3-02-08
The enemy has noticed us! Susan Faludi, in her new book The Terror dream, mentions our website on page nine and refers to my comments on 9/11 entitled, The land of the Smoldering Vagina. I don’t now how many people that notation drove to our website, but I did receive comments from one already and she informed me of Faludi’s book. There will undoubtedly be others who will log on to our website as Faludi is a well-known feminist author of the past 20 years. Our presence in the public domain continues to grow.
On another matter, I heard from Marc Roemer and learned more about his adventures n Cost Rica. I include herewith a copy of his correspondence to me.
EG, thank you for the latest article. I have to think more about thequestions you posed. In the meantime I´ve had a few experiences herein Costa Rica that I think you would find interesting.When I went surfing I hired an older American surfer to teach me. He´sliterally been surfing for 40 or 50 years. He´s a good surfer forsure, but not a good teacher! He has a lot of experience surfing butdidn´t teach me much. He mainly just described the details of how hedoes it! But another instructor I talked to one day, a younger CostaRican man, gave me some free advice in just a few sentences that ledme to do exactly what I needed to do. So there´s something going onhere with how men communicate. One tried to tell me exactly what todo, and the other told me generally what to do to get the experience Ineeded to learn the details on my own. Could this apply to Men´sAction? Maybe we need to instruct each other on how to acquire theexperience that will lead us to understand the specifics.This of course would be very different from women, who tend to simplypass on information. I had a discussion with some women on the beachabout Costa Rican Spanish pronunciation. Two women from Spain insistedthat the ll and y are pronounced like the English j only in Argentina.My experience during a total of 3 months here with many differentfamilies indicates otherwise, but when I asked them how they knew,they simply said they know all the variations Spanish pronunciation. Iassume they got their ideas from a book or professor somewhere becauseit couldn´t be from direct experience.The contrast between the gringos and the Ticos (Costa Ricans) here isreally striking. There´s a gringa woman living next door to the largeextended family I´m staying with who runs a hotel and restaurant. Shehas 2 children and drops them off at various neighbor´s houseswhenever she´s busy working. When someone says no she starts crying.Because she has done this so much, essentially the mom of my houseraised the 4-year old, including toilet training. The child now speaksSpanish while her mother only speaks a little. My house mom asked meabout this because she finds it so weird, and she thought that I as agringo could explain. I said it was a picture of the United States andif Costa Rica continues to advance materialism there would be more andmore ¨families¨ like her neighbor, and more and more women who want itall and only want to BE a mother while failing to DO what a mothershould do.
M.R.
Marc’s adventures have already provided him with knowledge of life not available in the classroom. What he learns by experience in relating with his fellow men and women will remain with him forever. We are fortunate that he shares some of these experiences with us. You can send him encouragement to m.i.roemer@gmail.com
E.G.
On another matter, I heard from Marc Roemer and learned more about his adventures n Cost Rica. I include herewith a copy of his correspondence to me.
EG, thank you for the latest article. I have to think more about thequestions you posed. In the meantime I´ve had a few experiences herein Costa Rica that I think you would find interesting.When I went surfing I hired an older American surfer to teach me. He´sliterally been surfing for 40 or 50 years. He´s a good surfer forsure, but not a good teacher! He has a lot of experience surfing butdidn´t teach me much. He mainly just described the details of how hedoes it! But another instructor I talked to one day, a younger CostaRican man, gave me some free advice in just a few sentences that ledme to do exactly what I needed to do. So there´s something going onhere with how men communicate. One tried to tell me exactly what todo, and the other told me generally what to do to get the experience Ineeded to learn the details on my own. Could this apply to Men´sAction? Maybe we need to instruct each other on how to acquire theexperience that will lead us to understand the specifics.This of course would be very different from women, who tend to simplypass on information. I had a discussion with some women on the beachabout Costa Rican Spanish pronunciation. Two women from Spain insistedthat the ll and y are pronounced like the English j only in Argentina.My experience during a total of 3 months here with many differentfamilies indicates otherwise, but when I asked them how they knew,they simply said they know all the variations Spanish pronunciation. Iassume they got their ideas from a book or professor somewhere becauseit couldn´t be from direct experience.The contrast between the gringos and the Ticos (Costa Ricans) here isreally striking. There´s a gringa woman living next door to the largeextended family I´m staying with who runs a hotel and restaurant. Shehas 2 children and drops them off at various neighbor´s houseswhenever she´s busy working. When someone says no she starts crying.Because she has done this so much, essentially the mom of my houseraised the 4-year old, including toilet training. The child now speaksSpanish while her mother only speaks a little. My house mom asked meabout this because she finds it so weird, and she thought that I as agringo could explain. I said it was a picture of the United States andif Costa Rica continues to advance materialism there would be more andmore ¨families¨ like her neighbor, and more and more women who want itall and only want to BE a mother while failing to DO what a mothershould do.
M.R.
Marc’s adventures have already provided him with knowledge of life not available in the classroom. What he learns by experience in relating with his fellow men and women will remain with him forever. We are fortunate that he shares some of these experiences with us. You can send him encouragement to m.i.roemer@gmail.com
E.G.
posted by Elder George at
5:05 AM
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