve met many, many people, albeit perhaps, most, all too briefly. I’ve loved a few and appreciated many more, some of whom have become friends. I very much hope that the good I’ve managed to do outweighs my errors. There are many places where I’ve left pieces of my heart and of my soul, and, while too many friendships were cut short too soon, few have been forgotten.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
The central range of the Colombian Andes is beautiful, as is so much of that all too frequently tortured country. Snow clad peaks overlook a paradise of perpetual spring which in turn overlooks a land of perpetual summer. The weather changes seasons several times a day, sometimes dawning as a silvered wonderland, clouds blanketing verdant mountains, then a bit of rain quickly replaced by robin’s blue skies and in the evening, the sunsets that so delighted poet laurate Pablo Neruda. Unfortunately, although nature does its best to provide an idyllic setting, as is the case in the United States and so much of the world, in Colombia we humans muck it up.
Inside a metaphorically reflective crystal mote, trapped within an imagined mirrored globe, a sentience engages in seemingly infinite introspection. It is a bitterly sad period culminating during two days at the end of February; two days that have usually been very special. They involve his three sons. It is his eldest son’s last day at thirty-four and first day at thirty-five. For many years they have lived continents apart but until recently managed to bridge that gap. The father plays with the new number noting that thirty-five is five times seven and three joined with five and that the son is the first of three, all prime numbers. He finds a strange delight in the magic he perceives in prime numbers. The number two is special in that regard as the only even prime. He recalls when his son was about eight and started to change, to become his own person, he recalls how proud he felt, how he believed he’d done well as a father. Then he reflects on the present, a very different sort of reflection.
Like so many others in a bitterly polarized world, he and his firstborn are profoundly estranged. On thirty four other occasions the father has written short missives shared with his son, celebrating the past and looking forward to the future. This year the son has declined to receive them. He has shut the father out, “ordering” him to refrain from any contact. The son has judged the father’s political perspectives unacceptable. They do not mirror his own. The father does not despise nor deprecate those the son hates but rather seeks to understand and persuade them, and that is anathema in his son’s brave new world. Not having succeeded through public ridicule to censor the father, the son has expelled him from his life. His father was not “woke” enough, even though their stated goals may have coincided. A strange new variant of “liberalism”.
That is the world of today. But though his thoughts may not be shared this year, the father writes them anyway. He reflects on what his son has attained, who he has become, gives him credit for his successes, such as they are, but blames himself for the faults. In trying to make him strong he instead made him self-centered; in seeking to make him proud he planted the now-sown-seeds of hubris. In seeking to make him love the concepts of honor and public service, he only made him politically ambitious and intolerant. The father wonders if his son is a reflection of himself. He thinks not, then wonders what it is his son perceives to the exclusion of so much. The father recalls that he too was all too frequently sure of his own beliefs and that only when they had changed almost every decade did he succeed in opening his mind to the possibility of myriad verities. Yet the father had always been open to others’ opinions, has long been aware that logic based on false premises only leads to false conclusions and that if actual results belie logic, then the premises are at fault. But that logic, in and of itself, divorced from premises and conclusions, always seems pure and beautiful and infallible. As infallible as Catholic Popes.
Father and son will not compromise their perspectives and while the father, being more experienced and mature can tolerate, or at least ignore the son’s, the son cannot accept that the father beliefs cannot be forced to conform to his. A conundrum. Perhaps to both, perhaps not. Perhaps they will go their separate ways, the memories of each conforming to their decisions until it is too late. That would be sad, very sad, but not uncommon, especially not today.
Tolerance and free expression are not in vogue. This is the age of hypocrisy, of overt manipulation, of censorship, concepts always ascendant but never as universal or blatant as they are today, except perhaps during the decade that started in the mid nineteen-thirties. No, that’s wrong of course. Human history and human misery encompass far more than the last century. The problem is that history is a fiction woven by all too clever artisans so who knows anything but what one has lived, and even that seems all too flexible, memory being fallible and that fallibility artfully manipulated.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, from afar and in silence the father wishes the son a happy birthday and a happy future. He has no idea what the son hopes and perhaps he now never will. Then he smiles, somewhat bitterly, in the realization of how self-serving his observations are.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Guillermo Calvo Mahé 