Mexicans do camp, they just have trouble sleeping

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.

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

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

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)

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

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

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