KJERRINGA MOT STRØMMEN

Democracy, the Verb

2008-07-29T10:10:00.000-07:00

"Democracy is always a movement of an energized public to make elites responsible - it is at its core and most basic foundation the taking back of one's powers in the face of the misuse of elite power. In this sense, democracy is more a verb than a noun - it is more a dynamic striving and collective movement than a static order or stationary status quo." --Cornel West, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism, Penguin Books, 2005, p. 68

I have always been struck by the oxymoronic quality to Mexico's powerful PRI party - Partido Revolucionario Institucional. How can a party, cause, or movement be at the same time revolutionary and institutional - dynamic and stagnant? However, pondering West's word, could the same not be said about American democracy, and, for that matter, the Democratic party? The status quo is so often defended in this country by claims that we are "preserving our democracy". In a particularly circular argument, criticism of the administration or the war in Iraq is stifled because it does not properly respect the soldiers who "are defending our democratic institutions". Perhaps the real oxymoron is institutional democracy. Granted, an institutional process is necessary; there is no need to keep re-inventing the wheel. However, the institution should never become more important than the process. The preservation of the government should never be more important than the constitutional safeguards. Questioning, criticsim and dissent should not be considered unpatriotic and the fourth estate should be responsible, informed, widely published and independent both from governmental and market influence.

Que en paz descansen

2007-05-16T20:48:00.000-07:00

How ironic that Jerry Falwall and and Yolanda King should die at the same time. A preacher and the daughter of The Preacher, the Reverend Dr. King. When Reverend King was preaching the message of justice, equality and peace, Reverend Falwell argued that the church should stay out of the civil rights movement; that religion and politics don't mix. Reverend Falwell did enter the political scene, but not with a message of justice and peace, but rather, a message of discord and hate. Yolanda King, actress and motivational speaker, carried forth her father's message of peace and justice.

In the final analysis, the damage Falwell and others have caused can, G-d willing, eventually undone. May he rest in peace. Yolanda King, on the other hand, will be remembered as one who made the world better, who followed the guidance in Micah 6:8: "... to act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your G-d. ..." Rest in peace Yolanda, and know that others will carry on your work.

2007-02-04T13:59:00.000-08:00

La imparcialidad ideológica del Estado liberal y su tolerancia de todas las religiones y opiniones tiene su contrapartida en su actitud frente a los particularismos... Al transformarse en la ideología del mundo moderno, el racionalismo burgués no se convirtió en una religión ni en una pseudorreligión como el marxismo en el siglo XX. Aunque enemigo de las antiguas tradiciones y particularismos culturales, por sí solo habría sido impotente para destruirlos, como lo fue antes el racionalismo grecorromano. Sin embargo, ha contado con un aliado que no tuvo aquél: la técnica ha sido agente de destrucción de lo que llamamos el alma o el genio de los pueblos, es decir, de sus maneras de vivir y sus maneras de morir, de su cocina y de su visión del transmundo. Los antiguos conquistadores edificaban una mezquita o una catedral sobre las ruinas de los templos de los vencidos; los imperialismos modernos construyen factorías y centros de comunicación. Edificios desalmados.

The ideological impartiality of the Liberal State and its tolerance of all religions and opinions has its counterweight in its attitude toward individual difference... In becoming the ideology of the modern world, middle-class rationalism did not become a religion or pseudo-religion, as did Marxism in the 20th century. Although enemy to the ancient traditions and cultural pecularities, alone, it would have been powerless to destroy them, as was the case with the earlier Greco-Roman rationalism. However, it had an ally the earlier (rationalism) lacked: technology has been the destruction of what we call the soul or spirit of cultures, that is, their ways of living and dying, their cuisine, their vision of the world beyond. The ancient conquerors built mosques or cathedrals on the ruins of the temples of the vanquished; modern imperialists erect factories and communication centers. Soulless edifices.

---Octavio Paz, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Trampas de la fe, pp. 50-51

Sor Juana on Life and Death

2007-02-04T09:18:00.000-08:00

A random thought: I just stumbled on a quote from Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, 17th century
Mexican poet and nun, directed to the Viceroy, arguing for the life of a condemned man:
Muerte puede dar cualquiera
vida, sólo puede hacerlo
Dios: luego solo con darla
podéis a Dios pareceros.

Death can be granted by anyone
Life can only be created by God:
Therefore only in granting life
Do you resemble the deity.

That, coupled with "Behold, I set before you life and death, therefore choose life" speaks to me as the "Spiritual" in progressivism - working for the life giving force, whether that be working for an end to war, an equitable economy, or a second chance for our planet.

Herr Gouverneur ist ein Esel

2006-10-08T08:26:00.000-07:00

With apologies for the disrespectful and undoubtedly incorrect German in the title, Governor Schwarzenegger, get your head out of the sand. Thank you Cindylou for alerting us to the Governor's recent remarks:

"They try to stay Mexican but try to be in America, so there's this back and forth,'' Schwarzenegger said, surrounded by Asian-Americans at a Moon Festival celebration in Los Angeles. ``What I say to Mexicans is you have got to go immerse yourself and assimilate into American culture and become part of the American fabric. That's how America will embrace you."

To begin with, the governor needs to check out a map. The United States is not the only American nation. More importantly, what does the Governor have to teach a culture that has been part of the fabric of the Southwest before the United States even ruled the area? Mexicans have been assimilating into the culture of the United States ever since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and new immigrants continue to do so. Assimilation, at its best, is not cultural suicide. Successful immigrants learn the cultural, economic and legal byways in order to work and live fully in the new culture while at the same time preserving and passing on the best of their home cultural traditions and values. In my experience, children of immigrants are best served when their parents not only give them tools to succeed in their adopted country but also pass on the linguistic richness and moral fiber of their homeland.

Immigrants contribute to our country not only by working, paying taxes, and raising good citizens. They also enrich us by sharing their cultural heritage. Here in central California, the cultural calendar includes Cinco de Mayo and 16 de Septiembre parades and festivals, Portuguese festas, Scandifest, Diwalli Festival, the Greek Food Festival, Café Shalom, the Assyrian Festival, the Japanese rice pressing festival to name only a few. Ours is not the only country that borrows from others linguistically and culturally. The fundraising kermesses in Mexico and other Latin American countries and the European polka influence in norteño music come to mind.

Countries that share common borders also tend to share language and culture. That is why we are much more likely to ask for carne asada or chile verde than weinerschnitzel. Governor Schwarzenegger, you´ve lived in California for a while now, you work in Sacramento, in the San Joaquin Valley. When you leave your mansion, you step into a California cultural heritage richly steeped in Spanish language and hispanic culture. Wake up and smell the café con leche.

Lethe and Other Summer Memories

2006-08-06T12:01:00.000-07:00

This summer has taken me to Panama, described in MsABCmom’s blog and flickr pictures as well as an excursion to Monterey with Sabina, who learned that trips with Bubbe always including walking longer than she would like.

Yesterday was a different kind of memorable day, a day spent in San Francisco with my mother. She is one of the few people I know who get caught up in the journey as much in the destination. So while we enjoyed the new De Young Museum, the walk in Golden Gate Park was perhaps even more spectacular. It was one of those rare San Francisco summer days; the weather a warm 65 degrees, the sky a brilliant blue, enough breeze to carry the scent of flowers and herbs, and the sun creating a paint box of color on leaves, bushes, trees and flowers.

Our real purpose for the trip, however, was to see the Cornerstone Theater production of Lethe. I had discovered this theater company a year ago with the production of “Boda de Luna Nueva” (New Moon Wedding), a contemporary adaptation of García Lorca’s “Blood Wedding”.

"Cornerstone Theater Company is a multi-ethnic, ensemble-based theater company. We commission and produce new plays, both original works and contemporary adaptations of classics, which combine the artistry of professional and community collaborators. By making theater with and for people of many ages, cultures and levels of theatrical experience, Cornerstone builds bridges between and within diverse communities in our home city of Los Angeles and nationwide." http://www.cornerstonetheater.org/who_mainpage.html
And so they do. For “Boda de Luna Nueva”, the company selected the tiny, farm town of Grayson in west Stanislaus County. They brought in a company of professional actors and students in their summer residency program and then recruited locals of all ages from Grayson and the surrounding communities to develop and act in the play. In adapting the play to time and place, they first researched the community. So, for example, instead of the wheat harvest in “Bodas de Sangre”, “Boda de Luna Nueva” showcased the tomato and apricot harvest. “Death” was played by a woman pushing a “paletera” cart and selling drugs instead of ice cream and popsicles. The Greek chorus of “Woodcutters” was replaced by a chorus of “Tomato Pickers” and Leonardo escaped with the bride not on horseback but in his pick-up. The play was performed at the edge of an open field and the audience sat in bleachers. Beyond the stage setting one could see the field, the highway and orchards beyond, and as the play progressed, the sun setting beyond the western hills. “La luna” (The Moon) appeared not on stage, but from the distant field beyond, back lit so she was initially just a white sphere moving ever toward us. The play was amazing; a magical moment in time.

There are moments and experiences I would like to bottle, in order to capture their essence. “Boda de Luna Nueva" was one of those. “Lethe” was another.

Lethe, taken from the Greek myths, is one of the rivers in Hades. New souls arriving in Hades drink from this River of Oblivion in order to forget their earthly existence, in preparation for their new home.

The play, “Lethe”, written by Octavio Solís, takes place at a Senior Home, modeled after the On Lok Institute on Aging. The actors include some professionals (including one 95 year old), students in the summer residency program, as well as first-time actors who in their other lives work or volunteer with the elderly. One story line focuses on a resident whose husband died a year ago, her son, who has not been able to deal with his father´s death, and the developing romance between the mother and another resident. Another story line highlights a filipina woman with Alzheimers (in her words, the Aswang or vampires, are stealing her memories while she sleeps) and her relationship with a young professional filipina volunteer. Both the son and the young woman are carrying around the ghosts of their parents, for whom they were caregivers. The ghosts will not leave them until the living are able to deal with
unresolved issues with their parents. Framing all this are three choruses: the Onstage Senior Chorus, the Caregiver Chorus and the Lethe Gesture chorus.

As in any good play, the acting and music were outstanding and there
were many moments to laugh and cry. What is memorable (!) about Lethe, however, was its truth. The setting really was a Senior Center and the people really were health care professionals, volunteers and residents. My mother recognized the truth in these actors and she knows; she is a volunteer in such a setting. The son accurately represented the dilemma of caregivers caught between the selfless task set upon them and their own lives. The resolution for the filipina Alzheimer patient and the young volunteer required the older woman to deal with her loss of memory but also for the younger woman to reclaim cultural and family memories she never had.

The playwright, accurately sums up Cornestone’s magic:
"Over the rehearsal period, there have been many times that our efforts
in rehearsal have been trumped by the sudden insertion of Real Life into the process. Someone will stop and abruptly tell a deeply moving personal account or explain something about hospice work relevant to our scene or simply misspeak a line of text in a way that reveals an utter fact of life previously ignored. While in other instances with other theatres, this might be scorned as frustrating interruption into the
artistic process, at Cornerstone, Real Life is the process... Our community
participants are not just the resource, they are the authority. Our elders carry the history of our culture inside them, ways of life that come and go like tides, momentous days and days of no consequence laced together by memory, fragile and
ephemeral. And our caregivers carry inside them the hours of constant selflessness,
weighing against their own personal wants the need to help others through the straits of illness and age. And through it all is love. If I discovered anything about these communities it is that they are built entirely on love." --Octavio Solís

Will the Real W. Please Stand Up

2006-08-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.danfingerman.com/bush.html

The United States Constitution: "...just a goddamned piece of paper". --George Bush

from: Doug Thompson, "Bush on the Constitution: It's Just a Goddamned Piece of Paper," Capital Hill Blue, December 9, 2005

Who Will You be When You Grow Up?

2006-06-19T19:58:00.000-07:00

Having worked my way through two careers and now on my third, having raised a family, I still sometimes ask myself that question. Not what you will be when you grow up, but who. The follow up question is what do you stand for and how do you follow up on that? Ava Lowery is a fifteen-year old who has figured out what she stands for and has taken action. If you haven't seen her on the news or caught one of her Peace Takes Courage videos, check out her blog at http://www.peacetakescourage.com/page-home.htm

"The Will of the People"

2006-06-05T19:10:00.000-07:00

Bush has now seized the bully pulpit to seek political advantage in the "marriage debate". Claiming that "activist judges" are subverting "the will of the people", he claims to support heterosexual marriage only amendment. I am eminently grateful for amendments that have enhanced and guaranteed our civil rights and am adamantly opposed to proposed amendments that would restrict rights to only a certain class of people. This proposed amendment is certainly one of those.

This is, of course, not the first time the supposed "will of the people" has been used to tread upon the rights of minorities, nor, unfortunately, will it be the last. Populism has had many ugly moments in our history. Others have pointed out that Senator Roddenberry proposed a similar amendment in 1911, prohibiting marriage between people of different races, later influencing the passage of anti-miscegenation laws in a number of states. Anti-miscegenation laws were finally declared unconstitional by the Supreme Court in 1967. In the intervening years, how many families were destroyed by these inhumane laws?

While it is thought that the proposed amendment is simply a nod to the right wing and that it probably will not pass, nothing should be taken for granted. It seems that too often in this new century we see an erosion of basic rights. We, like the frog thrown in a pot of slowly heating water, will not realize the danger until it is too late.

Stanislaus Salad Bowl

2006-06-04T13:30:00.000-07:00

I've been salivating over so many food posts recently, I decided to add another.

The Modesto Farmer's Market is open again on Thursdays and Saturdays. With homegrown music, homegrown fruits, vegetables, bread, pastries, nuts, cheeses, conserves, dried fruit, plants, etc, it is a feast for all the senses, not the least of which is the sense of community.

Yesterday, with green beans from the market, I made Mrs. B.'s famous green bean salad, posted by Ms.ABCmom yesterday. Breakfast this morning was rellenos de flor de calabaza. Not the healthiest of foods perhaps, it is a treat restricted to when those delicate squash flowers are available. The best squash flowers can come with mini-mini-squashes attached. These did not have the baby squashes, but they were round, plump and delectable. The preparation is simple.

When the squash blossoms are still fresh from the market, gently open the flowers and stuff with small chunks of your favorite cheese. Gently twist the blossoms closed around the cheese and refrigerate until you are ready to fry. Toss the blossoms in flour and salt, dip in egg, (I used egg substitute - I know it is not a diet dish, we were out of eggs), then again in flour and fry lightly in a little olive oil and butter - turn the flowers to fry on all sides. Remove, pat of excess oil with paper towels and serve immediately.

I've seen some intriguing recipes for other rellenos. This clearly is not the only presentation for the succulent squash flower. In Aguascalientes I tasted an amazing sopa de flor de calabaza, second only to the sopa de cilantro we also discovered there.

Squash flowers are generally not available, but you might try at an Asian market.

Today, we are on to tabouli salad, with tomatoes from the market. Had to stop at the Middle Eastern Market for the right kind of bulghur and their special cucumbers, "xiara", I think, in Assyrian (I asked). MsABCmom will probably post that.

I am so glad that the salad bowl that is now homegrown Stanislaus County includes exotic vegetables, fruits, flavors and accents. The melting pot is dead, long live the salad bowl.

National Day of Prayer: Hypocrisy Redux

2006-05-10T20:16:00.000-07:00

I have written several postings that fall under the heading "Interesting People I have Known". A peer and lunching buddy of my Uncle Gordon was my dad, Charles Baker. He deserves his own posting, but that will come later. In brief, my Dad quit school to work in a factory when he was 16 and voted Republican until he met Norman Thomas when he was a conscientious objector during World War II. So impressed was he, that he voted Socialist in one presidential election and for the rest of his life voted a straight Democratic ticket. He was thrice dissappointed when Adlai Stevenson didn't win, but the worst was yet to come in the shape of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. He was so incensed by the Reagan years that he created a Reagan binder that he filled with clippings and his own commentary logging the egregious excesses of the Reagan years. He and my mother were also active correspondents to the White House in those years, and on rare occasions, they would get a form letter back from an assistant to the White House correspondence secretary. The Reagan binder (entitled "The Continuing Saga of Ronnie Wonderful") is the greatest inheritance from my Dad - a material object representing the moral and civic values and lessons he taught us.

Last Thursday was the National Day of Prayer. I hereby enclose a letter my parents sent to President Reagan in 1981. Their comments could equally apply today as Reagan and Bush share the common traits of piously mouthing religious comments while at the same time consistently governing without ethics or moral values.

This letter is particularly appropriate today as it appears that Congress has voted in another tax cut to rob from the middle class and poor to again reward the rich.

May 7, 1981

President Ronald Reagan
The White House
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. Reagan,

You have proclaimed today, May 7, as National Day of Prayer. We believe that every day is a good day for prayer.

It is our feeling, after watching the evening news that today is an especially good day for prayer. It is much needed. Today the House of Representatives passed the "Reagan Budget".

We will be praying for the handicapped, the poor, the elderly, and others whose lives will be drastically altered by the cuts in the various programs which affect them. We will be praying that local communities will be able to support the welfare program increases which will become necessary to provide for the thousands of CETA workers who will be jobless and untrained as a result of these cuts.

Above all, Mr. Reagan, we will be praying that your view of the needs of the disadvantaged in our society will be broadened. We will be praying also that you will re-consider the large increases you have proposed for the military. Since the United States and the Soviet Union each has the nuclear capacity to destroy the other, further increases appear to be a waste and rob the needy in our society.

We want you to know, Mr. Reagan, that we are retirees in our sixties and that we are Christians who have always believed in the philosophy that Jesus taught relative to our responsibility to our fellow citizens in need.

Yes, Mr. Reagan, we are praying on this national day of prayer as we do every day. We pray for your health, happiness and success. We pray also that you will review your budget cuts again and consider the very sad effects that they will have on the disadvantaged who need help most.

Sincerely,

Charles W. and Florence R. Baker

Red Herring

2006-05-01T22:13:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, as I was preparing students for their impending I.B. Spanish exam, we were reviewing some difficult texthandling questions in which there were several similar answers for a single question. I asked them to tell my why the false answers were “red herrings”. Most students had never heard the expression before. I realized I had to explain the meaning of “una pista falsa”, a distracter.

Distracters, or red herrings are nothing new in politics, but on cable “news”, they have virtually replaced news and information. Fox News’ “The War on Christmas”, for example, would have us believe that Christians are a persecuted minority in this country, that the universally observed Christian holidays as well as Christmas decorations, promotions, concerts, etc, are mere chimera and not reality.

So in November/December, instead of, applying the “Peace on Earth” message of that holiday to the war in Iraq, Fox News slips in the red herring “War on Christmas”, diverting the unwary viewer from real issues of war and peace, the gutting of our civil rights, or the true disasters revealed by Hurricane Katrina: our lack of preparedness and the overwhelming poverty in our society.

Fast forward and the House passes HR4337, a sweeping though regressive measure that would transform undocumented residence in this country from a misdemeanor to a felony and criminalize “aiding” an undocumented resident. Instead of focusing on the real debate, red herrings are introduced, ranging from Michelle Malkin’s rant that “Mexicans” are scheming to win the Southwest back for Mexico, to arguments over which flag to wave, and now to a move to make it illegal to sing the national anthem in any language other than English. (Not a masterpiece in any language!).

Why don’t we roll back all the flags and take a look at some of the real questions.

1. The Children. Children whose parents bring them here from Mexico or elsewhere did not choose to be “illegal”. In most cases their parents worked to support them, paid taxes and bought in this country. The children went to school here, most played by the rules, attended class, did their work, assimilated our language and culture. But most of all, they bought the American dream: work hard, get good grades, graduate from high school so you can go on to college/trade school and eventually become that working, tax paying American. But for these children, the end of the road comes when they can’t get that part-time job, they don’t qualify for students loans, can’t attend college and realize that they won’t fit into the American dream. Go back to your own country, they are told, but their dominant (in some cases only) language is English, their education is American, and in many cases, their roots are deeply in this country as well. Don’t we have a responsibility to these children? And don't these young adults have great potential for good in this country?

2. “I don’t have anything against immigrants; I just think ‘those people’ should wait their turn and not cut in front of the line”. This country is capricious, however, as to who gets to the front of the line. Cuban immigrants were sent straight to the front of the line; on the fast track not only for citizenship, but also for welfare eligibility. I think of Russian friends who also became eligible for welfare and legal immigration status immediately on entering the country. In this case, they applied for citizenship as soon as legally possible and were naturalized within a year. The irony is that the wife’s employer, who is latino and had lived legally in the U.S. for decades, had applied several years earlier and was not granted citizenship until years later. Who was moved to the front of the line and why? This country has a nasty little habit of creating a fast track to immigration for citizens of countries whose leaders they don’t like but sending others to the end of life if they come from countries whose dictators are friendly to us.

3. “Why are these immigrants complaining? Their country's immigration policies are worse than ours?” Admittedly, many countries do have more restrictive immigration policies than ours. However, HR4437 would be a major step in that wrong direction. If we are to become “the land of liberty and justice for all” as we so proudly proclaim, we need to protect the liberties we have and seek justice where it is lacking.

Perhaps the greatest red herring is criminalization of the debate. Calling human beings illegal immediately sets the tone. Working peacefully without the proper documents, living peaceably and following all other laws of the land is far different from theft, murder and mayhem. Under HR 4437, those who follow the Biblical precepts of "love your neighbor as yourself" and "Provide sustenance to the stranger for you were once strangers in Egypt" would become incitement to break laws. There is something terribly wrong in this country when humankindness is outlawed.

Maybe it is time to look behind the red herrings and see the humanity that is being condemned. As JFK said at the Berlin Wall, "Ich bin ein Berliner" , today and henceforth, I too, am Latina.

Where's the Faith In Human Nature?

2006-04-27T22:14:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess I'd better tell this one. Yesterday after work and my usual 40 mile round trip to Sabi's violin lesson, I thought I'd better do the right thing and work out before we came home. So we locked the car, walked in the YMCA, and after leaving Sabi in the children's room, I entered the Fitness room and, having no pockets, left my keys on a table and began the routine. 40 minutes later, feeling virtuous, I went back to the table and found no keys. To make a long story short (not my usual style), my keys went missing, along with my car, Sabi's violin, my purse, cards, check book, 2 pairs of glasses, cell phone etc., and most of all, my hearing aids, . Yeah, I know I shouldn't have left the keys there, but it was a habit for many of us. Never again.

After a day of dealing with all this, cancelling cards, phone, checks, etc, filing claims, checking on the police report, I guess things are somewhat under control. As I was walking through all this, I was regaled with war stories about car thefts in other health clubs and the general degenerate and unsafe society we live in.

Well, I've had a lot of unexpected and unpleasant surprises in the past few years. The work ethics promise that if you work hard will be rewarded hasn't exactly panned out, but what is one to do?

So I got back up on the horse today, drove to the Y in the car Nebur so kindly left me (he also picked up lock sets last night and re-keyed the house locks and re-set the garage door opener since my I.D. was also in the car- thank you Nebur). Of course, I left the car empty, locked it and carried my key and personal items with me from machine to machine. In any event, I got the endorphins going a bit and as I pumped, I thought about a man I knew who always looked for the best in life. So I wrote about my "Uncle Gordon" y me desahogué. That is the blog worth reading.

Mini-bio: Uncle Gordon

2006-04-27T21:03:00.000-07:00

When I was a child, children addressed adults either as Mr. or Mrs. or aunt and uncle. Since we had no family in California, my parents’ friends became my aunts and uncles. One of the most memorable was my “Uncle Gordon”.

Gordon Nutson knew and taught me that the best way to be a nonconformist where it counts was to conform where it doesn’t count. Gordon was a “peacenik” in business suit and tie. He once told me that wearing a suit made it much easier to explain to a group of businessmen why he stood silently by while others saluted the flag. His nonconformist message was credible, he said, precisely because he had already gained their respect through his dress and his business practices. He was one of them and could be trusted and believed, even if his message was, for them, unconventional.

Uncle Gordon understood that in dress, as in language, different occasions and venues require different approaches. No more would he conduct business in casual clothing than he would work in his pasture or clean his pigeon cages in a suit.

Precisely because he dressed as a conventional businessman, Gordon was able to speak his message of peace and justice, concepts foreign to many of his colleagues. He was active in the peace and civil rights movements and agencies of social and economic justice such as Habitat for Humanity and Heifer Project.

Business, in his case, real estate, was as much a commitment to Gordon as was the cause of peace and justice. He was one of a small group of World War II conscientious objectors who, upon release from Civilian Public Service, came to Modesto and on a shoestring started a successful company, Wolverine Real Estate. Although he was highly regarded in the real estate community as a competent businessman, his keynote in business was ethics. Gordon counseled his agents that making the sale was secondary to dealing ethically with the customer. As a broker in Modesto in the days of de facto segregation, Gordon refused to follow the “gentlemen’s codes” that maintained segregated housing. In fact, he proactively worked with people of color in purchasing homes and integrating neighborhoods where others would not. His message was that while we should change bad laws, we can't wait for laws to change to make things right. Would my uncle Gordon, that little, old white man from Michigan, have been on the front line of the immigration marches were he still alive?

I will always remember Uncle Gordon for his clean-shaven cheeks and his crisp brown suits, his slicked-back red hair and Barber Shop Quartet performances, and most of all, his chuckles and full-bodied laughter when something tickled his funny bone. And being the jokester that he was, he found many things funny. My son Nebur, from the time he was big enough to talk, was invited to the occasional “business lunch” with my Dad and Uncle Gordon. He remembers Uncle Gordon’s unique way of punctuating his points by drawing on napkins. Gordon did nothing half way. These lunches often ended with pencil-marked napkins covering the table. I have never had occasion to meet with Gordon when he was not excited about something.

Uncle Gordon did have his moments of political incorrectness. A dedicated member of the Modesto Human Rights Commission, he was always alert for violations. However, being a product of his time, he once fell on the wrong side in a big way. On this occasion, a widow brought a complaint that the Old Fisherman’s Club had canceled her long term membership after her husband died, as membership was restricted to men, who were allowed to bring along their wives. Once her husband died, the widow was no longer welcome. What a human interest story! However, Gordon did not understand that feminism was also a human rights issue. His flippant and certainly impolitic remark: “woman should be in the kitchen making cornbread” was published far and wide. In fact, folksinger, Tom Hunter, who read the comment elsewhere, wrote a song about the infamous cornbread misogynist. So when the folksinger came to Modesto, this was one of the songs he sang. And to make it even more interesting, it was Gordon who volunteered to drive Tom back to the Bay Area after the concert. What I wouldn’t have given to be a passenger in that car!

The last time I saw Uncle Gordon before his final illness was at Modesto High School. At first I didn’t recognize him standing outside the office, now a tiny old man, surrounded by teenagers. The secretary laughed and told me that Mr. Nutson had come to school with a question. He told her that the student who worked on his “ranch” had asked him for money to rent a tuxedo for the prom. Gordon then told the secretary that in his day it was good enough to wear a suit to a dance, to which the secretary explained that boys today rent tuxedos because many do not own suits. Gordon responded that that was good enough for him; he just always needed an explanation for things. I hurried out, pleased to tell some of my students that they were talking with my Uncle Gordon. Gordon’s conversation with the students continued and they invited him to lunch. Of course, later that day one of my students informed me that my “uncle”, then 92 years old, had flirted with her, no surprise to me. But she also remarked that she wished that her abuela had such a young and positive outlook on life. Within two months, Uncle Gordon died of congestive heart failure.

My Uncle Gordon, all 5’ 2” of him, was a big man with a personality painted in Technicolor. As a businessman, peace and human rights activist, musician, week-end farmer, friend, and even as an occasional, gentle misogynist 20 years behind the times, he lived his life large. I won’t forget the lessons he taught me.

The Lesson in the Stones

2006-04-01T09:51:00.000-08:00

President Bush, visiting Chichen Itza said he thought it would be a good idea to learn a little about other cultures. Forgive my skepticism, but is staying at a Cancún resort the best way to learn about México? And why did it take our president almost 60 years to decide that other cultures also had something to teach him?

On the other hand, taking his good intentions at face value, the president might take time to contemplate the missing stones and defaced stairs on the other side of Kukulcán; stones that were stolen by the Spanish invaders to build a church; defacing one cultural icon to make way for another. Those stones do hold a message for President Bush as he brings American culture to the Iraqis, (as Rubén Darío would have said) by means of the bullet. The Nicaraguan poet, Darío, was amazingly prescient when he wrote the poem, "A Roosevelt" in 1904, a year after Roosevelt sent gun boats off the shores of Panamá, preventing the Colombians from entering, thus “freeing” Panamá to become a protectorate of the U.S. 1904 is also the year Roosevelt wrote a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, pronouncing Latin America a U.S. sphere of influence. To quote some of Darío’s visionary words:

“Crees que la vida es incendio
que el progreso es erupción,
que en donde pones la bala el porvenir pones.
No!

You think that life is fire
that progress is eruption,
that where you send the bullet,
progress will follow.
No!

Los Estados Unidos son potentes y grandes.
Cuando ellos se estremecen hay un hondo temblor
que pasa por las vertebras enormes de los Andes.
...
...Sois ricos.
Juntáis al culto de Hércules el culto de Mammón;
y alumbrando el camino de la fácil conquista,
la Libertad levanta su antorcha en Nueva York.

The United States is powerful and mighty.
When it trembles, it sends a profound shudder
Through the enormous backbone of the Andes.
...
You are rich.
You combine the cult of Hercules with the cult of Mammon;
And Lady Liberty lifts her torch in New York,
Lighting the way to easy conquest.

How ironic it is that many now propose building a Berlin style wall along the border to protect land that we, to paraphrase former Senator Hayakawa, “stole fair and square” from Mexico during the U.S. “intervention” and subsequent Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo?

For almost two centuries, the United States has considered Latin América its playground. We have stolen its resources, taken its land, and sent the worst of our “cult of Mammon” in WalMarts and NAFTA and CAFTA and all other products of U.S. economic hegemony. With equal missionary zeal, President Bush started a war of conquest in Iraq, to bring “democracy and the American way of life” by the force of the bullet. And now both the Iraqis and American soldiers are suffering the consequences. And the cost of the war has become an excuse to gut social programs in the U.S., thus widening the gap between the rich and the rest of us, both here and abroad.

Those stones at Chichén Itza do indeed have a story to tell us all. Darío’s warning about U.S. imperialism is every bit as contemporary today as it was one hundred years ago. But in his poem, Darío also praises the cultural synthesis that is Latin America: the product of indigenous poets and heroes as well as of the Spanish cultural heritage. That cultural mix, that mestizaje, was also the product of conquest and invasion. But it doesn’t stop there. The great Aztecs and Mayans also founded their civilizations on conquest and killing. And their moment in the sun came and went. As will ours. Conquest and killing do not guarantee longevity.

But the stones remain. And they tell the story of a synthesis of cultures. Toltec pillars stand in harmony with Mayan pyramids. While the Mayans honored Kukulcán, the Aztecs honored the same god, calling him Quetzalcoatl. The remaining stones share space with the verdant jungle and the eclipse still casts its shadow over Kukulcán at the same time and place as it did when Mayan scientists first designed the monument.

Let us read the stones and learn to stand in harmony with each other and with our planet.

Sabina the Wise

2006-03-05T16:57:00.000-08:00

Another memorable woman in the Deago Rodríguez family was Angelita´s mother, Sabina Rodríguez, mother of two sons and seven daughters. She was born at the beginning of one century and almost lived to see the dawn of the next (1900-1990). She was known by her grandchildren as Sabia, the wise-woman, a tribute we could all hope to live to enjoy. Her children could tell me little about her background other than that she was one of two sisters whose mother died when she was three. She was known for her white skin - perhaps the reason she was so much more wrinkled than her daughters are now at nearly the same age - and her gentle but hardworking ways.

Although her two sons apparently preferred working on the farm to attending school, her daughters were not happy when abuelo pulled them out of school to work on the farm. I´m told that by the time Ñeca, the youngest, was 10 or so, Abuela made the decision to leave the farm and her husband to allow her daughter to continue in elementary school. Life was not easy in the town, but somehow, she and her daughters found a way to survive. The rift caused by the separation never mended and abuelo Lolo (Heliodoro) and abuela Sabina apparently never spoke again. In a culture in which family is the hub of social contacts, somehow Sabina and Lolo arranged never to be with the same daughter at the same time. The portrait pictured here was a composite ordered by her daughter Ángela and painted decades after the separation from separate photographs of each. (Abuelo, of course, never wore a suit and tie and was never without his sombrero pintado).

By the time I met Abuela, almost twenty years before her death, she was already a tiny, wrinkled, old woman who usually sat in a chair inclined against a wall on its two legs, crocheting and telling stories. When her first great-grandson was born in the United States (Raúl Tello), I commented that she must be very proud. She responded that she wished it had been a girl, that she wanted no grandsons born in the United States because in that country they send their sons to fight. How true that was in 1971, in the middle of the Vietnam War. Abuela, a truly wise-woman, may have known that while wars end, others begin. And as are the ways of the world, when that grandson turned 17, the United States had invaded another country - this time it was Panama.

That morning of December 1989, we watched in awe and fear the television images of the invading U.S. soldies poised behind trees on the beaches of Panama Viejo, aiming their machine guns at children who waited for schoolbuses at the entrance to the very neighborhood where our Panama City family lives. That evening, we watched troops leaving Fort Ord destined for Panama. Had great-grandson Raúl been a year older and had the draft still been in effect, he might have been sent to fight his own family.

We visited Panamá the following summer to see what was left after the invasion, the eradication of the entire Chorrillo neighorhood and the killing of so many Panamanians. Abuela, by this time, had had a stroke, was nearly blind, and spent much of her time drowsing in an easy chair in Yaya´s home. The daughters said she was hallucinating, but it seemed to me more like confabulation, as she tried to make meaning of the world she couldn´t see, between her moments of wakefulness and sleep. She spoke of one dream, of the house being filled with tall white, young men, but that they meant no harm. I´m sure she was speaking of her grandsons´s Nebur and Aaron, but did she know that the city and countryside were crawling with U.S. soldiers?

Sabina´s only sister, Lucinda was born four years earlier and remembered and told stories of another war - the war for independence from Colombia, finally achieved in 1903 when another U.S. president, Teddy Roosevelt, sent gunboats to patrol the harbors, preventing Colombian troops from entering as the Panamanians declared their independence from what remained of La Gran Colombia. Of course, Roosevelt´s intentions were far from altruistic, and Panamá gained its supposed independence in exchange for economic and military dependence to the United States for the next ninety-six years.

Just as Sabina was now ending her ninth decade in the care of her oldest daughter Rosa (Yaya) in Panama City, her sister Lucinda was cared for by her oldest daughter, also named Rosa in Chitré. By September of 1990, Lucinda had fallen into a coma and was in the regional Hospital of Herrera, a four hour drive from Panama City. Sabina´s greatest wish was to see her sister, a wish her children finally fulfilled that month. She spent several hours at her sister´s bedside, returned home and died the next morning. Her sister, still in a coma, died several hours later.

This photo pictures Kelly in the center at her third birthday party at tía Yaya´s house. Kelly is wearing a crochet dress and holding a doll with a matching bag and crocheted purse, all made by abuela. Abuela is on the far right.

Sabina is remembered by her children, grandchildren and great-great grandchildren, numbering in the hundreds. Two great-granddaughters are named in her honor. When Kelly (MsABCmom) chose to name her daughter Sabina Luz in honor of her own great-grandmother, she didn´t know that Abuela Sabina´s only sister was Lucinda.

As I wrote this poem in 1993, I had little knowledge of abuela Sabina´s early life, but wanted to encapsulate the memories of the abuela I had come to know.

Sabina the Wise

Abuela, I knew you not in your youth,

Smooth skin glowing,

black hair flowing,

Nimble feet flying,

on you way to the dance.

What were your joys?

What were your hopes?

What did you know?

Abuela, I knew you not

In your middle years,

Clothing children,

Plaiting hair,

Cleaning chickens,

Walking out on a marriage
To educate your daughters.

What were your hopes?

What were your regrets?

What did you know?

But Abuela, I knew you

In your later years,

Leaning back in your chair in the shade,

Bare toes dangling free,

Eyes sparkling,

Fingers flying,

Crocheting memories and hopes into dresses

For granddaughters,

Sewing prayers of safekeeping

For grandsons gone to seek

Fortunes in the North.

Abuela, I remember your warning:

"I shall have no grandsons born in America,

In America they sacrifice their sons to war.

In America, they send their sons to conquer Vietnam."

And Abuela, I remember you in your dying years,

Leaning back in your chair in the shade,

Bare toes dangling free,

Your face a map of a thousand memories.

In your blindness you could not crochet,

In your blindness you wove

History and visions and dreams.

"I dreamed the sons of my grandsons have returned,

Tall white men crowding the house.

But they mean no harm,

They are gentle, they show respect."

"And I shall have no grandsons born in America

In America, they sacrifice their sons to war,

In America they send their sons south
To conquer Panama."

--M. Villalobos, 12-93

Mamacita

2006-02-26T21:07:00.000-08:00

Among the amazing characters I have met, my mother-in-law, Ángela Deago Rodríguez tops the list. Although she has few endearing qualities, and is, in fact, one of the thorniest persons I know, her outstanding qualities also make her one of the most memorable. Born the fourth child in a family of eight in rural Panamá in the 1920s, she had to begin work at an early age. She was usually able to avoid the picking and plowing by volunteering to go to town to sell the produce. From the age of nine, she would ride horseback crossing fields, and fording rivers to the nearest towns, sell the goods and return to the farm.

Never married, Ángela always found the way to support herself and her three children. If she had lived in another place and time, her talent, intelligence, industry and chutzpah would have led her to a successful career in sales or business. However, Lita made do with what she had. In the beginning, that meant chopping, gathering and selling firewood. As she tells it, she once sold enough wood to buy a room full of coconuts. She then set out to make and sell enough cocada to buy the materials to build her first house. She later bought sides of beef or pork to cut and sell. Essential cookware in Ángela’s house were two huge pots – one of copper for making cocada and cabanga and another of iron for frying chicharrón – all this cooking was done outdoors over an open fire, of course. Also necessary for this cottage industry were the ever-present oil drums, one for melasa for the candy and the other for manteca to fry the chicharrón.

Ángela´s primary product, however, were the chorizos that made her famous. I of course, will never forget the curtain of tripes hanging from the low, sloped ceiling of her back porch, nor the ever present smell and oiliness of pork fat. Once chopped, condimented and stuffed, Ángela would take the chorizos to sell in town, and particularly, in government offices. She would often fill tubs with the chorizos, hop on a chiva, and sell her product in Panamá City. She says that there were never enough chorizos to meet the demand and that the government officials would stand in line to be especially nice to her for the privilege of buying Lita´s chorizos, which of course, were always of the best quality. This cottage industry once brought her in the sights of the General (Torrijos).

As the story goes, Ángela was in Chitré, selling pork on the street, outside the bank. On this occasion, the meat inspector spotted her and told her she could not sell at this venue or without a permit. Ángela, not to be deterred from her enterprise, told the inspector, using the most specific, if unrepeatable language, exactly what she thought of him, and continued her sales. Not long after this, while chopping pork for chorizos, Ángela heard a knock at her door. Several national guardsmen entered, fully armed, and told her that she was to accompany them, as the General, then encamped at the beach of Parita nearby, required her presence. Ángela, who apparently never knew fear, replied that she could not leave because the pork would spoil. Unable to convince her to leave, the soldiers ended up paying her $200.00 for the pork and took her to see the General. It turns out that Torrijos, ready for some local color and a laugh, wanted to hear straight from the source exactly how Ángelita had cursed the meat inspector. This is Angelita's own Panamanian incarnation of Allende's character Belisa in "Dos palabras".

The chorizo industry also led to the business that funded Ángelita´s later years. In the late 1970s, AID loans became available in Panamá and someone had the great idea that Ángela´s chorizo business would be a great investment for such a loan. As they tried to convince her to take the loan, Ángela at first resisted. “But you could build a sanitary, commercial kitchen”, they said. But Ángela knew that the best place to make her chorizos was and would always be her back porch. “You could hire staff”, they went on to say. But Ángela knew that if she wanted something done, it was best to do it herself. Nevertheless, she says she took a $10,000.00 loan, banked it and set up a new business, extending personal loans. With this seed money, she was able to eventually pay back the AID loan and continue making loans in her old age. While some might call her rates usurious, they were probably not higher than credit cards, and her loans were easier to get in a pinch. During the U.S. embargo and invasion of 1989-1990, Ángela found another way to supplement her income. At that time, cash was not readily available and checks were unable to be cashed. Somehow, Ángela would buy these payroll checks minus a fee for her service, and pay for them in cash. Later, when cash flowed again, she would deposit the checks, making a tidy profit. In the meantime, those who had checks but no means to buy food and other neccesities were happy to get some cash.

Ángela´s gifts were not limited to financial acumen. She was also a poet. Although she had only three years of school as a child, she later completed an elementary education in night school. Her spelling was not the best, but that was not a concern as Ángela´s poems, unfortunately, were never written down. In the ancient tradition of the Spanish juglares, or the more contemporary creators of corridos and décimas, Ángela´s poetry was an oral art, and she had a mind for rhyme, meter and metaphor and an infallible memory. People would come to her house and ask for a poem in honor of this or that event, for the queen of this or that festival, and Ángela, while dicing pork or stirring cocada, would compose the poem. On one occasion, while selling something in town, she was asked to come immediately to recite one of her poems at a nearby square for some event. This time she demurred – she had not combed her hair and she had no shoes. Someone produced a comb and someone else a pair of shoes and she was on her way.

Ángela says that “La zona del canal” was actually a collaboration with another poet. She sang this décima to me in 1994, surprisingly with a few false starts, but eventually got it all out. In 1978 or 1979, at the time of the Torrijos Carter agreement, Ángela was in a hospital. A fellow poet visited her, excited about an idea he had for a poem to commemorate the event. She said that they composed this poem together.

LA ZONA DEL CANAL

Mi querido y adorado
recordado general
que me llevaste un día
a flamear mi bandera
en la zona canalera
porque otra extranjera
ay, su lugar tenía.

Quiero sembrar un maíz
en la zona del canal
y sobre el verde arrozal,
la saloma más feliz
es escuchar la perdiz
allá en la curva lejana
de encima de mi montaña
clavaré la enseña mía.

¡Ay! flor de soberanía
te rescataré mañana.
De Colón a Panamá,
¡cuantas tierras tiene el gringo
mientras yo, pobre india,
no tengo en la vida na´!

Me voy donde el pueblo va
con su daga y su sombrero
hacia el Canal compañero
de Los Santos y Herrera
de la república entera
a ver quien llega primero.

Qué bonita agricultura
en las faldas de Ancón,
la amarilla floración
entre las verdes espesuras.
Sembré maíz y verduras
desde Curundú a Gatún,
y seguiré según
me lo permita la vida.

Arroz de soberanía
cultivaré en Miraflores
el Chagres de mis dolores
me dará su agua fría.
Quiero sembrar un maíz
en la Zona del Canal,
zona de soberanía
la tierra que es tuya y mía
en la Zona del canal.

Ángela has always been an independent thinker, a trait that has often estranged her from her family. However, this very independence caused her to seek opportunities not often provided more timid souls. A Catholic by birth, she expressed an interest in other religions, and on at least one occasion attended a national Jehovah Witness conference, less I think, in a quest for religion and more out of curiousity about how people think. Her picture with the General at the National Women's Conference is another example of her quest for experiences. When she wanted to travel, she promoted tours and sold enough tickets to earn free passage. This gambit earned her several tours around Central America and one trip to Europe.

Although she was not always a pleasant person to be around, her family always seemed to find her in times of financial hardship because they knew that Ángela would never let them down when they needed help. She extended this generosity to others as well. On one occasion, a woman came to town seeking medical help for a sick child. Unfortunately, the child died and the priest refused to perform a service because the mother had no money left to pay him. In a town with many more well-to-do people, it was Ángela, the poor, single parent who gave a woman she didn´t know the money needed to bury her son.

Pizza is a Small Price to Pay for Cannon Fodder

2006-02-10T15:21:00.000-08:00

Another unfortunate aspect of the cynical No Child Left Behind Legislation is the requirement that military recruiters have access to high school students on public school campuses (in order to continue any federal funds the school may receive). Especially cynical in that the young people most likely left out, if not behind in the era of teaching to the test are those who are also most easily preyed upon by military recruiters. Our school bulletin announces twice a week that the Navy recruiter will be on campus in the career center and in the courtyard (where students eat lunch) twice a week. Today two recruiters were out in full force with boxes and boxes of pizza, giving out slices and free Navy pens. Notably, the students being courted by the two recruiters (at least when I saw them) were African-American. I suggested to several students that all I had to give them was free advice - that they had other options in life than signing on with the Navy, to which the recruiter responded that she was fighting for my freedom to say just that. After I responded that our freedoms are guaranteed by the Constitution and an informed electorate, not by killing Iraqis on the other side of the globe, it was clear that we weren't going to convince each other and I left.

Our principal, like her predecessor, tells me that recruiters' access to students (frequency, location and manner) is determined by the school board. Also, I am again told that recruiters have a right to as much access as college recruiters. In fact, in the thirteen years I have taught at this school I have never seen a college recruiter hanging out with students in the courtyard, giving out free food. Recruiters meet in certain classrooms or the career center by drop-ins or appointments. Students come to them. Military recruiters have far greater access than any other off-campus recruiter I know of.

In April, our Mock Trial team has been invited to spend a day at the county courthouse observing appeal cases. We are required to obtain signed parent permission slips in order for students to attend. On the other hand, the military also has access to demographic information (name, address, age, etc.) on any student on campus unless, at the beginning of the year, parents submit a signed refusal to allow information on their child to be released to the military. How ironic that parents must give written consent to allow their children to spend one school day at a local courthouse two miles from campus, but unless they proactively sign a refusal to consent, personal information on their child will be open to the military recruiters. Which is the greater risk?

I have several questions:

1. Are all sites recruited equally? Colleagues teaching on campuses in more affluent neighborhoods tell me that they can't remember the last time they saw a recruiter talking with students.

2. How much of these recruiting ploys is the School Board actually aware of?

3. How much and what type of counter-recruiting efforts would be permitted at the same venue (courtyard where the students congregate)?

4. Who could successfully do the counter-recruiting and what form would it take?

Freeway at Dawn

2006-02-03T02:09:00.000-08:00

Serpentine chain of diamond lights
Each link a coffin of metal and glass
on a road to nowhere,
leaving at dawn
returning at dusk,
futile struggle
silent screams.

Driving to Work at Dawn

2006-01-25T14:50:00.000-08:00

Fingernail sliver of crescent moon,
Lone star lambent in the distance,
Ghost-fingers of leafless trees
Emerge from darkness
In silent supplication.

Cloaking the horizon,
Murky fog seamlessly
Flows from mauve
To midnight blue.
Another day begins.

Google in the Trenches

2006-01-20T14:51:00.000-08:00

While the President and the other Tricky Dick Cheney would have us believe that our soldiers are killing and dying in Iraq to defend democracy, an unlikely defender of Freedom and the American Way has stepped forward. Attorney General González apparently issued an edict demanding that internet companies provide a list of all searches made in a given week by a random list of users – could be you or me. America On Line and Yahoo submitted those names – maybe yours or mine. Google refused to rat out its users.

4th Amendment:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Legal scholars out there – is it the 4th amendment González just trod upon?
Thank you, Google, for standing firm in defense of the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution, democracy, freedom and the American Way against “all enemies...domestic”!

Google, you are and will continue to be my search engine of choice.

Odds and Ends

2006-01-19T15:01:00.000-08:00

Politics of fear

Shortly after the President is accused of warrantless wiretapping, we suddenly are told that "chatter" suggests that Bin Laden is planning another attack on the U.S. Coincidence, we ask? We learn that Supreme Court nominee Alito believes that extraordinary powers should be granted the Executive branch during war time. Sounds like as long as a president chooses to start a war and then has the power to declare whether or not it is over, we can expect to live in a monarchy in the United States. What happened to a balance of power? Is this the type of "democracy" King George is planning for Iraq?

Thank God for Diversity

Too many these days seem to be complaining about diversity. I once heard a credential candidate (probably in her late 40's) complaining about the requirement of a class on ethnic diversity. "Why can't we just go back to the old days when we all got along? Why are we forced to use this ethnic literature? Why can't we just teach the literature we used to read?", she bemoaned. As a matter of fact, I can remember that classic reader, Dick and Jane. Dick and Jane had brown hair, as I recall, and little sister Sally had blonde, but all three were lily white. They lived in a nice house with a picket fence, Mom wore heels and and apron and stayed home and Dad wore a suit and a hat and supported the family. Doesn't sound like most families I know! I once saw a history text on early California purportedly used in classrooms in San Joaquin county sometime in the 20th century. In this text, Mexicans living in the state at that time were characterized either as knife-slinging horse thieves or prostitutes, depending on their gender. Here in Modesto, decades ago, I attended a high school with no African American students. One student enrolled but didn't last long. Her locker was defaced with racial epithets. In those days, de facto segregation in my fair city meant that African American students attended only Modesto High School where I now teach. Fortunately, much has changed about the racial and ethnic demographics in Modesto since then.

So on to the present. Today, driving through a town thick with January fog, in a mood darker than the weather, I decided to stop by the Asian market for some condiments not available in the supermarket - pickled ginger for my brine fix and Sriracha Vietnamese sauce for the picante lover in me. This market is located in a run-down strip mall that also houses Sam's Food City, and a variety of other hole-in-the wall establishments. I did pick up my jars of ginger and bottles of sauce, but also vicariously enjoyed the other delicacies - the whole fish on ice and newspaper in boxes on the side walk, the crabs crawling in a plastic tub and all kinds of other foods I couldn't name or recognize. I had plenty of time to hear two or three languages I don't understood while waiting in line, as the little store was packed. (Last summer, after fruitlessly waiting for flor de calabaza to appear in the local farmer's market, I stopped by this Asian Market for ginger and found virtually tons of that delicate blossom of the squash plant. The owner told me that customer grew it in his backyard). Leaving the market, other store fronts caught my eye. This dusty, run-down strip mall is proof positive that the homogeneous, boring, ethnocentric Modesto of my childhood is not what it once was. On this one street corner, in addition to the supermarket, the liquor stores, a storage shed, mortgage company and a wireless store, I noticed other establishments: Shiva's selections: Indian and Western Fashionwear, Gifts and Imitation Jewelry, Samakhon Medical Clinic, Tzu Chi Foundation, Heng's Accupuncture, Ly Ly Beauty Salon, Pho 7 Vietnamese Restaurant, Ron's Barber Shop, Dee Von's Hair Styles, Fijian Market: Groceries and Videos, Seng's Chinese Restaurant and four religious establishments: Evangelical Prayer Band of Love Church, Sanctuary of Peace Church, The Baha'i Faith Modesto Community Center, and Iglesia de Dios vivo columna y apoyo de la verdad, la luz del mundo. As to the last Spanish Speaking congregation, with a name that long, I'd hate to think how long the sermons might run! The fog lifted as did my spirits.

A Married Woman is not quite 3/5ths of a Man

After many years of marriage, I find myself not exactly single, but no longer with a husband in this country. Imagine my surprise when my car insurance agent tells me that they will not remove the absent husband from my policy without his written permission even though I purchased the only car on the policy and it is in my name alone! After decades of making sure to pay the bills, I find that I am not of sufficient worth to be called head of household. A state law, so the agent tells me.

The last word is that another agent is going to allow me to apply for a new policy in my name alone; I can only hope it goes through. Apparently the gender war has not yet been won.

Emancipation Birthday

2006-01-15T11:24:00.000-08:00

Looking at pictures MsABCMom posted on her blog, I was struck with the passage of time. I realized that after my youngest child graduates from law school in June and takes the bar exam in July, a monumental change will take place in my life. For the first time in 37 years, that is, for the first time in my adult life, a major chunk of my monthly earnings will not be allocated to raising children or paying for their college expenses. Please understand that in no way do I wish to be emotionally emancipated from my three wonderful children and amazing granddaughter, but financial independence will be nice. It also signals an opportunity to look at some goals for the coming year.

Work:
For too long I have identified who I am with what I do. For next year I need to plan how I can cut back to full-time work and cut back on club advising. I need to find a way to do the job without spending most nights and most of my week ends grading papers and worrying about lesson planning. I want to keep the energy and enthusiasm for work without letting it dominate all else.

The Body:
Yes, it does need some work. That means I need to decrease what I eat and increase how often I work out.

The Spirit:
I haven’t figured this one out yet, but it includes some fun, some travel, some music, some personal growth, and, I am hoping, new opportunities at my place of worship.

Family:
Continue to enjoy every moment I have with my children and grandchildren, spend more time with my mother, keep in touch with my sister and family, as well as my cousins. Hopefully, take a trip back east to see the cousins.

The Mind:
Include a few more non-fiction books among the fiction I read, spend some time on re-acquiring Norwegian and perhaps study Hebrew, consider whether I want to take that final stab at a masters in Spanish or E.L.D.

Tikkun Olam:
Think of a meaningful way to engage in “healing the world” through some volunteer activities.

Accountability:
Re-read this journal periodically during the year to see if I’m working on the goals

On Learning and Teaching

2006-01-07T09:34:00.001-08:00

Beating Time - by Barbara Kingsolver

Commemorating the removal of poetry as a requirement in Arizona's schools, August 1997

The Governor interdicted: poetry is evicted
from our curricula,
for metaphor and rhyme take time
from science. Our children's self-reliance rests
upon the things we count on. The laws
of engineering. Poeteering squanders time, and time
is money. He said: let the chips fall where they may.

The Governor's voice fell down through quicksilver
microchip song hummed along and the law
was delivered to its hearing. The students
of engineering bent to their numbers in silent
classrooms, where the fans overhead
whispered "I am I am" in iambic pentameter.
Unruly and fractious numbers were discarded at the bell.
In the crumpled, cast-off equations,
small black figures shaped like tadpoles
formed a nation, unobserved, in the wastepaper basket.

Outside, a storm is about to crack the sky.
Lightning will score dry riverbeds, peeling back the mud
like a plow, bellowing, taking out bridges,
completely unexpectedly.

The children too young to have heard
of poetry's demise turn their eyes
to the windows, to see what they can count on.
They will rise and dance to the iamb of the fans,
whispering illicit rhymes, watching the sky for a sign
while the rain beats time.

****

Not far behind, California is working hard to beat the magic and the mystery out of learning, victim of the pseudo-science of standardized testing. Five of the six items on the agenda for our next department chair meeting are related to standards and standardized testing. We are told that during observations, we should be seen identifying the standards we are addressing in the lesson and that students should be able to parrot back the name and number of the standard. What happened to relating lessons to real life; to students taking the lesson and letting their imaginations run with it? I've heard it said that a high level administrator observes that teaching novels is not an efficient use of class time as it does not directly improve test scores. What happened to the joy, the mystery, the magic of literature?

Granted, the lock-step is not as evident yet in the teaching of foreign language. There is as yet, no state or national Spanish test required for our students. And I would welcome such a test if it were proficiency based. I am grateful that my students take I.B. and A.P. exams because it gives us a bar to shoot for. I also find value in standards, as long as they lead to transparency in teaching. Realistic standards keep us focused on the same goal and help us communicate to students what that goal is. However, restricting teaching to preparation for multiple choice tests is not a worthwhile outcome.

INCIDENTE DOMESTICO - Miguel de Unamuno

Traza la niña toscos garrapatos,
de escritura remedo, me los presenta y dice
con un mohín de inteligente gesto:

"¿Qué dice aquí, papá?"

Miro unas líneas que parecen versos.
"¿Aquí ?" "Si, aquí; lo he escrito yo; ¿qué dice?
porque yo no sé leerlo..."
Aquí no dice nada!", le contesté al momento.

"¿Nada ?", y se queda un rato pensativa
o así me lo parece, por lo menos,
pues ¿está en los demás o está en nosotros
eso a que damos en llamar talento?

Luego, reflexionando, me decía:
¿Hice bien revelándole el secreto?
-no el suyo ni el de aquellas toscas líneas,
mío, por supuesto-.

¿Sé yo si alguna musa misteriosa,
un subterráneo genio,
un espíritu errante que a la espera
para encarnar está de humano cuerpo,
no le dictó esas líneas
de enigmáticos versos?

¿Sé yo si son la gráfica envoltura
de un idioma de siglos venideros?
¿Sé yo si dicen algo?
¿He vivido yo acaso de ellas dentro?

No dicen mas los arboles, las nubes
los pájaros, los ríos, los luceros ...
¡No dicen más y nos lo dicen todo!
¿Quién sabe de secretos?
***
The child scribbles roughly across the page
and presents it too me with an intelligent glance:
What does it say here, papa?

I look at the verse-like lines.
"Here?" "Yes, here; I wrote it myself.
What does it say because I don't know how to read it."
"It says nothing here!" I answer after a moment.

"Nothing?" She is silent a moment, pensive,
-or so it seems to me at least,
but is it through us or through others
that we call that which is talent?

Later, reflecting, I say to myself:
Did I do right by revealing the secret to her?
-Not hers, nor that of those rough scribbles,
mine, of course-.

Do I know if some mysterious muse,
some subterranean genius,
a wandering spirit awaiting human form
dictated those lines of enigmatic verse?

Do I know whether they are the graphic form
of some language of future centuries?
Do I know if they say anything?
Have I perhaps lived within them?

Don't the trees say more, the clouds,
the birds, the rivers, the stars...
They say no more and they tell us everything!
Who knows about secrets?

*****

Skill practice and development are important strategies and goals. However, what is teaching and learning if it is not also about spontaneity, joy, magic and mystery!

Religion

2006-01-07T08:13:00.000-08:00

I was raised in a social gospel tradition. My understanding was that being a Christian meant acting the faith through good deeds, i.e. treating others with justice and compassion. I'd heard all the other "stuff", the dogma, but thought that it was not central to Christianity, which I viewed as a religion of social justice. I remember, for example, a sermon in which a minister posited that the true miracle was not that Jesus, the founder of the faith, was born to a virgin, but that he was born to a poor, unwed mother, a member of an oppressed people. Furthermore, that the miracle of the fishes and the loaves didn't imply that Jesus could magically reproduce the food, but that the act of compassion of one child who shared one small fish and one small loaf compelled many others to share what they had.

When I was in Norway at age 17, I encountered religious Christians from Lutheran and Mission Covenant backgrounds who saw Christianity very differently, emphasizing faith, i.e. salvation through Christ's sacrifice, rather than social justice and good deeds. Christianity through that frame of reference didn't work for me. If G-d were all-powerful, why would he have allowed humans to partake of knowledge, then caste them from the Garden of Eden, punishing them with misery and suffering throughout eternity? Why would mess up so much that he had to send an emissary (Jesus) to fix it up? What is wrong with seeking knowledge?

For some years, I attended a U.C.C. church that was oriented toward social justice in those days, with little emphasis on creed or profession of faith. When we lived in South America, I again encountered traditional Christians whose core belief centered around salvation through Christ's sacrifice. I started to re-read the New Testament and began to feel that I couldn't ignore that the core message, what was new in the New Testament was indeed, was this very theory of salvation. I felt that identifying myself as a Christian was insincere, since I didn't accept, couldn't belief in the core concept of Christianity - Christ's divinity. The message of social justice - the Golden Rule, etc., was already evident in Judaism.

I began taking Judaism classes in South America and continued when I returned to the U.S. I found Judaism to be, historically, an evolving and growing religion. The emphasis on natural consequences made sense to me. Social justice is key as is the emphasis on ethical action - mitzvot. The prohibition of saying G-d's name also made much sense - because in my view, there is no way to define G-d and to express the ineffable name is inevitably to diminish what G-d is. How can we, with our human capacities, define something which is far beyond our scope?

There is much to Judaism that I don't accept or practice. There is much to other religions, including Christianity, that I respect and admire. There are many ways to wholeness, I chose one, and in its way, it works for me.

New Year; new blog

2006-01-02T11:25:00.000-08:00

Having read my children's blogs and following the links through some of their blogging world, my fingers began to itch for the keyboard and I decided to enter the blogging world. Given that I am a generation away from most of the bloggers I read, and considering where I often seem to stand on the issues, I chose the moniker, Kjerringa mot strømmen, a character from an old Norwegian folk tale. Kjerringa, the crone who swims against the current. Crone, in the best sense, as wise woman, is a goal, rather than a current description; something to work for. Which, I guess, would make me a searcher, a seeker of wisdom.