When I lived in the Caracas barrio of Nueva Tacagua, I had a neighbor, Mrs. America. Yes, that was her name, Señora América. I think she might have been in her forties or fifties but she appeared to be in her late nineties. She was also crazy.

“Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don’t have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.” --Stephen King.

I have only read one book by Stephen King. I may never read another. It is not that I have anything against Mr. King. I actually consider him a friend, although we have never met. It is simply that I don’t like horror stories.

That dislike probably goes back to my childhood. My older sisters used to listen to a weekly radio program, Inner Sanctum Mysteries. It was on the air in the early evening and began with the sound of a screechy door. I would cover my ears and ask them to shut it off. They laughed and never did. And I? I continued to hear that damn door until the next morning when I awoke.

One never knows where the mind will wander.

Today mine jumped back to a personal memory of long ago. It took a journey of a few thousand miles to a fifty-mile stretch of asphalt between Cheyenne and Laramie, Wyoming, known as the Happy Jack Road. I think it was a beautiful spring day when a friend of mine, Mike, decided to use it instead of Interstate Highway 80 that links the same destinations.

Had he traveled the Interstate, he would have been in Laramie in about forty-five minutes. Instead his journey ended up involving his father and me and taking well over twenty-four hours of our time.

I have just finished reading the first act of Los Papeles de Febrero (the Actors of February) by Oscar Acosta. The play recalls the tumultuous days of February and March 1989 when rioting broke out in Caracas and other parts of Venezuela. It was followed by the massacre of hundreds, maybe thousands of Venezuelans.

The scene centers on three young men who looted three television boxes from a store. As the men open the boxes, which they have struggled to get off the street without being killed by the police, they discover that in one there is not a television set but a cadaver. Their joy disappears and their attention turns to the problem of what they should do with the dead person.

Strange as it may seem, having personally lived through those days, nothing seemed fictitious in what I read. It was the result of Oscar’s imagination but it is not removed from the reality of possibilities during those traumatic days.

Recently President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela said President George W. Bush of the United States was a donkey.

His comment immediately drew negative reactions. The U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, said that such words did not contribute to the bettering of relations between the two nations. I heard similar comments from other people.

But a longtime supporter of Chávez surprised me when he also said that he didn’t feel Chávez should be issuing such insults. Then he explained his thinking: donkeys are very nice animals and shouldn’t be deprecated by comparing them to President Bush.

Someone listening to his comment later added, “and donkeys have never started international wars.”

November 19 and 20, 2005, an estimated 19,000 people gathered in Georgia at the gate of Fort Benning’s Western Hemisphere Institute of Security Cooperation (formerly the School of the Americas, also known as the School of Assassins because of the actuations of many of its Latin American graduates).

While the city of Columbus, Georgia, allows the demonstration, protestors are not permitted to pass a fence without presenting an ID card. Thirty-two did. After praying a few moments they were arrested. Following are their names, ages and the sentences that they received:

Rita Hohenshell, 81, Des Moines, Iowa—60 days in prison.

Delmer Schwaller, 81, Appleton, Wisconsin—60 days in prison.

Fred Brancel, 79, Madison, Wisconsin—90 days in prison and $500 fine.

I can imagine the scene now. I am in the little cubicle that I have been given on the periphery of heaven. It is July 29, 2054, and I am reading the morning newspaper. Looking at the inter-galactic section (a bit bored with only heavenly news), I notice a photo of Hugo Chávez.

The caption under the picture reads: “Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela on Planet Earth, yesterday celebrated his 100th birthday. He said that he had not yet decided whether he would run for re-election, since such an action would require another referendum for a constitutional change. Currently, a president is limited to only ten consecutive terms in Venezuela.”

* * * * For a few years I have wanted to meet Dada Maheshvarananda, the author of After Capitalism. We talked several times through the telephone when he was visiting Venezuela, but we never were able to be in the same place at the same time. Finally, in January, we had the chance to have what I hope will be the first of many encounters.

Dressed in a bright orange robe with a similar colored turban we sat in the lobby of the Caracas Hilton and talked about the world, quite oblivious to those who were around us and who might have been wondering about those two strange men who were so deeply engaged in conversation. I mention that, doubting that anyone noticed me in my Levi’s and sport shirt. But Dada’s orange attire does stand out as a counter-message to those of us who simply go along with the crowd.

It was a delightful conversation but I only wrote down one item that Dada shared: Do you know two ways to make God laugh?

I was comfortably seated on a Mexicana flight from Mexico City to Caracas a few years ago, when the attendant passed out the morning newspapers. However, before the plane had left the runway, I was suddenly uncomfortable with what I saw on one of its pages.

On the one hand, I didn’t want others to see the headline of the editorial I was reading. On the other, I wished that all of my friends in the U.S. were sitting alongside me and looking at it.

In his 1970 book, Future Shock, Alvin Toffler wrote about the difference between a fad and a trend. And, if my memory serves me correctly: the first could be found by reading the big city dailies; the latter by observing smaller newspapers scattered throughout the U.S.

It is no longer a secret that TIME magazine chose Bill Gates, Melinda Gates and Bono as their people of the year, 2005. But probably relatively few will be aware that a magazine published in Colombia, SEMANA, has named Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, as their man of the year. In Ecuador, the daily EL COMERCIO put Chávez at the top of their list of international leaders that they consider to have been the “winners” of 2005. (They also placed President George W. Bush at the top of their list of “losers.”) Time (not TIME) will tell which publications had the better judgment and whether we are looking at fads or at trends.