New Year's Painted Night Skies

Fireworks are illegal in the city limits and that is why the Woodlawn Lake Park Rangers quickly patrolled over to any arriving visitors at the park to inform them of the rules. We all know the rules. Following them is another story. 

It was an hour before midnight and we strolled with the dog at the dark and empty park to walk off a delicious dinner celebrating decades of friendship. The light fog rose on the streets and under the lamps suspended water particles mixed with fireworks' smoke and debris from hundreds--no, thousands--of yards and driveways surrounding the dark, lonely, law-abiding island. All around on the West Side there were youngsters, hipsters, dudes and dudettes, grandpa's and abuelitas setting off cohetes, fireworks--tradition and sheer fun silencing the law. 

Back on our Woodlawn Avenue porch near midnight, the explosions registered in regular rhythm from miles around.  At the stroke of midnight the thunder roared without a pause and the light show expanded its panorama. We looked in each direction and the heavens were painted with flying light spectacles rising, exploding and drifting downward. It was hard to hear each other talk or glimpse even a quarter of the night's lighted splendors. 

Several cars stopped on the street near us to take in the free light show and sit out the fever-pitch of explosions. Up the street a group of people squatted in between the street and the sidewalk to shoot their contraband fiery missiles and add their flares and explosions to the giant night sky canvas. They, and all of us gazing at our human-made-stars-of-only-a-few-seconds.

My thrifty mother's voice in my head asked, "How much money went up in sparkle and smoke tonight that could have paid for house paint or porch repairs?" Not the point. A better question might be: How many of us need to launch our dreams and hopes for the new year arriving with our own bursting, booming mark on the sky?

Bruce Springsteen at the Altar of Life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1xDzgob1JI 
Bruce Springsteen and I grew up together. We lived and loved in different parts of the country during those same decades that defined us.  During the flight across the sky that is our era, we got knocked around in some of the same turbulence, and yet, both of us landed gently enough to look backward with gratitude.

In the tradition of his Irish and Italian ancestors, Springsteen is both a storyteller and a cultural high priest. The kind of priest who is comfortable in a pub filled with hard working hand laborers of all sorts. As he shepherds us through the early years of his life and career, Springsteen confesses to us that he’s never had a job like those who inhabit the working class lives of his songs.  He explains he wrote his stories of laborers in the voice of his father, a figure so important to Springsteen that it cannot be overstated. His father, "with the legs and ass of a rhinoceros,"  held numerous factory jobs when he was well but suffered from depression. It was fascinating to watch Springsteen credit both his parents, two opposites, while giving careful consideration to the resilience and optimism of his mother who informed the artist's lifetime of energy, drive and commitment to his work.

Springsteen's story has taken him around the world several times over only to return to live 10 minutes away from where he started, the town of Freehold, New Jersey. His hometown is a major character in his life: its bars, factories, the neighborhood full of his relatives where he grew up and the giant tree in front of his home that was the center of his life.

I found in the songs and storytelling such love, humanity and a surprising lack of ego for a troubadour who won over the world while staying rooted in his hometown.  

The transformation I witnessed as Springsteen presided at his stage and altar, as he took us from his childhood to manhood, surprised me as it corresponded with my own growing up and maturity as a woman of Mexican heritage living in the U.S. I stood beside him as he described, with an Apostle's Creed cadence and the precision of a surgeon, his family's geography and the impact their lives had on him. With each story's turn, I saw reflections of my own story growing up to the same songs, TV and movies 1,911 miles away in South Texas' Laredo.  Watching him on his Netflix special, I'll bet I'm not the only Baby Boomer to imagine myself standing behind Springsteen as he performs, not as a backup singer, but as someone who mines the same territories of memory to make sense of family, fortune, loss and perseverance.  

Toward the end of the performance, which is based on his Broadway show, I had the same overwhelmed feeling I often get after attending High Mass and standing for more than two hours in an overfilled church. I had been taken on a holy journey. I turned off the TV set and stood up from the sofa exhausted, my thoughts and images still gelling from the immersive music and words that Springsteen performed with fearless grace and candor.
 

Roma is Alfonso Cuaron's love song to his family and neighborhood in Mexico City.

I was so prepared to dislike Cuaron's entitled family in the film, Roma, but the unflinching honesty of his story-telling made me appreciate the possibilities that can arise after painful rebirth. Think of the many films the child whose story this is grew up to give the world.

Roma is Alfonso Cuaron's love song to his family's neighborhood in Mexico City. It's a stunningly visual film, of course, but its magic also draws from two other sources. The audio track and the many years elapsed since 1971 are as important as the images in this loving but open-eyed inspection of family, class, country and the shifting models of maternity and paternity that this movie shines a light upon.

The music of the era -- Juan Gabriel's classic, "No Tengo Dinero" enters and exits as you glide by street scenes of urban choreography, crowded with street vendors, traffic and pedestrians in purposeful and poetic pandemonium. The frenzy is balanced with thoughtful and carefully mined collections of day to day scenes that paint a detailed portrait of people persevering despite displacement, theft of lands and destructive tremors to supportive structures.

Cuaron re-opens the case against authoritarian abuse with his account of of the killings of hundreds of protesting college students by young men displaced from the countryside, trained by the U.S. CIA, and posing as students.

In Cuaron's middle-class family, the violence is no less. His medical doctor father's decision to leave the household of his wife, her mother, four children and household staff of three (only in post-colonial countries like Mexico with such low wages for domestic workers could this be possible) strikes like an earthquake leaving trembling walls that are no longer reliable. 

Upstairs and downstairs residents alike are adrift in this new landscape. The roomy Ford Galaxy the family used before Cuaron's dad's departure gets lodged between two cargo trucks and is smashed into the walls of the family's driveway by Cuaron's mother in a performance that merits its own recognition as metaphor for a marriage's inability to fit where once it did.

The story is a truthful telling of changing roles for mothers and fathers, emerging democracies' efforts (the city that gave us the first university in North America is also the site where at least three times in its history college students would be mowed down by the government) and class as seen through the lives of women who need each other in ways material and spiritual in order to make it through the upheavals of divorce, abandonment and ultimately, making the inner journey with each other's help and understanding, to reach new shores, new beginnings.

Choose Your Superpower

Three of us are about to pounce on a beautiful turkey at Thanksgiving when a text arrives from a young friend. At her dinner table across the country, the question her Thanksgiving Day companions are considering, perhaps in order to avoid controversy, is "Which one of these superpowers would you choose, invisibility or flying?" We three answered in unison, "Flying, of course. We are women of a certain age, and are already invisible!"

As a superpower, invisibility has its attractions but also its drawbacks. It's like a car without a steering wheel. You  don't select when to be visible or not. Like beauty, invisibility is in the eye of the beholder. You don't know when you've suddenly turned invisible, but, like obscenity, you recognize it when it happens to you. 

The day before, I was the last patient for the staff at a health clinic before a four-day holiday. The dazzlingly beautiful, 35-year old dermatologist I had come to visit for the second time swept into the room where I had been brought to wait. She asked good, detailed questions about my skin issues and attended me with extra care and enthusiasm. Before she finished, I showed her the new spots on my cheek that keep showing up to remind me of sun-worshiping days long ago.

In retrospect, I see that I started what would later became a problem. I said to the doctor that surprises like those age spots, wrinkles, and delayed metabolism remind me of the  Bette Davis quote, "Old age is not for sissies." 

She turned and looked right through me, she responded in a slightly reprimanding and condescending tone, "You have a lot to be thankful for!" I naturally responded, "Yes, of course. You're right."  

I was, after all, in to see the dermatologist for mundane repairs, not battlefield scars, leprosy or another serious malady. I was still trying to understand her way of  speaking past me,  averting looking me in the eyes.  It was then that I remembered a 93-year old friend's disdain for being reduced to a "sweetie" or "honey" by store clerks or health professionals. 

After the drive home and the requisite 2-3 hours delay for witty comebacks expired, I realized that the doctor had done to me what I had done at her age to older people I knew. She assumed, as I had during my days as a dazzler, that feeling strong, self-possessed and nearly immortal with energy would be everlasting. Aging changes that, but no one admits it until they are forced to. I imagined responding to the doctor, "You don't know the first thing about me. How would you know what I do or don't have to be thankful for?" 

Some of the superpowers the aging enjoy, besides eventually hitting on a good way to answer dumb statements, are finding that your wisdom expands your sense of life, joy and learning. Which superpower would you choose? Invisibility or flying? How about ditching the need to be a people pleaser? Saying what's really on your mind?  Others?

Ten Reasons John Leguizamo is a Latin Hero and Everyone Needs To See His Netflix Show

Ten Reasons John Leguizamo is a Latin Hero and Everyone Needs To See His Netflix Show

1. He not only loves his family, he busts out all the stops a Dad can to help his kids thrive.
2. He explains history in a way I wish my history professors had at least tried to do.
3. He is no-holds-barred ambitious and wide-reaching in the task he accomplishes.
4. He accomplishes his task with the conflict, tension and energy that good story-telling requires.
5. He is Terco como una mula --  stubborn as a mule in his resolve to finish his quest
6. He kept his impossible last name, thus demonstrating real character in an era and industry of Barbie and Ken that he refused to let change him.
7. He walks around on stage in red--bright red--tightie undies. Kind of unforgettable.
8. He condenses 10,000 years of history in a tidy, Mr. Kotter meets Noam Chomskly Netflix comedy performance.
9. He reminds us that talent like his just improves with age.
10. He dances tango, cumbia, reggaeton, and hip hop. Well!

An Astronaut in Aztlan

When Procter and Gamble, the soap manufacturer attempts to reverse engineer a natural soap, the results are like Frankenstein's monster,  neither pretty nor natural. In a strange way the results may be just as "wrong" when a person possibly past their prime goes fiddling with their identity. It may be too late! It is justified to ask, is there any point in it at this stage in life? But isn't the point of identity to move forward with a stronger sense of self? There is no expiration date on that. Reflecting back for the sake of inquiry alone is valid reason enough. Add to that, I'm alive and looking forward to being so for years to come. 

So assuming most of us have read Catcher in the Rye and if not, get to it! Here come some  ideas from a latter-day Holden Caulfield who moved far, far south and became me.

In the case of our original, 20th century Holden Caulfield, consider how he came to be, born in the world of publishing and becoming the unwitting poster boy for the predominant point of view that spread from books across America for decades: New York-centric and WASP. 

Thus, the weight of geography played a disproportionate role in defining the American experience. No one planned it that way. It was not a conspiracy, but the effects were such that one region's stories and storytellers came to be valued over others for no other reason than proximity to publishing houses. The same resulted from magazines, radio, TV and films, which formed the foundation, along with books, of our national cultural identity. That's the legacy of the era of mass media, now less mass and more social.

As much of a misfit as Holden considered himself, he was less so than, say, anyone not WASP or in the geography of New York at the center or New England at the farther reaches.

Maybe it's not all "a lot of crap" as he might say. Here is a blog post from Holden in the far future, of another gender and heritage, who may still have more in common with him than not, whose writing owes much to American publishing and mass media in the 20th century. I am the new Holden, afloat in the ether of my own publishing house, an astronaut in Aztlan, asking the same questions about identity asked by the old Holden. 

Lately I've been thinking about identity and labels and their purpose, not when it comes to birds or butterflies but people. Our human tendency to "us and them" both ourselves and others is a trait of most, if not all humans, but it bears examining.

What is the role of a label when it is applied to a group of people in a minority by a group of people in power in the majority? In a state like Texas, this question may take new meaning in a few years when people of Mexican heritage outnumber other groupings. 

But let's stick with the moment. It's important, first of all, to recognize the difference in meaning between "illegal" and "undocumented". No person on the Earth is illegal. 

Moving forward from that, there are modifiers and adjectives that apply to some people's identities but not others. Journalistically, non-identitification of rape victims has long been the practice in order protect the victim. In other countries, the name of a "shooter" in a mass shooting is not used to quell any moves for the killer's martydom. In a news story that is about a search for a suspect, I can see how ethnicity would help to identify someone. But in the case about an arrest, newsroom policy makers should ask, what is the purpose of labeling some people by their heritage or ethnicity? Does it satisfy curiosity or does it belie a reporter's confirmation bias or unexaminded prejudice?

Labels like Hispanic were said to be necessary in distinguishing among political groups as in the previous paragraph about Texas demographics. When President Richard NIxon's administration initiated the term Hispanic, it was used as a tool to simplify the labels for demographic groupings for the allocation of national funding. This tool may have outlived its purpose. Language is too important to leave to bureaucrats. 

Undocumented v. illegal. The use of "undocumented" is a normalizing and institutionalizing of respect we have for people's commonalities with us instead of their differences. 

Let's take a look at how prevalent labeling as other is in the entertainment industry. 
When on NBC's "Making It" reality series, a couple being married on the show was identified as Mexican, I listened carefully to their speech and when I heard them speak flawless English, I suspected they were as American as the hosts. Yet they were labelled, possibly even self-labeled, as Mexican for any number of reasons, possibly including respect. If so, shouldn't they have been labelled instead as American of Mexican heritage or cultural descent instead? Or why even label at all on an entertainment program working hard to be inclusive and kinder and gentler in their approach as the producers of "Making It"?

The 21st century Holden asks, "What's up with this?"  Did we begin to use the labeling tool on people, at first for one purpose and continue using it even after new and better tools evolved for appropriating funds (using economic information or income levels for example)?  

Shouldn't we ask if the tool of labeling people other than by citizenship serves an unintended and dangerous purpose of dividing and furthering the cause of "us and them"? 

And Holden's question, "What's up with this?" is just the kind of no-nonsense, awoke sentiment needed now, when we desperately need "all of us" to move forward.

"What's up with this?" is a good question. "What do we do about it?" comes next and is certainly more important.  


 

Moonlight, lonely highway, tall stories -Communication is what makes us human: More tips for thinking, writing and speaking in a world of quicksand communications

96. Storytelling on night drives.	The lights are dim, we’re in our seats and we are all ears. There are fewer spaces more conducive to conversation than a long road trip, especially at night. In the darkness and with the rhythm of the tires on the roadway, we are in a cocoon kind of stage with a captive audience. I’ve enjoyed the best stories with family members and friends in cars on long drives.
97. Porches, campfires and long walks.	See the firefly! Feel the breeze. Poke the embers around on the campfire. There are comfortable silences. Then, one story from someone will prompt another person to tell their’s. And so turns the planet, now and from the time when we climbed down from the trees. Being outdoors at night brings out the latent storyteller in many of us. Nature reminds us that, like Archie Bell and the Drells of Houston, Texas, we don’t only sing and dance, we tell stories and listen to them as well.
98. What’s a story?	Stories are a multipurpose tool. They can teach or tickle, entertain or perplex us. They tell others who we are and what we have learned. They contain the past and the present. They are a gift to the listener and the person who remembers aloud.
99. Children and stories.	The smartphone may be a great baby sitter but it doesn’t smile, encourage or ask questions like mama and papa. The sweetest sounds I’ve ever heard are the cooing conversations a parent has with their infant. From the cradle through soccer practice and college graduation, kids need to hear and practice conversations and storytelling.
100. Ask questions like “what” instead of “why”.	We generally learn lots more by asking ourselves, “What is it that is going on, or what is it I feel like before I attack the bowl of m&m’s?” rather than “Why do I eat too many m&m’s?”

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