I'm writing this several days after (some of) the facts, so it's not as sharp as it could be. Ma3lesh. The L.A. event was great, and good to have a chance to reach out to at least one group of Central Americans. We did the whole event in Spanish (sorry Juli). Oh, but before talking about the event, I have to tell you about the venue and format. It was at CARECEN, the Central American Resources Center, in the Ramparts Division. Oscar and I met at MacArthur Park, which is forever defined in my mind by the Donna Summer song, had some delicious tamales, and walked down to CARECEN from there. The hall itself, upstairs, was beautiful, with a great mural and sunlight streaming in from the skylight. We set up a table and waited for people to arrive at the scheduled hour of 6. Around 6:30 the MC arrived, Miss Guatemala Independencia, complete with sash and large, glittery crown. Her name was Graciela and she wore the crown well. I'm waiting for the pictures to be emailed to me- you'll see. She had come at the last minute with her family because another Miss got scared and backed out, but she did fabulously.

Around 7:30 the rest of the people showed up. There were plenty of jokes about Central American time going around. I was a little too exhausted to be stressed out about it, and what's the point, anyway. When there were around 25 or 30 people there, we got started. We were introduced quite eloquently [I know it's un-pc to signal that for a non-white male, but I do want to point out that by my observation, the public speaking skills of most Latin Americans far outshine those of most gringos—they know how to wax poetic] by Nestor, as president of AGUA, Omar Corleto, president of COFECA, a Central American organization in L.A., and Doña Rosa Posadas, the director and founder of UGE, the Union of Guatemalan Emigrants.

Graciela, who by then had taken off her crown, introduced me. I don't remember exactly what I talked about. It was off the cuff, and mostly focused on the links between war and maquilas. I thank CNA for giving me my public speaking land legs—I just don't bother to get nervous anymore. The crowd, which had Central Americans from all over, nodded and laughed and the non-Hondurans made active comparisons to their countries, and wanted to know when the book would come out in Spanish. Put that on my long list of things to follow up on, in addition to finishing this tour and rewriting the chapter I lost with my hard drive meltdown.

After Oscar's movie came the best part of the night. Graciela, who on the script was only supposed to re-introduce us, gave a choked up, tear jerking impromptu speech about a good friend of hers who had ended up in a gang and who saw no way out, and how than rather than demonize these kids we have to love them and give them opportunities, and how important it is to work with the youth and trust them and help others to realize that they need support, not jail. She was not your everyday beauty queen.

We went for some food in Chinatown and then Oscar and I took the 1:15 bus to Bakersfield. Some tv show was filming a scene in the train station, with huge lights and cordoned off sections and security guards and lots of high up folding directors chairs and menacing signs about how if we got in the camera's range, we had no legal right to not be filmed. We stayed out of range. I crashed easily on the bus, but stayed awake on the 7-hour train from Bakersfield to Oakland. From the Richmond BART, we went in to 16th and Mission to see Jim. The lack of sleep was starting to wear down on Oscar by that time, and I had promised to find him a place to rest before AK Press. I failed. But we had such a fantastic conversation with Jim and the other folks at the Cesar Chavez Institute that I would have stayed another couple hours if he hadn't been on deadline and we hadn't had the event.

It was so exciting for me to speak at AK Press. It's just about my favorite venue anywhere. There was a nice crowd of about thirty, including some friends I hadn't seen in years, and others I hadn't seen in months. Meg Stalcup was there and is doing amazing work on policing. I can't wait to read her diss. I was really glad that Laura Nader seemed to enjoy it—she was nodding and smiling throughout my presentation, and told Oscar he had made a great ethnographic film on the way out. Part of my hope with this whole tour is to get anthropology professors to use the two together in their classes. They fit so well, I think. The question and answer session was enjoyable, and I was quite fluid on the 2-buck Chuck by that point. My friend Michele Friedner challenged our use of the term gangs, which was a really good point, and a couple very Berkeley guys said they wanted even more IMF-trashing, which I'm always game for. We had a lovely dinner of Ethiopian food in Temescal with Miriam and Joel Beinin. It's been so nice to have all these events where I've been able to see so many people at once.

Afterward, I screwed up our crash pad, so we ended up spending the night in the airport. Oscar was, understandably, not very happy about that—he had been three nights in a row without a bed. But it wasn't too many hours and we both got to sleep on our respective planes, so in the afternoon when we finally got into Boston (despite the weather in Chicago, where I had to switch flight), we were doing a wee bit better. After unloading the stuff and a quick shower (3 days in the same clothes, ugh), we went down to the Savant Project where Camille, my high school friend, and Owen, her and Oscar's son, were waiting. It was just so wonderful to see her. It has been 20 years since I saw her last, and she's just as wonderful, sweet, and smart as I remember her. The work she's doing in Equatorial New Guinea amazes me. What a crazy-sounding place. It's the third-biggest oil-producing country (how funny, I wrote company first and had to correct) in Africa, with an average GPA per cap of around 50 grand, but the real average income, once you subtract the billionaire owners of the place, is unimaginably low, well below the kind of poverty I'm accustomed to seeing in Latin America. She's on an anti-malaria project. Oh, and it's a Spanish-speaking country. Who knew there was a Spanish-speaking country in Africa? We had a really nice conversation, which Owen intermittantly and hilariously interrupted with his interpretive superhero dance (he claims it's not a dance) easily endearing himself to all present.

And then I came back to Ben and Aislinn's place and slept 10 hours. On a comfy bed.