Hello Otterites!
I’m here hanging in Studio M with my copy of Holidays in Hell pressed tight, re-reading “36 Hours in Managua, An In-Depth Report”, PJ’s commentary on the Sandinistas in 1987. It is one of my favorite PJ pieces and there’s an awesome nugget in it I’ve used in life, especially work. Now that sounds a bit crazy to take something PJ wrote about Latin American politics in the 1980s and make it a mantra for how you work, but that’s where I am.
So the background of the pull quote is PJ’s running down the horrible Communist Sandinista Front but does give them some credit, over any other Nicaraguan opposition group, for blowing up the extra horrible non-Communist scumbag Somoza government. The qualifier is the money shot though:
But it’s one thing to burn down the shit house and another thing entirely to install plumbing.
See, you can gripe all you want, but that’s just burning down the shit house. If you have a real solution, that’s installing plumbing. You can get tired of doing things the way they’ve always been done but come up with a working alternative. Bring solutions to the table, not just problems.
Well Otterites, thanks for indulging my need for another paean to my hero PJ and how he influenced my life. Working through my grief here with these posts, so a few more might come your way.
The cover graphic is filched from his publisher, Grove Atlantic. Check out his stuff if you haven’t already.
