Present, Past, Future

 What's on your mind?, the social networking site Facebook asks.

Another question is asked by what many say is the world's smartest website, Edge.  The editors of  Edge.org http://edge.org asked for responses from some of the planet's greatest thinkers to the question below:

"WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?" 

Here's a brief quote by a writer, Andrian Kreye, who is a German journalist who has also lived in the United States. 

"My observation had been a mere notion of the major difference between my native Europe and America, my adopted continent for a couple of decades. In Europe the present is perceived as the end point of history. In America the present is perceived as the beginning of the future."

I have been thinking about this for days, and wondering, if true, where Mexico and Latin America stand on the idea of the present, whether as end-point, like Europe, or as a starting-point, like the U.S.?

Latin America historically has taken so many cues from Europe, especially Spain, France and Italy: immigrants, legal system, literature, to name only a few. All this while living next door to the U.S. whose historical roots are in Spain's archrival Great Britain. 

As a borderlands resident, I can say that a primarily oral culture, such as mine and that of my parents and grandparents, a great emphasis was placed on the past. Family stories, history, traditions revered the past, including relatives who had died but were remembered often. The past was who you were: your name, your reputation, your worth was in your family and its good name.

As far as the future, I remember from my childhood that older relatives were generally well-disposed and optimistic, but there were also the perennial "if God wills it" (si Dios quiere) "may God will it" (Ojala (Allah) que sí), sprinklings of religious hesitations (signs of the cross and fingers crossed) nearly superstitious speech that nearly always accompanied descriptions of goals and dreams. An unspoken warning "Let's not be too bold-- you don't want to step outside your class or station and upset the natural order".

Meanwhile, in my 'Americana' up-bringing, it was in the schools and mass media culture that I was provided much of the future orientation that I possess. The future was who you could be, "grab all the gusto," "be all you can be", and those are only a few TV commercials.

I get dizzy thinking of the hundreds of movies, songs, books and the mythologies of TV programs whose American can-do spirit I've digested and adopted.

I'll keep pondering what the present means for me, and where I choose to land on the continuum of past - present - future orientation, if one can choose such a thing.

I mentioned the quote to a very wise friend, who added another interpretation about the present. She asked, instead of seeing the present as an end or a start, why not think of the present as simply the moment, now, the present, without a reference to the future or the past?

Lucky and Lucky Me

Lucky, our Maine Coon cat, doesn't know he's a Maine Coon, or a cat, nor that he's not a dog.

This holiday Lucky's given me a great gift to add to the hundreds of gifts he's given me since he adopted us in 2003.

Lucky often tags along on our walks with the dogs. He doesn't need an invitation to come along, or any encouragement. He just appears behind us, stays a few yards behind us or sometimes he zooms forward, ahead of us.

Sometimes on long hikes when it's hot, he plunks himself down on the caliche and quits, admirably getting one of us well-trained two-leggeds to pick him up and carry his hot little 15-pound furriness home in our arms.

Unlike my smart, little friend, I can get so tangled up and caught in labels and titles, names and symbols, that I confuse the words with something real. This holiday, as Lucky accompanied our little family/tribe on our daily walks, I loved being reminded by Lucky that labels don't have to limit us or keep any of us on the front porch. Each of us is much more than the labels that we or others use to describe us-- teacher, artist, 57 years-old, female, Latina, yellow-dog democrat.

The shorthand of language may be all we have to "tag" or describe, but it is important to remember the word is not equal to the vast, immeasurable mystery and thrill that is at the heart of our aliveness. The words don't do justice to the ineffable, intangible quality that is the spirit inside each of us. Thanks, Lucky.

Really New Media

Prepping for the new semester, making improvements to the website students use to access readings, links to viewings and assignments this week.

Peaceful and calm, as the season is upon us, and we enjoy family and friends near and far.

It's hard to see the outline of every pebble from the window of a speeding train, and so it is for me as I watch the mediascape as my students and I travel through time together.

I started teaching in the 1980's when we used textbooks. No DVD's or VCR's in the classroom, no cell phones in students pockets. Presentations were on poster board using cut-outs from magazines and newspapers. Now my students have their own You Tube channels and most feel utterly comfortable using multimedia software that I can't even start up.

We teach in Mass Communication about the industry that I began working in during the 1970's in radio, television and the newspaper in Laredo, Austin, and San Antonio.

Today that industry has effectively been eclipsed by the Internet, in the manner of all mass media, according to McLuhan: the new kid on the block adopts the programming of its predecessor (radio did it to vaudeville, TV did it to radio) and the beat goes on.

Seth Godin, however reminds us that it is more than the-beat-goes-on, because the Internet is a game-changer.

McLuhan might have thought of it as a return to life prior to the invention of mass media, when our stories weren't for sale or selling something (the commodification of information).

Here is Godin from his post today:

"Lifestyle media isn't a fad. It's what human beings have been doing forever, with a brief, recent interruption for a hundred years of professional media along the way. That interruption is fading away, and lifestyle media is resurging. People publish. Instead of denigrating user-generated content (what an obscure way to describe human stories), marketers need to understand that this is what we care about.

We shouldn't be surprised when someone chooses to publish their photos, their words, their art or their opinions. We should be surprised when they don't."

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/12/the-most-important-page-on-the-web-is-the-page-you-build-yourself.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fsethsmainblog+%28Seth%27s+Blog%29

Next to TED Talks, I count this writer as having the most valuable perspective on the Internet. I am encouraged and grateful for the impulses we humans have to share using media, whether via text, video, or the next platform.

View from the Borderlands: Happy Feast Day, Virgen de Guadalupe, We Need You ...

View from the Borderlands: Happy Feast Day, Virgen de Guadalupe, We Need You ...: In villages all across Mexico, high in the mountains, in the desert and in the jungles of the coasts, people awoke this morning to honor th...

Happy Feast Day, Virgen de Guadalupe, We Need You More Than Ever

In villages all across Mexico, high in the mountains, in the desert and in the jungles of the coasts, people awoke this morning to honor the virgencita, Our Lady of Guadalupe. Many are doing the same in the Southwest, in towns and cities.

The thought of this makes me happy inside. I like to imagine the many reasons we are getting up early on her feast day to celebrate. Some of us to give thanks for her help and guidance every day of the year's that's ending. Some of us to pray for a special reason for her protection and care. Some of us to mark the season, the calendar's march forward with a day of worship and thanksgiving; a tradition that repeats without our thinking of it like a heartbeat, a childhood rhyme or story that has become a part of who we are.

Here are the elements: Tonantzin, corn goddess of the Azteca; Juan Diego a peasant traveling to the city for medicine for his ailing grandfather; the apparition of the Virgin on the desert hill at Tepeyac; Juan's refusal to take the Virgin's request for the construction of a church to the bishop; Juan's avoidance of the Virgin; At the third request, Juan accepts her request and carries roses in his tilma to the bishop; the miracle, the tilma transformed from shirt to her delicate image, hands in prayer, standing upon a half moon, drafted into duty to persuade a new nation into Christianity.

Or here is another view. Was the Virgen drafted to emerge yet again?

Was her transformation from Azteca indigenous to Western ideal of beauty simply another way of revealing herself? Of providing us with protection, guidance and hope that fire up our spirits, lead us to do "important work" in the words of Seth Godin?

Have we people in the Americas, and also in Africa, Asia, Europe, the regions of China, India, the Arab world, everywhere we live on this chance planet, stepped forward to mark the end of the seasons for centuries before centuries were counted, to worship our protectors and providers?

Student Video Projects That Will Make You Smile

Students in my Mass Comm 1307 sections (Introduction to Mass Communications) were asked to view Simon Sinek's TED Talks presentation on "Why-How-What" vs. "What-How-Why"

http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

Next, they were asked to read and extract the main ideas from an article that appeared last week in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the impact of cell phone texting on sleep, and effects of this on academic performance. From these two elements, the students were asked to work individually, in pairs or groups of three to create public service announcements for an audience of entering college freshmen.

The work was done in a total of three days! Some students created particularly fun projects to demonstrate their talents. Here are two examples:

The first is by an individual student, Fred Lindgren.

The second is by a group of three (Jorge Alvarez, Megan Fitzsimmons and Dallas Glowka) who have worked together all semester on projects.

Night the Living Stayed Up Instead from Jorge Alvarez on Vimeo.

When Communication Kills

When Communication Kills

A friend whose brother-in-law was killed recently as a consequence of the cartel violence in Mexico said it best.  She explained the violence was finally brought to the fore, had become real. Before, the violence had seemed more of a concept, at a distance--until it struck close to home.

In a similar fashion, the struggle for power and domination by cartels in Mexico became real to me this week. The murder of a man this week in Nuevo Laredo, who thugs wrote in a hasty note was being punished because of his blogging activities was my own wake up call to fear.

Students in my Introduction to Mass Communication classes had just finished examining the way media impacts our society by studying the films "The Most Dangerous Man in America" and "All The President's Men. This week we explored the innovations that new media technologies like blogging and Twitter have brought to to the business and technology of mass media.

We had just viewed the inspiring and encouraging call for citizen journalism in the TED Talk from British journalist Paul Lewis

http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_lewis_crowdsourcing_the_news.html

That's when we learned of another innovation. We read of the fourth person murdered in Nuevo Laredo due to their social media activities.
Here is an update from the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/mexican-man-apparently-killed-by-drug-cartel-for-anti-crime-web-comments/2011/11/09/gIQA24X66M_story.html?wprss=rss_world