Category Archives: Musings

Karmic Echoes: a haiku of sorts

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Karmic echoes: self-sustaining strings of interlinked sins.


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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2022; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.

Reflections on a Black Friday: 

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Sports versus Team Fandom – A sort of Ode

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, has become an important commercial holiday, both to those who sell as to those who purchase, although it is also a reflection of the reality that prices have been unjustifiably high, at least in terms of equity and decency, than they ought to have been all year long.  Consumers are easily manipulated but no consumers are more easily manipulated and abused than sports fans, those “fanatics” who shell out trillions of dollars in attendance and viewing costs, memorabilia and incidentals, while the recipients (owners, not players) seem to snicker, and generally, to ignore them.

Being a fan is generally a passionate but passive activity, with frustration the most obvious aspect, especially when one is a team fan and the ownership views the team as business, rather than a hobby.  Consider the current New York Yankees as an excellent illustration.

When father George was at the helm, he was an owner and a fan concurrently, and, although a businessman, the fan aspect was paramount.  Indeed, he treated the massive ongoing investment in the team by the fans as a trust, and it was to the fans that he felt that owed the highest loyalty, although he was also loyal to the players and former players from whom he demanded so much, in so emotional a manner.  Even those he’d mercilessly bullied.

His son Hal, as in almost anything and everything, is a negative of his father whom he does not respect but from whom, everything he has, was inherited: a typical second generation syndrome.  Calm and profit oriented, the Yankees, to Hal, are primarily a vehicle operated for the benefit his creditors and investors, and it is to them, rather than to fans or players, that his loyalty is rendered.  And his chief advisor and operating officer, the aptly named Irishman, Brian Cashman, is his ideal henchmen.  Randy Levine, the Yankees president seems to be a seldom seen illusion, and apparently likes it that way.  While an extreme example, the model is not unique.

Yankees fans, the ideal illustration of “team” rather than “sport” fans, are for the most part, a masochist lot.  Vocal, emotional, passionate and pretty well informed, but kept at bay, carefully, by management trolls who infiltrate their social networks to support management decisions, suggesting that fandom is a permanent state whose prime virtue is loyalty to ownership.  In essence, Team fandom, in the view of ownership and its trolls, involves a sports variant on the “my country right or wrong” slogan that led the Germans to morph from liberal social leaders of the nineteenth century to the obedient masses who watched their values destroyed in the first half of the twentieth.

Team fandom is a strange but effective means of social control, diverting attention away from issues that really impact society and thus permitting a tiny elite, which now includes billionaire owners who also disproportionately exercise control over just about everything, to rule us all just as surely as if they collectively wore Sauron’s one ring.  But it is so addicting, that, notwithstanding acknowledging the foregoing – I’m a passionate Yankees’ and Jets’ fan.

Being a sport fan is quite a bit more rational and hardly masochistic at all.  One does not care who wins, only that the sport is brilliantly played.  It is much less passionate than team fandom and many team fans can enjoy that passive distraction too, when “their” teams (not theirs at all, fandom is not democratic) are not involved.

Fandom, a diversion that lets off steam so that the issues that impact our real lives can be safely obfuscated, manipulated and controlled.  Machiavelli would be proud.  He’d probably approve of Black Friday as well.

Go figure.

Anyway, Happy Black Friday!
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2022; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.

Thanksgiving 2022

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My reflections on the national holiday denominated Thanksgiving in the United States.

The concept seems beautiful.  A day on which to give thanks without asking for anything, just a general sense of gratitude directed at both our fellow men and women, and to a sense of the divine.  Unfortunately, it was a hypocritical concept since its inception set in stolen indigenous lands denominated New England by an intolerant and racist religious sect totally at odds with the humanitarian philosophy of the incarnate man, whom they judged divine and claimed to follow.  Of course, they were very much a reflection of the Romanized Jew, Saul of Tarsus, who changed his name to Paul, and who swiped the emergent innovative Hebrew religious variant right from under the noses of its progeny.

As a “Pauline” rather than “Nazarene” sect, the conduct of the Pilgrims was utterly predictable.  Orthodox hypocrisy followed by virtual genocide.  Still, the thought is beatific and noble even if its implementation by the Pilgrims and Puritans in general fell far from the mark.  But that does not, in any sense, mean we need to do the same.  Or, more accurately, to keep doing the same.  It would be awesome if on this day of thanksgiving we dedicated ourselves, not just to watching football games and stuffing ourselves, but to replacing polarization with empathy and to doing unto others as we would have them do to us; and to insisting on a peaceful world were swords are beaten into plowshares and equity and justice reign and truth is relevant; and if we did so, not tomorrow but today.

I wonder if resolutions need, for some reason, to be limited to the New Year.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2022; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.

Introspections in Purples and Lavenders and Russets and Browns

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I wonder how purple and lavender get along?  One reflecting royal masculinity and the other, tender femininity, or so it seems to me.  Crimson, best friends with scarlet, also seems to get along well with gold.  But gold and yellow, perhaps not as much.  And with green, not at all, although yellow and green are the happiest reflections of nature’s lust.  At least, … so it seems to me.

For some reason, I’ve always insisted on keeping negative information to myself, as if by doing so, I were protecting others dear to me, perhaps hoping that, alone, I’ll manage to make things right. But, perhaps, in a related manner, I generally decline to revel in the positive, instead, keeping it discreet, as if by recognizing it, by giving it too much importance, it would prove illusory, or perhaps, … disperse. 

Not that I don’t experience instances of intense joy, but they are ephemeral, lasting but an instant, and then fading to pastel shades that quickly meld, camouflaged, into the quotidian.  Not really two sides of the same coin but, perhaps, in some sense, complimentary; discretely so.  I wonder how common these reactions are among others?  I wonder if I’ll ever

Russets and browns swaying in autumn winds, then slowly drifting to pool over sylvan toes.  Never wondering why, or worrying as to where they’ll next go.  I wonder what it would be like to be a leaf, enjoying the sun, safely ensconced on a twig, the twig on a branch, the branch on a trunk, a trunk with long, slender fingers twisting below.

I wonder what impact my surface subterfuge has on the chaotic inner me, where nothing is held back, where no masks are allowed.  An inner me I don’t think I’ve ever met.  One perhaps at war with the me that others see.  One where emotions and aspirations roam free of all constraints, where a kernel of the child I may once have been, perhaps, still esoterically runs free.

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2022; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.

Inquiries into Consequential Imagery

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If the Abrahamic divinity was infinite and eternal, why would it have attained an image on which to base our forms? 

And if it had an image, wouldn’t it be much more Zoroastrian, as in the myth of the “burning bush?  Were we to peer into a divine mirror, would we see fire’s reflection? 

Is that, perhaps, the nature of our souls, or perhaps our spirits?  And if so, what would we have to fear from the infernal?

Ethereal and ephemeral while concurrently ubiquitous and eternal, a mystery such as those of which religions are so fond.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2022; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.

“Divinimorphic”

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“Divinimorphic”, an interesting hypothesis.  The obverse of anthropomorphic in the quest to contextualize the human-divine relationship, … whether real or fictional. 

It’s a term that should exist in the Abrahamic context if humans were made following a divine template, albeit, obviously, a deliberately imperfect template, which raises questions about what sort of divinity would strive for imperfection.  But the term apparently doesn’t exist, at least not yet.  What does that say about our religious studies programs?

Instead of “divinimorphism”, humans have seemingly anthropomorphized divinity, returning the favor by making our divinities imperfect as well.  A weird sort of symbiosis. 

So, “divinimorphic”, a neologism which ought to catch on.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2022; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.

Here’s Hoping; …. Again

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I wonder at the relationship between black holes and entropy. 

Then I translate that into quotidian social dynamics and finally, perhaps seeking to ground the esoteric with that which by entertaining us, helps subjugate us, … into sports. 

Perhaps that’s because I’m watching Tom Brady, the all-time best performing quarterback who I despised while he was with the New England Patriots (I have been a Jets fan since their birth as the Titans), sort of implode after a few successful seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  It’s as though the Buc’s loosing tradition has slowly drained the positive energy Brady initially carried with him, leaving him, more or less, a frustrated husk as his teammates accentuate the power of their mediocracy over his talent and charisma.  The Green Bay Packers and Aaron Rogers are a different story.  The team has deteriorated around Rogers, and age has taken its toll on him, but the magic still manages to shine through, at least from time to time.  Which somehow, in a convoluted fashion, brings me to my Jets, or rather, the Jets I share with millions of frustrated fans, waiting for Lucy to once more pull the ball away as Charley Brown tries for the ever-elusive field goal.

Many decades ago, most of us Jets fans, new at the time, it was early 1969, still believing in providence, begged for just one victory, after which, we agreed, we’d understand if we’d never again enjoy the privilege of asking for divine boons, at least in professional American football.  Evidently, if the Divine exists, he, she, it or they have a sense of humor and a close working relationship with a fellow by the name of Murphy.  At least most of us have always assumed it’s a he, but it might well be a she, or perhaps it’s androgynous, or plural.  We got our wish and, in the ensuing fifty-three years, have been paying off that open ended debt. 

Apparently, at least from today’s perspective, we were young and foolish on that January 12 in 1969 at the old Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida.  But then, given our nature, had we to do it all over again, we’d probably make that same deal despite the trail of ensuing tears, curses, lamentations and complaints.  It’s not so bad when our team is just uniformly terrible, it’s when it shows sparks of brilliance and raises our hopes, only to tumble them time after time that Murphy gets his, her, its or their kicks.  Perhaps we should consider drafting a quarterback named Murphy, and perhaps linebackers, cornerbacks and safeties named Murphy. That might at least confuse him, her, it or them, at least for enough time to let us sneak one more super bowl victory in.

Thinks look surprisingly good for our Jets this year and Lucy seems to be promising that she’s reformed, and the Jets do have a few Murphies: there’s Kevin (assistant director of pro personnel) and Tom (vice president, information technology) on the staff, but I know of no others.  So, just like Charley Brown, I and many other Jets fans are hopeful, optimistic, excited this year, … but a bit wary.  But then there’s the issue of black holes and entropy, and unfortunately, a somewhat negative tradition.

Still Joe Namath and company were awesome, and there’s never been a professional football game as important as Super Bowl III, and the AFL may have disappeared after that game, but it’s alive and well in some sort of sports Valhalla that echoes in our hearts.  And this team’s coaches seem different, as do the players, well, at least most of them.

Sooo; anyway:

Here’s hoping; .…

Again.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2022; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.

Involuted Lacunae

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“I actually liked Babel” he admitted, “I admired its audacity.”

“Then, why destroy it” asked his adversary, or perhaps his assistant, at least at one time, the Archangel Hêl él?

“I didn’t, not really, I just set events in motion so that those who dared consider the faintest possibility of challenging me turned, instead, on each other.  It was a reflex reaction, one I’ve long regretted.”

“But what of their language, and their knowledge; their music and their poetry” asked Hell-El, fully knowing the answer but perhaps wanting to add a bit of salt, perhaps black salt from the Himalayas, to the metaphorical wound?

“Fragmented, unfortunately, couldn’t be helped.  I hadn’t the time to consider consequences before I acted, and thus, unintentionally loosened Confusion; Misperception and Misunderstanding from their bonds, and they quickly mated and sired Disdain and Manipulation and Treachery, which in turn, bred politics and religion and journalism, and, if not the Law, unfortunately, the legal profession.”

“Pity that!  Unfortunate. Right.  The end of possibilities you once fancied.  ….  On another front, any news from Humpty Dumpty and his egg shell restoration project”?
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2022; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.

Kalliope, a Muse then in Training

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He’d met her in the apartment building where their families lived at the time, on Northern Boulevard adjacent to Flushing High School and down the block from a Horn & Hardart.  They’d bonded quickly.  Although she was one year younger than he was, she was vastly more experienced in things intimate and would explain, in intricate detail, what they were proscribed from doing, after which, they’d of course try it.  Her breasts were beautiful, large for a fifteen-year-old, with pretty, very sensitive nipples, but she was otherwise slender, at least then.  Her hair was auburn, and worn a bit shorter than he liked, and her eyes a piercing blue.

He’d seen her, walking with her mother in Manhattan, years later and she’d filled out quite bit.  But back then, in that magical summer and autumn of 1961, she was perfect and he’d immediately succumbed to a sixteen-year old’s addiction for his first love. 

He recalled a day at the beach, perhaps Rockaway but it could have been Jones, and listening to the Beach Boys “Surfing Safari” and to the Drifters singing “Under the Boardwalk”, and to the Four Seasons.  The Beatles had yet to arrive and turn the musical world upside down.

He couldn’t get enough of her back then and when they parted at the end of each day, one or the other would immediately call.  They’d spend what seemed like hours listening to the other’s breath over the phone, having already said everything they could think of, especially how much they loved each other.  He attended a boarding school to which he returned at the end of the summer but she visited him there several times and they talked on the phone every evening.  They made plans for a future together.  He’d attend Columbia University and study international relations, hoping for a diplomatic career, she’d be with him.

It was an ambivalent paradise of joy and pain, at least until it ended about eight months later.  Then only pain, intense and bitter remained.  A future very different than the one they’d briefly planned, although very full as well, at least for him.  He never knew what became of her although it may be that she eventually settled in California.

But perhaps, in a sense, their relationship never really ended, at least from his perspective, after all, he’s writing this reflection.  He doesn’t think of her often anymore.  Sometimes decades go by but then, of a sudden, while reading a book perhaps, or hearing a song, echoes come roaring back.  Bittersweet echoes faded a bit more each time.  Echoes tinted with scents.  Her scent, or perhaps the scent of an ocean, or a park.  Or of her parents’ apartment.  He wonders what she looks like now, where she is, what she’s doing, and whether her life has been happy and fulfilled.  He hopes that it has.  He remembers her parents too, very fondly.  He recalls the time they plied him with Ouzo to see what he’d be like when inebriated.  To be sure he’d not be an abusive husband.  They were, after all, of Hellenic descent.

He’s had many other relationships since those halcyon days.  Way too many in his own opinion.  Many were meaningful with wonderful women.  Endings were usually sad.  But perhaps no other relationship was as intense, for which, in hindsight, he’s now grateful. 

He’s never again experienced that bliss, nor has he experience that pain. A fair exchange, all things considered.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2022; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.

But it’s a Saying Nonetheless

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It’s strange being a shadow, discreetly indiscreet, fitting into all kinds of nooks and crannies.  I’m there even when, having turned on lights, bright or dim, it appears I can’t be seen.  I’ve quite a store of sort of borrowed knowledge but it’s not much use really, unless I share it with the echoes who are my friends, not all of them are, but some.  I am sort of trapped in a sense, having to go to all kinds of places against my will, in a sense, not really having a will of my own, except when the person who’s had me trapped all my life sleeps.

I have contrarian sort of cousin who lives in mirrors, always reflecting things sort of backwards, left being right and right being left.  It lurks in all mirrors but can be conjured by only one person, and is trapped there, imitating that person until it’s dark, or the person goes away.  Evidently there is a quantum based centrality of sorts where reflections lurk, waiting to be summoned.  Kind of like shadows.  We shadows are sometimes invited to party there, unfortunately, we don’t tend to mix well, and notwithstanding what people think, we hate to be superimposed, especially as rabbits.

Not that we have anything against rabbits, or crocodiles, or the other images we are sometimes, well, all too often, forced to imitate.  But we are happy just being our two dimensional selves.  Thinking our two dimensional thoughts and dreaming our two dimensional dreams, but avoiding colors whenever we can.  When we can’t we subdue them, sort of.  It’s a sort-of sort of life being a shadow, but it’s okay; at least for now.

Is a cube merely a square squared?  Or a sphere merely a circle escaped into the three dimensional world.  More likely a circle abducted and tortured into three dimensionality.  Indeed, we shadows seem to shadow almost all three dimensional objects, beings and non-beings alike.  We believe that we existed first, when the multiverse only had two dimensions, but that’s a hard hypotheses to prove.  Still, it may be our greatest religious belief and they don’t require proof.  Only faith.

It may be that at least one of us has escaped, or blundered into the three dimensional world because they sometimes seem to believe that one among us knows a great deal, perhaps everything.  They have a refrain: “who knows what lurks in the hearts, of men, to which they answer: ‘the shadow knows’”.  There’s a sort of similar saying among us which we apparently share with three dimensional beings: “who knows what the future will bring”.  But as far as I know, none of us has ever met that “who knows”, so none of us knows if it even exists. 

But it’s a saying nonetheless.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2022; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.