moving over here for a bit...

i'm not really blogging at the moment.
but i am book-reviewing!
over at ampersand

come and join the booky party!

'pirates' rhymes with 'virus'

and the news isn't telling you anything real about either of 'em.

here's some smart talk about pirates, power structures, perception, and toxic waste dumping:

You Are Being Lied to About Somali Pirates by Johann Hari

Somali rapper K'Naan on why it's complicated:
article
more video

as for the virus thing .... just go ahead and google "swine flu factory farming"

K'Naan on Somali Pirates -There is a reason why this started

The Denver Principles (and my cuz)

in addition to being a smart, infinitely humble, and consistently inventive human being, my cousin Sean is an AIDS activist and a person living with HIV - for almost 30 years now. i got a special treat today when he and his sister, Megan, came to town briefly and managed to fit lunch with me into their busy schedules.

when i first moved to New York in 1996, i was 19 years old and after pounding the pavement for a couple weeks, i was about to start working in a bookstore. i had never met Sean before, but had his # from my mom with the directive "oh, you should call our cousin Sean, he's like your second cousin once removed or something like that, from the Iowa folks i think - maybe he can help you find work." i called, and we met for lunch. by the time i left the restaurant, Sean had introduced me to several amazing people, told me terrific family histories about feisty relatives whose existence i wasn't even really aware of, and hired me to answer phones at the magazine he founded, POZ (a lifestyle and health magazine for people affected by HIV and AIDS). by the time i left POZ a couple years later, i'd been given the opportunity to be a reporter and assistant editor, helped launch a new magazine under POZ's publishing imprint, and had my eyes opened to an amazing and dedicated community of people -- and to a fight that still needs to be fought. so much of my formative experience in New York and in general is linked to Sean and his unwavering generosity of spirit. if i had never gone to lunch with Sean that sticky summer day in 1996 it's likely i wouldn't be a writer, and certainly not an editor. and i was just one of an assortment of many whipsmart young folks over the years who Sean tends to encounter and immediately mentor (in ways often not obvious to us until later).

anyway, he was in town from New York just for a day with his sister Megan (who still works for the magazine) for the memorial of Martin Delaney, founder of Project Inform and longtime AIDS activist who concentrated on approval, access, and affordability of drugs to treat HIV.

and i thought i would post this link to a speech Sean gave last year at the US Conference on AIDS, because sometimes, family totally rocks, and because generations tend to have rapid-forming amnesia, and we all need to keeping knowing about this stuff and keep pace as the epidemic changes and struggles evolve: Renewing the Denver Principles

and thanks for lunch, sean and megan. it was a treat.

the great spring clean, part 1

cleaning out the deskal area. big effort. just beginning, tiny bits.

finding old pieces of paper. dear diary.

pop quiz: did i write this, or did jane austen?

"I cannot prudently seek to avoid these disappointments of acquaintance but can, perforce as much by equal parts felicity and evolution as by firm resolve, seek to acquire the very graces and traits which I so admire in those upon whom I would grant my affection: openness; civility; culinary skill; an aesthetically investigative eye; an inquisitive mind; an athletic figure; and above all transparency of character."

sometimes i, younger, just crack me up.

editorial karma

in the past few weeks, i've had two people find me on facebook: these people don't know me, but they both submitted stories to the fancypants literary magazine where I used to work as an editorial intern. at the time I had written them detailed and personal rejection letters, for which they wanted to thank me.

one is a writer with an MFA and a job at a literary mag; her very good story made it to the final "readers roundtable" round of reading, and had all the magazine's readers arguing for or against it. although it didn't make the ultimate cut, it was a good story and i wanted to make sure she knew that. i remember taking particular care in the personal rejection letter i sent her, thinking "this woman could be me; in fact, she is a bit ahead of me in the game, and deserves props for that."

the other is a deployed naval soldier, an amateur writer who probably didn't have much experience. although his story engaged with a lot of really interesting ideas -- about the military and the current f'ed up state of US foreign engagements - it wasn't a fit for the mag. but i ended up having a dialogue with this writer, because he was unable to receive mail on his ship in the middle of the ocean, he had emailed us asking if he could submit a piece over email. Though it's stringently against such things as online submissions, the magazine made an exception for this deployed serviceman and i was able to consider his submission mcuh faster than the normal 9-month turnaround time for submissions. i didn't relate to this guy at all, but i was amazed by his tenacity -- sending short story submissions to magazine from a freakin' aircraft carrier-- and his work made me wish there were more outlets for soldiers to tell their stories in writing. (which i still wonder about -- are there any soldier-specific lit mags? we used to get a TON of submission from soldiers which weren't quite pro enough for lit mags but still deserve to be heard and printed...)

anyway, both of these very different writers have since contacted me (ah, the magic of facebook) and written me nice letters thanking me for my nice letters, even though i'm no longer at the magazine in question and it's been about a year since I was.

the point?

i dunno. it just really made my day to hear from both these writers. i had left my internship feeling somewhat disillusioned with the whole "literary magazine" enterpise, and specifically unhappy about the proliferation of unpaid internships in that industry which allows these magazines to function, but also taps the talent and commitment and resources of young writers and editors who, in fact, should be paid for our labor but end up doing it for the resume credit anyway. i didn't leave on bad terms at all, but i ended up very grumpy about the whole enterprise in general. and hearing from these writers helped me, almost a year later, feel like my work there actually mattered. at least to two people. which is a lot. it also made me remember how it's important to be real, and polite, and respectful to people (something this particular magazine is actually quite good at -- witness them allowing their interns to write polite, personal rejection letters, something that rarely happens at most lit mags, let alone of that size/notoriety).

and as a writer myself, of course, it's good to keep the faith. anyone who is a writer and has also ever slogged through an editorial slush pile knows: it can be inspiring, and depressing, and confidence-boosting, and illusion-shattering. and there are lots of papercuts. so, you know -- it's good to have good karma in that complex arena.

keepin' the faith man -- people are people after all.

photographic proof

well, max and i spent a magical final week in Honduras having a romantic island getaway at Bo's Island House, on the beautiful and tiny and slooow-paced island of Guanaja. we had to take a teeny-tiny plane to get there and everything. despite a few more illnesses (me this time), we managed to chill out a lot in hammocks and play with dogs and swim in the amazingly clear ocean and hang out with Bo and stare at the stars and such.

then we said goodbye and i came back to san francisco and max continued on to nicaragua and points south. it was, and remains, difficult to be apart, especially after such heightened togetherness traveling. but i am so excited for his adventures.

so i'll stop writin' about it and instead show you the first of maaaany installments of maaaany photos from max's camera. i'll be putting these up on flickr over the next weeks, with narration in the captions. for those who don't wanna spend a long time looking, i will also do an abridged version set of photos. stay tuned for that. but today, i uploaded our first week or so:

my flickr page

Re-entry

hi all. i am back from Honduras and nursing some jet lag, culture shock, and a giant pile of unopened mail (snail and otherwise).
in short: the trip was amazing and in many ways i wish i was still on it.
final sum=up and LOTS of photos to come in the next couple days.
for now, keep on keeping an eye on my max for me...
xo
manjula

The Wild Wild East

hi everyone. one week left in Honduras! max and i have been travelling for 32 days, and are not sick of each other although we ARE sick of eating beans and eggs and tortillas for every single meal.

a lot to cover here, including a fabulous new year´s eve in the Garifuna town of Sambo Creek. (the Garifuna are Hondurans descended from African slaves who were marooned here on the coast or escaped en route to the US and ended up here). i won´t go into too much detail but max has a write up of it on his blog. we had nice strolls on the beach, gave lots of Lempiras away to little boys dressed like devils (long story), and had a fancy dinner (max had seafood soup!). most special was that wandering the town, which was one big party, on new year´s eve we got to see (and i got to dance a bit) the Punta, the traditional Garifuna dance performed by women, and ended up wading in the Carribean after midnight in a rainstorm. very wonderful. then it was back to the junction-point, and our least favorite city, La Ceiba, for a couple days and then we were off on our `jungle tour` into La Moskitia and up the Rio Platano into the largest stretch of virgin rainforest in the Americas other than the Amazon.... this region of Honduras occupies most of the East and stretches into Nicaragua. It´s almost inacessible by land, and planes are outlandishly expensive and infrequent.

To get there, we took a bus for 2-3 hours to a town in the mountains called Tocoa. Then we got on a pickup truck for a 5-6 hour drive to the coast and along the coast. I won´t go too much into the truck ride here, because i could talk about it for hours, but it was the most adventurous, insane, and dangerous experience I´ve ever had. you go over gnarly dirt and mud roads and end up speeding along the beach, on the beach, partially IN the break of the waves. there are frequently river mouths (barras) blocking the way. when this happens, the driver of the truck and his assistant get out, take off their pants, and wade around in the water to find a shallow place and then you drive on through. shallow is a relative word here. at wider barras, the truck goes onto a raft that is either pulled by men (or one very buff man, in our case) or steered across by a single outboard motor. insane. plus, our macho drivers overloaded our truck -- 17 people and various cargo in on pickup truck, including a stove. we had a terrifying incident in which everyone had to jump out because the wheel went throught a sand bar and we basically fell off the path, but i´m not going to post that picture because I don´t want my mom or dad to have heart attacks. here are our truck mates, minus us and all the cargo, as well as a photo of another truck crossing a barra on a raft:

After surviving (?) the ¨carro¨ journey, we took a motor-driven large canoe (a launcha) from the coastal town of Batalla for a couple horus through amazing seaside lagoons, into the town of Raista. We spent the night there in a really charming hostel and then in the morning took another boat another 4-5 hours up river (inland) to the town of Las Marias, which is about 120 familiesi (of various sizes) living in thatched houses on stilts along the river. everything is about the river, and little kids from the age of what looks like 5 can pilot a "pipante" canoe, which is a long and narrow canoe made from a single tree trunk that you pilot by pushing with sticks. up river is slow going and downriver through rapids is a bit terrifying. you get used to it though, and it´s an amazing show of skill by the people who do it.

Basically, the indigenous community in and around this town of Las Marias has developed a really admirable monopoly on all tourism that goes through their area. THere are about 100 guides, and they take turns leading tours, and no outside parties are capable of navigating the terrain and the river there, so they are able to maintain control over the environment and to generate income for their own community. it´s pretty darn cool.

So the next day we set off on our 3-day hike to Pico Dama, a mountain in the jungle. We went with three guides, a lead guide (Abelardo) and two secondaries (one of whom was Abelardo´s son). 2 hours up river and then park the canoe and a 5 hour hike in thick jungle up hill with all our stuff on our backs. Definitely the hardest hike i´ve ever done and very grueling. pictures don´t really do it justice...

But miraculously, after many falls crossing many creeks and stumps and mud hills and such, we finally arrived at the cabana, which the community has built so tourist can go on this camping trip. it´s basically a wood platform with some wood bunks, pretty nice for the jungle, and we hang out and make the fire underneath it. there´s water in a creek nearby, and a nice hole to do your business in. we bathed in the creek (um, splashed water onto ourselves is probably a more accurate way to say it) and made mac and cheese over the fire and crashed out.

next morning we set off for the peak. in general, i would say that the rainforest is absolutely indescribable... so thick and green and teeming with life trying to grow everywhere and death in the form of decaying plantlife. as we got higher we went through amazing stretches of forest, green bamboo thickts and red roots and moss-covered everything and.... it was a really difficult but so so worth it. at one point it was so steep we had to climb UP the roots of fallen trees with our hands. at the top, an amazing view of the valley of forest below and the Peak, a rock point that´s pretty much inaccesible, although we got very very close. up at the top, the rain clouds blow in in about 2 seconds, and everything is quiet until the rain starts, huge drops. we took shelter in the roots of huge trees and then descended through the mud to camp. max fell (we both fell a LOT) and accidentally grabbed a spiny plant and had jungle spike embedded in all his fingers. i pulled one out of his wrist that was at least an inch long. ouch. but no broken limbs and minimal ticks!

back at camp, another nighttime cookout, with added company: another tourist pair who were ascending, two Hungarian-speaking chemical engineers and their three guides. then the next day, a hike down a different way towards the river through thick underbrush, but less hilly. at that point i was so tired and so deep under the canopy of the forest that I started feeling a little weak and dizzy, but we finally emerged at the riverside on a nice family´s property where we drank fresh coconuts and sat in chairs for a little rest.



Maria, the woman whose house we had hiked out next to, made us fresh hot chocolate from cacao that they grow on their land. then i was less dizzy and more high from the chocolate! then we boated upriver some more to see some petroglyphs, cool engravings in granite boulders in the river that date to BC which are apparently still being discovered all over the area (and are not being archeologically explored or studied at the moment). there we swum in the river, the first cleaning i´d had in days, and then we boated back to Las Marias. that was a looong day.



when we got back to Las Marias, the wonderful hospedaje owner Rutilia had made Max a birthday cake! we bought sodas, which seemed like a huge treat, for all the family and kids around, and everyone ate cake and drank soft drinks, then sang songs in Moskito (the indigenous folks in these parts are largely the Moskito and the Pech) and everybody danced up a storm.





Then we began the long route home, spending an extra night in the cute hostel at Raista and swimming in the ocean there and getting some much needed rest before the insane journey back to La Ceiba yesterday.



Yesterday started at 3am with a boat ride, then another pickup truck adventure (this time with less crashing and less people, although another truck got stuck in the OCEAN and had to be yanked out with ropes!) and a bus and then back to our home away from home, the Hotel Caribe in La Ceiba. And now we´re hanging out at the mall, because everything is closed on Sundays, and tomorrow we fly to the small less-developed island of Guanaja for a week of chillin on the beach.

That´s the story for now. as always, you can read Max´s version of events and see more photos at www.maxincentralamerica.blogspot.com.


Miss you all.

xo

fotos

hey all

max put up some photos on his blog and also updates on health, etc., on his blog www.maxincentralamerica.blogspot.com

tomorrow at 4am we catch the bus to go into (via a long and surely gut-churning bus and truck ride) La Moskitia, where we´ll be for 7 days. no internet in the jungle, so will post more after returning.

thinking of everyone and wishing everyone (ourselves included) happyhealthyhealthyhappy into the new year...

feliz ano nuevo!

ceiba ceiba

¨Ceiba ceiba!¨is the call of the bus wrasslers as you walk through the bus ¨station¨ (usually just an area on a busy block or a dirt lot where the chicken busses, which are converted schoolbuses in schoolbus-yellow and Jehovah-blue with motley handpainted logos and destinations and religious statements painted on their windshields, congregate in a mass of miraculously-smooth-running chaos before departing for various parts of the countryside). if noone approaches you first (but they always do) you ask a guy if he´s going where you´re going, he repeats the town name, he points you to another guy, another takes up the location call-out, and you are rapidly walked to a half-full schoolbus, engines idling, that departs ¨horita¨. they always depart horita, even if that ¨right now¨means ¨right now in 20 minutes when the bus is full.¨ when you´re waiting, the kids come, and grownups too, hocking wares and snacks and Jesucristo and misformed limbs. the chorus is a song, a bridge from ¨ceiba ceiba!¨into ¨quere pollo, pollo pollo quere fresca quere pollo¨and earnestly preached sermons from the bible and ¨quere fre´co¨ ¨quere papas¨ ¨quere dulces.¨ a dance, in the aisle, a song, in your eyes.



so here we are in the city of the destination song i´ve heard so much over the past three weeks, in La Ceiba itself, third biggest city in Honduras, the capital of the North Coast, the debarking point for all things touristic (Bay Islands and Roatan, mostly), the crazy scramble of people selling shit on the sidewalks and men with rifles guarding the Wendy´s and everywhere you turn somebody tells you it´s not safe and this time, you feel it too. believe.



but it´s sunny today, after a deluge in the night in our noisy motel, and after days in the hot dry mountains, this lowland humidity is getting to my head, and we walked for blocks before we found a single place selling food (it´s all products here, sell sell sell, stuff made cheap in new maquilas here outside San Pedro or hustled in from even cheaper ¨Guate¨- Guatemala). Last night after an 8 hour bus ride from the highlands, and still in thrall of the Mayan ruins and the outlandish tourist town of Copan and still sick, we were at a hospital privado called S. Antoni, where a bellicund doctor with the sniffles had fun practicing his English on us.



because yes, max is still sick. the diagnosis: 102 degree fever (for like a week now) probably due to flu and ear infection, which turned into burst eardrum. apparently this usually heals on its own, and after several gigantic shots his fever is lower. but let´s just say the visit to the hospital was a low moment.



however. we are taking care of each other (i still have slight flu, too) and max is getting tested for Dengue Fever just to be sure and we are going to recover and go on an amazing tour in the jungle beginning saturday. a trip to La Moskitia - the famed/fabled ¨Mosquito Coast¨- by bus, truck, boat canoe, for a 3-day camping hike in the jungle and a ride up the Rio Platano and into the largest swath of virgin rainforest in the Americas other than the amazon. wish us luck.

Copan

Copan is:

--an immense and artistically unrivalled city center that thrived from about 300 to 800 under the rule of a Mayan dynasty in the northern mountains of Honduras on the border of Guatemala. features include the great plaza, a gathering of stelae and structures beyond belief in their architctural and artisanal complexity and aesthetic integrity, the several-stories-high ¨Acropolis¨, beneath which are buried previous generations´temples and monuments and in which archaelogists are still actively excavating, the ¨balll court¨, an immense hieroglyphic stairway bearing the largest collection of glyphs in the Americas, a large set-up for a high stakes sports game no one knows the rules to, and thousands upon thousands of intricate hieroglyphs and carvings that mark this civilization as so smart, so connected, so in fucking tune with the sun and the moon and the jaguars that they became intertwined. (or, as max said, ¨a loooot of guys with animal heads¨...). Also known as ¨manjula´s first ruins¨and way too awestriking and big and .... way too much for even i to have words for. we entered at 8 under the watch of the Macaws, and for a brief time we were the only people in the whole city, and it was quiet and green and grey and powerful calm and i could see, feel, the city beneath us. a city.

--the busy and somewhat gaudy town near the ruins from which hundreds of travellers a day depart to take a quick walk to see the ancient city. features include cute colonial architecture, awful gringo bars, high prices for just about everything, lots of crafts for sale, and somewhat gross but oddly pleasing ¨ïnternational¨food such as spaghetti and bagels. home of the six dollar breakfast, which is more than we pay for a room some nights. we were still sick here, and are glad to leave it.

Ruinas

Sorry for the infrequent updates, but i haven't be feeling very eloquent lately. part is just overload - sounds sights sensations feelings movements - and part is due to the flu that max and i seem to have picked up somewhere between the north coast and the western highlands. max has it worst, with a nasty ear infection following la grippe, and i just have the plain olde grippe - fever chills coughing sneezing, so so so tired.
but let's see,.... where have we been. well, basically holed up in a hotel room for the past 5 days in Gracias, a cute colonial town with dusty dirt roads and spanish tile roofs in the mountains. we had planned to do a 2-day hike up mount Celaque to see a cloud forest, but the illness cancelled that plan. luckily our hotel room in Gracias was lovely, and had tv and hot water, and made a great place to be knocked off our feet in.
beunanoche - christmas eve - was a big deal in town, and we roused ourselves from our sick bed to go out. we went to an amazing restaurant that serves Lencan style cuisine - the Lenca are the indiginous folks around these parts. the owner of the place was very talkative and we chatted (well, max and her chatted and i listened) about community and tourism and all sort of stuff. she gave me this awesome fermented root in a jar to sniff, and it cleared my head. unfortunately, i had to leave it with her.... the food was great. basically just like tamales, but made from amazing yummy spices and beans and flowers. max wrote down all the stuff, so maybe he'll do a blog post about it.
after the now-nightly half-hour power outage, we wandered through town. we walked by this house that had an enormous, amazingly crafted Navidad diorama in the living room. the display was packed with lights and wood animals and traditional clay figurines and american action figures and pine branches.... a beautiful and impressive effort by the matron of the family. they had their doors and windows open, and were rocking out to the radio and dancing int he living room. max asked if he could take a picture of the navidad scene, and before i knew it i was invited to dance by the guy (tio? hermano?) and the madre. we spent a few songs dancing with them, then took turns taking photos in front of the navidad scene. it was a really nice moment, one of those minutes or times of true connection with other people regardless of relationship, and very precious to us poor little sick travellers so far from home on the holidays.... but we had to decline their offer of tamales and begged off to go to ... church.
the big to-do at the church was the usual, candles and singing and standing and sitting and standing. it was great to see the entire community there, together for the evening, regardless of our own heathen status. however, it was really hot in there, so we made our way home and lit our hannukah candles and passed out in our sick bed.
today we managed to pick our tired selves up and caught three - yes three! - chicken busses in a row. (the chicken busses are the converted schoolbusses that are the "regular" (not first class) transport here). the busses were crowded and the ride was harrowing - people were puking to our left and right, ugh - but finally we made it to this wildly touristic town of Copan Ruinas, in one piece.
tomorrow we go to a doctor, then to see the mayan ruins.
and that's the update.
love to all. missing you into the new year.

travels... in slightly more detail....

max's thoughts on our last week or so....
www.maxincentralamerica.blogspot.com

he will hopefully, internet gods willing, have fotos up too.

(speaking of which, i should here say that i will never have fotos up of our honduras adventures, because my camera was stolen when we got robbed on our first night here.... but don't worry, that was the only big thing taken and everyone's safe. um, except the camera. the camera is probably not very safe. sigh. )

love and thinking of everyone into the holidaaaaaaaays.

-manjula

gracias

a quick update, friends and fam...
max and i are in a town called gracias, in the mountains of western honduras, after many many adventures. we left tela for tiny beach *literally, on the beach* towns of Torurnabe and Miami. then paid a boy to boat us across an amazingly beautiful lagoon mouth to the uninhabited beach beyond, walked for half a day on the empty beach resting to cut open coconuts and drink them, and arrived at Punta Sal, a national park of jungle and insane pristine caribbean beaches and coves. we camped there, completely alone except for the sound of the monkeys in the forest, for two nights. then a harrowing taxi ride over dirtmud hills back to tela and on to a little farm hostel called Finca El Eden in Santa Ana, just outside the big town of Ceiba on the coast. lovely two days involving fireflies at dusk, rain, swimming in the river, crazy german expat owner, a hike up into the hills to a hut in the jungle, and other excellent diversions.
then a day of busses took us to the very different Western region, to santa rosa de copan last night and Gracias today/
we hope to stay here a few days, experience the aguas termales, and hike up to see the cloud forests and birds on this huge mountain here. then we hope to book an affordable tour up the rio platano in the eastern region and go into La Moskitia... the jungle./
more adventures and a max blog update to come soon,
but all is well and we are safe and healthy and happy and amazed and and and.....

feliz hanukah, navidad, etc.
manj

Tela, Honduras

so....

things got off to a bit of a rocky start -- on wednesday we realized that we had completely messed up our tickets and our flight to florida arrived in miami AFTER our flight to San Pedro Sula departed.... so.... 500 dollars each later... and after a frantic day of hurried packing and phone calls with airlines... max and i were full of Mission burritos and on a redeye out of SFO wednesday night instead of thursday morning. over the next 24 hours we rode on three planes, a taxi, a big ole bus, and a taxi, and arrived last night in a rainy caribbean wind in this little town of Tela. we found one of the only cheap hostels in town and walked around to find most things closed after 9pm. i got my first look at the caribbean in the dark, from a bridge where the rio tela connects with the ocean. but some restaurants were open, and we found some pupusas and fried plaintain salad (called tejadas) and crashed out.
this morning we awoke to a much livelier town, a funky beach town full of people hanging out and selling stuff and eating helado in the square. people say this area is being primed to be the next Cancun, but things are way not that developed or tourista-fied yet -- thankfully. this morning we cruised the shops in town, bought some maracuyas (sp?) and took a walk across the bridge to the fancier side of town, on the beach, where big old houses that used to be the residencies of the fruit company overlords are now vacation rentals. we checked out the abandoned train station and saw the pier where the train tracks led straight from the fruit orchards to the boats. need to read up more on the specific history of this place, but it is still visible in the physical layout of things.
we´re both remembering, and i´m learning, about traveling, and how having nothing to do all day can be tiring and amazing, and how checking out new places can inspire so many questions big and small. as everywhere, the people have been super friendly here - we just met a self-taught tattoo artist in the square and chatted with him and his lady for a while before coming to the internet cafe. i´m surprised at how much spanish i understand - but still shy about speaking- max is a champ and is doing most of the bargaining- i´ll be jumping in any miunte now, though...
tonight we will see the apparently much-heightened weekend night life in town, and tomorrow we´re going to continue our quest for a undeveloped beach to lie on. we hope to catch a boat or bus or walk (or some combo of all three, although the seas are really rough and wintery right now) to the Garifuna town of Miami, then on to a nature preserve at Punto Sal, where rumor has it there is camping. then we´ll see where things take us!

This is a strike, support our cause!

Oakland Tribune article about our show!

"Public Theater Experiment Spotlights Labor Struggles on Historical Site"