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Alvarez, Julia
Some time ago, I dropped by the local Hastings Book store and in their Spanish language books, I found a new book by Julia Alvarez. This one is in both English (inglés) and Spanish (español). It was called "A Cafecito Story" or "El Cuento del Cafecito". My connection to Alvarez is an emotional one. The stories I have read pull an emotional string or two. It began quite a few years ago when she published a story that was eventually made into a movie. The story in the movie affected me.
It was late 2002 when I rented a DVD and watched the movie called "In the Time of The Butterflies". The "Las Mariposas" was the code name of the Mirabal sisters when they belonged to the revolution during the Dominican Republic dictatorship of Trujillo. Trujillo's was a reign of terror that ended when he was assassinated a few months after 3 of the Mirabal sisters were brutally murdered.
When intelligent people get involved in a revolution, I think they are trying to commit suicide. Educated people have to know they will be held accountable for their actions if they get caught. In a place like the Dominican Republic during the time of Trujillo, this meant that they simply disappeared. If they succeed, they will be remembered as brilliant planners. A few become martyrs and they accomplish with their deaths what they were trying to accomplish in life.
The story about "En el tiempo de las Mariposas" was published by Alvarez in 1994. It was the first novel in español that I purchased. I will be satisfied with my progress with Spanish when I can read it. I also have the translation into English so this is purely a matter of personal progress at this point. The Cafecito story is not about Alvarez and her husband Bill Eichner but is an eco-parable about the history and philosophy behind the Alta Gracia Project. It also contains a side story about how they started the "Café Alta Gracia" and used fair marketed coffee. If you have encountered any stories about the plight of the coffee farmers and the price of coffee, this is a way to help.
I hadn't read very far into Cafecito when I read about the birds. Some people think Seagulls are really pretty birds but I think they are dirty, noisy, nasty birds. I have a side story about how that was changed for me when I was fairly young. When you are raised on a farm, you learn how to drive a tractor when you are really young. It was nothing to be driving a truck 2 feet behind a chopper cutting corn. A full truck of chopped corn may weigh 10-15 tons. For the rest of the world, a metric tonne is 1.1 US tons. The US trucks always had 4-gears and up to a 3-speed rear end. I was small enough when I started driving our truck that I was driving through the steering wheel. I tell people that I had driven 100,000 miles before I got a drivers license. When you tell stores about doing things like this, people raised in the cities give you this strange look because they can't comprehend what farm kids do on a regular basis.
Back when the seagull story happened, I was running our Caterpillar tractor and preparing a field for planting. A "Cat" is a large, very slow tractor with tracks instead of wheels. I wasn't large enough to start the "Cat" but I was strong enough to drive it. Anything that turns over the ground attracts seagulls and a "Cat" pulling a set of implements turns over a lot of ground. One spring day, I was pulling a set of disks behind the "Cat" and a seagull took off and flew straight at me. Seagulls seem to need help to taking off at the altitude of the farm in Utah. I joked for years that they eject a few drops of a mostly white material, which acts like the Jato units in the large bombers as they are taking off.
This seagulls timing was absolutely perfect and I knew what was going to happen. I have always seemed to have a built in computer that did trajectory analysis in realtime. I was always good at duck hunting, which is a trajectory analysis problem. I had to be good. The shotgun I was given when I was old enough to hunt was a bolt action 410 guage Stevens. Because of the small size, it was more like shooting the ducks with a 41 calibre rifle than a shotgun. As far as the seagull was concerned, I was locked in because I couldn't stand up or change the directions I had the "Cat" pointing. All I could do is sit there and watch it happen.
My calculations were correct and the liquid remnants left behind during the seagulls take off hit me in the lap. I have never been able to change a full baby diaper and this was worse, much worse and I couldn't do anything about it for several hours. I have hated seagulls every since.