Farm(er) Friday, February 24th 2023
Apolinario Garcia and Sonia Vasquez are making a better life for their family
Don Polo Garcia has been a member of the organic growers’ coop for many years, but it wasn’t until this year that we visited his house. When we visit El Sute, we are always hosted by Don Chico, who tends to monopolize our time. So last year we didn’t visit Don Polo, who is a reserved man by nature and did not make a fuss.
Also, last year when I said I wanted to go to see Don Polo’s coffee, he told me that there were “garrapatas” in the tall grass on the way. This made me say that perhaps we could delay the visit. Garrapatas are these tiny ticks that I think we call “chiggers” in the States. I have had them almost every time I go to El Sute, probably because they keep so much livestock in the community. I HATE those little f**kers because they cause big red itchy welts all up and down my lower legs that drive me up the wall.
This year, Don Polo spent hours chopping the grass on either side of the trail, and he assured us that there were few garrapatas. I could not say no.
But first, we went to his house, which is in the town, a good 45-minute walk from his coffee plot. I had never met Sonia, nor seen their house.
I was glad to visit their house. It is on a ridge with amazing views on either side. His girls are happy and were pleased to see us. Sonia was pleased to welcome us and show us around. Don Polo showed us the coffee-drying hoophouse and then showed us where he hoped to expand their house.
Their house is made in the traditional “bahareque” style, which involves making a cage out of wood and filling it with rocks, and then caking mud over the rocks.
Don Polo has ambitions. At his house, he showed us his neighbor’s property, which is up for sale. They are thinking about buying it to improve the homestead site. When we hiked up to their coffee plot, we saw young coffee plants growing on the edges of the established plantation, attesting to goals to grow more coffee.
Although at this point they have only a small area of organic coffee, the good prices they get from Farmer to Farmer allow them to have a little hope for the future.
I was also pleased to deliver backpacks full of school supplies and a small stipend for both Yeisi Carolina and Sonia Yamileth, who are not twins, by the way (I asked). I also made the mistake when I first met them of asking if Don Polo was their grandfather. No, he just is late to having a family.
Don Polo and Doña Sonia are a quintessential hard-working Honduran family. They want the best for their girls and it shows.
Stop reading here if you don’t want a “how is your writing on Medium going?” update. Continue at your own risk.
In writing news, one of my stories from last November was chosen by an editor to be “boosted.” Thank you! In the last three days, I have seen almost 1000 views on my stories, an amount that in the past I might get in a whole month. Wow! I also have many new followers and many people commented on the piece and on others. I love being boosted!
I also published a couple of new stories. One was an ode to maple syrup for the Reciprocal “seasons” prompt, and another was a short story for the Vocal Media time travel prompt.
I’d like to take a moment to discuss something that is bothering me about my own writing style: I think I might be an over-explainer. Let me explain (he said unironically).
I know I tend to get into a teacherly explainer mode in many of my essays. I also know that man-splaining and white-splaining are real phenomena.
Do I do both? Ugh. Not my intention. This one of the reasons I moved my writing from Facebook and a local list serve to Medium — I was “taking up too much space” with all that I had to say. I figured Medium is a place where people can find me and read if they want to.
This week I have been thinking about my writing style.
This last week I burned through several episodes of the podcast If Books Could Kill. The two commenters look at the popular “airport books” and tear them apart. They hate pseudo-science and pop science and they distrust gimmicks where authors try to sell us a bill of goods. Their podcast is snarky, smart, and entertaining, all as they take down famous authors.
They destroyed the author of Men are from Mars, they took Malcolm Gladwell and the Freakonomics team to task, and they ended any respect I might have had for the End of History.
While I laughed along with them, I did it while revising my own sometimes high opinions of all of those authors along the way.
Each of the authors they took down has a sort of “let me explain the way the world works” vibe, and I can see that same vibe in my own writing style.
My defensive side says that I mostly speak about my own experience and I don’t make ridiculous pronouncements like Gladwell or Levitt. But, if I am completely honest, I didn’t think either author was ridiculous until the If Books Could Kill people said so. I do tend to make pronouncements, and I would actually make a lot more pronouncements if I could back them up.
I love to figure things out and explain them. It might go back to wanting to prove to my parents how much I learned in school or show that I was smarter than my older brother.
The worst part is that some of the things that they tear the authors apart for are their unacknowledged biases. And I hold (or held until recently) many of those same biases. An example is The Population Bomb — one of the books they really had fun destroying. That book informed my ethics in my 20s. The message is that there are too many people on the Earth and we need to control “overpopulation.” I even wrote a paper about China’s one-child policy. I eventually saw how racist and classist the whole overpopulation game was, but it took me years to become aware of my biases there.
What are my other biases that make me nod along with Gladwell and others? Big blind spots.
It wasn’t just the If Books Could Kill folks that got me thinking. Being boosted this week also made me think that I need to edit and fact-check and source all of my essays. When hundreds of people are reading my stuff, I don’t want to be full of shit.
I don’t know what to do with this little moment of self-reflection. Perhaps I will edit my own work to “show more” and “tell less.” Perhaps I will file it all away mentally, so I will subconsciously explain less and describe more. Maybe I will change nothing.
© 2023 Andrew Gaertner. All rights reserved.
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