View from the Borderlands

Present, Past, Future

2012-01-27T20:26:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-03T17:08:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-13T05:32:00.000-08:00

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 ...

2011-12-11T05:02:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-11T04:17:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-03T05:59:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-11T08:11:00.001-08:00

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

How The Kitchen Floor Taught Me An Important Lesson

2011-10-22T10:36:00.000-07:00

I'm finishing grading a five-day report from students on their experiences in observing their thinking patterns and behaviors, and learning about great strategies to improve their thinking and their lives. Their text is "25 Days to Better Thinking and Better Living"

http://www.amazon.com/Days-Better-Thinking-Living-Improving/dp/0131738593/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319304914&sr=1-1

Truthfulness and honest introspection are common among this generation of students. The students in my classes submitted many insightful and courageous experiences. They give me lots of hope for the generation stepping up to bat in the game of life.

I feel honored to be a part of their lives and to be able to intersect with them for this short time of a semester. I am blessed to be a witness to their courage and their efforts.

Reading about many of my student's challenges in communicating and focusing, I'm tempted to comfort them by saying, 'You're not alone, that's part of being human.' I am also tempted to say that troubles communicating and focusing may be persistent problems that get better over time, but they seem to keep showing up no matter your age or what you do in life.

The kitchen floor, for example, is a great teacher in the areas of communication and focus.

For the first 30 years of my life I took my cues from television as to the proper way to clean the kitchen floor. Thousands of Spic and Span commercials in my childhood and more recently commercials from the Swifter brand had convinced me that the way to a clean kitchen floor was by mopping with a cleanser.

The results were less than Mr. Clean would have approved of. In fact 'lil old me-- of much lower standards than Mr. Clean in these matters-- did not approve. The corners, for example, never really got clean using a mop. Maybe the mop and bucket just seemed like over-kill for such a small space. The deck of a ship at sea, possibly, but not my home kitchen.

Finally, a woman who grew up in Mexico came to work for us cleaning our house. She taught me an uncomfortable lesson. She would start the kitchen floor project first by sweeping. Then she would take her shoes off and kneel down, with the bucket at her side, scrubbing, rinsing and repeating. Not missing a spot. Including the corners and beneath the fridge.

My reaction at first was to feel a sort of shame in our common Mexicanity. (Cool word, huh?) I felt embarrassed because she was so old fashioned and not 'with it'. "Oh, wow. How backward. How unenlightened of her to do it this way!"

Then, my sister came for a visit, and after a terrific time one night feeding family and friends, she took it upon herself the next morning to clean up the kitchen floor. I was thunderstruck when I saw her, my paragon of beauty and elegance, coolness and sophistication, on her knees, scrubbing up stains from last night's mole sauce.

I stood and stared, then joined her knees to knees. I asked if she always kneeled to clean the floor, and she answered me like I'd lost my mind, "Of course. It's the only way to do it. How else do you propose doing it?" "A mop--like on TV," I muttered. To which she quickly asked, "Well, what about the corners?"

Mr. Clean never got down on his knees. Mr. Clean was a cartoon.

Communication and focus. Lessons come from the oddest places, including corners.

2011-10-17T16:22:00.000-07:00

A Sporting Weekend

There's a thread that ran through this past weekend: seeing sports from new points of view. First, I added a third Zumba class to "dial up" my weekly exercise. Dancing to Zumba is a sport of a kind, I'll admit I'm stretching the point, but that's OK.

Next in my sports trifecta I saw the excellent movie, "Moneyball," which is less a sports movie than one about change and the pressure to squeeze the last decimal of probability out of sports because the stakes ($) are so high.

On Saturday, at the local TEDxSanAntonio, two of the best speakers were both using sports to arrive at interesting and unusual ends.

Jose Angel Garcia Elizondo is from Tampico, Mexico. He is an executive in a fuel distribution and service station company. The violence that has devastated Mexico has spurred him to fight both crime and a growing obesity problem in Tampico. He and a team of investors started a professional basketball team. The idea was to inspire boys and girls to play basketball and become more fit and healthy and have alternatives to joining the narcotraffic cartels. The Huracanes Tampico team have visited schools and performed for 15,000 kids.

On the same stage earlier in the day, San Antonian Gordan Hartman, former developer and businessman, and son of former friend and co-worker at KSAT TV, Gordon Hartman, spoke of starting a professional soccer team in San Antonio. The team's earnings will help pay for the operating expenses to Morgan's Wonderland, the world's first "ultra accessible family fun park designed with special-needs kids and adults in mind."

The two creative solutions to serious problems were a real revelation. My how times change: A basketball team for a Mexican city, a soccer team for an American city, and it all makes perfect sense when you consider how small the world has become.

But the reasons for creating each sports team are what really make these propositions (and realities) so cool. That's the real measure of how much the world has changed.

When Is A Brow Too Little Too Late?

2011-10-13T17:45:00.000-07:00

Bushy Eyebrows are Nicer Than You Know Now

Check it out, I'm all about the whole metro-sexual thing, it's fine with me for men to wear nice shoes and smell good.

The story was under the fold in today's Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203791904576609163401024594.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

I think it's my duty to let you know, men who Mother Nature has equipped with unruly eyebrows, some important secrets women have been keeping about eyebrows.

1. What you pluck today may not be back tomorrow! Plucking, shaving, threading, all of it is telling your little unsuspecting hair follicles they are no longer welcome.

2. Eyebrows are like the rest of us, they change over time. They get thin and lose some of their original color. Will you miss today's bushy brows when you need extra reinforcements later in life?

3. Plucking eyebrows now means painting them in later.

4. Painting them in naturally and evenly requires some artistic talent. Most ladies who are old hands at it can't manage it well.

OK, it's off my chest now. I have done my part. I don't care what this leads to. You can wear pantyhose, read romance novels and crave chocolate. Just don't start putting on your makeup in the car during the commute. That always gets the strangest looks from people driving past you.

P.S. I love men who look a tad Neanderthal. That's just the whole Mexican-Spanish-Arabic-thing that I'm hard-wired with.

P.P.S. My own little unibrow was something I missed as soon as I saw my first Frida Kahlo portrait, but, alas, it was too late. Don't make the same mistake!

Rocket, the photographer

2011-10-13T06:04:00.000-07:00

The film, "City of God" hit me as hard-- as any good film should. It stopped me, sat me down and revealed truths that I had been looking for, and some I had not known I had been looking for.

Two good friends had been recommending it to me for years, but I resisted, thinking I had to be in the right state of mind for a hard movie about poverty in Brazil. Little did I know that the film would bring to light what is going on today in Mexico and along the border in South Texas.

The film is artful, masterful in its production style and editing. My colleague, Ron Wojnar, has his Advanced Editing students study the film for its editing in particular. As a journalist, I see the film's news media storyline of particular interest. The main character, Rocket, grows up in City of God, and aspires to become a news photographer.

The difference between the drug wars in Brazil and in Mexico is that they are more extreme here than in Brazil: In Mexico, newspapers would not play the role that they played in the movie set in Brazil, exploiting and exposing the gang wars of the neighborhood of City of God, nor the complicity and corruption of the police. Newspapers are silenced by the cartels, while the ones in Brazil are not shown to be afraid of writing about the violence. Yet.

The "happy ending" for Rocket, not given to many of his childhood chums or family, however tentative and tossed like a lifeline by capricious fate, would not happen in Mexico's drug wars today. Newspapers there, along with social media now, are not serving the function they perform in most countries.

The film is a jewel, a treasure and I'm amazed at the vision of the filmmaker, who based his movie on the true story of the boy who grew up in City of God to tell the stories of human ingenuity and perseverance in a drug based economy.

2011-10-09T12:17:00.000-07:00

SurveyMonkey Solution To Assessing Group Participation

Waking up, I sometimes notice the first thing that is on the 'highway sign of my mental freeway'. Steve Martin’s movie set in Los Angeles invented that visual motif. Here in Pipe Creek there are few highway signs, except those announcing the bar’s regular belt sander races.

My imagined highway signs point me, usually in clear, concise English, to a solution for a problem I’ve been pondering, I’ve had lost items reappear, ideas for fixing something, new approaches to correcting a problem. I think of these billboard moments as a bit of a connection to the heavens.

This morning’s billboard was a solution to a way to have my students give me an honest, well-thought out self and group evaluation of their work on a long-term group project, Topic Exploration. They are exploring topics such as "What is it like being a college student and working part-time?", "What is it like being a college student and paying for college" or "What is it like living in post 9-11 America?"

Topics Exploration is patterned after Michael Wesch’s "A Vision of Students Today".

http://youtu.be/dGCJ46vyR9o

Six groups in each section of my five sections of Introduction to Mass Communications have spent the past three weeks refining a research question, and collecting responses to the question from social media (usually Facebook, but others have also been used like Google docs and Google moderator). Some have collected more than 100 responses, others less than 50. Their analysis also included scholarly articles from the colleges online databases from the library.

It’s been an “all electronic” project, no posters or hand written surveys were allowed, as the idea is to use “relevant technologies”. The students have been busy this week finishing their collection and analysis of the categories their responses fall into ( e.g. gender, age, pro, con).

They have started the fun part of creating their project electronic media productions. Their work in Powerpoint, Prezi, video and info graphics. Some are including white board animations. The productions should speak for itself-- self contained and complete, all about the data they have gathered and studied on their topic, with a bibliography, in the assigned length of between four and six minutes. It is a recording of their work; Students who create the project sit and watch it with the rest of the class as it plays.

As part of their evaluation and reflection on the project, ’ll have each of the group members fill out a brief survey that tells me how they evaluate themselves and their group members individually, on cooperation, contributions, communication, leadership. They can also note other comments, ideas they want to share with me on this survey.

I wanted to do this electronically, and was unable to get our college’s online system, Blackboard, to do exactly what I knew I could do with SurveyMonkey, but there were still unanswered questions as to how I would collect and manage responses from five sections of six groups each.

One problem with group evaluations is that they tend to be dashed off by students when completed at a table with their group, usually with glowing remarks for all group members. Partly, there is a lack of privacy when they fill out the surveys by hand sitting at the table with their group. I know that to get honest, considered feedback will require the instrument to be brief and out of the view from their group member’s eyes, so I decided an electronic form would better than a hand out they would fill in at their desk.

I will use SurveyMonkey to distribute, but with one important difference. I’ll forego the usual very detailed survey that would take each student through about ten LIkert-style questions about their and their group’s work-habits and participation in the project’s planning and completion.

Instead, I took the cue from my morning billboard moment, and created a simpler set of 1-3 questions that they can respond to in short paragraphs: In your opinion, which of your group members (including you) were group leaders whose work and participation you consider “above the call of duty”? In your opinion, which of your group members (including you) should be recognized for their leadership skills? Conversely, which of your group members did less than their share of the required work?

I’m sure there are pro’s and con’s to what I am considering, both technical and otherwise. I have about a week before the evaluations are needed. Any ideas on how to improve? I can shoot you the link to the survey if you would like to check it out.

2011-10-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

At the eve of another election season, I am relieved to have one less thing to worry about.

I Take My Name Back, Dick Nixon.

I had a name for who I am in the arms of my mother, Mexicana.
And then my name changed to teen. I looked for me on American Bandstand,
but I couldn't find anyone there who looked like me, or my sister and brothers.

I wandered for some miles til I got to Woodstock, where I became a hippie.
My mother thought I looked funny.

Then I came to where I thought was home, when I became Chicana.
My mother couldn't stop laughing.

To simplify, I lived in Mexico, where I learned I wasn't Mexican,
but Americana.

Went back to the states where I read in the magazines
Others had taken to naming me, too.
Dick Nixon named me Hispanic.
This sounded to my young mind like a mental condition
for people of indeterminate origin or equality.
I knew that didn't meant me.

I've been labelled Latin American, Spanish, Mexican, Mexican American.
Lately, the lovely word, Latina, which sounds musical and happy.
I think that cranky, tired, turned-around and distracted describes me better.

Today, I'm a voter.
I've decided that my identity is mine to define,
Even as others persist in their labels.

Countries and governments are important, I know,
My citizenship is something of great value
(think of that long line of soldiers and sailors in my own family)
But labels, no words, are not as important as my worth.
My name and my purpose are mine to define.

A name or a label says nothing of
Why a person lives.

Overconnected, UnderInformed

2011-09-30T05:24:00.000-07:00

Bill Davidow, author "Overconnected"

I like advice, especially if it's short and sweet. It's easier to accept and remember, I suppose, not to mention useful in the practice of living.

Two recent arrivals reverberate regularly in my daily work-a-day life teaching communications. "Some is not a number, soon is not a time," is a quote from the Heath brothers' book, "Switch". It's a nice re-issue of the famous maxim: what you can measure you can improve.

The next is from "Overconnected, the promise and threat of the Internet' by Silicon Valley veteran William Davidow. His book's premise is that 'feedback loops' in computer and communications technologies accelerate flaws in financial systems and make mistakes easier to make and slower to stop. It's less a "pro and con" view of the Internet than a view from beneath the floorboards of how the Internet's changed the world's economies.

He quotes his humanities professor from college, John Adams. Adams required students to memorize years, names and places. When engineers like Davidow protested such memorization, Adams answered "I have found that the more facts people know, the less they theorize."

For teachers, this advice is a helpful reminder. In the Age of Information, it's tempting to throw out the baby with the bathwater. If Google delivers facts, dates, names in a matter of seconds, what good is reading a detailed account of a historical era or event? The temptation to turn instead to the Internet's maze of dazzling distractions is easy to understand.

The answer, of course, is context: The reason for the sudden rush of coolness and bouyancy is the pool of water you just dove into. Context gives us the reasons that the economic crash of 2008 was similar and different than the one of 1929. Knowing facts, dates, names and context is what prepares us to not repeat mistakes, but avoid them.

2011-09-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

Five Things I Know About Nuevo Laredo

1. The residents who love and have built the unique border culture of la frontera are of the most adaptable, creative and resilient people on Planet Earth.

2. There is no border region in the world where there is greater disparity in economies, yet our history is largely peaceful and rich (think music, dance, food, sports), convivial and collaborative in its acceptance, blending and enjoyment of bicultural traditions.

3. The message sent by the cartel to create fear with the recent murders and the decapitation of a local woman employed by a Nuevo Laredo paper is frightening as it reveals the intent and character of its authors.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/24/woman-decapitated-in-mexi_0_n_979609.html

4. Borderlanders are creative, and that's what it will take to fight the powers that seek to control Nuevo Laredo.

5. Those who work for good work tirelessly. They work not for money or gain, but for something greater, culture and the future. Over time, truth will overcome lies, and good will always triumph over evil.

PS. June of 2010 I spent a week in Laredo/Nuevo Laredo preparing a radio report on the use of social media by residents of the two cities in response to the decline/death of journalism about cartel violence in Nuevo Laredo. The reports were broadcast on Texas Public Radio. Here is a link:

http://www.tpr.org/programs/texasmattersarchive.html

(Scroll to Show 516)

Just in Time vs. Just in Case...a case in point: donuts

2011-09-24T16:13:00.000-07:00

Just in Time vs. Just in Case

I hate those TV programs that exploit the mentally ill, like Jerry Springer’s show or more recent examples like “Intervention” and worst of all, “Hoarders.” Poor people working out their family squabbles, addictions and bad habits in front of the camera for the audience’s entertainment.

See, I’m not at all like those crazy cheaters, meth addicts and shopaholics who lose sight of their lives and hallways with stuff they do and buy without thinking.

It’s tempting to watch, because deny as much as I want, some part of me is right in there with the crazy woman who can’t make her way out of her apartment anymore.

I can’t watch for long, though. I get a pain in my gut just from watching. I figure that’s my spiritual payback for watching mind-numbing pop-porn.

So imagine my surprise when I learned yesterday that I could have my own “there’s never enough” TV series right in my own shoulder bag. In fact, I have huge pop-porn potential.

I needed a thumb drive from the bottom of my purse. For what? To have an extra copy of a project, of course.

It struck me that I had BAD case of “Just in Case” when I had to plunge elbow deep in my bag to locate the thumb drive. In the process I fished up two wallets, two hair brushes, a cell-phone equipped with a photo and video camera, another photo and video camera, four pencils, five pens and a jumbo-size tube of hand cream.

Two of everything, including data. Does this mean I really am a hoarder? I was now knee deep in despair. Fortunately, I came across an email from my good friend, Oprah Winfrey. Yes, she sends me emails every morning, that busy bee. In this morning’s mail she sent a 2007 article by life coach Martha Beck about “Just in Case” thinking that bulges at my purse and body parts closer to my backside-- versus “Just in Time” thinking that leads to lighter living and shoulder bags, I suppose.

“Just in Case” I need no coaching on. I do "Just in Case" on my own. Here's an example from this morning. Two donuts. Just in case. Or, I’ll have this taco now, in case I get hungry later this afternoon. I’ll buy this outfit that’s on sale now in case I fit into it after my planned summer of Zumba exercise classes.

For learning about “Just in Time” thinking I do need Martha Beck to coach me. She writes in her article that hoarders and other pop-porn over-achievers that shop, eat, drink, exercise or do just about anything to excess are doing so out of fear and thoughts of scarcity.

Martha, are there really ever enough cameras around when you need them? She thinks one is enough. Silly girl.

OK, so I am a bit reluctant to sit down at my own intervention. Take a deep breath.

Martha Beck proposes a three step process for moving from “Just in Case” to “Just in Time” thinking:

First, list 10 times that you thought there wouldn’t be enough of something and you survived.

Second, list ten areas where you have too much, not too little.

Third, list 20 or 50 or a 1000 wonderful things that entered your life just at the right time, with no effort on your part. She coaches that it’s OK to start with the little things (oxygen, sunlight, a song on the radio).

Martha Beck says once we start “deliberately focusing on abundance” we will be overwhelmed by all the good things that just show up in our lives without much effort on our part. Really?

I intend to try this and work hard at it, but I’m afraid this is dangerous territory, Martha. After all, I’ve come this far carrying around a heavy purse and no real harm’s come from it.

Besides, what if I need a camera and can’t find one when I need it? What if I’m in the middle of a project of some kind and feel --God forbid --hungry?

Not only that, but have you ever waited for a job to just show up in your life? Or the right pair of sandals? I hate to be a doubting Thomas, but as they say, if the sandal fits.

I may still be stuck in scarcity thinking, but I don't really like it here. I’ll give it my best shot to work on my “Just in Time” thinking and try to toss out my “Just in Case” thinking.

If you like you can read the Martha Beck article at the following link:

http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Martha-Becks-Strategy-to-Lower-Stress-and-Improve-Your-Life/1

Brothers Brilliant

2011-09-24T06:40:00.000-07:00

I've recently noticed how much I appreciate writing that is clear, direct and helpful. I stick to non-fiction for most of my leisure reading because, to paraphrase a recent trendy phrase, "I do drama on my own."

Chip and Dan Heath are two brothers and scholars that write books that are excellent, accessible and loaded with interesting studies. Their first book, "Making It Stick" is chock full of helpful advice on writing effectively.

Their principles for making ideas "stick" follow an easy to remember formula, use ideas that are "Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Stories (the acronym is SUCCESs)."

Their follow up book, "Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard" may even be better than their first book. Just as rich with great examples of leadership and innovation. My favorite line from the entire book is a real kick in the pants for those like me that need help with following through on ideas, projects and plans: "Some is not a number, soon is not a time."

It's helpful to remember, too, that self-control is a resource that is in "limited supply." The Heath brothers write how researchers learned that self control can be exhausted. Therefore it's important to focus on what we use our self control on, because we can't draw on an endless supply.

With the ailing economy, drought, political turmoil and other news flooding from around the world, it all gets to be a bit much for me. Remembering that self control is an exhaustible resource helps me to remember what I can impact and what I cannot.

It also means relaxing a bit about the "small stuff". Really remembering, no one is watching, overseeing my every move. Not that I'm not interesting, but because they are usually too busy focusing on themselves. That's a huge relief. My self control can be focused on stuff that counts, like grading student work or things that I can have an impact on like my health.

I love you, Dr. Michael Wesch

2011-09-23T07:27:00.000-07:00

My five sections of Introduction to Mass Communications at Northwest Vista College are embarking on Week Six of the semester by exploring topics their groups have selected that are 1. important to college students 2. using relevant technologies, much in the style of "Visions of Students Today" by Kansas State University Anthropology professor Michael Wesch.

http://youtu.be/dGCJ46vyR9o

So far some of the topics the 30 groups in the five classes have selected are: "What is it like living in post 9-11 America", "What is it like living without ready access to drinking water", "What is it like living in a consumer-driven economy?" and "What is it like being in a relationship surrounded by media-driven images about romantic relationships?" The students worked on their "research question" by discussing their interests and carefully editing for bias or leading language.

The 'relevant technologies' they are using are similar to the ones used by Dr. Wesch's class in the video which has had 45 million views since 07 when it was uploaded by his students. These include Facebook Group pages, Google documents for collecting and gathering responses, as well as others, including Twitter.

The student groups are energized about this project and I'm eager to see the process evolve, and to learn from our classes efforts. I'm not sure we'll have 45 million views on our projects, but I am sure this is the sort of activity that tells students education is about things they care about and that their ideas, voices and efforts can contribute to building a better world.

Dry, Hot Stormy Weather

2011-08-27T08:16:00.000-07:00

This Saturday morning in August, 2011, we in Texas are expecting the highest temperatures of the year, 106 degrees. There’s a heat wave and drought that brings stress to wildlife, as well as anxiety to people about falling water levels in the aquifer and wildfire. Meanwhile, on the East Coast of our country, Mother Nature brings in waves of storms and winds in the form of Hurricane Irene, whose swath threatens the coastline from North Carolina, through New York’s densely populated boroughs, to New England. Those extremes -- drought and deadly storms-- are happening at once on the fearful body of our country.

It’s days like this that make it clear to me just how big the United States really are in scope and scale. Stumbling upon the stunning beauty of historic piazzas in Florence a few years ago, I was astounded by the scope and scale of those beautiful structures, built hundreds of years ago by our human ancestors. I thought of scope and scale again when I recently read about a successful entrepreneur who lost all business fear by hitch-hiking across the country with less than ten dollars in his pocket. His adventures taught him to shift his ideas of what was possible, to live his life with less care about the “what if” fears that keep many of us from being who we would like to be, our real selves.

When I was a girl, TV’s vision of our times was large and supposedly all encompassing -- but my life was missing. Where were the Mexicans who weren’t maids, gardeners or bandidos? Was I invisible to our culture? I held tight to the representations I accepted and adopted about what it meant to be American. My scope and scale was such in those early years that I couldn’t figure out where we borderlanders fit in.

TV seemed like it was telling the truth. I was sure that the people in the 1910‘s and 1920‘s I saw on newsreel footage walked faster and in a quirky odd gait. Why did people walk so differently back then, I wondered, not understanding filming technologies that were in their early stages. When my Arizona cousins would travel to Texas and Mexico to visit our grandmother, I asked my Tio for their stationwagon keys so I could listen to the Arizona radio stations that I was sure they had brought with them in their car radio.

It was with this same scope and scale of truth that I learned that every media depiction of being gay was terribly tragic, especially for lesbians. On the screen at least, I learned it would be deadly to be gay. I remember seeing movies like “Therese and Isabel” or “The Fox” (D.H. Lawrence), “The Killing of Sister George” (adapted from Frank Marcus’ play) or other plays stories like “The Little Foxes” (Lillian Hellman). There were others, I’m sure. In most media depictions for the better part of the last century being gay meant you were a loser: you either committed suicide because you were gay, or someone killed you because you were gay.

For some viewers of media, it is somehow a function of media to set in our mind’s eye the scope and scale of our perception of the world. Then an event like a massive hurricane comes to reset the view. We are still a large country, but we seem smaller in our vulnerabilities to drought and storm, regardless of our scale and scope.

Likewise, my perception of what it means to be gay in the media has been adjusted to a wider, more full screen recently. I saw the television documentaries, “For My Wife” and “Edie and Thea: A Very Long Engagement,” two ground-breaking projects that shifted my focus and view to a new level.

In “For My Wife” a Northwest’s woman’s struggle for equality in the eyes of the law finds support that breaks barriers for all of us, no matter where we live in this big, wide country. “Edie and Thea” tells the story of a couple of ‘classy dames’ who shared their love and lives for 42 years.

My vision was advanced to a new “setting” by these two honest and moving documentaries. I think of the many girls happening upon these Netflix offerings and seeing hope and possibility for themselves or their gay friends instead of the gray and sad films that were made in the last century.

That makes me happy,and relieved: The scope and scale of my perception are flexible and can still be affected by what I encounter on our media. That give me hope for this country and the world. I’m reminded that despite our differences, our American measure in miles doesn’t compare to our measure of creativity and persistence in defining ourselves by the compass of truth, compassion and diversity.

Just In Case: a case in point

2011-08-09T09:32:00.000-07:00

Just in Case vs. Just in Time

I hate those TV programs that exploit the mentally ill, like Jerry Springer’s show or more recent examples like “Intervention” and worst of all, “Hoarders.” Poor people working out their family squabbles, addictions and bad habits in front of the camera for the audience’s entertainment.

See, I’m not at ALL like those crazy cheaters, meth addicts and shopaholics who lose sight of their lives and hallways with stuff they do and buy without thinking.

Those shows are tempting to watch, though, because deny as much as I want, some part of me is right in there with the crazy woman who can’t make her way out of her apartment anymore.

I can’t watch for long, though. I get a pain in my gut just from watching. I figure that’s my spiritual payback for watching mind-numbing pop-porn.

So imagine my surprise when I learned yesterday that I could have my own “there’s never enough” TV series right in my own shoulder bag. In fact, I have huge pop-porn potential. I needed a thumb drive from the bottom of my purse. For what? To have an extra copy of a project, of course.

It struck me that I had a severe case of “Just in Case” when I had to plunge elbow deep in my bag to locate the thumb drive. I fished up two wallets, two hair brushes, a cell-phone equipped with a photo and video camera, another photo and video camera, four pencils, five pens and a jumbo-size tube of hand cream.

Two of everything, including data. Does this mean I really am a hoarder?

I was now knee deep in despair. Fortunately, I came across an email from my good friend, Oprah Winfrey. Yes, she sends me e-mails every morning, that busy bee. In this morning’s e-mail she sent a 2007 article by life coach Martha Beck about “Just in Case” thinking that bulges at my purse and body parts closer to my backside. She pointed out in the article (link below) that it's much easier on your life to have “Just in Time” thinking.

“Just in Case” I do well on my own. For an example, check out my two great donuts in the photo I've posted. Or around lunch time it will be "I’ll have this taco now, in case I get hungry later this afternoon." Or, " I’ll buy this outfit that’s on sale now in case I fit into it after my planned summer of Zumba exercise classes." Yup. I do "Just in Case" fine already.

For learning about “Just in Time” thinking, I need Martha Beck to coach me. She writes in her article that hoarders and other pop-porn over-achievers that shop, eat, drink, work, exercise or do just about anything to excess are doing so out of fear and thoughts of scarcity.

Martha, are there really ever enough cameras around when you need them? She thinks one is enough. Silly girl.

OK so I am a bit reluctant to sit down at my intervention. Take a deep breath.

Martha Beck proposes a three step process for moving from “Just in Case” to “Just in Time” thinking:

First, list 10 times that you thought there wouldn’t be enough of something and you survived.

Second, list ten areas where you have too much, not too little.

Third, list 20 or 50 or a 1000 wonderful things that entered your life just at the right time, with no effort on your part. She coaches that it’s OK to start with the little things (oxygen, sunlight, a song on the radio).

Martha Beck says once we start “deliberately focusing on abundance” we will be overwhelmed by all the good things that just show up in our lives without much effort on our part. Really?

I intend to try this and work hard at it, but I’m afraid this is dangerous territory, Martha. After all, I’ve come this far carrying around a heavy purse and no real harm’s come from it.

Besides, what if I need a camera and can’t find one when I need it? What if I’m in the middle of a project of some kind and feel --God forbid --hungry?

Not only that, but have you ever waited for a job to just show up in your life? Or the right pair of sandals? I hate to be a doubting Thomas, but as they say, if the scarcity sandal fits.

I may still be stuck in scarcity, but I don't like it here. I’ll give it my best shot to work on my “Just in Time” thinking and try to toss out my “Just in Case” thinking. If you like, you can read the Martha Beck article at the following link:

http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Martha-Becks-Strategy-to-Lower-Stress-and-Improve-Your-Life/1

Mexicans do camp, they just have trouble sleeping

2011-07-17T15:53:00.000-07:00

To Chill A Mockingbird, Use a Flashlight

“Mexicans don’t camp.” I explained to my new partner when she first proposed the idea of a camping trip to Big Bend when we had about two weeks off together in the early spring. The only way she got me to warm up to the idea was having a dog accompany us. A real dog, as in large and protective. We found our Catahoula, Josh, at the animal defense league in San Antonio and he was such a grateful adoptee that he willingly stayed inside our yard even when the gate was open, for the next ten years, save for the two weeks he was dognapped and the animal communicator-dog psychic in California and a lost dog ad in the newspaper helped us find him.

It’s 18 years later and we are camping en route to New Mexico. No dog, this time. We own two large rescues, one a Border Collie and the other a Coon Hound. There’s not enough room in a moving van for those two dogs, and especially not in our little 1999 Toyota Pre-Runner with our hastily-acquired-on-Craig’s list camper top that cost us half of a hundred dollars. It just sounds a tiny bit better to say it that way.

As everyone knows Mexicans do camp. At least this one does, now. Whether they sleep while they camp is another story--This one:

Sonora Caverns campsite had plenty of space for us, and the fall of dusk came with the sounds of bleating lambs from the ranch next door, guinea hens, peacocks and turkeys that roamed around the campgrounds. A sprinkler spritzing the trees and grass that a worker set near us was the last sound I heard until around two a.m. when the happy, varied and amplified Star Wars sound effects repertoire of a mockingbird shook us awake.

I remembered a spell of sleepless nights in the early 80's when I lived with a roommate from Laredo on Magnolia Street in San Antonio. The sleepless spell was also caused by a similar songfest outside our open window. I remembered I had used a flashlight to scare away the happy little bird back then. For several nights I had to clomp down the stairs, cross the street and stand like the Liberty statue in my nightgown holding up my flashlight shining up into a tree until the singer was either confused by the immediate arrival of dawn or his ego was bruised and the singing stopped.

Camping has improved in the past 18 years. Last night all I had to do was swivel around upon our plywood and foam mattress, aim our high tech spotlight and with the precision of a hunter on safari, silence, sweet silence. For about twenty minutes after dawn and nightfall came and went again and our impassioned serenade started all over.

2011-07-04T20:32:00.001-07:00

The Sinking of The Romantics

You understand why you are uncomfortable throughout this entire film during one of its early scenes. Old college friends and lovers gather at a rehearsal dinner and offer awkward toasts to the bride and groom. The scene is made even more tortuous by not knowing if the couple will be getting married the next day.

The main character, the maid of honor, played by Katie Holmes, is the strangest of the bunch of friends reunited by the wedding. Not only does she seem a generation older than her pals, she seems as confused as we are about her inexplicable role as maid of honor to a woman whose fiance she has been seeing on and off for ten years.

Poetry--the English variety from Blake and Keats and others from the romantic era--is the glue that binds the benighted couple who are not yet finished sorting out the end of their affair, even as the night of the rehearsal dinner turns to morning. How strong a glue poetry and its first cousin, romanticism can be against the storm that’s coming in with the wedding is the tension that ebbs and flows with the wedding party's stores of alcohol and other treats to make more comfortable the rite of passage.

In the movie’s best scene, in few words and rare logic, the reluctant groom explains why he’s marrying who he’s come to marry and not the maid of honor. The passion and intensity of their relationship was too much for him, he confesses. It gave him morning-after panic attacks. These he saw as signs of needing to run clear of Katie Holmes’ character and into the arms of the willing and wealthy woman who is free of romantic danger, but devoid of passion or poetry.

We all know the bridegroom’s frail, fearful logic and also its allure. But it’s not enough to carry an entire movie. The question of whether the wedding will happen or not kept me in my seat when I sometimes wanted to bolt from the movie as badly as the groom from his wedding to the wealthy, emotionally antiseptic woman to whom he is engaged. She spends most of the movie sequestered from her friends wearing, no, I’m not kidding, a blue facial mask to prepare her complexion for the big day ahead.

Questions that linger after The Romantics ended: If you’re going to have just-one-last-time sex with a soon-to-be married guy, why would you select for the setting a spot beneath a well-lighted tree that is already the anchor to too many night scenes at a huge, beach-side estate? Where did the short actor from Lord of the Rings disappear to during half the film? Was he shooting another movie elsewhere during the filming of The Romantics? Did Katie Holmes push for this vehicle for herself without noticing that only parts of it were well written? Why didn’t Candice Bergen have at least one good ass chewing scene, especially when it’s clear everyone in the wedding party needed one. It seems a crime to not let the character who plays her daughter who is about to get dumped have a dose of Murphy Brown’s anything-but-romantic straightening out. I’m betting one or two scenes with Bergen going berserk would have added comic relief that might have saved The Romantics from the seriousness that sank it.

Off-the-Grid

2010-12-11T05:29:00.000-08:00

Each semester I assign to my Introduction to Mass Communications students a two-day experience. I ask them to get off of the mass media grid. Except for school or work-related activities, students are to turn off their music, their I Pods, phones, television, computer games, Internet, movies and even their car radio. They prepare to do so by alerting friends and family and creating a list of ten questions about the experience of living in the natural world of their senses for a temporary time without their digital extensions. They are not even allowed to read for pleasure, but they are asked to keep a hand-written journal in which they note their reflections on the questions they posed at the start, as well as other observations.

Invariably when the assignment is introduced there is much groaning and some disbelief. I explain I am aiming for the students to study themselves like bugs in a petri dish, to see their connections to media in an objective manner, from a distance. I am also interested in reviving their sense of the natural world, face-to-face conversations and being untethered to electronics.

The assignment is titled A Natural Senses Experience, and is intended to increase students awareness of their use of media and the roles it plays, some known and some unexamined. I would like to spark an interest in my students about what is on the other side of the screens that occupy most of their days and nights.

Over the semester, in preparation for the project which is near the end of the term, I try to cajole them into being interested in trying the 48 Hours by telling them stories students' experiences in past classes. There were many who were resistant to the project who made interesting discoveries after completing their time off-the-grid.

There was one young man who told the class about being surprised to learn that the brother, at whose home he was living, disclosed to him that he was lonely. He told us he realized he had not been available to his brother for most of the time they had been living under the same roof due to his use of media and electronic devices. Another student reported that the loud buzzing in his ears stopped during the project. There was a young woman this past summer who seemed especially resistant. She reported in her journal that she corralled her entire family for a drive to the coast, and that they sang and told stories since the car radio was off. She also reported reconnecting to her mother and younger siblings.

It doesn't always go so smoothly. I tell the story of doing the assignment along with my students about three years ago and realizing that I had been feeling smug about how well things were going then realizing I had been using my cell phone the entire length of the project. Something about media addiction is similar to other addictions, it's in large part under the radar.

The young woman standing in front of me after class today was about 25, a sweet, young mom who I considered to be fairly engaged in class and discussions, but I would see her from time to time with her head bent while texting into her cell. Although I state at the start of the semester my policy prohibiting use of cells during class, I've had to peddle back on the policy because students often text or do searches using their cell phones for class-related business. Fellow group members alert them they are stuck in traffic and will be in class soon, or during a class discussion there may be the need for a fast search on Google to chase a tid-bit of information.

Today, my student explained the 48 Hours Natural Senses Experience taught her something that surprised and pleased her. She said on the 2nd day of the project her grandfather showed up agitated at her front door because he could not get her to answer his phone calls. She had not followed the assignment instructions about alerting people she would be temporarily out of touch.

My student and her 3 year old daughter had been outside and while putting up Christmas lights she had noticed for the first time in living there for five months that two doors away another three year old was playing with her mother in their front yard. The moms and girls met and now the children are regular playmates.

My student explained to her grandfather that she was fine and that the reason she had not been answering her phone was the off-the-grid experience assigned for her Mass Communications class. She said when he heard about the assignment his eyes seemed to light up. He saw his chance and seized it.

They began a visit of the sort they had never had before. He told her a family story about his last name not really being his because he had been adopted when his father was deported to Mexico. She had never known this and listened as he continued with other stories.

My student told me that she noticed that during the conversation with her grandfather that she was able to listen more deeply --not just following along, but falling into his story-- in a way that had never happened before. She said the difference was that she was not distracted by the TV in the background or by glancing down to check her cell phone.

More importantly, she also said that her grandfather was speaking in a more engaged way than ever before. "In the past he didn't act like it, but he actually had noticed that I was distracted, that I constantly glanced at my phone or the TV and really had not been giving him my full attention." Now it was different. This time he really knew she was listening and his own response was different too, deeper, richer, fuller. More intense.

These two awarenesses that my student told me about were born from the experience off the grid, and are the reason for the assignment. When we learn what good, rich conversations require, we are more likely to have more of them and enjoy the gifts that flow from them. This improves our human connections to each other. Which is the point of communication.

There are myriad examples of how technology helps to connect us to one another. I follow on Facebook the 5K races, birthday parties and other events that family and friends share. This helps me to keep in touch in ways not possible ten years ago.

There are far fewer examples of what our over-dependence on media and technology can sometimes cost us in human interactions and connections, yet the cost of these are too expensive to ignore. My student's afternoon of speaking with and learning about her grandfather brought them closer together than he ever expected, and closer than she ever knew was possible.

She got off the grid for long enough to give him the signal she was really listening. She gave herself the gift of undisturbed time to send that signal and enjoy hearing the stories that her grandfather either had never tried to tell or felt she didn't have the time or interest to hear.

Borderlander Honored as CNN Hero

2010-11-26T12:40:00.000-08:00

Thanks, Guadalupe!

I sat in the family den flipping channels after I awoke from the post-Thanksgiving dinner nap. I was like a kid with a new toy. Our cable back home in Pipe Creek was unplugged back in August of 2008. In the two years since, I had only watched movies and documentaries on DVD or via the Internet. I keep up with the news listening to NPR, on the Internet and reading news magazinese
Today I was mesmerized by the new shows, new commercials, new channels on the tube. It was like a reunion with that quirky old friend you’ve been in a love-hate relationship since kindergarten. Fun to catch up with them --until they pull out their smokes and light up in your pristine living room or ask to borrow money from you again.

In the time before the bad old habits resurfaced (repetitive commercials bearing little creativity) I tuned in to CNN’s Hero awards. I remembered why I loved the old pal in the first place.

The Hero awards honor regular people who act in ways that are not regular, but extraordinary. Like many of us, the nominees have ideas to improve and change the world, but unlike many of us, they have the stamina and moxie to follow through with their ideas and really do change the world for the better.

The nominees came from around the world—Scotland to India, and included one nominee from the Borderlands at El Paso-Juarez. The Borderlands nominee was introduced by the Hollywood actress, Jessica Alba. The young actress is beautiful beyond measure. Even so, her light seemed dim next to the nominee, 74 year old Guadalupe Arizpe de la Vega, who was being recognized for her more than 30 year efforts at improving access to health to families in Juarez.

The short video of Dona Guadalupe’s project showed the stylish woman walking through the hospital she built in Juarez. The first words from the honoree on the video focused on her belief that women could be empowered by having control over their reproductive lives, education and health care. I was so thankful her words were beaming across every continent to which CNN sent its signal.

The svelte woman wore a beautiful rebozo as she stood at the podium and delivered her acceptance speech in English, and ended it in Spanish with a short, inspirational and encouraging message about Mexico’s future.

Questions I would like to ask Dona Guadalupe:
1. How did you fund your project, through donations or your own money?
2. Is there a way to reproduce your project in other border communities?
3. How do you keep so positive and productive while living in the crisis that Juarez and its people have suffered with the cartel’s turf wars for the lucrative American drug market?
4. How can I look as stylish as you?
Here is a link to a video showing Dona Lupita at work:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/10/cnn-hero-guadalupe-arizpe_n_712180.html

Who Likes School? (no hands) Who Likes Learning? (hands waving)

2010-10-09T08:44:00.000-07:00

Students love to learn. Yet, ask them if they love school--and the answer is usually 'not so much.'

The expectations some students bring to college from high school are to get only A's and to never, ever make mistakes. Learning in college and at the university level expands those earlier boundaries to build the intellect and to identify the the shades and gradations between "the right answer" and "the wrong answer."

In an exercise that I modified this semester I stumbled on learning how students can come to see mistakes as a natural part of the process of discovery and invention (not to mention the Scientific Process).

"Test Pilots" is the title of a an exercise for building critical thinking skills I created about a year ago for the six teams of four students each in my Introduction to Mass Communications sections. They are assigned 25 Days to Better Thinking and Better Living by Linda Elder and Richard Paul.

The first two semesters I used the activity, I simply asked the students to teach the concepts to the class and the results were usually wooden. Mind-numbingly wooden.

This semester I tried something new. Students were assigned to select four days in the text and the corresponding topics and activities. Their job would be to "test pilot" the recommendations from the text in the weeks prior to the presentation. Their presentations would not teach the concepts, but report on their experiences trying out for one full day the concepts in their lives. The reports were to include both their successes and failures. I told them to expect there would be errors, mistakes, other surprises and discovery as part of the process.

The results were surprising. The wood turned to a bonfire.

A near-fatal car accident a student's grandmother suffered with a four-time DWI offender, and the surprising correspondence that developed between the perpetrator and the victim. A domestic violence offender's profound gratitude for her husband's forgiveness that created a home and family that is now strong and healthy. A teen's learning about the importance of patience in teaching values to very young nieces and nephews whose parents have lost their children's custody. The joys of volunteering each summer now at a camp--learned after a judge once ordered the student to perform community service-- "I do it now every summer because it makes me feel good."

The group that presented were four young women, aged from late teens to early 30's. They prepared a powerpoint following the 6x6 rule (no more than six words per line, no more than six lines to a page). It served as a clean and informative outline of the concepts contained across their four chapters. Their stories were then woven around the ideas they tested ("Don't Be A Top Dog", "Control Your Emotions", etc.)

One of the keys was their telling their stories about their trials and successes in applying the concepts without having the burden of explaining the text. Their own experiences did the job and made the text's ideas clearer to all.

Another was the safety the group developed. The ideas they were learning had meaning to their lives. The critical thinking skills they learned and applied were cemented in the telling and in the listening among the class who were their audience. You could have heard a pin drop.

I learned that stressing that mistakes were OK was the doorway to the success of the activity. Mistakes in the activity was what I meant, but students included mistakes in daily life.

Timing was also important. The assignment requires at least 2-3 weeks to complete, because students need time to try out the ideas, but also to become comfortable with each other and to feel safe in the class to share their experiences.

The testimonies the students freely gave about their lives and the impact and power of critical thinking were powerful.

The presentation proved the importance of relating student's lives to what they learn. With equal parts new information and application in everyday life students in the class transformed "school" into "learning."

I would love to share with anyone more about this exercise and to hear about your experiences with student engagement and learning.

Thanks to West Side Chamber of Commerce

2010-09-29T15:00:00.000-07:00

Last evening recent doctoral graduates were honored by the San Antonio West Side Chamber of Commerce. It was a special night in many ways.

First, my companion for the evening was Hope Cuellar, my sister in law who was married to Israel, my brother. She was there in her role as sister in law, and also in her husband's stead. He spent hours and hours helping me understand the difference between .05 and .5 (the toughest part of understanding significance in my first statistics course). He also patiently listened to me unravel my thoughts as a dissertation topic began its long birthing process over the span of two years. He died the year before I received my degree, but his spirit was with me during most of the time I worked on collecting my data and writing about it. I am so grateful to him, and to Hope for being there with me last evening.We both felt he was present in the audience.
There was an interesting surprise: the evening's speaker was his friend and colleague, Dr. Roberto Jimenez.

72 Migrants Remembered at Northwest Vista College

2010-09-27T19:35:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, several of the faculty and staff met to discuss how we might create awareness among our college community about the violence in Mexico as well as remember the men and women who had been murdered south of Brownsville by the drug cartel.

There were several ideas put forward and it was decided to organize under the college's peace program. That afternoon the coordinator of the program met with Dr. Jackie Claunch, our college president about an upcoming speaker's visit, and at the meeting briefed her about our plans. She was enthusiastic about every aspect of our ideas and we moved forward!

We created a list of reading and viewing resources from our library and distributed the list in an email invitation to participate in the demonstration for peace.

Art Club and other students created numerous posters with information and eye-catching titles. Students wore tee shirts we had collected and recycled that we spattered with red paint to simulate blood. Students volunteered to lie along our college pedestrian bridge during the most busy time of day, in between classes at 10:45. Two faculty from the music department volunteered to perform a moving horn and guitar piece by a Mexican composer, and our president read a poem in both English and Spanish by Garcia Lorca. We then all kept 72 seconds of silence to remember the slain.

The results were a confirmation of what can happen when people work cooperatively and with enthusiasm.
I invite you to browse the media stories that were written and take part with us in remembering the victims.

The event was the headline of La Revista, our college publication for staff and faculty:

http://www.alamo.edu/nvc/employees/pr/larevista/092410/issue.htm

Our college online publication had a story written collectively by my students in Newsgathering and Writing:

www.thevistavoice.org

Texas Public Radio ran a piece by old friend and collaborator, Eileen Pace that evening:

http://www.tpr.org/news/2010/09/news/1009242.html

Local television stations covered the event, as well:

KENS 5

http://www.kens5.com/news/local/Nortwest-Vista-College-students-silent-in-memory-of-72-murdered-migrants-103672924.html

Telemundo KDVA

http://sanantonio.holaciudad.com/adjuntos/110/videos/000/409/0000409660.flv

KABB FOX 29

http://www.foxsanantonio.com/newsroom/top_stories/videos/vid_3506.shtml

Un Pedacito de Dios

2010-08-25T05:55:00.000-07:00

It's a strange time, in the midst of a new semester, 16,000 students starting new academic journeys, each trying to find a parking space. Even so, it seemed to me this morning that everything was "going to be allright", just as in a Sandra Cisneros short story set in Falfurrias, deep in South Texas. The sun's rising was comforting. I remembered to smile more today. I get a chance to be a part of these students'lives, to build their skills and confidence, and it is such a trust that I treasure.

Sometimes I imagine that I see a glimpse of the "big picture" as I guess if there is a God, that She would see. That glimpse confirms everything is going to be allright, the sun rising over the campus, cars streaming in, students heading to class. How great is that? She feels self satisfied and relaxed knowing the "big picture"--even a tiny portion of it.

I love the Rocio Durcal song where she sings about her lover being a little piece of God. I feel like I might be a tiny spot on God's left buttock, or maybe at the tip of God's nose. Wait, does God sneeze?!

"They are not Vikings!"

2010-07-23T06:12:00.000-07:00

A law enforcement officer in Laredo, Texas was quoted in a San Antonio Express news story dated July 22 about the cartel violence sweeping across Nuevo Laredo. He spoke about the concern and numerous phone calls emergency personnel received in Laredo, Texas, about the violence, especially fearful about the sounds of gunfire coming from Nuevo Laredo. One of the underlying reason for the calls was, will the shootings cross into Texas? Will the violence extend to Laredo, Texas?

His answer was possibly meant to comfort the worried Laredoans, and it was true. (http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/state/a_hrefhttphostedaporgdynamicstoriesllt_drug_war_mexico_txol-sitetxsaesectionhometemplatedefault_99027109.html)

The "badguys" as the cartel members are known are not Vikings. They are not super-human, they can't easily transfer their brand of power to the U.S. side of the border. That's good, but still leaves open the question, who are they, really?

I submit they are more than "badguys" and that it is important to make this distinction in what we call them, because we have to delve deeper than the shallow, good-guys vs. bad-guys level of understanding if we hope to ever resolve the problems plaguing the border.

They are, first of all, criminals. They are affiliated with international crime rings. (Zetas, Juarez, Sinaloa, they are organized gangsters with different criminal cultures and origins.)

Secondly, they were once Mexican boys (and girls). They went to play at Nuevo Laredo's Parque Viveros riverside park where there were soccer fields and a public pool. Where some of the cartel violence has been taking place today. They went as kids to play like I did with my cousins when I was a girl. They believed in the church and its teachings. They had dreams and aspirations. What happened to change them into violent killers?

This is not the most important question to ponder at the moment; there are certainly more important questions, such as how can safety be restored for innocent citizens living on the border (both sides)? But without considering the question what went wrong, as Alejandro Junco has done, we miss the point. Any solutions will be as superficial as "bad-guys vs. good-guys"; the response that does not consider "what went wrong, how did we get here?" paints over a more complex understanding of the questions that badly need addressing.

"They are not Vikings" leads me to ask myself, why is there so much fear from this side of the border?

Speaking only for myself:

I fear these criminals because I DO know who they are: I know how angry, disenfranchised, and pissed they are.I DO know how they are demonstrating their power using weapons we U.S. citizens sold to them.

I fear them because I know their education level has been low because of Mexico's corruption and mindsets about class and race that are closer to colonial times than to the millenium in which we currently live. If the U.S. only offered free education up to the sixth or eighth grade, how many more criminals would we have today?

I fear them because I know that as a society we have failed those children who played and swam and strolled next to me by failing to address the failures of our governments and our cultures:

On an individual level, I have not done my part by not pressuring for more communication and interchange between our colleges and universities, especially those from states along the border.

To date we have relied on solutions coming from the wrong centers: on NAFTA, its banks, and media and politicians who sometimes consider the borderlands to be remote outposts whose needs are not as important as those of mainstream Mexicans or mainstream Americans.

We, especially I, have allowed the historical distrust, antipathy and prejudice that affected and informed our two countries' histories 200 years ago to continue to affect and inform our 21st century policies without challenging them vigorously, without demanding new paradigms from leaders and policymakers.

The world's stage calls to us to share and show what we borderlanders know:

How our bicultural heritage has uniquely prepared us to use cultural diversity to our best advantage, to build and create from the gifts of two disparate cultures something beautiful, unique and rich, that is infinitely more than the sum of its parts.

From our days playing together in the streets as children, in Parque Viveros riding horses, or swimming or years later strolling with our dates as teens, in utter, complete and absolute safety, our futures led us into different adulthoods (utter, complete and absolutely different).

What are the reasons for the differences? Knowing the answers will help us to solve the problems plaguing the border.

Being on either side of the border was home. It was safe to play, to ride, to swim, to walk along the river enjoying Parque Viveros, a park those of us from the city of Laredo, Texas envied.

It can be safe again if we believe so and work to make it so.

YMCA = fun and health

2010-07-11T13:20:00.000-07:00

The word "exercise" sounds like a grueling experience. Like chalk squeaking on a blackboard. A much better word is "dance"--you leap and turn in the air just speaking the word. There's music pulsing and you just have to move!

For the past five weeks I've been dancing 3-4 times a week with Susie and about 40 of my newest friends at the YMCA at Braundera. Zoomba, which is aerobic dance set to mostly Latin music, is apparently widely advertised on TV.

I can tell you Zoomba an easy way to melt the inches and build endurance and energy, and all the while you are having a good time learning new steps, listening to great music from around the hemisphere and keeping up with the grandmothers, teenagers, moms and young women who are hoofing, leaping, lunging and generally pretending to be Shakira for just one moment.

I've also become a regular at Water Aerobics, Yoga and Bodyflow, which is a form of Tai Chi and Yoga.

Five weeks have helped me to see what a difference a little bit of effort can make! I feel better, have more energy, my clothes fit me better and have rearranged muscle and fat in significant and good ways.

I have learned a lot about fitness by also reading books about nutrition and getting fit. The best one is "Younger Next Year".

Bravo to the Alamo Colleges and YMCA who permitted enrollment at greatly reduced prices to Alamo Colleges employees.

More on "Whatever": "What Ev" and the novel Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott

2010-06-29T03:42:00.000-07:00

Reading Anne Lamott's work is like reading an X-ray of the human soul. One whose owner has been less than perfect, and in-fact, often taken the easy road, not the one less travelled. Like many of us.

Her latest novel, Imperfect Birds is a life lesson in respecting and appreciating the hard, slogging, often endless and hopeless seeming job of becoming an adult. Even one who is among the lucky ones to be born into a family committed to "keeping it real".

Lamott is a recovering alcoholic, like a good friend of mine. Lamott writes well about the scary terrain of addiction, depression, growing up, parenting and the steep climbs and tricky descents of the terrain, which for many of us is the terrain of our times. It's the age of availability, with the added kick of a 50 billion dollar a year advertising (US alone) industry to keep us on target with regular and heavy consumption. There is cheap or freely available alcohol, pharmaceuticals, weed, speed, cocaine, meth, heroin, "what-ev" as Rosie, the teenager in the novel loves to say. Freely available at home, at school, at the freaking village green, mall, local hang-outs, on Facebook, etc.

The age of availability is a product of supply and demand. What drives demand is often supply, as much as what drives supply is demand. Like a snake devouring its own tail, we have before us a candy store of drugs, including candy and fruity-sounding names for alcohol and other drugs to choose from, thanks to the hard work of the beer, wine, alcohol and drug traffickers international brotherhood. (Who since 2000 have murdered into silence 60 journalists in Mexico alone. Knowledge vs. Consumption-Profits).

In the age of availability one can flip the switch and life is a fuzzy, feel-good buzzy place to occupy our time, space, mind and soul--a respite from the troubles, pressures and demands of being awake, fully alive. Meeting our demands, responsibilities, reaching the dreams we have had since children.

"It's OK. Really, I have it under control" is the mantra we repeat as time goes by. The lies to the self increase day by day, night by night, seasons pass, semesters fly by, all the while "It's OK, really, it's under control" wears thinner and thinner til it rips.

My friend, who I mentioned above, felt the mantra rip apart at the age of 35. She only drank on weekends, but when she started she never stopped. She decided to sober up after drinking like that since she was a teenager. At 35, she looked even older, but she only had the emotional brain (self confidence, maturity, self awareness) of a girl close to 12. Today she spends several hours each week at AA meetings and recently celebrated 10 years of sobriety, emerging as a successful businesswoman and delightful person all around. My friend doesn't spend time looking back at the lost years. She doesn't have time to do that. She only looks forward, but that doesn't make those lost years less lost.

The age of availability-- of highs available at every corner, at every stage of the day, morning coffee, sugars, consumption of clothes and products as a way to feel good, alcohol, recreational drugs makes it important to "do the math". Growing up healthy and with most of ones' marbles intact means being able to "be there" for yourself and someone else, maybe a lover or a child someday. It means putting in the time my friend lost all those years being high. Do the math: if one doesn't get the life lessons in an on-purpose, wide-awake state, they are only postponed, not cancelled or avoided. And looking 35-plus externally, while one is emotionally only a teen is a tough price to pay for being high.

The industries want us to choose their products (addictive substances from Hersheys to Hennessy to heroin) now, and to continue using them as often as possible. To jack up their profits this month. Period. That's what their math is.

The math of the human heart is much more. We have a soul, spirit, something inside that cries out for the high because it remembers something deep inside of us that is peaceful, calm, blissful. This is our human heritage, to feel free of stress, tension and worry.

We can find the bliss, all the wisdom of the world tells us, through our actions. Doing good, helping others, working with passion and curiosity at something that gives us pride and joy: gardening for my friend who is wildly successful in being the landscaper to the stars in San Antonio; building homes for my friend the former alcoholic, who woke up at 35; making thought-provoking and achingly beautiful art as my friend, the fiber artist; being a realized yoga instructor for my friend from childhood; teaching developmental math in the country's best program for my friend who works at the college where I teach communications. Some examples from my limited experience.

Bliss. Available. Free of charge. Available in the age of availability. Its path is not advertised, or part of the bottom line for profit-making industries. It's there for us to find inside us, in our own way, every day doing the math, making corrections along the way, doing the daily calculations.

56, Again

2010-06-22T14:00:00.001-07:00

Turning 56 for the second or third time. I don't know if my memory is getting sketchy or I have honestly just thought I've been 56 for the past two years.

Anyhow, it's been a great past few days celebrating and seeing family and friends. I'm reading the new Geneen Roth book about women, food and God. That writer has hit her stride, it's her best book yet.

Visited with our old Artist's Way group, and it was great to see how everyone has applied the principles in their lives in ways that are powerful: a new MFA in arts for a former social worker, several new books, careers, degrees, and journeys in parenting, grand-parenting. Really good to be reminded that according to Julia Cameron, we do our part by putting out the work, and God can be trusted to take care of the quality.

Birthdays are great excuses to eat and drink, and this one had four gatherings, for which I'm so grateful: Mac and Ernies in Tarpley is everything I'd ever heard about and more. Great gourmet food. It's true, arrive early (open only Friday, Saturday and Sunday). There was a great lunch at Dough's at Blanco and 410, excellent, just like in Italy. A wonderful dinner with burgers and shrimp and fruit salad at Medina Lake at my brother and sister-in-law's new place on the water-- and there's water!!! There was a rowdy and long, fun meal at La Gloria, where Mexican street food is the best I've ever tasted. My current favorite restaurant. And finally, an outdoor picnic near the Medina River. Yummy. Back to the YMCA to work some of these calories off!!

Excerpt from radio documentary for Texas Public Radio"They are making decisions for us, we don’t have the freedom we want to.”

2010-06-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

:05 Two way radio chatter
Linda: That’s audio from a YouTube post of a Mexican TV network report that includes narco gangs’ two-way radio transmissions. Cartel members posted a video on the Internet of the execution of a cartel traitor or “traicionero”. Laredo Morning Times editor, Diana Fuentes:

(Fuentes: Two 10:50 – 10 :55) “They slice his neck. They kill him, and the blood, it’s all sound, it’s there.

(Fuentes: Two 11:00 –11:17) “They’re sawing his head off, and it’s one of the big, big things on You Tube right now. And obviously they’re doing it to terrorize people. You know, who’s going to want to go against these people, they do this kind of stuff.”

(Fuentes: Two 11:22 – 11:45) “They post it themselves, they had to shoot it themselves, they’re the drug dealers, this is not the police, these are the killers, showing what they do to people that they consider traicioneros, and then they post it. It’s interesting how social media is being used by both sides.

Linda:
On the other hand, social media in the hands of citizens are used to fill the gaps left by the silenced traditional news media.
(Arturo and M Engl. 3 0:53 – 0:58) “It was right after we were eating dinner that I came to my Storm, my phone, and I opened the blog and I saw what was going on.” (:05)

Linda:
Although it’s not fact-checked, social media offer real-time information that make up in timeliness what it may lack in traditional journalism standards. A local business woman reached for her smart phone when traffickers set up a blockade within sight on a major street in Nuevo Laredo:

(A. and M. Engl. 3 1:05 – 1:21)
Someone had told that person about it, and immediately they put it on the blog. They were asking on the blog if any one has heard anything else about it.” (:15)

Linda:
Border residents know that by whatever means, and regardless of the source, keeping track of where and when there is violence is vital to preventing becoming a victim of crime.

(High School Girls: 2 16:08 – 16:25)
“If you hear there’s a shooting, you can’t go out. They are making decisions for us, we don’t have the freedom we want to.”

A River Runs Through It, Bleeding

2010-06-08T14:15:00.000-07:00

Listening to Alejandro Junco, publisher of numerous newspapers in Mexico, I am reminded of a linguist who I had the good fortune to interview some years ago. He was from Germany, but raised in Latin America. He explained that the whole concept of being bilingual was so foreign to monolinguals, that it was almost impossible for them to understand what being bilingual is. A person born and raised in Chicago speaking English, he said, could not understand what being bilingual is any easier than a person born and raised in Mexico City can get it. Their world is monolingual, whereas a person born, raised, educated in two languages finds it "muy pretty" and normal, to boot, to be bilingual.

In Mr. Junco's talk, I learned what went wrong with Mexico, but I don't have a sense that Mr. Junco has much to say about what to do, what steps to take in order to improve what went wrong and make it right. The talk is priceless in understanding what went wrong, brutally honest and unflinchingly open and clear. I recommend it to anyone who loves Mexico and whose heart aches for what is happening there with the narco violence. I commend Mr. Junco for expanding the conversation to include democracy and what is needed to have democracy survive.I have thought often of the ease and safety that I live in and take for granted since my trip back home to Laredo. I have so many freedoms, including that to speak and write about whatever I wish.

I am disappointed to not hear about Mexico-based solutions from Mr. Junco. I am disappointed to not read about US-based solutions from other policy makers or in media. In his defense, Mr. Junco doesn't speak much about solutions and ideas for Mexico's re-creation because his job as a journalist is to tell the story, and he does this extremely well. Perhaps it's not his job to envision a solution for the problems he lays out for us to study. Maybe in the studying of the problems, a solution will emerge from somewhere, I don't care if it's Mexico City, Chicago or Stockholm, just let's get started.

Check out Alejandro Junco's talk on Texas Public Radio a few weeks ago on April 16. (scroll down about 8 program titles to "Mexico:What Went Wrong?"

http://www.tpr.org/programs/newsmakerhour.html
Mexico: What Went Wrong?

April 16, 2010 · Alejandro Junco, President and Chief Executive Officer of Grupo Reforma, a seven daily newspaper publishing group. Junco spoke on March 25, 2010 to members and guests of the World Affairs Council of San Antonio. The title of his presentation is "Mexico: What Went Wrong?" Introducing Alejandro Junco is Raul Rodriguez, the Benson Chair in Banking and Finance and a distinguished professor at the H-E-B School of Business and Administration at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio.

Return of the 8th Grade Mystic, Clairvoyant Catholic

2010-05-27T06:19:00.000-07:00

Remaining: the 4 square blocks of the old Ursuline Academy school boundaries in Laredo, Texas. The school is now named St. Augustine. Most of the old buildings are still there, including the High School and Convent where the nuns lived, and the courtyard there where we held dances with a rock and roll band.

Gone: the giant mesquite tree near the 5-8th grade classrooms under whose shade I memorized Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl," the trees on the corner where we carved our initials with boy's names we had crushes on, now forgotten; the grotto where I had my only moment of accidental mind-reading: After lunch at home two blocks away, I sped to my classmates on my bike and blurted out the name Sam Jaffe, the name of TV doctor Ben Casey's mentor. The girls spun around and said "shhhh!!!" as they were playing charades. I don't know why I blurted his name. I had plucked the name from the air and said it out loud before I even knew they were playing charades.

Gone: the 3rd floor open room in the convent where we were gathered to watch (great fun) a film. A film about the horrors at Auschwitz (what is most the opposite of great fun?) We cringed and cried to see the mounds of skin and bones. Where was God in all this terror?

Remaining: the office where I sat as an 8th grader, stunned to know I was being asked to leave my school of 9 and a half years (since kindergarten), and would be enrolling at public school. Less austere today is the office than when the nuns were in charge. It is now bright orange in color and students and staff breeze in and out, as I careen between the present and past, its shadows and whispers from 40 years ago.

Remaining: the chapel where we sat each week for prayers or Mass on the first Friday of the month, little Kleenex's pinned to our heads when we forgot to wear our beanies (little caps). The chapel has had a make-over, with new stained glass windows. The square chairs are still there, and the old plaster statues are fragile from the years of standing guard in the humidity of Laredo. I see the statue of the Virgin Mary there, and gaze carefully to catch her eye. I remember the week we learned about the miracle at Lourdes and we all prayed so fervently to repeat the miracle. One girl (not me, I swear on sharp cheddar cheese) thought she saw Mary shed tears and the news of the vision spread from class to class. For days the nuns played traffic cops to a little parade of penitents praying before the statue hoping they could witness her crying.

Gone: the scared 8th grader that was too much for the nuns. She left the old school shamed, but collected herself in short order, making new friends and learning from new teachers. The nuns, when they said good-bye promised to pray for her. The girl is grown and approaching 60, and thanks them for their prayers; she is thriving and so is the old school. There were more than 3 million dollars in scholarships awarded to the 120 graduating seniors this year. Isn't that miraculous?

I miss the old mesquite, the dances under the night sky, the conspiracy of little mystics. I am so happy to have returned and seen how well we are both doing, the school heading toward its 150th anniversary, and one of its once-clairvoyant minor mystics moving well on her divine path, whose journey of learning in life was so strongly shaped within those 4 square blocks.

There May Have Been A Day Without Mexicans on Bridge One

2010-05-25T07:40:00.000-07:00

I loved this funny film, "A Day Without Mexicans" and was excited to see life imitating art yesterday while in Laredo and Nuevo Laredo. The business community in Nuevo Laredo had called for a boycott of US businesses to protest Arizona's controversial new law allowing the police to stop and question anyone about their immigration status.

I drove over early Monday morning from my hotel to the bridge and was happily reminded the distances were not those that I'm accustomed to living in Pipe Creek. I was at the bridge in less than 10 minutes.

I walked to the area where the toll booths are located and could see the long line of pedestrians, which meant the planned Day Without Mexicans boycott of US businesses had not worked. The supervisor I spoke with said there was no difference in traffic this morning from any other morning.

Later in the day I returned to cross into Nuevo Laredo, and at 4:45 p.m. was the only car on the bridge, both ways. That was strange. I did my interview with the two very generous communication professionals who filled me in on their takes of what the border violence was doing to their lives--everyone staying indoors at night, essentially.

Also stopped in to visit my Aunt Angelica and Cousin Estelita, who live close to the bridge, and then drove home on an equally empty bridge. The attendant on the Mexican side said there had been 70 percent decrease in traffic, while the US Customs agent said there had been no change from the regular traffic.

Later yet that evening, Dee Dee Fuentes, the editor of the Laredo Morning Times met with me. She was working on a story for today's paper about A Day Without Mexicans not panning out. Turns out there can be no day without Mexicans, as people need to show up for work because they depend on a paycheck.

This is the reality, but the point of the film can still be useful in understanding just how interlaced our economies are, especially here in los dos Laredos.

Check out the movie, if you haven't seen it yet, it's funny and it makes you think...what if?

We all have plenty of faith, even narco-traficantes

2010-05-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

"There is no such thing as a lack of faith. We all have plenty of faith, it's just that we have faith in the wrong things. We have faith in what can't be done rather than what can be done. We have faith in lack rather than abundance but there is no lack of faith. Faith is a law." (Eric Butterworth)

They are back, my friend reports. She's recently traveled by car from Nuevo Laredo to Monterrey. The roadside chapels built by families of a victim of a roadside car accident are back up after being demolished for the visit to the region last year by Hilary Clinton. The shrines were destroyed because they are an embarrassing and frightening reminder of the cultural changes happening in Mexico.

The roadside chapels used to contain plaster cast icons of the accident victim's saint (the saint on whose day the person was born), images of Jesus, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and others, and rows of candles. You would pull off the road on your way to the main highway to Monterrey to light a candle and pray for your safe journey. It was always smoky from the candles, and always warm. There was a place to kneel and pause to pray before your trip. It always felt like a gift from the family who built it in their loved one's memory.

New roadside shrines similar to the old ones but dedicated to a new deity, the cult of death, started being built along the roadways about ten years ago. Inside are statues of a death skeleton dressed in robes like the religious statues, also surrounded by images and candles.

We stopped to see one when we were last in Mexico in December, 2008 between Bustamante and the Colombia bridge outside of Nuevo Laredo. Inside the ramshackle windswept shelter I started to feel sick. It felt like the earth had suddenly begun spinning backwards and I nearly lost my balance, everything seemed upside down in a Mexico that venerated death instead of life. There were broken bottles and such a sadness in the statues crept over me I had to get out. I quickly took some photos to prove to myself this was real and not a nightmare. We drove on to the border without speaking. I wondered what causes the veneration of the dead? What causes someone to abandon faith in eternal life for faith in a short life ending in violence? Was it the desire for power? Is this new, or have there always been those that trade their souls for the short-term? These shrines are a testament to their coming out of the shadows.

In an excellent New Yorker article, Days of the Dead, Alma Guillermoprieto writes about the cult of death and narco-culture of Mexico in a way that illuminates and helps to explains these questions. The section on the cult of death is on page four.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/10/081110fa_fact_guillermoprieto?currentPage=4

I will add that these new shrines are good in one important way. They force the discussion about the shadow side of faith in Mexico's terrible struggle with poverty, corruption and maintaining against the odds the values that define its cultural trust: supporting and keeping its families together, healthy and strong, for long productive lives rather than short journeys ending in tragedy.

Jalapa, who's Your Papa?

2010-05-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

Breakfast tacos inspired some word detective work this morning. It started with a large container of "Nacho slices" from Costco, for about $3.85, a great buy for jalapeño peppers.

Jalapeño peppers are becoming part of the mainstream American diet, and the English language is "owning" or "appropriating" the word, as well as the tasty pepper, changing the word used to refer to the hot little chile from jalapeño to "nacho slice". Here's a little backstory:

Jalapa is the capital of the Mexican state of Veracruz. There are about 400,000 people living there, and there is a university and a phenomenal anthropology museum with those great (as in enormous) and mysterious basalt heads that arrived there via waterways and the hard work of slaves thousands of years ago. It's high in the mountains and cool, with lots of trees and rain. It's near Coatepec and Xico, where the best coffee and mole sauces come from. I've been there three times. Once with no money (as in no, none, zilch) and two other times with lots of money (as in my wallet contained two credit cards). I mention this apropos of nothing, other than to say Jalapa is beautiful regardless of the money you may have. The sycamore trees in the park are taller than any I've ever seen, and three people holding hands would not be able to connect around their wide speckled trunks.

Xalapa, the Nauhuatl word for the town, translates to sandy land of water. When the Spanish came they appended the colonial governor's name, Enriquez to the town, but it's known as Jalapa or Xalapa interchangeably. That's how the name jalapeño came to be. The chile was grown there, and started its conquest of the Americas from that rainy, mountain terrain.

So, let's keep track, now: language migration/appropriation # 1: Native tribe names a town. The original name of the chile is lost as far as I know, and it becomes over time known as a jalapeño.

Language migration/appropriation #2: Ends at South Carolina, whose soldiers fought in the Mexican War at Jalapa. They returned to their homes enamored of where they had served, and named their town Jalapa. Pronounced with a hard "j" like in "jelly."

Language migration/appropriation #3: From Detroit. Cars made in the U.S. that were rusted and knocked around were exported for purchase by ship that landed in Veracruz harbor in the 1930's and 1940's, where they were transported to be repaired and resold in the city of Jalapa. Thus the English word for old junky car was born, "jalopy."

So it goes; language is alive; it changes spelling, meaning and it's fun to trace its journey. Next time you have a nacho with the mean green slice upon it, say thanks to the Aztecs and God knows who before them made that jalapeño possible.

Here is a cool link for more commonly known words that trace their roots to Nauhatl.
http://www.mexica.net/nahuatl/nahuawds.html

Terrorism Comes to Texas

2010-05-14T07:56:00.000-07:00

The Four-Syllable Word, Terrorism

A four-syllable word can muffle the meaning of concrete feelings.
Take terrorism.
Once a headline for tragedies in far away countries.
It happened to people you would never know.

Sharper focus comes in first-person conversations :
• Schools and churches closed in your grandmother’s village.
• Nine people executed in another ranch town in the sierra where you spent a magical week Christmas ’08 hunting handmade straw chairs, hiking in canyons overlooking a desert oasis.
• The sierra where palm trees grow sideways in walls of slate
now a training camp for ex-police who traded their promises to keep the peace for profit in a new profession.
• News reporters are murdered; those remaining are silent, or writing obliquely to save their lives.

People turn from mass media to word-of-mouth:
• Whispers about a thousand troops sent to the border from the interior.
• Rumors about the Tamaulipas town of Camargo blockaded, no one allowed to leave or to enter.
• An entire village in Chihuahua packing it up and moving to Texas to seek asylum.

This is the new Mexican Revolution:
It convulses the country and spills across borders in a slippery, red flood.

Terrorism doesn’t explain the pain of the mother praying a novena for the son lost in the rain of bullets crossing the street to his class at the university. Nor does it fit for the 17-year old girl who survived two kidnappings, now uproot ed 500 miles from home.
Heartbreaking maybe.

Also, the word longing:
Sweet connection of bridges over a river that gave life, never severed.
Now threatened by greed and machineguns.
Force of might asserting will, gaining turf.
The deaths of thousands never entered on laundered-money ledgers

I am impotent remembering more peaceful times and long for their return:
We flitted like hummingbirds from flower to flower along both sides of the border,
singing songs in English or in Spanish, sometimes both.
We laughed at jokes in English or in Spanish, laughing crosses all language borders without a passport.
We ate at fast-food joints having tacos al pastor or burgers.
We learned the dance of two cultures by afternoons of shopping, visiting with family and friends, dancing in smoky clubs
How the border really was,and when it wasn’t; when it mattered, and when it didn’t.
Like a four-syllable word, the border we lived in had divisions that were apparent, but not discussed.
Layers beneath layers , which we saw, but could not explain or understand.

We never looked up to see
The storm that was brewing outside the fancy restaurants and gated neighborhoods of castles and green lawns.
We didn’t notice
The thunderheads forming over the card-board homes in the desert and the sierra
Where the have-nots watched on television the lives of those that did.
TV showed the way, the ticket to all things.
Old patience worn thin, faith, religion, hope and optimism exhausted.

Words like terrorism, narco-trafficking, money -laundering, and underground economies,
Cloudy constructions, foggy filters that obscure the vision and visceral reaction:
Sit,instead, for just a while in a shadowy chapel.
Cringe in sharp sorrow with mothers and widows who grieve for departed souls and memories of more peaceful times.

Top Reasons for Celebrating Cinco De Mayo

2010-05-05T05:06:00.000-07:00

1. Simpler Times.
Mexico defeats France at Puebla. Mexico wins its freedom from French colonial domination. Today, in contrast, it's hard to discern who are wearing the white hats in the crowd of old-government-sponsored-drug-thugs, new, anti-government-drug thugs, new-turn-coat soldiers-aligned with anti-government-drug-thugs, spin-off anti-government drug thugs, etc.

2. Enchiladas Suizas.
French cooking is a great addition that has enriched Mexico's cuisine. Merci boucoup.

3. Half-price lunches at participating locations.
Chamber maids, gardeners and farm-workers temporarily held while traveling to their jobsites in the U.S. receive half-price on their happy meals at all Homeland Security holding station cafeterias (while supplies last).

4. Actors portraying Mexicans.
The U.S. commemorates Latinos' contributions to the magnificent mosaic of American cultures with remembrance of American film actors who have valiantly portrayed Mexicans in American cinema: Marlon Brando. Gracias, Marlon.

5. U.S. Brings End to Mexican Corn Market
The staple of Mexican agriculture, corn, lost its market value when U.S. subsidized corn flooded the market south of the border with cheap corn. Thousands of Mexicans lost their farms and work on farms and were forced to move to cities to find work, including cities in the U.S. No worries. Taco Bell bravely stepped into the Mexican fast-food business to provide the remaining masses with their daily "wraps". The corn goddess Tonantzin is not pleased.

6. Gated-Tourism
Flying in for rays and virgin beaches at heavily guarded Cabo San Lucas and Cozumel is still safe-vacationing for tourists. On the American consulate's no-travel zone: Acapulco, Mazatlan, Mexico City, all points interior (including San Miguel de Allende) and the border, where 5,000 people have died each year on average in drug-traffic related violence.

7. Daily bread vs. Ideology
The terrorism link to Mexican seasonal farm-workers, construction laborers and others coming to the U.S. to work at jobs Americans refuse to do has finally been disproven by the arrests of numerous would be-terrorists from other parts of the world, who only resemble, but are not Latino. Mexican workers leave their homes to earn a living, not for ideological reasons.

8. Legalized Pot.
Mexico's gift to American pharmacology is now being grown and sold legally in parts of the U.S. This is a significant step forward in drying up demand for its supply from old-government-sponsored-drug-thugs, new, anti-government-drug thugs, new-turn-coat soldiers-aligned with anti-government-drug-thugs, spin-off anti-government drug thugs, etc.

Deliver Me From Arizona

2010-04-28T19:47:00.000-07:00

Our Father, Who Art in Heaven: What were You thinking when you created Arizona elected officials?

This question comes from an Arizona-born, but reared and educated as a “Got-Here-As-Soon-As-I-Could” Texas transplant. This dual citizenship of a sort has made me wonder how two states that make up the major part of the U.S. –Mexico border could be so different in their approaches to immigration.
The answers I’ve come up with are as follows:

(I have had some help with this vexing question from historians at the college where I teach).

1. Arizona legislators put in more hours than ours do in Texas. Ours only meet every two years and for special sessions called by the governor, while theirs meet every year. I’m normally not a less-government-is-better kind of person, but in this case I’m apparently sipping tea.

2. In Arizona, the border with Mexico is a fence dividing the vast, sparsely populated Sonoran desert. You could see it from our back yard in Douglas, where my family lived for 19 years, and where my Dad was killed in a copper smelter accident when I was a toddler. In Texas, the border with Mexico’s Tamaulipas and Chihuahua states is a river, where villages and towns have thrived for more than 300 years.

3. Every year for the better part of this new century, 300 undocumented workers, also known as people, died crossing the Sonora. Last month, unknown thugs murdered an Arizona rancher. The death enraged residents and sparked the state’s lawmakers to pass a controversial law allowing local police to stop those they suspect of being here illegally to show legal work permits or citizenship. One person dead is too many, but you have to wonder if the Arizona lawmakers were wearing cultural blinders not to react in similar shock to the deaths of thousands in the state’s desert.

4. Culturally, Texas’ history is intertwined with those of Spain and Mexico. There have been serious conflicts, some still unresolved. But there has also been, especially at the border, many surprises and successes in the blending of two polar opposites. It takes real grit and tolerance to smooth over differences between such strikingly different cultures, but the Tex-Mex border has been working at it for fun and profit since Texas won its independence from Mexico. This “best of both worlds” brew of heritages is ultimately stronger than any divisions, despite and including dispiriting health and economic problems, and the recent return of the worst of the Wild West, lawless drug cartel thugs.

5. Follow the money. Both states’ largest trading partner is Mexico, yet according to the Department of Transportation, in August of 2008, Texas’ trade with Mexico was estimated at $8.3 billion, while Arizona logged in $787 million in that same month’s business with Mexico.

6. Money talks, but votes talk too, as the old Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project wisely counseled in their bumper sticker slogan, “su voto es su voz” your vote is your voice. According to the U.S. Census, Texan Latinos comprise 36.5% of the state’s population, while in Arizona, Latinos make up 30% of the state’s population. With both the money and demographics talking, it’s no wonder Texas politicians, starting with former Texas governor and U.S. president George W. Bush, have been listening. Their ears are tuned to business and political strategists more than to talk-radio hate-mongers bent on making scapegoats of undocumented workers.

So do we know if the next session of the Texas legislature will pass a law similar to that of Arizona’s? Or will the U.S. Congress finally see beyond election myopia to pass immigration reform that includes a legal accommodation for workers from Mexico? I don’t know, but I do have a sense that the drug cartel crisis will influence the outcome, as well as the new push for our nation’s climate policy. Likewise, Arizona may experience unexpected economic repercussions from the diplomatic fury in Mexico.

Exploring the different stances at the U.S. Mexican border has convinced me that Texas and my birth state, Arizona, diverge in their approach to immigration for reasons that differ as much as their shapes and sizes on the U.S. map. Amen.

Bring Me the Bathtub of Julia Roberts

2010-04-22T08:12:00.000-07:00

The boy’s not-yet-arrived-at-puberty voice lifts over the barren hilltops with a ranchera ballad worthy of the lungs of Vicente Fernandez. It rides on the sunshine and cold wind to swirl around us as we sit resting on centuries-old rubble of stone and mortar that once was a chapel. I hear a phrase, a half sentence, nearly recognize it, and then lose it like a scarf blowing in gusts just beyond my reach. The edges of his voice are thin, but he makes up for his shallow resonance with purity and pluckiness. Since I cannot see him, I picture him with sheep in the background, standing like Julie Andrews in the Alps filmed from a circling helicopter.
We sit high in the Sierra Madre, among the more than 200 year old ruins of the Ciudad Abandonada, The Abandoned City, what remains of the 18th century Real de Catorce, a thousand feet above the present village of Real de Catorce. The ruins are nearly at knee level, with not a trace of the old city’s roofs remaining.
We hear his singing for nearly an hour, as we eat our packed lunches and rest the mountain ponies after a morning of slow climbing up rocky trails. From where we sit on our hilly moonscape we scan the hills around us to try to spot the young, singing shepherd, but cannot find him to wave at him and let him know by our waving that we hear him and like his singing. From behind a nearby hill where he tends his sheep he sings, unaware of the pleasure he sends as he sings to pass the time.
The church of San Francisco de Assisi in the center of Real de Catorce dominates the postage stamp view we have of the village. The church sits across a small plaza from an elegant square building that once served as one of Mexico’s treasury mints. Real’s population reached 40,000 around the turn of the century. Silver was discovered in 1773 and poured from Real into Spain and Mexico’s treasure houses until production ended when the mine was destroyed during the Mexican Revolution. Real’s wealthy citizens shut down the opera house, bullring and their colonial mansions, but some families chose to stay. The two-kilometer, one-lane tunnel that runs though the mountain connects Real to the outside world of San Luis Potosi, two hours to the south, and Saltillo and Monterry four and five hours respectively, to the north. Car headlights bounce as they probe the dark, undulating solid rock walls of the tunnel connecting Real to modern Mexico. A primal memory is stirred while driving through the passage, like navigating the birth canal or awakening from a dream, leaving one world to enter another.
The village spills over with visitors once a year in October for Mexico’s second largest religious pilgrimage. Real’s patron saint is San Francisco de Assisi; the saint’s life size, sandal-footed statue’s worn soles attest to his disinclination to stay put at a newer church built across town for him. Villagers are said to have taken the statue several times to its new home, but each morning it had found its way back to the old church. Villagers saw the wear and dirt on the statue’s sandals and decided to leave it alone.
The large church is a testament to the town’s solid Catholic base, but there is also a relaxed acceptance among the villagers for people with different beliefs, including the pagan beliefs of the ancient native culture of the Huichol who revere their sacred, ancient sites near Real. The Huichol travel on foot across the width of Mexico from the state of Nayarit for their annual ceremonies, which include ritual eating of peyote found in the area. Real’s surreal moonscape, along with its remoteness at 9,000 feet is a magnet for hippies, mystics and urban refugees from around world. The hallucinogenic cactus attracts yo-yo’s and yahoos who foolishly collect burlap sackfuls of peyote buttons they couldn’t ingest in a year, destroying decades of growth in an afternoon of “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth over-doing” western greediness.
The locals, who are proud of their village and understand its attraction, politely tolerate visitors of all kinds, from professionals from Mexico City on holiday, to scraggly travelers from Anyplace, Planet Earth, on missions of looking for themselves by looking in new places. Locals are accustomed to visitors, but they still view them as somewhat odd curiosities. An anthropologist who lived in Real for seven years told me she detected a common concern, bordering on pity, from the locals toward their resident foreigners. Why would someone want to leave her family and home so far away in England, Italy, or the U.S.? Locals wondered what awful thing had happened to keep a person away from family for so long.
For the past twenty years Real has been populated by about three hundred families and a sprinkling of growing families of new immigrants from Europe and the States. They have opened artist studios and restaurants and are raising families in the arid hills around Real. The latest invasion of outsiders to enter Real was documented in the American press. A Hollywood crew for the (awful) film “The Mexican” brought super stars from California to live for weeks in Real. TV and newspaper accounts about the movie’s filming in the remote location spread news of Real’s existence to a worldwide audience. I followed the news with distress, praying Real would not go Hollywood and be overrun by tourists ruining its ruinous charm.
Spacious showers are standard in Mexican hotel bathrooms, and all memories I have of showering in Real are of racing to finish before the supply of hot water. About a year after the film was shot, on my fourth trip to Real, I am relieved to see only two modestly modern additions: additional phone lines have been installed and a cozy, new one story hotel has been built, both in connection with “The Mexican” film production. One newspaper account reported that the movie star Julia Roberts was unhappy with the whirlpool bathtub installed to her specifications in the hotel, and that she requested it be replaced with another one that suited her better. Brad Pitts, her co-star, is said to have been more accessible and friendlier than Roberts with the locals. He wore an orange tee shirt for several days, and locals copied him, buying out the town’s supply of orange shirts.
Has the singing shepherd seen the movie “The Mexican?” and, if so, what does he make of it? I can’t see him, so I try to picture him. He is about twelve, and short compared to the overfed boys his age in Texas. He has traded his gray hand-me-down clothes for a velvet black mariachi outfit, silver studs along both pants legs. He sings as he twirls a rope in a smoky arena at two a.m. at a state fair, performing to a packed house in the pre-show to the rooster fights, the main attraction. His boots are set with determination in the red sand, legs wide apart, chest held high, head thrown back. His boy’s voice wails into the microphone songs of heartbreak and passion. At the end of his set, in a smooth, sweeping motion, he lifts his dark, jeweled sombrero and bows to the crowd.
We refugees from city jobs scarf down our sandwiches in a hurry, rushing through our lunch break, still on Texas time. We envy the young shepherd and his rhythm of life without stopping to consider if he sings to ward off worries or to mend a broken heart. “What spirit! What optimism! What a legacy the young pastorcito carries, since before the time of Jesus! (I have finally remembered the Spanish word for shepherd boy. My mother used it with the diminutive suffix “ito” when describing the adult hired hand at her father and uncles’ ranch.) His job was probably the first we humans created coming out the gate of the Garden of Eden! Does the pastorcito appreciate this? Does he consider the long tradition of which he is a part?” I am swept up with the romance of the stark terrain and his mysterious singing. I then remember the poverty in Real and realize the pastorcito is unlikely to be as romantic about his life as I am. He’s the boy lost in the reverie of his singing, but he’s also the boy playing at the electronic game machines in the dark bar facing the tiny plaza that is hidden by the treetops a thousand feet below us. He’s the boy reviving the engine of an old cannibalized jalopy that would’ve rotted away in undisturbed retirement decades ago anywhere else but Real. He’s the boy playing soccer and dreaming of a world championship for Mexico. He’s the boy leaving the village at the end of the eighth grade for a job in construction in the metropolis of Monterrey.He's the boy considering a career with narcotraficantes, maybe he'll be lucky and live to be 30!
On this rocky promontory high above the desert I remember vague strains from the CD of the shepherd folksongs of the French composer Canteloube which was the musical accompaniment of the year I spent writing my Master’s thesis. The ranchera ballad the boy sings is as far from the trained voice of Anna Moffo as this desert mountaintop is from France. Their connection to each other is not the voice or the song, but the shepherd's singing and the loneliness the song expresses and heals all at once.
With friends I hiked on shepherd trails in Ireland’s Dingle peninsula one summer, aware that shepherds made the paths we followed centuries before Christianity arrived on the island. I remember the black and white mop of fur we came across one morning outside a village, tied to a low shed. She was mostly bones and fur, wagging her long tail, pleading to be petted, showing us her tummy. A working dog, this Border Collie, gentle with strangers at the edge of peat bogs. Where was her shepherd, and did he sing whenever he got lonesome, or did he lift his cell phone to call a friend instead? I wonder if pastores everywhere are going in for career retraining, checking-in the long hours outdoors in the elements for a job at the soon-to-come-to-your-village-Walmart?
I can only hear the young shepherd in fragments, plumes of sound that drift in and dissipate. Is he near? Beyond that craggy hill? Or is it that one? I can tell he is singing full throttle, no holds barred, his whole heart is in every word. Just like Julie Andrews or Anna Moffo, for the beauty and the joy of it.

Census and The Future of Space-Age Mexicans

2010-04-16T09:08:00.000-07:00

Update to Census Bureau Procedures:
This is to request the use of special class “M” algorhythm in the 2010 and all future U.S. census of Americans of Mexican descent.
Special interest is due to this affected population group, whose numbers shall heretofore be counted in multiples of two in blue states and four in red states. This special action is required due to their status as endangered in America’s future, as evidenced in recent futuristic films.
Although recent reports estimate Latinos in the US to number 47 million, with the majority being of Mexican descent, media evidence is clear that without these special Bureau of the Census measures, this demographic group will disappear.
Case # 1: Star Trek-- Note the population of the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise reflects a wide diversity of nationalities, there are no Mexicans to be seen. There is an actor portraying the half-human character, Spock, whose name is Zachary Quinto, who initially appeared to have a Hispanic surname. While he did receive a Catholic education, Quinto is in fact Italian-Irish.
Case #2: Avatar—The native population of the planet Na´vi is blue. Conditions seemed more hopeful for the existence of Mexicans due to the appearance of the feisty, immigrant Chicana helicopter pilot portrayed by actress Michelle Rodriguez. While she was instrumental in saving the Na´vi, she unfortunately died when she used her helicopter to help blow up and defeat the machinery that threatened the Na´vi tree of life and wisdom.
Case # 3 Star Wars—Contrary to earlier reports that Star Wars character Chewbacca was Chicano because he is both brown, and is sometimes referred to as “Chuy” by close friends, it has recently been learned that Chewbacca is in fact of Indian extraction. He is currently working on a DVD set of anger management videos with celebrity physician Deepak Chopra.
One possible explanation for the mysterious decline of Mexican Americans may be traced to the recent substitution of the term “flatbread” for tortilla, “wrap” for burrito, and the demise of the 15 year old Taco Bell mascot and media hero, Gidget (Spanish for “I may be small, but I make a six-figure income”).

Follow Up to Post on Nva. Ciudad Guerrero

2010-04-12T08:12:00.000-07:00

We traveled to the border this past weekend for the funeral of my sister in law Mary's only brother, Larry Hernandez. Our cousins from Guerrero, Martita and Maricela, and their mother, my Aunt Marta attended the rosary and family gathering after the rosary. They informed me that the schools and church are still closed in Guerrero, after a month of violence such as machine guns going off at night. The government has sent in sailors from the Mexican Navy to try and keep the peace in this tiny border town. My cousin's 8th grade girl is going to move to Nuevo Laredo to try and finish out the school year in Nuevo Laredo. They say they have gotten so tired of the violence, but have learned to simply hit the floor when they hear the sounds of gunfire. What a horrible contrast to the peace that once permeated this little patch of hardscrabble country along the Rio Salado where my mother's ancestors settled to ranch and bring up their children.

The Power of Language

2010-04-01T08:29:00.000-07:00

Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues was a wonderful experience for all of the women (students, staff and faculty) who took part in the two performances we presented at Northwest Vista this week, Monday, March 29 at 12:30 and Wednesday, March 31 at 7 p.m.Thanks much to Professors Melissa Marlowe and Carina Gonzalez-Stout who spear headed the effort.
The amazing thing about the experience was the transformation I underwent with respect to the word, "vagina". I remember telling my office mates that I was auditioning for a play, and I just avoided saying the name of the play, even though I had seen Ensler's video on TV some years back. I remember the audition, at which I was emboldened to speak only after seeing 9-10 teenage girls have the courage to stand up and go through their audition. I remember thinking, if these young women have the courage, so can I. I didn't know then, but it was a case of The little Coochi Snorcher that could. Or should I say the Panocha that plowed forward! It took several readings of my part (The Vagina Workshop) and a rehearsal with my fellow actors to finally get me out of my discomfort zone about saying the word, "vagina". I got pretty good at it, frankly a bit melodramatic, I'm afraid. In my efforts to learn an English accent, I sounded like Count Chocula. Now, after two performances, the word is (almost) alarmingly easy to use. I'm tossing it around at any opportunity-- in front of my office mates, my friends and even my students-- some of whom were in the audience. Yikes!

My question is, if this word had so many locks and keys to keep it hidden, what are other words that need to be said out loud? Any suggestions, and why do they need to be spoken, the way "vagina" does in Eve Ensler's phenomenal play?

music, radio, oldies (Jeannie C. Riley, "Harper Valley PTA"

2010-03-19T06:22:00.000-07:00

After 25 years of listening to Oldies stations and the same 25 tunes, I have begun to ask what the little Nash Rambler am I doing listening to the same songs for so long? How many times of hearing Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon" does it take before I want to shout "Hey, you are ruining a good song by playing it every 15 minutes!" If I knew 25 years ago I'd be hearing "Rhiannon" every time I turned on the radio for the rest of my life, I would have ripped out my car radio long ago, and worse yet, played one-way frisbee into a bonfire with my entire record collection.Too much of a good thing is still too much. But let me tell you about what radio was like before it became too much: Ray Stevens, Led Zepellin, Credence Clearwater Revival, Herb Alpert, Tammy Wynette, Jeannie C. Riley, Mick Jagger, Ray Charles, Diana Ross and Roger Miller. And yours truly, who worked in news on the radio on and off at four stations until the early 1990's.

AM radio in the late 60's and 70's was a tail-gate party to the game of life. Fans from all the human leagues' different teams would gather to dance and sing, get to know each other, tell stories and sometimes laugh, sometimes cry. AM radio welcomed everyone, British invaders, soul, odd little comedy singers to country and international balladeers. It was decidedly low-brow and you were welcome in your dashiki, your boots and jeans, sandals and shorts, or beat-up sneakers and raggedy blue jean cutoffs. Radio was on in the car, at home in the kitchen, in the den on the stereo and by the bed where you listened late at night to whining signals carrying stations from across the country as they skipped across the airwaves, caught by your radio's receiver. There were transistor radios the size of a shoe box that you could take with you on picnics or to the public swimming pool where music buzzed in and out of your ears like bees. You might hear Ray Coniff's singers, or Ray Charles or a novelty song from Ray Stevens, whose "Guitarzan" and other silly songs punctuated the more serious love songs that lived on your favorite station. Frank Sinatra sang next to the Beatles, who were followed by Elvis, Diana Ross or Barbra Streisand. Country songs were not known as country, they were just songs. Rock, soul, blues or French, Spanish, German or Japanese hits were just songs, too. The party was open and all were welcome, and one station would play them all.

There were songs that told stories. Lonely boys jumped off bridges into southern rivers. There were short ditties about polka dot bikinis and little Nash Ramblers. There were long, eight minute mini-concerts about women in yellow cotton dresses and melting cakes in the park. Extended solos from guitarists were common, and the world's longest on-air drum set from "Inagottadavita"(In the Garden of Eden?). There were songs that made you cry for teens that died in car crashes or for your nation's murdered leaders, Abraham, Martin and John. There were songs that lifted, with bells (Sonny and Cher), tore at your heart with yells (Janis Joplin) and made you blush about no-tell motels (most country performers).

FM arrived in the early 70's to South Texas. It featured music from full album sides played with no commercials or interruptions whatsoever. It almost sounded like you were listening to the music at home on the stereo, a stereo that was twice as large as the television. The markets began to break down into segments and fragments when FM arrived with its superior audio technology. Richer sounds were carried in the richer sound waves, but if you drove across the state, you'd lose the frequency and have to search for another station.

Radio was a good party, with a good 20 year run, and like all parties, it came to an end. Radio stations, which were owned by local owners, began to make serious profits, which were attractive to investors. Station chains began growing. With the new chains came cuts at the local level and centralized programming (that's what investors wanted, more profits). These new programs targeted the market's sub-groups. Now there were stations whose targets were teens and young 20's. These stations aimed at reaching sub-groups in the lucrative youth market, playing all hip-hop, all metal, all modern country. There were still the "oldies" and "classic country" stations, but the first-string players were gunning for the large youth market who were free-spenders buying new clothes, music, concert tickets and eating out frequently.

Radio's tail-gate parties of the 80's, 90's and beyond were smaller, tightly-managed affairs where songs were introduced to the nation only by big promoters and record companies. Gone for good were the local singers and bands who broke onto the airwaves with an original sound and talent in one city to catch that rare ride across the country to stardom. San Antonio had the Royal Jesters, Sunny and the Sunliners, and the most famous, the faux-British combo, The Sir Douglas Quintet, whose Mexican-origin members tried hard to pass as Welsh or Black Irish in the era of all-things-British-are-better.

The national sound was an experiment in management that made money quickly but soon bored most music buffs. It ultimately failed. National began to sound vanilla and worse than that, contrived, pre-packaged, unoriginal, like "Dancin' in the Street" killed by a Broadway choreographer.

Another reason segmented radio failed was that technology, again, would enter uninvited to transform the party forever. The four and eight track tape decks fitted into cars started the trend that made every driver his or her own music programmer. With the radio turned off, the decks morphed into factory-installed cassette players, CD players, MP-3 players. Then came the I-pod and satellite. No commercials or chattering from DJ's, and, mercifully, the end of the pre-set selection from someone in New Jersey.

Today, take a road trip with me and you'll hear Shakira, Eydie Gourmet and the Trio Los Panchos, Jeannie C. Riley and Grace Slick along with Conway Twitty, Jimmy Hendrix, Roy Orbison, the Beatles, Juan Gabriel and Cole Porter. I'm the programmer and the songs are from "mi epoca" (my era). However, I do wonder, sometimes if the radio race to market segmentation had never happened, and if the tailgate party had stayed open to everyone, what the party would sound like today. Would my tastes be more modern? Would they be more international in flavor?

I know for sure segmentation took some music away, and gave me more (much, much more) of the music that I liked. But is that necessarily good? Even if too much of a good thing is too much, I won't rip my radio out of my car or build a record album bonfire because that bonfire won't burn. I love radio too much to believe it's failed me forever.

I still hope to hear new tunes that I can appreciate and not flinch with embarrassment at hearing lyrics with over-the-top commercialization of sex and intimacy from genres as varied as pop and country to hip-hop and rap. Any recommendations, fellow music lovers?

Our Mkt=Drug Profits/5,000 deaths per year

2010-03-12T07:06:00.000-08:00

My grandmother's town, Nueva Ciudad Guerrero, Tamaulipas, was built in the 1950's to replace the 250 year old original town where Mom's family lived and where she and my dad were married. Old Guerrero was buried beneath the Rio Grande when citrus growers in the Lower Rio Grande Valley lobbied for a dam to manage the river so their groves would have a steady source of water.

The original Spanish settlement was abandoned to its watery grave, along with its church, two story Hotel Flores, its market, plaza and the many homes built of cut sandstone, with rock corrals adjacent to the homes, for cattle were gathered at night from their grazing in the commons. A way of life was ended for another to prosper.

75 years later, the orange groves of the Valley now lie untended, their fruit on the ground, abandoned as developers trade the properties in shifting economies, speculating for future housing developments. One man's policy becomes another's destiny.

My cousin, Martita, lives in Laredo, 90 miles from New Guerrero. She keeps in touch with her only sister, Maricela, a teacher in New Guerrero, by phone conversations that have become more frequent lately. Martita says New Guerrero has swollen in size with arrivals from the interior looking for work. It's not the quiet town that time and progress seemed to have forgotten when we girls spent weeks there each summer, playing in the streets, flirting with the teenage boys driving by in their father's clanking ranch trucks. At night, there were no TVs to watch. We cousins played loteria wagering bottle caps with Nana's neighbors, the only AM radio station we could pick up in the desert drifted in and out on distant signals from far away Monterrey. We slept in the backyard beside Nana's sugar cane patch on wide canvas cots whispering about the handsome boys we were meeting at the plaza, in the same way our mothers met our fathers. The still night summer air was cooled by the breezes from the reservoir.

Today in Nana's town, my cousin tells me that whether it's night or day, the sounds of gunfire shock the stillness with a frightening regularity. Schools, including where my cousin Maricela teaches, are now closed, and masses at the church are cancelled because of gunfights that break out in New Guerrero's streets.

The gun-battles among competing groups of drug smugglers and murderers keep "gente decente" (decent folk) locked inside the safety of their homes, where their news media is gagged into silence of any news reports about the violence. Residents recount their news about how their town is changing when they venture to neighbors homes, or speak on the phone.

"Gente decente" don't send their kids to school, or take them to church, nor can they shop for groceries, or travel to relative's homes to visit or help the sick or elderly. The hidden network of family -- the safety net that Mexicans have depended on for decades--dissolves as surely as the underwater sandstones of Old Guerrero in the wake of the violence that has claimed 15,000 lives in the past 5 years.

When thugs rule, "gente decente" suffer.

What's Your Number?

2010-03-03T08:01:00.001-08:00

My great nephew introduced himself by saying his full name and then his age, three. He then asked "What's your number?" I'm not sure the whole concept of age or even time has fully formed in the boy yet, so I'll write a note for him to read sometime in the future.

Dear Vaughn,

By the time you read this you will be much older than three, and may even be interested in girls at least as much as you are today in Thomas the Train. If so, here are some important pointers from early in the 21st century, from your great (and also "great") aunt.

Keeping the attention and affection of a member of the fair sex will require learning to look deeply, quietly and longingly into the eyes of your beloved, taking out the trash when you would rather be competing in the current version of men's most popular video war games, going shopping with her on occasion, and doing your share of cleaning up around the space station.

There is one thing that you must remember, Vaughn, no matter how curious you may be, and that is to never ask her about her numbers. Women, by nature, love to share, but a woman's numbers are hers to keep private. Her age, weight, height, shoe size, pants size, her score on the Bo Derek 1-10 scale, her GRE score, credit score, all delightfully full of data, but data that is designed for her eyes only.

Vaughn, the best reward for keeping mum with women about numbers is that you too will have the option of keeping quiet about your numbers: age, height, weight, IQ scores, romantic conquests, golf handicap, etc. Keeping these to yourself, ironically, serves to increase your own score in the muy importante rating system women keep for their lovers: the trust and confidence scale. This all important scale is built over time, with equal parts understanding, patience, affirming smiles and deep, quiet longing gazes into the eyes of one's beloved. Exactly how you currently feel about Thomas the Train, but infinitely more fun. You'll see what I mean.

Star Light, Star Bright, What's For Dessert Tonight?

2010-02-27T11:34:00.000-08:00

I was well into my 40's before I discovered the star that was the persistent light across all the years of my life. I somehow took it for granted, distracted person that I can be, until one evening I found myself sitting across an elegant restaurant table from a friend who is a food critic for a magazine. Our meal together that night would cost nearly as much as my car payment! I munched on my amuse bouche and wondered how I had come to be so fortunate as to be her frequent dinner guest at fine restaurants I could never have afforded to go to on my own. The answer came in a flash. I have the food star.

I've always had good luck with food. It started at my Mom's kitchen, where there was always delicious food, and at each meal there was a stack of hand-made, fresh flour tortillas. Our meals were nothing fancy, but were always prepared for our family by our mom, Pepa Cuellar, with the utmost care and love, the most important ingredient for good food.

Other people I have known have had stars. My friend, Diana has the friendship star. She has always had a loyal following of woman friends-- strewn across two countries-- who would follow her blindly wherever she led them. Another friend has the money star. She had been born wealthy, then saw her family business fail. A few years later oil was discovered at her family's ranch. She then saw the wells dry up, but soon after had the good fortune to have a philanthropist invest in a business she started. Her money star flashed on and off, but overall, it was a hard worker!
What star do you have? It's an important question to consider. Discovering your star(s) can be fun and surprising. It can also help remind you of patterns that run like a quiet current beneath the surface, always a part of our lives.

After the Austin IRS Building Strike

2010-02-21T08:38:00.001-08:00

I always thought the apocalypse would be sudden.

The great shifting of weather, masses of people dying like in the movies (Red Sky At Dawn, A Boy and His Dog)

A windy lonesomeness across the earth

Only rabbits left like in On the Beach

But now I wonder if it could be more subtle than sudden.

Less The Road and more Ordinary People.

The software engineer who blew up his home and flew his plane into the IRS building

Anthrax after 9-11 the work of another pissed off American.

Who are most the terrorists, the dudes in the caves plotting to kill us

or the radio monsters making a career of it behind their masks of patriotism?

Finally, what will we tell the children?

What sense will the young people make of their inheriting this arcade game of power, words, technology, blistering revenge and cancerous rage?

I say, it's a nautilus. We inside the They. Inside the Other. Wrapped around the us versus them. That old, spent rhythm of hate that used to be balanced by long distances, lack of funds or traction. It is now armed and ubiquitous, dispiriting and finally contrary to our need to marshall our resources and ingenuity in the service of optimism and peace.