What Cannot Be Predicted

You can only predict things after they have happened.
Eugene Ionesco

Violence among young people is an aspect of their desire to create. They don’t know how to use their energies creatively so they do the opposite and destroy.
Anthony Burgess

Before it was about who to blame or what could have been done different, it was about how do we take care of each other.
Tim Kaine, Governor of Virginia


The tragic and senseless shootings at Virginia Tech on April 16 affected me deeply—as it did millions of others.

Words fail even the most eloquent when confronted with such a brutal, sinister act. As a teacher, what most troubled me about the Virginia Tech tragedy is that human beings were murdered while passing on or acquiring knowledge. Teaching and learning the wisdom of previous generations are hallowed rites, and that’s why the actions of Chou Seung-Hui were, in the eyes of many, sacrilegious.

In light of the eight-member panel report investigating the academic community's failure to prevent that devastating and incomprehensible event—as well as an imperfect attempt to explain why I believe an act of this nature cannot be predicted—I’d like to relate a disturbing incident that occurred in one of my classes, nearly twenty years ago.

At the time I was a doctoral student and relatively new to teaching. The happening took place in a Beginning Spanish class—a level I loved to teach. No longer do I remember the names of any of the the students (alas, with the passage of time so many pupils have gone through my classrooms that I stopped, long ago, trying to keep track), but the occurrence I’m about to recall has become—in my mind, and perhaps in the minds of a few of my former students—frozen in time.

In every one of my Beginning Spanish classes I incorporated an activity students found enjoyable: “Mostrar y decir”—Show and Tell. It was a safe activity for people new to the language that took them back to their kindergarten year, when language was miraculous and sharing with one’s peers was an innocent and happy experience. I enjoyed “Mostrar y decir” as well. In fact, many of the fascinating items students brought to share over the years remain etched in my memory.

That semester, in that particular Beginning Spanish class, there was a student who stood out from his peers: he was older than anyone else in the class—in his mid-twenties, while the others were still in their late teens—and, to put it delicately, he would’ve benefited from a course on anger management. The young man had once snapped at me when I asked him to respond to a question in Spanish. (It was a Spanish class after all, wasn’t it?) For certain, I seldom encountered that type of a behavior in college. What’s more, he also had expressed his annoyance, and rather sharply, at a couple of his classmates, snapping at them as well for reasons I can no longer recall but that surely didn’t merit that type of response.

Although his behavior troubled me, I wasn’t alarmed enough to report him to the university authorities. In all honesty, he didn’t seem to pose a physical threat to anyone.

And by mid-semester—which was the time of year that I always dusted-off “Show and Tell”—every person in the classroom, including myself, had gotten to know one another fairly well. Thus, we all knew that this student, in addition to having a hair-trigger temper, had served as a MP (Military Police officer) in the US Army.

The day that his turn came to “Show and Tell,” he walked to the front of the classroom—holding a black, medium-sized canvas bag in his hand. He stood behind the podium, placed the bag on the teacher’s desk, opened it, and pulled out a submachine gun as casually as if he were pulling out his favorite book or his most treasured compact disc. He then proceeded to tell us—in Spanish—about the item he had brought to college to share with his classmates.

I realized immediately that every single person in that room, including myself, was at his mercy. My first impulse was to rush to the front of the class, stop the presentation, and confiscate the weapon. But I also knew that as a former MP, he could neutralize me in an instant if he meant to do us harm. Besides—I said to myself in one of the tens of thousands of thoughts that flashed through my mind—if our armed forces had trusted him to keep order, who was I to question their judgment?

But, to be honest, I was terrified. I could clearly see the headlines in the paper: 20 students and teacher killed in a college Spanish class. And still today, nearly twenty years later, I can vividly recall the paralysis brought on from feeling utterly powerless.

So, instead of acting on my initial impulse to do something, I chose to remain as calm as my nerves would allow. I glanced around the room—discreetly—to see how the students were handling the situation. What I saw was reassuring: every student present was absolutely calm, as if a short-tempered former MP wielding a lethal weapon in front of a beginning Spanish class was the most natural thing in the world.

I was scared, almost out of my wits, but the students’ calmness was both soothing and contagious. Based on their reaction, I sat through the entire presentation grinning like a fool who loved having submachine guns in his classroom.

After what seemed like an eternity, the student’s presentation ended (not before he showed us how to load the clip.) He then answered a few questions (that’s how at ease the students appeared to be—they asked questions, and in SPANISH!), placed the ammunition and the submachine gun back in the canvas bag, and returned to his seat.

For the remainder of the class the minutes went by painfully slow. And when the hour finally ended, I was still a bundle of nerves. The former MP was among the first to leave the classroom. As I breathe a huge sigh of relief, and as I checked my pulse to make sure that my heart rate was returning to normal, several students approached me.

“Sr. Sirias,” they said, “Thank you for remaining so calm. We were scared to death, but when we saw how at ease you were, we knew everything would be fine.”

I accepted their compliments without mentioning that it was their calmness that kept me from storming out of the room in fear for my life.

After that experience, I developed a list of items that were forbidden to bring to class for “Show and Tell”—weapons, of course, were at the top of the list. Although I continued to include “Mostrar y decir” in my Spanish classes—and for many more years at that—I never had another troubling incident.

As the instructor of that class, I knew that the student who had brought the weapon had a problem with his temper, but it never would’ve occurred to me to ask campus security to monitor him.

Admittedly, there were numerous indications that Chou Seung-Hui posed a serious threat; but could this wretchedly misguided young man have been prevented from stockpiling weapons and later opening fire on his fellow students and on the faculty?

No one, I believe, not even the brightest professor, could’ve been that prescient to foresee what was about to happen. And even if this troubled individual had been expelled from Virginia Tech, short of locking him up in a maximum security prison before he committed any crime, he would have only gone elsewhere to satisfy his lust for inflicting pain.

And the truth is that the vast majority of us could never imagine—even in our worst nightmares—that anyone would be capable of carrying out such a horrendous act. And the thought that this crime was largely unimaginable gives me a small measure of comfort; and that’s precisely why it’s impossible to predict abominable acts such as the one that took place that heartbreaking April morning at Virginia Tech.

The Evolution of a Dream—On Becoming a Teacher

Teaching is a good distraction, and I am in contact with young people, which is very gratifying.
Manuel Puig


As an adolescent, living in Nicaragua, I went through a phase that lasted a couple of years in which I wanted, with all of my heart, to become a Catholic priest. I’m sure that has a lot to do with why priests figure rather prominently in my fiction.

Back then the rites and rituals of the Catholic Church mesmerized me—and I spent hours fantasizing what I would look like in a cassock, and my head was filled with visions of me celebrating mass in a church bulging with reverential parishioners. During those heady days, I could not imagine a more noble cause than devoting my life to helping the faithful along the path to spiritual wholeness.

But my dreams of becoming a priest evaporated the moment girls became fascinating and radiant beings.

Years later, as a college undergraduate, I saw myself as a social activist, helping to save the world. Thus, as anyone can see, becoming a teacher was the furthest thing from my mind. (I do admit, though, that as a junior in college I started to indulge myself with the fantasy of becoming a college professor; but at the time that dream seemed impossible.)

It literally took an act of war to get me into teaching. This happened in 1978, when I returned to Nicaragua after completing my undergraduate degree. In September of that year, after a devastating and bloody two-week uprising against Anastasio Somoza Debayle’s regime, several American teachers at the American-Nicaraguan School, who had come to Nicaragua expressly to teach at that institution, packed up their belongings and fled the country. In dire need, the high-school principal offered me a position as a long-term substitute and, being jobless at the time, I accepted.

I discovered at once that I enjoyed being in front of a classroom. Helping young people to learn was as rewarding as I imagined celebrating mass would be; and although I lacked formal training as a teacher, I found out that I had a knack for teaching.

Still, in spite of that gratifying initial experience, it would take quite some time for me to find my true niche as a teacher. I returned to the States in July of 1979, twelve days before the Sandinistas ousted Somoza, with the dream of someday attending graduate school. In California I bounced around for a while, teaching English as a Second Language and then Sixth Grade, before I decided to abandon the public school system to go back to college to get a master’s in Spanish.

From the first meeting of the first college class I taught as a graduate assistant I knew I had found a haven. And that’s when my formal training in education began in earnest as I took course after course in applied linguistics to learn how to best teach students the intricacies of language.

And now, many years later, and living in Panamá, I’ve come full circle—I’m back in high school classroom, admittedly a little out of my comfort zone and sometimes feeling as if I’m starting all over again.

But that’s what I love about being a teacher—as I help others learn, I’m learning myself, something new each day.

And today, in retrospect, I realize that my adolescent desire to become a priest was not too far off the mark. I now understand that because the teachers who most inspired me were priests, I leaped to the assumption that I wanted to join their brotherhood. And in a way, I did—like them, although I didn’t become a man of the cloth, I ended up becoming a teacher.

An Interview Revisited

All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.
Lloyd Alexander


Nina Forsythe, who conducted this interview, is a very dear friend. Although distance and time continue to separate us, she is someone I hold close to my heart, and I think of her often. We met in Nicaragua, were a group of us that worked together formed a remarkably strong community. This community is The Gang at Lario’s to whom Bernardo and the Virgin is dedicated. Nina is a gifted writer and poet herself—her poems regularly appear in the leading literary journals of the United States. She is also an excellent editor, and thanks to her diligent work, the manuscript of Bernardo was in virtually impeccable state when it reached Northwestern University Press, the publishers.

Nina also wrote the review I posted last week. I treasure her thoughts on the Bernardo because she knows the novel as well as anyone. I admit that her review is very flattering; and when I first read it I suspected that Nina might be biased in my favor. However, when other favorable reviews followed in Rain Taxi, The San Antonio Express, Bookslut, Catholics Today, and The Scruffy Dog Review, I was relieved—as well as delighted—to see that Nina opinions were shared by other critics.

Nina’s interview appeared in The Siouxland Weekender of Sioux City, Nebraska, in the July 14-20, 2005 issue. Because I had so much fun answering Nina’s questions, I’ve decided to revisit our friendly chat. At one time the piece was accessible on the journal’s website. The site, however, was recently refurbished and the interview can no longer be found online. Thus, I was to preserve our conversation on this weblog.

Tailor’s visions of Virgin Mary captured in fiction

By Nina Forsythe


Picture yourself in a tropical town in the evening. Cool breezes stir the palms and bougainvillea, salsa music is in the air, cigars have been lit on the front porch, and the Cuba Libre is flowing. This is the setting in which I first heard the story of Bernardo Martínez as the author, Silvio Sirias, was writing it.

Sirias, a Nicaraguan-American, had come back to Nicaragua—after many years in academia in the U.S.—and discovered the story of the poor tailor who experienced several apparitions of the Virgin Mary soon after the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship.

“Upon hearing Bernardo’s life story,” says Sirias, “I immediately knew that the best way to capture its many dramatic and magical dimensions was through fiction.” The result is Bernardo and the Virgin just out from Northwestern University Press. Sirias will be reading from his novel from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, July 20 at Barnes and Noble. A book signing will follow.

Nina Forsythe: Why fiction? Why not a biography?

Silvio Sirias: I love reading biographies; however, they appeal mostly to the intellect. Fiction, though, aims straight for the reader’s heart, and that was my target. In addition, a novel allows us to suspend disbelief. That lets me say to the reader: “Sit back a spell to enjoy this incredible story I came across while in Nicaragua.”

N.F.: How close to the truth did you stick to portraying Bernardo, who was, after all, a real person?

S.S.: The only times in the novel where Bernardo’s character speaks directly is when he describes the apparitions. At these times I stay very close to his version of events because of a promise I made to him while he was still alive. But outside of that I had considerable creative license. That’s why I chose to tell the rest of his story through other characters. However, I always sought to stay true to the essence of the man and to the defining moments of his life.

N.F.: You seemed to have a lot of fun with the other characters. There’s the Nicaraguan émigré who constantly botches English expressions, the priest who’s nostalgic for the Inquisition, and—my favorite—the literary theorist who’s so impressed with himself. Were the secondary characters created out of whole cloth?

S.S.: Well, Nina, while living in Nicaragua and conducting research I had many delightfully surreal experiences, and I met many interesting folk who ended up—vastly exaggerated, of course—in the novel. To give you one example, toward the novel’s end there’s a Spanish priest who shoots fish with an AK-47. This actually happened. He invited me and an English friend (also in the novel) to go “hunting” with him. He drove us to a nearby river, told us to hide behind a fallen tree trunk because the bullets might ricochet, fired his weapon three times into the water, jumped in fully clothed, and came out holding three large fish, which we ate for lunch while he told bawdy jokes about bull testicles. And that’s just one of many incidents.

N.F.: Do you have a favorite character?

S.S.: They’re all my children, and I’m terribly fond of each one. I do confess, though, a preference for the ones who make me laugh out loud. In my favorite chapter, they all come together during a mass pilgrimage to the apparition site. I still enjoy reading that chapter—for me it’s like attending a fun and touching family reunion.

N.F.: Is one of your goals to change the way Americans think about Nicaragua?

S.S.: Definitely. Throughout the 1980s, the decade of the Contra War, Nicaragua was in the news everyday. I think Americans got sick of hearing about Nicaragua every evening while they were eating dinner. Although the war ended fifteen years ago, it left a lasting impression that Nicaraguans are hopelessly violent people, and because of this the country has been placed in the drawer of things Americans would prefer to forget. But you lived in Nicaragua for three years and you’ve seen that most Nicaraguans are gentle, caring people with incredibly generous spirits. That’s a great part of what I wish to convey in Bernardo and the Virgin.

A Review of Bernardo and the Virgin—Revisited

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
W. Somerset Maugham


As I return to teaching—summer vacation having reached its end—I’m taking this week off from writing a new entry. Instead, I’ll act upon a long-held wish to preserve this review of Bernardo and the Virgin, since it is no longer available online. I have to confess that I greatly enjoy Nina Forsythe’s take on Bernardo. The piece originally appeared in the July 10, 2005 issue of the Sioux City Journal.

‘Bernardo and the Virgin’ author to give book signing at local book store.

By Nina Forsythe

What Americans remember about the Nicaraguan Sandinista revolution of the 1970s and the Contra War of the 1980s, if they remember it at all, is the Iran-Contra scandal. That’s understandable, given the press the latter received, but most of us have no idea how the events of those turbulent decades were perceived by Nicaraguans. One of the most fascinating news stories that hardly got any ink in the U.S. was a series of visitations by the Virgin Mary reported by a poor tailor and sacristan in the back of beyond village of Cuapa. The effects of the apparitions, beginning in May 1980, less than 10 months after the Sandinistas had finally toppled the Somoza dictatorship, reverberated throughout a deeply divided, war-ravaged nation.

This real event is the basis for a new novel by Nicaraguan-American Silvio Sirias. Bernardo and the Virgin tells the tale of the seer, the apparitions, and how they touched the lives of the people of Nicaragua. At the heart of this work of fiction is the real-life tailor Bernardo Martínez, but woven around him are the stories of numerous fictional characters whose lives intersect, in one way or another, with his.

And what a motley crew they are. They run the gamut from a giddy, young girl impatient for love to an abrasive seller of religious supplies and her womanizing partner, from a right-wing crusading priest (and CIA operative) to a hardened Sandinista National Security agent, from a devoted 4’11” nun who carries around a 2” statue of the Virgin to a professor having a devastating mid-life crisis. They even include the ex-pat Nicaraguan community in the U.S. Some try to distort the Virgin’s message in various ways, either to undermine the church or to undermine the government, but most are preoccupied by their personal troubles. The stories range from deeply moving to humorous. One of the most hilarious chapters is, believe it or not, about a self-absorbed literary theorist.

The cast of characters, varied as it is, does not become unwieldy because their stories eventually intertwine. As a result, the reader gets a different perspective from an earlier character. Sometimes a later story undermines a previous interpretation; other stories provide a fuller understanding of an earlier event. Not all the characters are equally fleshed out; Father Damian Innocent MacManus, for example, seems more caricature than real. While there are such two-dimensional people in life, they don’t seem to fare will in fiction. Nevertheless, what we come away with in the end is an understanding of Nicaraguans during the latter part of the twentieth century: their suffering and longings, their losses and hopes, their mysticism and bawdiness, their idealism and resignation. The author writes that he hopes to “give readers some insight into what it has meant to be Nicaraguan during such tumultuous times.” In this entertaining and moving novel, he has done so splendidly.

Balboa Academy: Year One

It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.
Henri Frederic Amiel

No one should teach who is not in love with teaching.
Margaret E. Sangster

Every second of every day of the first three months I kept wondering what I had gotten myself into.

Although my first teaching experience—many years ago now—had been at the high school level, I soon made the jump to college, getting a doctorate along the way for the right to continue doing so for the rest of my life.

But the privilege of living in Latin America comes with a price. Initially, I thought I had landed in the best of both worlds—first at Ave Maria College, in Nicaragua, and then at Florida State University—Panamá—working within the American system of higher education, which I greatly admire, while residing in Latin America.

Alas, both experiences were terrible disappointments (and I won’t dwell on this here, for these institutions are now part of my past, and happily so).

But in order to stay in Latin America—specifically in Panamá, a country I’ve come to adore—after a couple of years of writing full-time (a highly unprofitable venture), I accepted an offer to teach English and Spanish literature at Vasco Núñez de Balboa Academy, the school my wife has worked for, and joyfully, for the past four years. (Balboa Academy, as the institution is more commonly known, was founded and is owned by teachers who once worked for U.S. Canal Zone schools.)

I must confess that my first months working with students from grades 10-12 was disorienting. The attentive college-age audiences immediately became a thing of the past. From the onset I found myself standing before restless adolescents for whom my “professorial” (although I don’t think I fit the stereotype) style of teaching was—to put it succinctly—boring. The first four months I struggled every hour of every day to retain control of the classroom, and this hollowed ground, which for me had been a refuge, a sanctuary, had become a battlefield.

In retrospect, I realize that the problem was not the students but with the way I trying to teach people of their age group. And, although at the time it was painful, the only way to improve the situation was for me to question every single teaching method I had been using—and rather successfully, I believe—for years.

Fortunately, after a few months, things began to change for the better. But the turning point came when, while spending an evening with friends, which included Bill and Jackie Madonna (American ex-pats my wife and I first met in Nicaragua and who now also make Panamá—living only a couple of blocks away from us—their home), I must have been whining a bit too much about my frustration about teaching high school because Bill, who is known for speaking his mind, interrupted me and said, “If I were you, instead of complaining, when I get up each morning I’d say to myself, ‘Today I’m going to make a difference.’”

So, with nothing to lose, I started following Bill's advice, saying to myself every morning while I showered: "Today I'm going to make a difference."

Mantras often do work, particularly when they help to alter a negative outlook.

From that point on my life as a high school teacher started to improve, and quickly.

Last year I learned more about teaching than over the last fifteen years combined; and I grew as a teacher as I had not done since entering the profession.

What’s more, at Balboa Academy—contrary to my previous two experiences with “American” institutions in Latin America—I’m was thrilled to see that students and teachers are treated with respect.

It’s not surprising to me, then, that in spite of last year’s heady challenges—or perhaps because of them—as my summer vacation approaches its waning hours, I’m looking forward to year two.