Before going to bed last night, I was informed that Gerry Sullivan died yesterday (13 September). Gerry was a priest in Wyoming.

Our minds play games with us during the night and as I awake this morning, I realize that his death affected the strange dancing of my mind during the past eight hours. I would like to talk to someone, but I am thousands of miles from Wyoming right now and, while the sun is already shining in Venezuela, it is four o’clock in the morning in Wyoming. Thus the keyboard becomes my solitary friend for the moment.

I don’t remember what year it was and I don’t know where I was at the time. Was I in a church, a park, an outdoor amphitheatre, or standing alongside the Union Pacific railroad tracks in Cheyenne, Wyoming, as a white train passed by carrying nuclear warheads? All I remember is holding the hands of others and swaying together as we sang the words from John Lennon’s song, “All we are saying / is give peace a chance.”

Today, almost forty years after Lennon first wrote those words, I hear a similar refrain echoing in my mind in Venezuela.

I was recently on the island of Curacao. The flight from Caracas arrived at the same time that another plane was arriving from Europe. As we stood in line waiting to go through immigration, I found myself comparing the physical features of the arriving passengers.

Maybe it is prejudice, but it seems to me that the Venezuelan is a more beautiful and handsome person than the European (and being of Austrian heritage, I have to include myself in this second group).

Looking over the speaking engagements and book signings that I had the past few months, I realize how indebted I am to Jantje Tielken of Curbstone Books and to all the other people who helped make arrangements for me. During the months of April and May I spent only three nights in a motel. The rest of the time I had the privilege of wonderful hospitality in private homes. I also had the help of a multitude of people transporting me from place to place through snow, rain, and flooded roads as well as on sunny, clear-sky days. I hope to communicate individually with these friends, but for the moment I want to publicly say thank you here.

I am presently planning another speaking tour in April and May of 2008, especially in parts of the U.S. that I didn’t visit this year. Should you be interested in helping with such an event, please write me at cowboyincaracas@yahoo.com or to Jantje at jantje@curbstone.org.

If you would like to order the book, you can do so through the Curbstone Press website.

I am very thankful to Dave Lindorff, Peter Coyote, Jim Russell and Saul Landau for some kind words they have shared about the Cowboy in Caracas book. You might enjoy seeing their comments.

One day when I was a child I told my mother that since both she and my father were from Austria I had pure Austrian blood in me. She quickly corrected me.

My mother said that there was no one in the world that had “pure” blood of any type, that there had been wars and migrations throughout history, and that the blood of everyone was a mixture of every race that had ever existed on the face of the earth.

When this site was started a few years ago, it was my intention to post something new weekly on Wednesdays. I did pretty well in keeping that promise, except for the past few months. I apologize and won’t bore you with excuses. Rather, I would like to share some good news.

In April Curbstone Press will publish Cowboy in Caracas: A Northamerican’s Memoir of Venezuela’s Democratic Revolution .

You can now order it at your local bookstore, online, or through Curbstone Press. I would recommend the last option. By going to the Curbstone Press site you will also be able to see some of the other fine books that they have published.

More book news will follow in the coming weeks, including a list of places I will be visiting in April and May.

Reading the daily news reports and editorials that are appearing the northern hemisphere, and seeing the comments of United States political leaders from President Bush on down, one gets the feeling that the people of Venezuela have thrown out their traditional Apostle’s Creed to begin praying a new one that starts: “I believe in Hugo Chavez, President Almighty, who is about to create a new heaven and earth.” It seems Venezuela has lost all semblance of sanity and has given a madman dictator power to legally do whatever he wants to do.

For almost two months, in December 2002 and January 2003, the major television channels in Venezuela carried no advertisements. They were participating in an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez. The only spots seen during the twenty-four hour day of programming were anti-government and were repeated frequently.

One day, someone threw a rock through the window of RCTV, a TV channel whose origin dates back to 1953. The images of that event were broadcast around the world as an example of government abuse of the private mass media, even though no government official had anything to do with the event.

The December 3 Venezuelan presidential elections are now history. As was expected, President Hugo Chávez Frias was re-elected for another six-year term. With 91 percent of the votes counted, he won with 62.57 percent of the votes (6,857,485). His major opponent, Manuel Rosales had 37.18 percent (4,074,871). Chávez surpassed his opponent in every state, including Zulia where Rosales is governor.

Abstentionism was at its lowest since the 1988 elections, 25.03 percent, a figure representing democratic participation that United States citizens should envy. Some people even slept outside the polling places to be the first in line. Trumpets sounded throughout the country at 3:00 a.m., a call from Chávez supporters to go and vote.