The Dedalus Log

Cause I’m struttin’
With some barbecue,
Feelin’ mighty grand.
Pass another helpin’ please,
Of that good old Dixieland.

And mister waiter, if you please,
Another rib or two.
And I’ll go strut, strut, struttin,
Struttin’ with some barbecue.
(Struttin’ With Some Barbecue: Lil Hardin & Louis Armstrong – 1927)

I have a secret to share. I’ve started “cooking” some meals. Normally I wouldn’t use that noun or verb in describing my relationship with food and its preparation. I usually just eat what I buy, or what someone else prepares for me. But since I’ve retired, I’ve taken on more responsibility in the planning, buying, and preparing of meals for Kathy and me. To be sure, I fought a successful rearguard action in avoiding the actual hands-on baking and cooking of food for a long time, but things began changing about a year ago when I grew more confident in using my old charcoal-burning Weber grill. The barbecue grill always seemed a nonthreatening way to “cook”. You just put the hotdogs or hamburger patties on the grill until they looked ready to eat. It was done in the masculine security of the backyard, free of intimidating recipes, appliances, and kitchenware. The barbecue was the extent of my cooking for years. The kitchen, with all its devices, pots, pans, and skillets was the feminine domain of first, my mother, then my wife, and surprisingly, two exceptional friends.






I grew up being completely clueless about cooking. Food was something my mother prepared and I ate. Some foods tasted better than others, but it never really made a difference. I ate what my mother served and never asked questions. I was so indifferent to food that I never bothered to identify the vegetables, meats, fish, or rice that was put before me. Going to restaurants were the only times I felt forced to put names to the dishes I was selecting. Even then, I usually just said, “Uhhh, that sounds good, I’ll have what he’s having.” I didn’t use the opportunity to ask about the unfamiliar dishes and meals on the menu. Pasta simply meant spaghetti, and I never explored the myriad of other exotic pasta entrees on the menus of Italian restaurant. So I just went along with what other people chose or what they recommended. It was only slowly, in the company of close friends, with whom asking stupid questions didn’t matter, did I start trying different foods at restaurants – especially foreign foods. These same friends were the first to propose the theory that my indifference to food might be related to the impairment of my olfactory sense, or my sense of smell.

I discovered that I couldn’t smell in the 3^rd or 4^th grade, when a friend and I were walking to a neighbor’s house to watch television. “Ahhh,” my friend Manuel said, as we entered the front yard, “they’re making popcorn”.
“How do you know that?” I asked indignantly, suspecting that he had inside information that hadn’t been shared with me.
“I can smell it”, he replied, matter of factly. “I love the smell of freshly made popcorn”.
At first, I refused to believe that popcorn had an odor, but slowly, over time, more and more evidence began accumulating within my childhood world. I began noticing that children in my classroom held their noses and exclaimed, “yuck!” when someone farted, or vomited, or when a prankster set off a “stink bomb” in the room. I smelled nothing and thought they were pretending. I finally asked my mother and father about it, and she replied that I had obviously inherited her same disability, because she couldn’t smell either. Luckily, my father could, so only half of my siblings share this trait.




The scientific term for the inability to smell is called anosmia, and the absence of smell from birth is called congenital anosmia. I never really considered it a handicap. One doesn’t miss an ability one never had in the first place. In fact, my anosmia shielded me from all of the repulsive odors of the world. It was only as an adult that I realized the disadvantages it presented, forcing me to compensate in a variety of ways. I learned to always compliment Kathy on how she smelled on dates, assuming that all women wore perfume. I also learned to dissemble when performing my job, pretending I could smell tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana, in order to coax confessions from students I suspected of using or carrying these contraband items in schools. My one secret regret was my inability to truly appreciate and “taste” the full measure of food and wine.

Take me on a trip upon
Your magic swirling ship,
My senses have been stripped
My hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels
To be wandering.
I’m ready to go anywhere,
I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade,
Cast your dancing spell my way,
I promise to go under it.

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man,
Play a song for me.
I’m not sleepy and there ain’t
No place I’m going to.
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man,
Play a song for me.
In the jingle jangle morning
I’ll come following you.
(Mr. Tambourine Man: Bob Dylan – 1965)

The announcement in October that Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature was uniquely satisfying for me. It finally legitimized Dylan’s merit as a writer, poet, and artist, by putting him in the same category as W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, and Seamus Heaney. Dylan occupies a special place in my life. I can mark my progress since adolescence by his career as a folksinger/songwriter, a rock legend, and finally a cultural icon. I can’t begin to measure the impact that Dylan has had on generations after generations of musicians, writers, and artists throughout the world. I hear his influences embedded in hundreds of the singer/songwriters and bands that succeeded him.




I learned to appreciate poetry in my junior year of high school under the guidance of a marvelous English teacher, Mr. Thomas McCambridge. He took our class from the staid beginnings of Tennyson and Longfellow, and introduced us to the modern styles of T.S. Eliot and E.E. Cummings. Words, metaphors, and similes began to take on a life that was more complex and compelling than the rhyming words of earlier poets. But there was still a wall between poetry and me, and I continued believing that poetry was an intellectual medium reserved for cultured intellectuals and academically certified practitioners. Then I heard Like a Rolling Stone, and poetry exploded.




I didn’t hear Dylan the way I heard regular rock and roll songs on the radio. Those songs were commercial tunes that concentrated on catchy rhymes and harmonies. Dylan, on the other hand, challenged you with words, metaphors, and allusions. I listened to Dylan’s songs and words and then plunged headfirst into their endless flow of possible meanings and interpretations. This was the kind of poetry Mr. McCambridge talked about, poetry that demanded attention – grabbed you by the throat, forced you to listen to the words, and demanded that you interpret their message. Like a Rolling Stone, and the other songs on Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited album, turned Rock and Roll on its head. The songs were too long, the orchestration was too simple, and the lyrics were too bizarre. And yet, the album seduced countless young people into falling for the allure and limitless capacity of poetry that was contained in his music.





The Something is Happening Tour marked a coming of age in my life. Dylan was the first musical artist I heard live in concert. It was 1965, the beginning of my Senior year of high school, when a friend, Russell Dalton, suggested that we go see him play at the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium in December. He told me he was tired of my endless ravings about Dylan’s Revisited album and he insisted we actually go and hear him play. I suspect that his real motive was to involve me in a double date so he could ask out a particular girl he had been mooning over. That night was my first rock concert and my first official date. Prior to this event the closest thing to a date was visiting a girl at her home under the watchful eyes of her parents, spending time with a girl at a school activity, or asking a girl to dance at the Sock Hops in the school gym after home football games. This was the first time I called a girl to asked her out on a date which entailed picking her up at home, meeting her parents, driving to the concert in Long Beach, and ending the evening at a pizza house before taking the girls home. It was a big deal. Yet, while I can’t remember the girl’s name, I have crystal clear memories of that night, the concert, and the songs that Dylan sang.




Tom Waits, the gravely voiced, fedora topped, blues singer was the opening act. I had never heard of him before, yet his songs and lyrics, a mixture of jazz and blues, invoked cinema noire images, and scenes of billiard parlors, forlorn and empty streets, and lonely nights. He was the perfect introduction to Dylan because his music also emphasized words and images instead of accompaniment and orchestration. Dylan’s performance was divided into two parts with a brief intermission. The first half was classic Dylan – a lone troubadour on stage with an acoustical guitar and a harmonica draped around his neck. This is the image of Dylan I will always keep with me: a man and his musical poetry, singing Mr. Tambourine Man, I Don’t Believe You (She Acts like We Never Met), and Desolation Row. He sang many of the songs on, what I thought at the time, was his debut album, Highway 61 Revisited, saving the electronically accompanied tunes for the second act. Songs like Tombstone Blues demanded concentration, but his hit, Like a Rolling Stone, brought down the house. That concert, and Dylan’s performance solidified my eternal support for him and his music. At the time, I was totally unaware of the historic musical significance of the album and this tour. For me, Dylan, the singer/poet, had sprung fully formed from the mind of some rock and roll god, with songs that were unique because they were more lyrical and poetic than anything else on the radio. They were almost existential. It wasn’t until college that I started filling in the back-story on Bob Dylan.





Besides the commercial rock and roll on the radio, it was folk songs that permeated college life in the mid- 60’s. These were the songs of protest and youthful defiance that challenged the Vietnam War and the social injustices that seemed so apparent to the baby-boomer generation. It was at UCLA, in the Newman Center and the Student Union, that I heard the classic folk music of Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Gordon Lightfoot, and Peter Paul and Mary, and finally discovered some of the historic roots of Bob Dylan. It sounds naïve now, but until college I had no clue that the singer/songwriter of Like a Rolling Stone and Mr. Tambourine Man was the same guy who wrote Blowin’ in the Wind and Don’t Think Twice. While always a “fan” of Bob Dylan throughout my life, I never became maniacal about his music or his life. I didn’t buy all his records or CD’s, and I never bothered reading the countless articles and books written about him, or movies made about his life. I supposed I simply considered him an exceptionally gifted singer-songwriter. In fact, it wasn’t until 2005, when I saw Martin Scorsese’s documentary, No Direction Home that I finally got a clear picture of his early connections to the legendary Woody Guthrie, and American “roots-music”, and his migration to the folk music scene in Greenwich Village.  I was especially shocked to learn of Dylan’s traumatic breakup with the folk world in 1965. By “plugging in” his guitar and playing electronic Rock and Roll at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Dylan scandalized the folk music purists. All by himself, Dylan became the solitary bridge between folk music and Rock and Roll, and he created the folk-rock genre that would dominate the late 60’s and 70’s, and influence musicians throughout the world for decades.






Certainly the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Bob Dylan was controversial, and numerous traditional poets and writers criticized it. Perhaps they were even as shocked as the Folk Music purists were in 1965 when Dylan “plugged in”. I was delighted. In true Bob Dylan fashion, while accepting the honor, he did not attend the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, on December 5, 2016 to receive his award. Instead he sent a humble and disarming letter of thanks to be read by the United States Ambassador to Sweden. In it, he said that he was honored in receiving such a prestigious prize and joining the ranks of so many giants of literature. At the same time, he let it be known that he never really considered the idea that his work might be “literature”.


“When I started writing songs as a teenager, and even as I started to achieve some renown for my abilities, my aspirations for these songs only went so far. I thought they could be heard in coffee houses or bars, maybe later in place like Carnegie Hall, the London Palladium. If I was really dreaming big, maybe I could imagine getting to make a record and then hearing my songs on the radio… Well, I’ve been doing what I set out to do for a long time now. I’ve made dozens of records and played thousands of concerts all around the world. But it’s my songs that are at the vital center of almost everything I do… Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, ‘Are my songs literature?’ So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer.”





I think Dylan’s response was perfect. To me, he will always be the Tambourine Man, dancing and singing his songs. Over all these years, he was just a musician creating his art – writing and performing uniquely poetic songs. He wrote for himself first, and, perhaps, for an audience second. With or without and audience, he would always write and sing his songs. Perhaps Horace Engdahl, a member of the Nobel Committee, said it best in a speech he gave after the ceremony. In it he called Dylan, “a singer worthy of a place beside the Greek bards, beside Ovid, beside the Romantic visionaries, besides the kings and queens of the Blues, beside the forgotten masters of brilliant song Standards. If people in the literary world groan (at the prize for Literature going to a singer-songwriter), one must remind them that the gods don’t write, they dance and they sing.”

“Dia de los Muertos is the one day of the year
We get to celebrate the family
who aren’t with us anymore.
It’s like we’re throwing a party
and everyone we love is invited”.
(Disney’s Elena of Avalor: A Day to Remember – 2016)

Prisa brought her two girls, Sarah and Grace, over last month to spend the night. Her husband Joe was supervising a high school football game at a nearby school and she arranged for all of them to spend the night with us. It’s always a treat to have the girls over this early in the fall. The weather is temperate and the pool is readily available for afternoon and evening swims. The girls exhaust themselves in the water, making them very susceptible for an early dinner, video, and bed. This evening both girls were very eager to see the latest installment of the Disney Channel cartoon series, Elena of Avalor. Elena is an animated TV series of a Hispanic, Spanish speaking, teenaged princess who rules a mythical island. Each episode includes simple, catchy songs, or moral lessons. It reminded me of a more sophisticated version of an earlier animated TV series that Sarah watched as a two-year old, called Dora the Explorer, that also had a Hispanic, bilingual heroine. However, Prisa seemed particularly interested in her girls watching this latest episode, because it dealt with Dia de los Muertos, The Day of the Dead.



Dia de los Muertos is a uniquely Mexican festival, or holiday, celebrated on November 2, which coincides with the Catholic feast day of All Souls Day. This is the final event of the 3-day series of secular and religious celebrations that begin with Halloween (All Hallow’s Eve) on October 31, and All Saints Day, on November 1. But, I was curious as to why Prisa was so insistent that the girls watch it? I assumed it would simply be a reminder of their Mexican ancestry and culture. This hypothesis proved wrong. The underlying message of the episode was addressed very early in the story with the singing of the principal song, The Festival of Love:

Dia de los Muertos
Is my favorite day.
We honor all our loved ones
Who have passed away.

We go to the graveyards
Build altars in their name.
Share our memories of them
By the candle flame.

Dia de los Muertos
The one day of the year.
We bake up treats so tasty
To fill us with good cheer.
Sugar skulls and sweet bread
Are made with love and care,
Then brought down to the altar
For everyone to share.

This is the day we all await.
This is the day we celebrate.
The Festival of Love,
The Festival of Love.

Dia de los Muertos
Means more to me this year,
Since Mami and Papi
Are no longer here.
But I’m not feeling sad now,
I’m feeling joy inside.
Because this festival
Keeps their memory alive.

This is the day we all await.
This is the day we celebrate.
The Festival of Love,
The Festival of Love.
(Dia de los Muertos: Elenor of Avalor – 2016)


I have to admit that I was a bit teary by the end of the song. The lyrics of the last stanza before the final refrain had brought up a flood of images and memories of family members who have passed away recently: my father-in-law, the Doctor, my Aunt Espie, and my Uncle Fausto – but especially my Uncle Pepe, who had just died that week. A few months ago, I was forced to cancel a trip to Mexico to celebrate his 90^th birthday because he had suffered a stroke, and had rescheduled a flight for December. I hoped to visit him before his condition worsened – but I was too late. Deaths that occur so far away, especially those we can’t attend their funerals, are difficult to process. In some way, because we never see or touch the remains or casket, they never really die. That was the way I still felt about my uncle. How does one remember those we have lost without also calling up the shock and pain of the separation, or coming to grips with the notion that they have ceased to exist? I could not. But Elena, in this episode showed my granddaughters through song and story how we can transcend the pain by celebrating their memories and keeping them alive in our hearts and minds every year.




I really admire Prisa as a parent, and respect her ability to use children’s television programming to introduce and reinforce proper values, behaviors, and traditions. I first got a glimpse of this when I saw Sarah watching Daniel Tiger, the PBS animated children’s series that guided behaviors through instructional songs and stories. Songs like “Grownups Come Back”, “Clothes on, Eat Breakfast, Brush Teeth, Put on Shoes, and Off to School”, and “Stop, Think, and Choose” were simple, easy to remember lessons that could be recalled and reinforced by parents through song and repetition. In this episode of Elena of Avelar, Prisa was clearly teaching a double lesson about death by introducing the Mexican tradition of Dia de los Muertos, and emphasizing the importance of keeping alive the memories of great-grandparents and other deceased relatives and friends. At the end of the program, we praised the story and its song, and Kathy made arrangements for a sleepover with Sarah on the following weekend of November 5^th, and then taking both girls to the Canoga Park street festival of Dia de los Muertos on Sunday, November 6.


Many native Angelenos are surprised to discover that Canoga Park (originally called Owensmouth) was one of the two original towns in the San Fernando Valley – the other being Van Nuys. Both towns were established circa 1911-1912 and they represented the East and West extremities of the Valley, and the focal points of its future development from agriculture to housing. Canoga Park, probably because of its greater distance from Los Angeles, managed to hold on to many aspects of a small town, along with a large resident Mexican-American community and neighborhood (or barrio) near its Old Town location along Sherman Way. These last vestiges of small town life can still be seen in its two November events: the Memorial Day Parade on November 11, and the Dia de los Muertos Street Festival on (or around) November 2.


Dia de los Muertos, the event central to the Elena of Avalor episode, is a Mexican celebration that fuses two cultures and traditions – the Catholicism of the Spanish empire and the indigenous civilizations in Mexico. Before the Europeans arrived, Indians had an understanding that the spiritual world and the material world were not separated. Those who were of the natural world had flesh, while those in the spiritual realm were fleshless, and depicted as skeletons (calaveras). The Catholic and indigenous traditions fused seamlessly in the religious feast day of All Souls, on November 2. Mexicans would often paint their faces, or half of the face, as skeletons. Families would create altars, with levels representing heaven and earth, to help remember loved ones who had passed away. Altars vary, but they usually include a photograph of the deceased, along with their favorite food, drink, and music. In Mexico and in the American Southwest, families gather at the cemeteries on the vigil, November 1, and decorate the gravesites. After the time at the cemeteries, families gather around their family altars at home and continue celebrating and sharing stories of their loved ones. I had gone to the Canoga Park Dia de los Muertos Festival on previous occasions, and had even taken my granddaughter Sarah when she was three-years old, but I had never really tied the festival, or the Mexican traditions, with our own families, or our deceased relatives. I hoped to change that on the night of Sarah’s sleepover with us. My plan was to build on the groundwork laid out in the Elena of Avalor episode with actual participation in the customs and traditions of Dia de los Muertos.





When Kathy brought Sarah home for her sleepover, we had prepared a full agenda of activities. We had purchased an early birthday gift since we would be out of town on the actual day, and we had prepared a craft project that would foreshadow our participation at the Dia de los Muertos Festival on Sunday. So, once Sarah had opened her wrapped oversized present to reveal a dynamically flexible scooter, and spent an hour breaking it in on the sidewalk of our cul de sac, we were ready to work. I laid out all the materials I had accumulated: an original Dia de los Muertos shadowbox we had purchased years ago, and wished to update; a large selection of wallet-sized photographs of recently, and long-time deceased family members; and a large collection of religious and Dia de los Muertos stickers and decorations. The idea was to construct two brand new Dia de los Muertos shadowboxes and decorate them as if they were part of an altar tradition. We wanted to tie this activity to the Elena of Avelor episode Sarah had watched with the Festival that would follow – concentrating on the most immediate family members who had passed away. Sarah loved the project and the assignment. On Sunday, reunited with her sister and parents, we celebrated Dia de los Muertos and went a little crazy. Sarah had always wanted her face painted in the Mexican tradition of calaveras, or skeletons. So as soon as the festival began at 10:00 am we were in line to have her face decorated. Of course, once Kathy and I saw her gorgeous calavera face and hair ribbon, we had to complement it with a dress styled in the china poblana fashion of Mexico. Sarah literally resembled the fashionable representation of the catrina figurines that are part of the Dia de los Muertos iconography. All of these activities were subsequently repeated with her sister Gracie, when she arrived at the festival with her parents.





All granddaughter sleepovers with daylong activities are wonderfully tiring for two old-timers like Kathy and me. At the conclusion of the day, when we are alone together and everything is quiet, we always look back at those moments with the girls and reflect on the day. On this occasion, however, I couldn’t help thinking again of my uncle Pepe.  I had slipped his photograph into one of the Dia de los Muertos shadowboxes we had made, and he still loomed large in my mind. I have two images of my uncle Pepe that have withstood time and age. They are both images from the awed perspective of a child that have never changed. Pepe, whose real name was Jose Manuel Villalpando Nava was a stylishly tall, slim man with refined, delicate features and wispy blondish hair. He always wore tailored suits with starched, long-sleeved, white shirts, and freshly shined shoes. He was a multi-talented intellectual in the classic Mexican and European style. He was a published Doctor of Pedagogy and a busy professor of Philosophy who also taught at the National Preparatory School and the Mexican Naval College (with a rank of naval commander). “El Profe”, as he was sometimes called within the family, was the archetype of the kind of man I dreamed of becoming, and I schemed at establishing closer ties, and a viable relationship with him. Since it was too late to make him my traditional Godfather (padrino) at baptism, I named him my padrino for Confirmation at age 14. However it wasn’t until 1970, at the age of 21, that I made a real connection with him during a two-month stay in Mexico City. All future encounters with Pepe never reached the level of that summer again, even during extended visits in Mexico. He would always make time for me during those subsequent visits, but the intimacy was never the same. In 1975 I invited him to be a part of my wedding as Father of the Groom, and he gave a very elegant and formal speech at the reception, one you would expect from a prominent scholar and author.




The last time I saw Pepe was when I attended a Family Reunion celebration in Mexico in 2009. The party was publicized as a combination birthday/reunion to attract as many family members as possible. I went as the sole representative of the American contingent. By then Pepe had retired from teaching and did very little writing. I was almost saddened about my decision to attend when I saw how he looked, and I only talked with him a bit. He was a bent and aging figure of a man in his declining years. He was often distracted, and his mobility was very limited, forcing him to spend most of the party seated and silently watching the movement and interactions around him. I would occasionally sneak sidelong glances at him, cursing the remorseless deterioration of aging.


In late October I received a phone call from my sister Estela with news of Pepe’s passing. She gave me few details, but I suspected that death was a result of a stroke he had suffered earlier. The sad news left me with a puzzling dilemma. I felt an overwhelming compulsion to write about Pepe, about what he meant to me and how much I loved him, but I was also hesitant about revealing too much. Any recollection of Pepe would have to center on the time we spent together in 1970. Yet the things I learned about him might be considered too revealing – especially for my mom. She, like all her now deceased sisters and mother, adored Pepe and never saw any faults or weakness. Yet it was those same human foibles that made him a real person to me, and not merely an idealized picture of the proper educator, intellectual, author, brother, and son. It was during this maelstrom of conflicting impulses that one of those graced moments of serendipity occurred. While driving I heard one of the songs on my iTunes list. It was K.D. Lang’s The Valley, from her album, Hymns of the 49^th Parallel. It’s a sad, haunting song that has always puzzled me about its point and purpose. Driving home alone I heard the lyrics in a new light, and they awakened my recollection of the second timeless image I have of Pepe:

                                                I love the best in you,
                                                You love the best in me,
                                                Though it is not always easy.
                                                Lovely? Lonely?
                                                We will walk,
                                                We will walk,
                                                In good company.

During one of our family’s earliest visits to Mexico, when I was still a child and Pepe a recently married young man, I remember my mother organizing a family trip to La Villa, the Old Cathedral that once housed the miraculous image of La Virgen de Guadalupe. The Sunday morning excursion would combine a pilgrimage to the shrine, a mass at the main altar in front of the image, and a family brunch at a downtown restaurant. After entering the crowded Cathedral and making our way to the front altar, I was stunned to recognize my uncle Pepe, kneeling meekly in back of the priest saying the Mass, while serving as his sole altar boy. There he was, this slim, handsome figure, wearing his tailored suit, and placing himself at the service of the Virgen and the Church. Gone was the pose of the cynical anti-cleric, or swaggering Mexican male, who criticized sermons and debunked religious formulas and superstitions. He was simply “un joven güero” placing himself at the call of his Church, Savior, and the Virgin Mary. He was a young man of Faith.




That was my relationship with my uncle, Jose Manuel Villalpando Nava, PhD. I loved the best of him, while recognizing the worst. It was not always easy because sometimes his opinions and prejudices got in the way. But, if I can paraphrase a quotation from St. Paul, “Love is patient, Love is kind, it does not dishonor others, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love rejoices with the truth.” I rejoice in knowing that Pepe lived a full, happy life and that many, many people, especially his family, loved him. With his death, Pepe joins Mima, Carlos, Beto, Rorra, Helen, Chita, and Rosita in eternal peace. As K.D. Lang proclaimed in her song – he will walk in good company.



One never knows how much young children remember of family events or occasions, as they grow older. Will Sarah and Gracie remember what we did that weekend, what was said, and what they learned about Dia de los Muertos? Judging from conversations with our grown children, Toñito and Prisa, some events do manage to standout. Our hope is that Dia de los Muertos, with all its iconography, art, color, decorations and associations with deceased family members will survive. It’s a wonderful way to remember our religious and cultural heritage and faith that the spirit survives death, and that death itself is simply a transition to that place from which we all sprang. So on this Dia de los Muertos we renewed that faith, that hope, that expectation that we shall one day reunite with those we love, and once again, we will walk in good company.

I ain’t gonna work
On Maggie’s Farm no more.
Well, I wake up in the morning
Fold my hands and pray for rain,
I got a head full of ideas
That are driving me insane.
It’s a shame the way
She makes me scrub the floor.
I ain’t gonna work
On Maggie’s Farm no more.
(Maggie’s Farm: Bob Dylan – 1965)

I went to see the movie Snowden a few weeks ago. I just didn’t feel like writing or working out on my 69^th birthday, and Snowden was the only film that fit my time frame. I will admit that I was a bit apprehensive about seeing another Oliver Stone movie. While admittedly he has made some fine films (Platoon, Scarface, and Wall Street), he has also directed some wacky, politically disasters (JFK, Nixon, and W). I was worried that his latest effort was going to fit into this latter genre, and go off the deep end over the topic of government surveillance and covert military force. Instead I found the story remarkably restrained. The narrative was about a naively patriotic American youth who joins the CIA and NSA, and becomes increasingly disillusioned and alarmed about the government’s secret authority and how it uses covert force and surveillance to a fight a “war against terror”. Ultimately Stone’s protagonist leaks the information to the world media and is forced to flee the country as a traitor.




Strangely, for me, the central question of the movie wasn’t about Snowden’s actions: Was he a whistle-blowing hero or a traitor? Rather, I found myself indentifying with this young man who wanted to do “the right thing” after the shock of 9/11, and I was relieved to find that Stone (as opposed to some earlier movies) was allowing the viewers to reach their own conclusions. I found myself much more interested in Snowden’s original decision to join the CIA. You see, at one time, I too interviewed for a job at the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States.


In 1975, long before September 11, 2001, in the time when our Cold War with Russia and other Communist countries still ran hot, I applied for Foreign Service with the State Department of the United States. I was finishing up my Master’s Degree in Latin American Studies at UCLA and looking for a diplomatic career in the State Department. Unable to join the Peace Corps after my undergrad graduation in 1970 because of the Draft, I enlisted in the Air Force and served until my father’s death resulted in my discharge. After teaching U.S. History at St. Bernard High School for a year and a half, I returned to college in 1973, under the GI Bill. I had always dreamed of a career in the Foreign Service, living in exotic countries and cultures, speaking Spanish or Portuguese, and traveling throughout Mexico, Central and South America. Working in embassies and consulates seemed exciting and challenging, and my experiences in teaching and studies of education in Third World countries seemed complementary to this type of service. Even my pending marriage to Kathleen Greaney seemed to fit it with these plans. Kathy spoke Spanish, and taught high school English-as-a-Second Language, but more important she would make the perfect diplomatic wife. She was smart, beautiful, and charming – everything a successful diplomat needed. By the Spring of 1975 I had made contact with the State Department and all I had to do was score high enough on the Foreign Service Examination to proceed. I didn’t. After getting over the shock of not passing the first hurdle to Foreign Service, I went to Plan B, and applied to the CIA.





After taking some graduate seminars in American Counter-Insurgency and Third World Politics in Latin America, I knew enough about the CIA to understand that James Bond-espionage was only a small part of their service. The CIA was primarily concerned with the study and analysis of social, economic, political, and military intelligence and data of countries, and I naively believed that I had done much of this for two years as a graduate student at UCLA. I also knew that all foreign embassies, and most consulates, had assigned CIA officers. I thought I could still manage a career overseas, as well as spending some time near Washington D.C., by joining the CIA. All I had to do now was apply and successfully clear their interview process.



My first encounter with the CIA was in the blue-collar city of Hawthorne, a suburb of Los Angeles, just east of the International Airport. As usual in those waning days of the Vietnam War, the Federal Building was a massive, non-descript edifice. It could have been any regular office building except for the long, winding lines waiting for passport and visa permits, and veteran services. Of course there was nothing in the government letter I received, or the building directory, indicating that there was a CIA office. I was simply to report to a room in the building. There I met a tall, handsome, 40-ish looking man in a tailored suit. His huge, mahogany desk was situated in front of a massive eagle on the wall, brandishing swords and spears in its talons. He welcomed me and reviewed a file folder containing, I supposed, my application, as I sat answering his questions. He asked about my education, military experiences, and future goals. He seemed very satisfied with my responses and he expanded on my desires to travel and live in foreign countries. He also explained that he was the first stage of the screening process, and that I would soon be contacted by mail for a secondary, more in-depth interview by agency personnel. I left the meeting feeling very optimistic. I recall another scene in connection with this first encounter with the CIA, when I called Kathy to tell her about it. Looking back now, I see an element of foreshadowing in this conversation, because Kathy’s response to my enthusiasm was oddly cool and muted. She emotionlessly stated that she was glad that I was pleased with the outcome of this first meeting with the CIA.




The follow-up letter I received from the CIA was in an ordinary, white, business envelope. The generic federal stationary invited me to two separate interviews on the same date in two rooms in a swanky hotel in Marina del Rey. I was surprised at the plainness of the letter and the proximity of the meeting to my home. All of my previous interactions with federal agencies, beginning with my registration for the draft in 1966, were in clearly designated, but hard to find addresses and buildings. This was the first time a government entity seemed to be making an effort to be convenient. Needless to say, I was very intrigued, and a little intimidated.


I dressed in a coat and tie and knocked on a numbered hotel room door at the designated time. I was greeted by black face on a stocky body, wearing a white, rolled-up, long-sleeved, white shirt, with a loosened tie, inspecting me from behind a chain-locked door.
“Can I help you?” The gravelly-voiced man said.
“Uhh”, I stammered. “I have an interview here, I think”.
“Are you Antonio Delgado”, he asked?
“Yes, sir”, I replied, feeling as if I was back at Lackland Air Force Base, addressing my Training Instructor.
“Come in and have a seat”, he said, un-securing the chain lock and opening the door. “Don’t mind the room”, he added, “ housekeeping hasn’t had a chance to come in yet.” He pointed me to a chair across from a small, circular table, and then joined me at another chair. He never referred to a file or document while he spoke. Before questioning me, he explained that I was to meet another interviewer today who represented another arm of the agency. He was a field operative tasked with determining my suitability for that aspect of the agency – data gathering. That’s how he termed spying, “data-gathering”. He then invited me to answer some open-ended questions:
“Why did you want to join the agency? What are your unique qualifications for the job? How do your previous education and job experiences help in this one?”
As I was citing and expanding on my employment history, post-graduate studies, fluency in Spanish, and military experiences as an Information Specialist, he interrupted to redirect the conversation. He explained that “field data collection” was about cultivating and sustaining personal relationships. These relationships were intimate and authentic, but they were always directed by their usefulness to The Mission. The Mission was the defeat of the current and future enemies of the United States. I have to admit that this declaration took me aback, and before I had a chance to recover my balance, he asked me the crucial question:
“Could you establish and maintain a close personal relationship with a friend or relative in a foreign country to gain information that was useful to your country, even if it put the life of that friend or relative at risk?”


I don’t recall now exactly how I answered that question, but I sensed not well. All I remember is being so thrown off by this question. I think I tried hedging at first, until I realized that I couldn’t avoid the ethical dilemma it posed. So I answered truthfully. To an enemy yes, but I couldn’t ask, manipulate, or induce a friend, relative, or loved one, to commit what they might consider a criminal or traitorous act. I clearly answered the agent’s question incorrectly, because his demeanor quickly changed. His attitude up until that moment had been business-like and efficient, and suddenly he turned friendly and talkative. He volunteered that not all CIA personnel were meant to be field agents or data collectors. The main function of the agency was analysis, which required different skills. I knew that he was metaphorically showing me the door, and pointing at my only avenue of entry into his world of government service. He amiably explained that the next interviewer would discuss this aspect of the agency and my suitability for it.


There was a brief interval between interviews and I was sure that my first contact had spoken with the second. When he responded to my knock, the door was unchained, and he was personable and friendly. He was a tall, white guy, who also wore a long-sleeved, white shirt, but it was buttoned with a tie, and his room was completely made up. My encounter with him was casual and relaxed, more of a getting-to-know-you conversation than a job interview. He began by explaining that analysis was the visible side of the agency, involving the type of work done in doctoral programs at universities and at think tanks, like the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica. His questions centered on my academic experiences at UCLA and as a teacher at St. Bernard’s. By the time I finished talking, he simply sat back in his chair and smiled.
“You know”, he began, “listening to the way you describe teaching, you really seemed to enjoy it. You’re at the point in your life where that dimension has to be factored into your plans. What do you enjoy doing? It sounds to me like you found it in teaching.”
He never finished that thought by adding that I didn’t fit in with the CIA, but I heard the message loud and clear. And secretly, I was a little relieved.




That was my encounter with the CIA, and the end of my dreams of a career in the Foreign Service of the United States. When I told Kathy what had happened, she confessed that she was relieved. Recognizing my desire and longing for a career in the Foreign Service, she finally admitted that she had sublimated her dislike of a life in foreign countries where she would be separated from country, family, and friends. She expressed that she had fallen in love with me, agreed to marry me, and had been willing to support me in my chosen career – but she had still hoped (and prayed?) that something else might come up instead. It did. I woke up to the realities of the CIA, and by extension, the NSA. I was not CIA material. Even I realized that the second interviewer was right. I did enjoy teaching. Teaching was challenging, and mastery of this profession gave me purpose and satisfaction. The CIA needed an ethical manipulator or a think tank academician. I was suited for neither of those options. And yet, despite this new awareness, I was still dogged by a question. How had I failed the interview? I had never failed a face-to-face interview before. What had I done wrong? What had I said that made it so apparent to them? Why was I not a good fit with the CIA? I replayed my encounters with the two CIA agents over and over in my mind for months. The answer hit me a month later. The first agent had actually spelled it out at the outset, only I had missed the implication at the time. There is only one justification for what he was asking me to do as a field agent – WAR. A CIA agent has to believe that he is a soldier fighting a justifiable war against all current and future enemies of the State.





In the movie, Snowden, Stone shields his lead character by not allowing him to make an informed decision at the time of his recruitment. Instead, he creates a CIA father figure, a “silky apparatchik” played by Rhys Ifans who sees the value of recruiting this highly talented computer programmer, despite his reservations that Snowden will not be a good fit in the CIA. He seems to trust that Snowden’s naive patriotism, ambition, and eventual greed will overcome any questions or doubts about the morally ambiguous activities of the CIA and NSA. For me, this is the weakness in Stone’s tale, and although it is better than his more contrived films, it is still a preachy story of government over-reach, and its abuse of power and authority. At the same time, it does pose an important question to the viewer: what would you do in Snowden’s situation?


In my lifetime, the United States has been “at war” against Communism and Terrorism. Both enemies are more ideological than concrete, and yet the USA has sent American fighting soldiers to countries in Southeast Asia, Central America, and the Middle East because of it, and provided intelligence officers the legal cover for their covert and amoral actions. Soldiers will accomplish their missions, do their jobs, and protect their brothers-in-arms, even at the cost of their own lives. However, intelligence agents and analysts are asked to go beyond the confines of conventional warfare where only a trust and faith in a legal and perpetual state of war is their ethical refuge. An authorized war justifies almost any action – and the victors decide if it is patriotism or genocide.




There was a scene from Alan Sorkin’s popular television show, West Wing, that has stuck in my head for years. The episode was called “War Crimes”, and one of its stories concerned the United Nations wanting the President’s support for a permanent War Crimes Tribunal. The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was lobbying the President and Leo, the President’s Chief of Staff, to oppose the resolution. In the key scene Leo reminds the Air Force General that although America set up the Nuremburg and the Tokyo War Crimes Trials after WWII, the Cold War threat gave German rocket scientists and the activities of American intelligence services higher priority than the morality of their actions. At that point the General, who served as Leo’s commanding officer in Viet Nam, reminded him of a specific bombing mission in Thailand during the Vietnam War. Leo, as an Air Force Bomber pilot, believed it to be a military target, but the general reveals that the bombing of the dam was in fact a civilian target that resulted in the loss of 11 civilian casualties.
“Why did you tell me?” a stricken Leo asked the general.
“All wars are crimes,” responded the general.




I enlisted in the Air Force at a time of war. I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to obey the orders of the president and his appointed officers. As a soldier, that oath meant that I was ready to follow orders, do my job, and support, protect, and defend my brothers-in-arms. More than anything else, it is this brotherhood that gets soldiers through a time of war. The war stops being about the big issues – fighting Facism, Communism, or Terrorism – and becomes as simple as trusting your mission and defending your brothers-in-arms. This is a fighting man’s code – faith that the mission is right, ethical, and justified, and trusting his officers in accomplishing it. Leo fulfilled his mission of bombing a civilian target with his commanding officer withholding critical information. The general believed he was justified in making this decision because the truth might have jeopardized the mission. At the same time, he was wise enough to acknowledge the moral ambiguity of war – all wars are crimes. And yet nations and governments believe they need to be fought.


I honestly don’t know how to answer the question I posed above. Luckily, I met two intelligence officers who did their jobs in screening out a young man who would not have been a good fit in the CIA. Over the years, I’ve met and gotten to know many men who did fit this type of government service. They are good and moral men who are serving their country in completion of its mission. Is Snowden a hero or traitor? I don’t know, but I disagree with Oliver Stone’s method of excusing him and blaming the cynical actions of the CIA father figure. Yes, Snowden’s actions brought to light the secret and covert actions of the NSA and CIA, but they may have jeopardized other American lives as well. Are we better off as a nation and a people for knowing the truth about the NSA’s actions? Did he betray his brothers-in-arms? I believe we all make decisions for which there are consequences. Snowden’s actions were a clear violation of his contract, his promises, and possibly, his sworn oath. These actions have consequences. I believe Snowden’s next steps will determine how he will be judged. Right now, I’ll wait.