The Necktie

If men can run the world, why can’t they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?
Linda Ellerbee

I've found that you don’t need to wear a necktie if you can hit.
Ted Williams


I have quite a tie collection. I never intended to collect neckties, but over the years, little by little, without my being aware of it, the ties started accumulating, taking up more and more of my closet space.

My taste in neckties used to be conservative; I once preferred wearing dark, single-colored ties. But my wife has gotten me to loosen up; and now I enjoy wearing ties that require sunglasses to look straight at them without damaging the viewer’s eyesight or psyche.

I know that if one is not careful, collecting ties can become quite an expensive proposition. In my hands, I’ve held neckties with $80 price tags. But since I don’t shop in higher-end clothing stores, I’m sure that there are ties out there that can cost much, much more.

So, as an amateur, yet prolific, necktie collector, I’ve had to set and adhere to one firm rule—$2.99 is as high as I’ll go.

This restriction forces me to be forever on the lookout for bargains. But it helps to have a terrific partner in crime, and I do: my father-in-law. Every Christmas, I look forward to opening the gift-box of ties that he buys at thrift stores—each one costing only a dollar. He has discovered that Goodwill and Salvation Army stores are goldmines for necktie collectors. And since the overwhelming majority of men appear to have conservative tastes—as I used to—they’ll gush profusely over the kitschy ties their relatives give them on birthdays and at Christmas and, the very next morning, perhaps before daybreak so that no one can witness their deceit, they’ll drop them off at the nearest thrift store.

I don’t mind being the naïve person that adopts these unwanted neckties. In fact, I’ll accept them happily because I will wear just about any tie as long as the material is of decent quality.

And the louder and the more crazed the tie, the better. I believe that wearing neckties capable of provoking mild hallucinations helps keep students wide awake in class.

Aware of my fondness for bizarre, strident neck attire, several students—four girls, members of a cayuco race team (an annual event in which, over three days, competitors row the length of the Panama Canal in boats made of materials native to the country)—chipped in to buy a tie for me that they found at a local store.

This was the tie to test my commitment to wear just about anything around my neck.

When I first saw the necktie—after taking it out of the gift box as the students stood around me, eagerly awaiting my verdict—one word, and one word alone, occurred to me:

HIDEOUS.

The tie resembles a towering soft-serve ice cream cone. The material along the border of the tie has been tailored to form the curves of the spiraling dessert. The flavor seems to be a swirl: vanilla and another ice cream of undetermined flavor whose color resembles dog biscuits.

I let the necktie sit in my closet for a couple of weeks, hoping the students would forget that they had given it to me.

Alas, they didn’t.

“When are you going to wear the tie, Dr. Sirias?” they asked most every day, their expressions unable to contain their youthful eagerness to see a dripping ice cream cone dangling from my neck.

And not wishing to crush their generous spirit, I finally had to break down and wear the tie.

I left my house that morning feeling self-conscious and praying that my neighbors wouldn’t catch a glimpse of me.

And, as the students entered the school building, I braced myself for the onslaught of comments ridiculing my neck attire.

“Cool tie, Dr. Sirias!” the first student said.

“I love the tie!” said another.

“Gee, what a terrific tie! Where did you get it?” asked a colleague.

And so went the day.

Never have I worn a tie that has received so many compliments.

Today, the ice cream cone necktie sits in a place of honor in my closet, awaiting its next turn. What’s more, I now lament that I only get to wear it once a year. But, after all, I have an obligation to the rest of my collection as well as to keeping the students off balance, wondering which tie I’m going to wear tomorrow.

The Deaths that Came from China

Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy.
Paracelsus

The more hidden the venom, the more dangerous it is.
Marguerite de Valois

For greed all nature is too little.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca


In September of 2006, a wave of panic swept across Panama as reports of an alarming number of mysterious deaths began to flood the local media. At first, the deaths were attributed to kidney failure; soon afterward, though, bewildered spokespersons of the Ministerio de Salud (Ministry of Health) reported that the nervous systems of afflicted patients were shutting down for no apparent reason. Medical professionals scrambled frantically to determine the cause of the deaths and, ultimately, these were traced back to a cough syrup that had been distributed across the nation through clinics of the Seguro Social—Panama’s public health care system.

And to date, nearly nine months after the tragedy first surfaced, three hundred and sixty-five deaths have been attributed to the tainted cough syrup. These deaths occurred exclusively among Panamá’s working class, who usually cannot afford private medical care and have to fill their prescriptions at pharmacies that belong to the Seguro Social.

What investigators eventually determined was that the fatal cough syrup contained diethylene glycol—a solvent, dangerous to humans, that is commonly used in automobile coolant and antifreeze.

Walt Bogdanich and Jake Hooker—journalists reporting for The New York Times—helped world health authorities trace the culprits of the poisonings back to China. While covering the Panamá story, they also discovered that since 1992 that there have been several thousand other victims whose deaths are also due to the use of diethylene glycol in cough syrup. These tragedies occurred in Haiti, Bangladesh, Argentina, India, and China.

In a remarkably short period of time, the Chinese have become leaders in supplying the world with low-cost chemical products. Because of China’s vertiginous economic expansion, health and safety regulations for medical goods have tended to lag far behind the standards of the developed world. But those responsible for the exportation of death from China have only been a handful of unscrupulous entrepreneurs—they substituted diethylene glycol for the far more costly glycerin—who have taken advantage of this gap in safe commercial practices in order to make huge profits.

Three-hundred and sixty-five Panamanians—and possibly more—have succumbed to their greed. And, personally, the thought of ingesting cough syrup from a contaminated batch has hit close to home.

My wife and I love visiting Panamá city’s old Chinatown. It’s off of Avenida B, near Sal Si Puedes, in the sector of Santa Ana. There, shoppers will find friendly store-owners who sell a wide assortment of products from China at reasonable prices.

Among the items I like to purchase in old Chinatown is cough syrup. The English translation on the box—a poor, yet enchanting, translation—assures me that, in addition to ridding me of my cough, if I take a spoonful of syrup every day I will live a long and vigorous life. But I only use the cough medicine when I’m suffering from a cold. I find that this cough syrup, in addition to delivering the promised results, costs merely a fraction of name-brand cold medicines.

Recently, at the onset of the rainy season, I caught a bad cold, with a hacking cough. And in spite of my newfound fears of cough medicines that come from China, in a death-defying leap of faith I bought a new bottle of my favorite cold medicine, placing my trust in the fact that I hadn’t heard of a single death by poisoning in Panama’s sizeable Chinese community.

Nevertheless, I confess that in light of the recent tragedies—in Panama as well as in the rest of the world—during my recent bout with the common cold, my favorite remedy, the one that has help me deal with coughing for several years now, has become much harder to swallow.

In Praise of Pueblos

Learn from me, if not by my precepts, then by my example, how dangerous is the pursuit of knowledge and how much happier is that man who believes his native town to be the world than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

To say the least, a town life makes one more tolerant and liberal in one's judgment of others.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


I could live quite happily in a small Panamanian town. And I’m not speaking about a community like Boquete, which has become a haven for ex-pats from all over the developed world. I mean pueblos where to hear the sound of English is a rare, and often blessed, occurrence.

I believe the reason for my fondness of pueblos is due to the years I spent, during my adolescence, in Granada, Nicaragua. At the time, Granada was a relatively small community of thirty-five thousand. What I loved about living in a pueblo that size was that I had the chance to learn—and intimately at that—the stories of the town’s most interesting citizens.

(Today, regrettably, Granada—an enchanting colonial city located on the shores of Lake Nicaragua—has become a major tourist attraction, thus distorting the "Spanish" culture of the place. As a result, my second hometown—the other is Los Angeles, California—has become a Mecca for wealthy ex-pats who have settled there, hoping to cash in on Granada's popularity, raising the prices of real estate to absurd levels, and making English the most commonly heard language in bars and cafes.)

But my love of Central American towns is also founded on the three years my wife and I lived in Nicaragua, which was five years ago. During our stay there, two pueblos became very dear to us: San Marcos, where we resided, and Cuapa, where we spent considerable time while I conducted research for the novel Bernardo and the Virgin. Small Central American communities have a timeless quality: when one returns after a long absence, very little has changed.

There are several pueblos in Panamá that my wife and I have visited and learned to love. On that list are Chitré, Aguadulce, and Parita. But there are two towns in particular where I feel most at home—I refrain from speaking for my wife here—and that bring back fond memories of my life in pueblos and where I think I could live happily: Penonomé and La Pintada, both communities located in the neighboring province of Coclé.

Penonomé is the capital of Coclé. It is located an hour and a half from Panamá city, along the Pan-American Highway. La Pintada is a far smaller community, twenty minutes northwest of Penonomé at the end a secondary, two-lane paved road.

Panamanians who live in the capital tend to smile indulgently when I tell them about my fondness for these places.

“Why?” they usually ask in bewilderment. For the most part, residents of the nation’s capital tend to think lovingly of Penonomé only during Carnival, for during this week the town has a much admired parade in which the floats literally float on the waters of the Río Mendoza, the river that runs along the outskirts of the town.

During the rest of the year, Panamanians drive through Penonomé on their way elsewhere.

Whenever my wife and I stay in Penonomé, we take a day trip to La Pintada. What first took us there is one of my vices: on occasion, I enjoy smoking cigars. La Pintada is home to Joyas de Panamá: a factory that makes cigars for exportation. Buying them at the source saves money, and what’s even better, the quality of their product is on the par with the best anywhere.

But my wife and I also love the friendliness of the people of La Pintada. Every time we’ve visited we’ve made wonderful acquaintances. During our most recent trip, for instance, as we walked back toward the center of town after buying cigars (my wife and I until very recently did not own a car), a pick-up truck, loaded with wood for the construction of fence posts, pulled up next to us.

“Hello. Where are you from?” asked the driver in perfect American English.

The person speaking was Louis Archuleta, a Mexican-American, native of New Mexico. When we told him that we lived in Panamá, Louis invited us, perfect strangers, to join him and his wife for lunch at his home. Although his spontaneous and generous gesture took us completely by surprise, we accepted.

Mr. Archuleta worked for the Panama Canal Company, from which he retired many years ago. He had first come to Panamá as an enlisted man in the US Army, and he first came to La Pintada with a group of Army engineers who were mapping the area. It was then, a little over fifty years ago, that he met his wife, Olda, a native of this pueblo. Louis fell in love with Olda and with La Pintada and, together, they bought a small finca. On this land, over the course of forty years, they’ve built a lovely home that’s surrounded by a breathtaking garden and with a pond in back that's worthy of a picture-book. Olda, who attended college in Iowa for two years, has exquisite taste in decorating. Their home combines, and to perfection, the styles of New Mexico and rural Panamá.

A German couple, friends of the Archuletas that have also fallen in love with La Pintada, joined us for lunch that day. They plan to build a bed and breakfast in the pueblo, which at the moment lacks overnight accommodations for visitors. The couple is also financing a small-scale a housing development in the hope of attracting other retirees to La Pintada.

The lunch was lovely and the conversation light and engaging. To top everything off, while we were having desert, I noticed a strange ripple on the placid surface of the pond. And then, suddenly, and to my great shock, I saw a crocodile emerge from the water, energetically flapping its jaws as it devoured something it had caught.

“Where did that caimán come from?” I asked with my mouth wide open in amazement.

“From a nearby river,” said Louis. “He just strolled over to the pond and made it his home.”

Because Central American pueblos are quiet places, where one has plenty of time to reflect on life, people have time for one another. In the nearly five years we’ve lived in the city of Panama, my wife and I have never been invited to lunch while we were out shopping. And we certainly never had the opportunity to share a meal with a crocodile and his owners.

And this is precisely what we like about living in a pueblo: the experience of sharing with others, even strangers, is heightened, reminding us how humankind is all connected.

Local Hero—At Least for a Day

Every hero becomes a bore at last.
Ralph Waldo Emerson


El Conquistador, the high school paper of Balboa Academy, where I teach, published an article about me in its April issue. The acknowledgement, of course, was very flattering. And, for one day, I got to be a celebrity.

Here’s the article:

Dr. Sirias Gets Serious
By Maria Kisling

Dr. Sirias may be part of the English staff at school, but what you may not know is that he is also the author of the books Bernardo and the Virgin and Meet Me Under the Ceiba. In addition to his published books, he has helped co-write and edit other books, such as Julia Alvarez: A Critical Companion, Conversations with Rudolfo Anaya, and Tropical Town and Other Poems.

Dr. Sirias’s book, Bernardo and the Virgin, is about a man named Bernardo who witnesses a glow around the Virgin Mary, who then tells him to spread the message of peace and faith to his people. The story is based on actual events in Bernardo Martinez’s life. The story also teaches many lessons.

At the age of 11, Dr. Sirias moved to Nicaragua, where his family originated. He claims this was a significant milestone in his life.

Dr. Sirias got his doctorate in Spanish at the University of Arizona. He returned to Nicaragua in 1999 and then in 2002 moved to Panama.

He is currently working on the novel The Saint of Santa Fe. To find out more about this story, ask Dr. Sirias directly.

In Dr. Sirias’s web log, he relates that once a college professor read his composition and told him that his writing skills were so poor that he suggested he try looking for another career field in college. This comment stuck in Dr. Sirias’s mind for years, but nevertheless, he knew that he could write, and he kept doing so. Through his perseverance, he proved his skills and published his stories and novels to the world.

To read more about Dr. Sirias and his web logs, go to his website at www.silviosirias.com

The Price of Perfection—On Reading In Cold Blood

I doubt that any writer in any language living at the time of the Kansas murders could have written In Cold Blood with the severe control that Capote exercised. By that I mean the depiction of an Aeschylean theme without morose moralizing; I mean the choice of precisely the right vocabulary; I mean the management of tension and horror without collapsing into bathos; I mean the telling of a highly personal story—his interaction with two disgusting murderers—without allowing himself to become a central character; I mean also the pioneering of a new style of novel writing. For all these reasons Capote can be praised for having produced a chilling masterpiece. No one but he could have done it at that time, and few could equal it now.
James Michener

Every time I pick up In Cold Blood I read it all the way through, as if I didn’t write it. It’s really quite a perfect book, you know. I wouldn’t change a thing in it.
Truman Capote


The film Capote moved me to read In Cold Blood again. A little more than twenty years ago, when I had last done so, I wasn’t quite capable of appreciating the genius behind its creation; thus, at the time, I read Truman Capote’s masterpiece as merely a compelling account of a gruesome and cruel mass murder that took place in the wheat plains of western Kansas, in 1959.

And then, a couple of years ago, I read Lawrence Grobel’s Conversations with Capote—an engaging collection of interviews that Grobel conducted with the author between 1982 and 1984 (the year of Capote’s death). In his exchanges with Grobel, Capote is outspoken, candid, and biting in his opinions about art, film, literature, and people. What’s more, Capote places himself above his subjects throughout —looking down from his pedestal on all of creation as he critiques everyone and everything in it. Yet in spite of Capote’s unflinching stance of superiority, the reader cannot help but be in awe of his remarkable wit and formidable intellect.

After rereading In Cold Blood, I had to ask myself: how can a writer with such a seemingly enormous ego, a man with such an inflated sense of self, be the same as the virtually undetectable narrator behind the telling of the tale in In Cold Blood?

This true crime story—the brutal murders of a family of four on an isolated Kansas farm—inspired Truman Capote to enter a bleak, forsaken world. But the account the author brings back from his incursion into the psyche of these irrational killings does, indeed, appear to tell itself, as if the story possessed a will and a mind of its own. Throughout In Cold Blood, the narrative moves forward at a relentless pace, and is told with a supremely authoritative yet virtually untraceable voice. Because of Capote’s mastery over voice and point of view, his most renowned work is bound to stand the test of time. I have no doubt that In Cold Blood will be long remembered as a bold and innovative literary creation. And, as Capote told Lawrence Grobel, that was his aim: “I wanted to write what I called a non-fiction novel—a book that read exactly like a novel except that every word of it would be absolutely true.”

Yes, Truman Capote fulfilled his objective—totally and without question.

But as the postscript of the film Capote suggests, writing In Cold Blood drained the man of his soul—in the artistic and animistic connotations of the word—and Capote never produced another work of consequence for the remaining nineteen years of his life. He admits that the price he had to pay for writing In Cold Blood far exceeded what he had anticipated when he confides to Grobel: “I certainly wouldn’t do it again. If I knew or had known what was going to be involved, I never would have started it, regardless of what the end result would’ve been.”

While in pursuit of a new literary form, Truman Capote unknowingly walked straight into the heart of darkness—spending close to seven years exploring the dankest dungeons of malevolence. But in spite of the ghastly toll the experience had on him, Truman Capote managed to leave behind one of the greatest feats in literary history.

Moreover, in spite of the dark, sinister subject of In Cold Blood, Capote was able to tell the tale of those senseless, cold-blooded killings in stunningly poetic language. The reader only needs to consider, and briefly at that, the astonishingly striking alliteration in the final clause of the work’s closing sentence: “Then, starting home, he walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind the big sky, and the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat.”

Never again, I would think, shall human wickedness be described so breathtakingly.