People - My Sister Yadira

Yadira -I have been told- means "beautiful among the beautiful" in some exotic tongue. Since she was a girl my sister has been pretty although for Rubenesque tastes. With a hiatus, since I demanded being put with her in the same kindergarten class, we went to the same class until we graduated from high school. Just after she graduated, she was in an unplanned pregnancy. Yadira was not going to give up her dreams to become a teacher- attended college at the same time took care of her baby. And later worked for a year in a remote village in the highlands, visiting her baby only on weekends, until she got a job closer to her home.

Yadira has always been entrepeneurial and thrifty, having acquired more real estate and bussinesses than anyone else in the extended family. She has always been a model of perseverance, visiting mom every week, rain or shine. Once, we traveled together to visit mom, then living in a village in the highlands. An enourmous mudslide had destroyed miles of road the day before. Yadira and I held hands and crossed a train bridge jumping from one sleeper to the next, 150 feet above whitewater, and then walked 10 miles for a tracherous, muddy track until we reached mom's cabin.

A couple of years ago, we lived half an hour away from each other but did not visit very often, and I am sorry for that now. It has been said that you value something or someone only when one losses that person or thing and learns the hard way how important that person or valuable thing was for you, and miss the loss badly.

I’m your future, son. Don’t cry.

When asked to write a 6-word story, author Stephen Baxter wrote: I’m your future, child. Don’t cry.

Paraphasing Baxter, I would tell my son Dan, shown in this video, if he had not realized that I, the one holding the camera, was the closest thing to that "Dan of the future"

People - My Sister Miyaray

Millaray means "Gold Flower" in Araucan, the language of Amerindians living in what is now Chile. Millaray was the wife of Caupolican, a warrior-chieftain. Seeing him crying after being defeated by Spaniard Conquistadors, she threw her baby upon him saying she did not want a child from a coward.

My sister Miyaray is a strong woman too. And being very feminine, she enjoyed nice clothes since she was a young girl. Later in life, she did not see any conflict between being a well-dressed professional (an excellent one by the way) and rebelling against injustice, corruption and lack of democracy in her home country.

This incident illustrates just that: My sister was in a demonstration against Fujimori's corrupt dictatorship. Miyaray was all dressed in black, with an alpaca designer suit, Argentinian high-heeled boots, acrilic nails and an expensive handbag. The demonstration, comprised mostly by professional women, turned ugly when police tried to dissolve it, and demonstrators battled police with their signs and handbags . On that night, Miyaray's family was watching the news on TV when they saw women resisting police. Mario, Miyaray's husband, commented that these despicable feminists seemed lacking a life, a home, a man in their lives. Then the camera focused on Miyaray hitting a cop with her handbag. Hey, that is mom! cried Indira, Miyaray's daughter.

People - My Sister Lili

A Saturday noon, I was doing household chores and waiting for my wife to have lunch together. We lived in a small apartment in downdown Lima, that a friend rented us for a nominal amount. Suddenly I heard my wife shouting. I opened the door and I saw her being followed by a large man with angry expression. I asked my wife to enter our apartment , closed the door behind me and faced the man. What is going on? I asked. The man did not respond but ran to the bottom of the passage. I followed him. He picked from the floor the heavy iron cover of a drain, swinging it as if he was going to blow my brains out. I thought that under these conditions the best defense was to attack immediately and tried to get closer, but since my eyes focused on the man's hands, I tripped on the drain the man just uncovered and fell to the floor. The man got closer to me. I thought I was going to die.

To my luck my sister Lili arrived to visit in that precise moment. Seeing the man attacking me she acted immediately. Jumping up in the air she hit the man on his chest with both feet, then clipped the man to the floor, twisting his arm on his back. Somebody came to inform the man was a schizophrenic neighbor, his relatives appeared to control him.

I had thought that in a gesture of chivalry I was going to defend my lady on that day. Instead, I ended up being saved by a lady.

How to: Milk a brown recluse spider

Loxosceles sp.'s venom can be "milked" (extracted) in more than a way:

a) Kill the spider, dissect its fangs and the venom glands just below the fangs, crush them in a mortar. The result is a crude venom, contaminated with hemolymph (spider's blood) that is venemous by itself. You will need to catch more spiders next time you need venom.

b) Take the spider out of its container, hold the legs from one side (all of them, otherwise the spider will self-mutilate and escape). Flip the spider and stimulate with low voltage around the fangs. Electricity will make muscle fibers around the gland to contract. Collect the venom with a capillary tube. Put the spider back in its container. As described, the procedure is extremely dangerous, the spider can easily bite you. Its venom may cause skin necrosis, hemolysis, renal failure and death. I milked Loxosceles this way when I was young, and can only explain this self-destructive male adolescent behavior -disguised as scientific project- as a consequence of sexual repression.

c) Anesthesize the spider exposing it to 100% CO2 for a 1-2 minutes. Proceed as in b) without any risk of being bitten.