We've gone through four years of emotional austerity. Like the orphans in Annie, stead of kisses we got kicked, 'stead of Hilary we got hatred. Voters got ourselves a slap in the face when that election looked like the nation was in line for the first woman president. Instead we get our first despot.
That isn't the only thing that wasn't supposed to work out like that, but it's the only one we can't do something about. Not we, Georgia. Georgia voters have the political CPR to unclog the airway of government, remove petulant obstacles from the first two years of the JoeKa administration. D&D, please.
Neighborhood ephemera, in my Pasadena, California neighborhood, share affirming messages that point to what's heading our way after January 20, if Georgia voters come through and give us a delayed but incredibly happy new year. The signs read "common sense," the rarest commodity in human nature, and what they say is just enough to set matters back on track.
People "Drank the Kool-Aid" these recent four years. Now they can seek sweeter nectars, a poet might maunder. Indeed, voices of still-restrained Hope begin to sound, as if some refined spirit gains speed, dashing to D.C. to be born with the JoeKa team in charge. The second coming of the Unitedstatesian Dream is at hand.
For my part here at La Bloga-Tuesday, I'm restraining my enthusiasm and tuning down my Hopefulness. I learned restraint the hard way, these past four years. When I thought it wouldn't get worse, it got worse. And I'm more ascetic than epicurean!
Thus, my New Year resolution looks a lot like that wondrous chuparrosa below. A hummingbird doesn't go looking for new and better but finds reliable sources of the same sweet nectar. And that's enough. Just look at this visage of Huitzilopochtli and tell me that enough isn't.
No, this isn't a self-defeating metaphor. With strength from the same old places, the bird extends its range, the plants and gardens extend theirs, and in the natural course of events, things come to be as they should, ever the same and ever greater.
Happy New Year, Raza, Feliz Año Nuevo, Everyone.
Here's to just enough being enough for now.
Las Comadres Debut List
From Dr. Thelma Reyna comes news her edited anthology, When the Virus Came Calling: COVID-19 Strikes America, Golden Foothills Press, joins the titles listed in LAS COMADRES AND FRIENDS NATIONAL LATINO BOOK CLUB 2020 BOOKS OF THE YEAR.
For sure, the plague is on our minds, like the mask is on our faces. Several La Bloga columnists are included in this publication.
Here's a link to the full list of this first annual selection. Las Comadres sees marketing usefulness in the activity and generously lists numerous titles across diverse fields.
ANTHOLOGIES / SHORT STORIES
And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again: Writers from Around the World on the COVID-19 Pandemic, Editor Ilan Stavans, Restless Books
Cockfight by Maria Fernanda Ampuero, The Feminist Press @ CUNY
Come On In: 15 Stories About Immigration and Finding Home, edited by Adi Alsaid, various authors, Inkyard Press
LatinNEXT, The Breakbeat Poets, Vol 4, edited by Felicia Rose Chavez, Jose Olivarez and Willie Perdomo, Haymarket Books
Lockdown: Stories of Crime, Terror, and Hope During a Pandemic by various authors, Polis Books
Noiryorican: Short Fiction by Richie Narvaez, Down & Out Books
The World Doesn't Work That Way, But It Could by Yxta Maya Murray, University of Nevada Press
Tiny Nightmares: Very Short Stories of Horror, Editors Lincoln Michel & Nadxieli Nieto, Black Balloon Publishing
Vampires Never Get Old by Zoraida Cordova & Natalie C. Parker, Imprint
When the Virus Came Calling: COVID-19 Strikes America, edited by Thelma T. Reyna, Golden Foothills Press
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