Engaging
Jake Warga is a prolific freelance photographer/journalist-cum-wanderi ng minstrel whose stories have taken him to such far-flung places as Israel, South Africa and Australia. He certainly doesn't need my plaudits. His piece under review here was aired on "All Things Considered" last week. His other stories have regularly been broadcast on various NPR and PRI shows.
I was blown away by "Postcard from Guatemala"'s humility and generosity of spirit. After describing his mother, dead for a decade, he comes upon a homeless German widow while he's treading the backwaters of Guatemala. With his mic carefully attuned to the woman's mix of English and German-accented Spanish, Warga's portrait of the lady is neither sentimental nor condescending. Except for his written summary statement, "No matter where you go, the past goes with you," his script barely talks about deja vu, that a disheveled, skin-and-bones 55-year-old street person named Olga thousands of miles from home can bring back the image of his American mom wasted away from a terminal illness, Warga subtly conveys what many listeners might call his "message."
With gentle probing questions that expose his interviewee as a liar -- she says she doesn't smoke, then lights a cigarette; she says she doesn't drink, yet it's clear she's a tippler -- Warga gives us a nuanced character whom we care about.
This cutaway was aired the Tuesday after Mother's Day. It's obviously more than a holiday special.
I'd say Warga's mini-docudrama resembles a kind of one-act verse play, something that could have been co-written by Malcolm Lowry and Bertolt Brecht. It's a first-class act with three-hundred-and-sixty-degree appeal.
Listen up, PDs!
James Reiss
Wilmette, IL
May 17, 2008
No matter where you go, the past goes with you
