Almost Summer, 2006-2007

SUMMERTIME: As a native of the Northern Hemisphere, I still find it weird to think of the summer season as the one that spans the old and new years, but here, of course, it does. The time leading up to Christmas and New Year’s is when students look forward to the end of the school year and summer vacation – although that vacation is much shorter in Argentina than in the US because their education system requires many more annual school days. Most children and young people get just under two months, from December 23 or so until the end of February, and then it’s back to the grind. It makes it difficult, of course, for those wishing to travel outside of the country; all the North is in mid-winter, and Europe or the US is certainly not as appealing in school vacation time here as it would be in Northern summer. Thus, families and individuals tend to get away to other locales in the Southern Cone, especially the Andean resorts that are scattered on both sides along the Argentine-Chilean border. As I mentioned last year at this time, one of the popular places is San Martin de los Andes, and we’re headed back there for two weeks again in January simply because we want a more thorough visit to the surrounding region, including the “Siete Lagos” (Seven Lakes) tour (you can Google it). Next summer we will probably venture even farther afield, probably to the Deep South where we will see glaciers and the Beagle Channel and all that great stuff.

HOLIDAYS & VACATIONS: The week of New Year’s marks the end of various activities for two or three months, especially those related to the arts and music. Theatres close their doors, and the city sinks into its summer doldrums of normally hot, humid weather. Everyone who can tries to get away from Buenos Aires for as long as possible in January and February, and the two major seaside resorts of Mar del Plata in Argentina and Punta del Este in Uruguay are vastly populated, along with their satellite beach towns up and down their respective coasts. Argentine President Nestor Kirchner and his senator and future presidential candidate wife, Cristina, shun the slightly more elegant Uruguayan resort and the Prez encourages his cabinet members and fellow party members not to patronize Punta del Este, but many go anyway. They go, like everyone else, for a variety of reasons, but mainly for annual socializing with summer friends, the more elegant social whirl of Punta, and the more international crowd that assembles there, especially in January, from the North. Lots of golf and tennis, along with dinner and garden parties and boat races, make for a suitable break from daily life in the big city. Argentines and other foreign visitors probably outnumber native Uruguayans by about three to one, and many Uruguayans are scornful of Punta because the international group has created higher prices for everything from property to a good meal. The Uruguayans go instead to other, smaller beach towns or to nearby Brazil.

It’s remarkably inexpensive here for many to leave the city in summer. Unions of all types have summer campgrounds and resort complexes that, while more modest than commercial sites, are very pleasant and offer lots of activities for parents and children both. The big union vacation clubs and their counterparts in the Buenos Aires metro area comprise one of the better monuments to Juan Perón’s political life in Argentina – he was a genuine friend of the worker, and even if he wasn’t always sure what that meant (he could be a seat-of-the-pants type of guy) he did strongly believe that workers had as much right to vacations and to real recreation during their time off as members of other economic classes. Thus, to this day the union social clubs are a huge part of Argentine family life. I myself play tennis once or twice a week at the huge SOIVA recreation and social property near the river in the San Fernando municipality north of the city. SOIVA is the union of textile and clothing workers; the huge swimming pool is built in the shape of a sewing machine – only you would have to be standing (or flying) pretty far above it to appreciate it fully; on the ground it just looks huge with a big island in the middle with a children’s’ playground.

Additionally, the long-distance buses (which long ago took over from the then-extensive railroads established largely by the Brits and French) are very inexpensive; a custom-class Mercedes “Marco Polo” type ride, more comfy than first class on an airline, cost US 50 round-trip to San Martin, a distance of more than 1,000 miles each way. Similar but less-exotic buses make the same run for US 25. And although cars are more expensive to own and operate in general here than in the North, many have older cars that are very economical, and the price of gas is cheaper here than in the US. Inexpensive campgrounds, many run by the ACA (Argentine version of the AAA), as well as self-contained apartment-type motels and hotels, mean that whole families, even of modest means, can make their annual pilgrimages to cooler parts of the country.

The run-up (I love how US English is using more and more Brit words, including “over the top,” etc.) to the holiday season is, gracias a Dios, much more low-key here than in NYC, for example. People do shop a lot and it’s a special time of year, but unlike in the North, what’s lurking in the back of Argentine minds as Christmas and New Year’s roll around is double-barreled: “We get Christmas, New Year’s and the Summer Holiday Season coming all at once!” as one younger Argentine person said to me not long ago. “Most of us are happy about the holidays, but even happier that school is out.” As people in the North see the often-bleak months of January and February stretching out before them after New Year’s, Argentines are getting into 100% summertime mode. Not a bad thing!

As I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the 2001-2002 economic collapsed re-ordered all of life for most Argentines save the very rich, who had their money offshore all along. Many families had to sell their homes, move to rented homes or apartments, change their daily menus, their spending habits, and especially what gift-giving was all about. Now, many families practice the “one gift per person" Christmas program, where everyone in the family contributes a little bit on behalf of themselves and everyone else, and selected people buy a single gift for each family member. Last Christmas with the family of Maria del Carmen, I received a really lovely slate-green polo shirt that is one of those things I would never have bought for myself but has turned out to be one of the favorite things I wear. When everyone gets just one thing, it becomes very special, and everyone knows that the gift is from the whole family. Again, maybe that’s not a bad idea, either, except for what such a concept would do to the American retailing industry after only one or two Christmases! Sigh. Spend and buy, buy and spend. Ah, well. So it goes.

THE BABY BUSH PURSE-SNATCH: There was some nice humor recently when Barbara Bush, Jr., was in town with her twin sister and had her purse stolen at a huge bar-restaurant in the hip San Telmo district south of the Plaza de Mayo. Evidently she didn’t even notice right away, but it seems that the ladrones were a young couple, obviously skilled at their trade. The papers said later that part of the reason it was so easy was that a) the place was crowded with young people, and b) Barbara’s Secret Service detail was some 40 meters away because she hates having them too close to her. So although it’s certainly not a happy event, it’s certainly common enough in San Telmo (as in Greenwich Village or Soho or lots of other areas) of a busy late Spring evening, and I don’t think anyone here feels either threatened by crime or particularly upset at her loss. One of the local chistes (jokes) was: Clever Porteño purse-snatchers, 1; US Secret Service, O. The next day the Argie government insisted on assigning about 50 Federal Police and a fire truck to the already large USSS protective detail. Believe it or not, the fire truck is used to put out small fires that are set by the firefighters themselves (when ordered to by their superiors over the radio) to distract people from chasing after the Bush twins. The fires are usually set in trash barrels as the firefighters stand by with a small hose. The USSS detail featured six of those huge Chevy Tahoe things (as we've all seen in pictures) and no one knows how many agents. During all this fuss, a Reuters reporter walked right into Barbara’s hotel lobby, after seeing her through the window from the street, where she was using one of the hotel’s computers to send e-mail along with three or four girlfriends. The reporter went right up to her and they chatted. He left. No one said a thing to him and he didn’t see any Secret Service or other security types. So, who knows?

THE NEWS BIZ: Finally, in the Baby Bush saga, the Reuters agency outdid itself in good, old-time British journalistic style by creating a story called "Embassy Denies Telling Bush to Call Daughters Home." This is what we in the biz used to call the "Have You Stopped Beating Your Wife?" kind of comment. The whole thing was a set-up: The Reuters person asked if it were true that the Embassy had suggested that the Prez recall his daughters! Of course not, the embassy said, "What the hell are you talking about?" and then denied the whole query, which in turn generated the story that got quoted throughout the mainstream press. I mean, why would the Embassy tell the Bush daughters to go home because of a purse-snatching event? I confess to feeling nothing but scorn for news persons who cause such events, as well as being embarrassed for having been a part of that so-called profession (which, when I learned it in the early 60s, was still called a business). One of the pithier editors at my first paper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, said to me early on, "Son, what we do is not a profession. It's a business. The Inquirer is in business to make money for Mr. (Walter) Annenberg. It is not in business to protect the people's right to know, or any other silly damn thing. And don't you forget it." And we were called newspapermen or -women, not journalists. That same editor said, "Journalists are people who keep journals. Newspapermen are men who write stories for newspapers." Ah, were it only so.

MORE IS HAPPENING HERE: Argentina and Buenos Aires have been much in the news the last two or three months; I set up a Yahoo news-tracking thing and the number of stories that pop every day has increased from perhaps four or five to at least 10 to 15, with more when a serious event occurs. One interesting recent item was that the Argentine wine industry, which is located mostly in the Mendoza province and in other nearby Andean areas, is getting ready to expand to the southern part of the huge Buenos Aires province, in a hilly (but not higher than 3,000 feet) area called the Sierra de la Ventana (Mountain ridge like a window). Viniculturalists have scoped it out for the past couple of years and decided it has the capability of producing some very good wines, both white and red, akin to French wines in the mid-southern regions of France near the Atlantic. This land is hilly and rocky, and the creation of a new wine-growing area seems assured. Since Argentina is now the world’s 5th-largest wine producing nation, maybe this will move it up to 4th! I will keep close track of this and let you know when the first vintages appear.

Economically, things continue to grow. Big recent story: 1.2 million used cars will be sold by year-end, the largest number since before the 2001 crash. The peso, still pegged at a bit more than 3 to the US dollar, will receive less support from the Argentine government come the New Year, speculation says, and slowly begin to move towards its "true" level of 2.5 to 2.6 to one. That, of course, will decrease the buying power of those of us living here, but in real terms it means that the US 20 dollar blowout dinner for two of a Friday evening at La Vaca will cost about 23 dollars. Radishes will still be 22 cents a bunch and milk will be 34 cents a liter.

PERSONAL STUFF: In my own “personal development,” I’m back to playing tennis for the first time in many years and it’s going well – better, in fact, than I could ever have predicted, so that has been very exciting for me and my general physical well-being. And, I’m resuming my Spanish studies as part of a small group of four under the tutelage of one of the senior Spanish professors from one of the very good prep schools here. We’ll begin meeting in February and I’m looking forward to making more progress.

IMMIGRATION INCREASES BY ONE: Soon a friend of ours from Paris (an American) will be returning here permanently; she is one of many, I understand, who are emigrating here from Europe. In her case, after living in Paris for 40 years, she is finally fed up with the congestion, the taxes, the rude behavior, the prices, and the social ills she feels are befalling the country. She sold her apartment in Paris for many Euros, and has bought a much bigger one here in my suburb of Martinez for just about one-quarter of the amount her Paris place fetched. Needless to say, she is suitably happy about that. She is keeping her country house, however, for the moment, as she likes it and she has long-term tenants who like it as much as she does and take very good care of it – although as she wrote in a recent e-mail, she has now had to install an electronic security system. Such is life in the New Europe (or old, I guess, for that matter).

I have a built-in security system at my apartment here – my two Siamese, Nick and Maggie (aka Miss Priss), who can hear someone coming down the marble-floored hallway from yards away and immediately run to the door. How they would perform in attack mode has yet to be learned, since after running to the door they usually turn around and run and hide under my bed! Apartment robberies and break-ins are very rare in this part of the conurbano, and any burglar worth his salt knows that my particular building is not filled with rich folks.

I notice by the tracking system in my blogsite that some 1,324 people have visited my blog, but I find it interesting that none (so far) has left me a note! Gee, and I thought it was kind of interesting.

Until next time,

Chau,

Peter