What does the billboard say?

On my morning walk to work, over the Manhattan Bridge, I encountered a kind of koan: a billboard that says, “What does the billboard say?”

What does it say? It says, “What does the billboard say?”

One mango at a time

In 1996, a relatively peaceful time in Haiti, I traveled there with Global Exchange and was struck—despite the deforestation, despite the outbreaks of violence—by what a vibrant, welcoming, and even beautiful country it was. I wrote an article about the trip called Haiti as a Tourist Destination.

About a year later, I came upon a book of photos from Haiti that made me wonder—beginning with the seeming village idiot pictured on the cover—whether the photographer had been to the same place. “Steeped in Voodoo and brutalised by its rulers,” the book’s description read, “it is a country where human life is cheap and animals hardly worth life.”

Along with a surprising amount of help and compassion after the earthquake in Haiti, there has been a strong undercurrent of contempt and condescension. Once the compassion has faded, I’m afraid the contempt will continue. Long-term assistance and development requires a recognition that Haiti is worth developing.

For that reason I was pleased to see an op-ed in the New York Times called Building Haiti’s Economy, One Mango at a Time. Here’s an excerpt:

Haiti is by far the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and yet it need not be so, because unexploited economic opportunities abound there. Some of the best mangoes in the world grow in Haiti — though too many of them rot, offshore from the world’s largest market, for want of adequate roads and well-governed ports. Excellent coffee is grown in the Haitian mountains, but much of it is sold informally across the border to coffee producers in the Dominican Republic, who reap most of the profits.

Haiti also has many qualities attractive to tourists: a warm climate; magnificent white-sand beaches and turquoise water; Tortuga, the famous pirate island off the northern coast; and the Citadel, a mountain fortress erected after Haiti’s independence in the early 19th century to fend off colonial powers, now a World Heritage site. Still, it is one of the least visited places in the Caribbean.

Richard Wright stamp

While I was on the USPS website, I discovered to my surprise that a stamp honoring Richard Wright came out last year.

It looks nice, but it’s a 61-cent stamp. Who uses 61-cent stamps? If you really want to honor a major American writer, wouldn’t you put him (or her) on a first-class stamp? Instead we have Bob Hope, Gary Cooper, and the Simpsons. 

Happy Groundhog Day

As I did last year, I want to honor Groundhog Day with a quotation from Thoreau’s Journal. Although Thoreau wrote more about some other creatures (for instance, the muskrat) than he did about the woodchuck or groundhog, his affection for this creature is obvious.

June 21, 1854
Here, in the midst of extensive sprout-lands, are numerous open hollows more or less connected, where for some reason* the wood does not spring up, — and I am glad of it, — filled with a fine wiry grass, with the panicled andromeda, which loves dry places, now in blossom around the edges, and small black cherries and sand cherries straggling down into them. The woodchuck loves such places and now wabbles off with a peculiar loud squeak like the sharp bark of a red squirrel, then stands erect at the entrance of his hole, ready to dive into it as soon as you approach. As wild and strange a place as you might find in the unexplored West or East.

*Maybe frosts.

Once again, groundhog fans should visit my friend Lucy’s pages (with more quotations from Thoreau), including her tribute to one charming but unfortunate young woodchuck.