Two blogs in English

A Mis Hijos Nietos y ...

It does not exist if it is not on Internet

Very common is the phrase but I do not think that is true. There are many things that are not on the Internet that actually exist. I can name more than ten and more than a hundred and many still remain unlisted. Internet information exists only for some things and not the thing itself, just some of their images. It is impossible to find information on Internet about some of my ancestors, or the ancestors of anyone, unless they have fought in the war of the thousand days or have been very famous as Einstein, that there is none. However this information exists, as there is information about the life of many who currently have in the field of living or who have passed through this world, but not in Internet. There is also no information in Internet on many current and past events unless they are historical, but not all, or that are very prominent in the life of humanity. Information about my life does not exist on the Internet and nobody cares about it. But this paper is not a treatise on Internet but aims to bring my grandchildren, great-granddaughter and all grandchildren and great-grandchildren coming in posterity, information about someone long living and whose years were not entirely wasted. Information that is not online 

I never had enough intelligence to realize I was a smart guy, very young, when I being in a school where we had to go with clean feet after walking over the swamp of unpaved streets of the town where we lived and did not wear shoes, if feet were dirty, as it was expected, the Christian brother on duty with all this forces, with a ruler, hit on the palms of the hands. My Tai Chi teacher would say that is very beneficial to open the energy channels, but for me it was an abuse of authority of the Brother and a great ardor in the palm of my hand without knowing why. Above all, when it seemed to be an act of discrimination because the farther one lived the dirtiest the streets to school and the dirties the feet. Those who live near, the wealthy, were receiving no punishment. This school was the philosophy that "Spare the rod and spoil the child" and there was punishment for almost everything because no matter what you did, it was always wrong. I still remember the distribution of record books on Saturday, because we had Saturday school in the morning. The book was a weekly record of notes for the student headed by notes of "behavior and civility" that one did not know the difference very well but the Brothers did, a 3 in conduct out of five, was enough reason to come before all School take the belt off, give it to the brother director and received several lashes with it, bare legs as we were in short pants. If the conduct grade was zero (not yet know why this score had not all values between zero and five, only the discreet form of 5 or 3 or 0) we were whipping with the belt buckle. Pain Oh !. More than the physical pain was the emotional pain of being humiliated in front of the whole school. Worst of all was that the parents agreed and if the Brothers were to punish it for something wrong and then received undeserved punishment at home also from the father who usually hit harder than mom.

In this school I learned to read or rather to gather the letters into syllables and then words, because I did not know until very late and the meaning of these phrases that could build them. As learning to read, or what a partner school said that there we only learned to "roar and kidding" because reading was studied in a giant book, Brother pointing with a stick and all we repeated out loud: aaaa ... baa ... moo ... meee ... When Brother Philemon, who taught us reading, realized early that I knew how to read fluently and that was premature, I was given a beautiful marble that I showed with pride during recess. But my happiness did not last long because a fellow named Isaza took away the marble and in response I mourn because I did not know any other thing, at home they had not taught me to fight which pleases me very much because I am now a dying pacifist. Philemon was laughing louder when I cried which surprised me from someone who should have come to rescue and defend me because he was the only authority around aware of the abuse of my companion and the marble was given me by him not for favoritism but by merit. This incident marked me forever. What is the motivation to behave yourself well if your superiors laugh at you? If I now behave well it is for self-satisfaction and conviction that that was a necessary ingredient of cohabitation, but not because I praise.

It is not pleasant to write about yourself, but like my friend M. Jaramillo says in his memoirs he wrote thinking about their grandchildren "... the desire of making those little people to know me, those who have expressed so much affection to me, the desire that they remembered me for something more than the tender affection that exchange with them, and hope that one day draw lessons from my successes and failures. " As I have great granddaughter I also do for her and the grandchildren and their descendants who will appear in the future. In this month of January 2015 will be born my last granddaughter to complete eleven grandchildren, I hope than no more grandchildren will come. For them and for my most close relatives, especially my wife, is my desire to make life a great joy, because this is the only thing we can control as part of one's feelings, you make yourself as unhappy as you want. When all the basic things are satisfied people should live happily.

May 29, 2015

They say: experience is that which we acquired when it becomes useless.

I was very fortunate from the time I finished in college and thereafter. For starter, I did not search as all my colleagues for a job, since I was hired as a student by the National Association of Industry, ANDI, a very prestigious organization but paying little, that was by the end of 1956, the vice-president of the institution called me and said: You just finished studies and you are going to work full time you will be pay twice what you are making with half time and a little more, the first time I've earned $1000 pesos a month, US$ 400 a year! I was out of this world; I did not know what to do with all that money. My continuous fortune was that I did not have to look for work until very late in life but my youth was not hampered as it has been for many, due to lack of employment.

Then I thought about getting married like everyone of my generation, and I married to Berta Osorio, during my few years as a full-time ANDI’s employee. But before I was married I lived my single life as any one of those days. As part of this life I had a girlfriend, Luz Elena Restrepo, but I was not to waste time in a Victorian courtship as of the time, windowing and enduring desire which increased in the trips to the country side where we always had to take a chaperone, usually Luz Elena's aunt. So I gave up this courtship with no little disappointment of my sisters who were more girlfriends than I was.

Gabriel Restrepo, one of the skinheads narrated in other blog, was the boyfriend of a Luz Elena’s sister and married her later, although he earned very little money to survive, a marriage costs and married life costs more ... at that time was selling Germany made sewing machines, Pfaff. After that he did very well because of the ingenuity and natural intelligence he possessed in the highest degree, he became in a very little time, senior executive Carvajal, the main printing and selling office supplies company in the country

Both Gabriel and Marta, his wife, died and she did very young, apparently of a brain hemorrhage after a small car accident. The thing was told to me as follows: the couple went to the movies after an accident with no apparent consequences because there were no injuries of consideration or apparent damage to the car, during the film she complained of headache until it became unbearable and had to leave the theater and go to a hospital, when they arrived there Marta was lifeless. It looks like she hit her head during the accident. I did not hear back from Gabriel but the last time I now about him, he was already dead.

A friend of mine says that one who lives as long as I live, the activity that exercises more is to bury relatives, friends and acquaintances and these blogs have already buried enough people. We are just in my youth, because I go through my twenty years of age and we have to reach the eighties. By then I thought, like all young people, which was good is partying and I partied, yet, as the song says I spent part of my life buying bottles. But let’s go back to our business without this numbo jumbo.

I still think I was very lucky because my work was not a work but a continuation of what I liked, including predictions, projections, interpolations, surveys and other herbs where I spent my professional life first at ANDI and then the National Federation Coffee Growers, Federacafe. National Cotton Distributers, Diagonal and the University again. I changed from Medellin to Bogota and from there back to Medellin.  Sometimes the changes were to take advantage of career opportunities and other forced by circumstances. If there is some nostalgia for those years was the lack of doing more than what I did, because some things were inconclusive and others are lost in time, but all are important for the contribution that one should do to improve the standard of life of the people.

While in ANDI I received a call from Bogotá to take care of the Department of Economics Research at Federacafé, The meaning of that was four times the salary I was making in Medellin, and despite of the higher cost of living in Bogota there will be more money left after all bills paid, and a very rewarding career. This association of coffee growers grouped the most influential sector of that time in Colombia. There I was in charge of estimating crops yearly that served to determine the amount of coffee purchases by the Federation and especially for the distribution of the monies among the departments or political divisions of the nation according to their production. Besides analyzing the data collected by the farm owned by the Federation in Chinchiná where greater experimentation data with new crops and new ways to grow coffee was going on. All the information about oppression, strain, and pruning of coffee plants was gathered there; information about new varieties especially Bourbon and Caturra, practicing widely today for cultivation of this bush in Colombia. The results of this experimentation was the high productivity per hectare; if I remember correctly ascended as five to ten times the yield per acre of the productivity those days.

For family reasons I had to come to Bogota offered me a position in Diagonal, which was the federation of all the textile industry for the purchase of domestic cotton crop that had been very popular in lands like the valley of the Magdalena and the department Tolima.

From there I went on to rule the destiny of the economic research department of the faculty of economics at the University of Antioquia When I was there soddenly a gentleman, Dr. Mario Jaramillo of the Faculty of Medicine at the same university appeared and proposed me to visit Mr. D. Chock a man who came from USA to recruit people who was interested in demographic studies to go to a seminar in Suescún, Boyacá. There they offered me a scholarship with all expenses paid to study at Chicago in the department of sociology at the university, where demography was taught. The rest of this new adventure I have already told it in another blog.

All this is to say that here I am at my 83 after all those love, job, study and many more experiences, non of them helping me to survive or probably surviving because of them.