Excerpts From Potter’s Writing
I’m Still Here, a novel
Money Laundering
“We do have a need,” Sister admitted, as Loco on the other side of the partition continued his effort to fix the unfixable. And Loco had heard her sigh that her appeals to the diocese, to foreign charities had not been answered. Beneficial work in communities suffered greatly when guerrillas were fighting openly with the Guardia Civil. Bodies were found in the street nearly every morning, and the Santuario’s connection to the Maryknoll sisters and other interfering radicals had damaged their reputation with the local authorities as well as with Rome.
“Good work should be rewarded,” continued the sympathetic man on the other side of the window, who went on to ask for her blessing, in exchange for which he offered a donation, because a mere gesture cannot measure the value of a blessing, “Let us say a donation of $50,000 so that you can continue your good work.” And the way the transaction was to be done was that the sympathetic man would deliver $500,000 in cash, in small denominations, which could be described as having come from the collection plate and from bequests and fees from members of the community grateful for the fine work undertaken by the Sisters. And the shopping bags full of cash in small denominations Sister would then deposit in the Santuario’s own account. Then at a later date she would issue a check back to the man’s organization. Conveniently, the gentleman had the check already made out, the stated date filled in, needing only her signature as trustee of the Order’s bank account, for $450,000.
Santa Muerte, a Central American death cult
… a psychic’s studio with a sign: “Santa Muerte; Consejeria Espiritual y Sentimental; Exorcismos . . .” Inside the space behind a pane of glass, like the viewing window of a hearse, stood a skeleton in a wedding dress, a veil thinly covering the skull, the gown low-cut over the ribcage, and falling from the hips a short-hemmed Confirmation dress that strangely resembled a “naughty nurse” outfit. This effigy stood on a dais looking out at the citizens of the barrio from bottomless eye sockets, a rictus grin leering from the fleshless jaw. In one hand she held a skull, in the other a scythe with filigree engraved on its blade. A pace or two behind her was a half-size mannikin caballero smoking a puro. It was a tomb sculpture animated by the gleeful idea that death was fiesta and liberation, promising happiness and fulfillment, and that the half-alive smokey unawareness of the now would expand beyond the grave into a fully realized something more in the to-be.
Guerrilla Wedding
Someone thought up this scheme as a way to distribute materiél to groups of fighters. It happened at a staged wedding at a park in Mejicanos. Some cadres showed up and decorated the park with streamers and cutouts of hearts and lovebirds. There was a guitar band, a priest, mountains of presents on tables. Guests came from all over the city, people who were strangers to the neighborhood, which in itself didn’t look right. The presents actually contained grenades, pistols, ammo clips, howitzer parts. It was strange to see the guests departing with the gifts and the bride and groom hanging around empty-handed, sipping champagne with the priest. It all came undone when neighborhood kids showed up expecting free sandwiches and there weren’t any; this important detail had been overlooked. The so-called guests vamoosed before the counterrevolutionaries arrived, but the plan only barely succeeded.
Resurrecting the resurrection drug – Nature Medicine 8(9):908 Sep, 2002
Over the past decade, the pharmaceutical industry has been steadily increasing its investment in lifestyle drugs (see next page). Although this effort is geared more toward capturing revenue from the developed countries of the West, there can occasionally be a positive outcome for developing nations. Eflornithine is one such example and its development also illustrates just how far public-private partnerships have come.
Eflornithine is used to treat advanced human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), or sleeping sickness, the incidence of which has increased nearly a 100-fold in the last 40 years, returning to levels similar to those in the 1950s. But the compound originated from a depilatory product marketed to women in North America by Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS). So how did a cosmetic product recently become a life-saving drug for a parasitic disease?
Partnerships and the critical mass – Nature 395:410-11, Sep 24, 1998
Academic faculties today may have insufficient openings to accommodate all prospective candidates, but industry partnerships are generating opportunities for basic and applied researchers to help make up the difference. Funding indicators reported by the US National Science Foundation confirm that collaborations between the academic and industrial sectors are on the rise. In the United States, investment by industry in basic research performed at universities and colleges increased in real terms between 1991 and 1997, rising to a total of $1.05 billion. An even longer term trend is indicated by the fact that co-authorship of journal articles by US industrial researchers with their colleagues in academic and government labs has been increasing steadily across all fields since 1981.