Michael Sedano
Snow covers the higher elevations of the mountains above fire-scarred slopes. Gente lined up at the post office aren’t enchanted by the sight on a perfect California winter day. We are the survivors of the firestorm that incinerated the residential heart of the community of Altadena.
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| World Central Kitchen serves free meals, water, fruit. Spirts remain upbeat. |
The fire was miles to our east but my daughter insisted I leave my bed and head downrange. A foolish skeptic, I disbelieved a fire over there could reach us. I grabbed my prescriptions, my laptop, wallet, glasses,and shaving kit. My camera and long lens were already in the car. The next morning my entire worldly possessions were the clothes on my body and the stuff I’d taken for a night’s stay in a motel.
The fire scattered us. My granddaughter was welcomed to the primos’ spare room. My daughter and I found motel rooms. My daughter worked exhaustively to find lodging, competing with hundreds of burned-out families. She did and today we’re under the same roof again.
At first, I took refuge in a simple motel room. After a week and a half, disenchanted with restaurant food, I moved into a kitchenette motel. Angel Guerrero and Thelma Reyna gifted me cooking pots and utensils. Thelma took me shopping at Home Goods for stuff I denied needing. She was right; I needed them.
Clothes loomed as urgent needs. I scored a few serviceable threads at the Salvation Army and Ross Dress for Less. Friends in deed come to ones in need: Jesus Treviño outfitted me with a near complete wardrobe of stylish warm clothes including nice jackets that defeat the daily chill. Mary Cannon is holding some clothes for me.
This morning packed to move out of the Motel 6, I looked into the back of my car to realize I was staring at all my worldly goods. That’s a fact. And I’m not alone living out of a car. We’re in line to collect mail that has no place to go.
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| After 79 years living and working, here is all the stuff I own. |
Let Me Count the Ways: Loving A Panel of Immigrant Poets
Two weeks ago I was happy to attend the fifth iteration of a marvelous panel of poets who happen to be Immigrants, Writing from Our Immigrant Hearts. In the wake of the Eaton Fire, I gained a new perspective on the four poets’ experiences. Hearing these four poets will have impact on any number of preconceived notions, and will likely raise new insights.
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| Teresa Mei Chuc and Thelma T. Reyna |
Moderator Dr. Thelma T. Reyna asks the panel two questions. Tell about their homeland and circumstances leading to their decision to emigrate to the USA, and second, what’s life as a United States American, what dreams and hopes have you developed? Three panelists, Lisbeth Coiman, Toti O’Brien, and Alicia Viguer-Espert share similar arrival stories: wife of a man coming to work here. Teresa Mei Chuc fled Vietnam on a refugee boat.
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| Lisbeth Coiman |
My enlarged understanding of the immigrant experience grows out of our mutual experience of profound displacement. The three married poets divorced the man they accompanied and the women began new lives. The poets speak of returning as visitors with some estrangement. Coiman is an “enemy of the state” and cannot return. The phrase, Ni de aquí, ni de allá, touches on that experience.
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| Alicia Viguer-Espert |
Here in Altadena, authorities slowly are reopening blockaded areas allowing people to return to sift through ashes. There’s no aquí here and no allá there, that’s why we’re lined up at the post office.
After the immigrant poet panelists have offered their answers to Reyna’s queries, they treat the audience to poems reflecting what the narratives conveyed. The reading makes a powerful conclusion to an engrossing and eye-opening presentation.
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| Teresa Mei Chuc |
The energy of this face-to-face panel makes attendance the highlight of any conference or reading series. The drawback of any oral presentation is you have to be there at the right time or you miss everything. Now, there’s a book in the works. La Bloga doesn’t have many details of the published work but when we have it, we’ll share.
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| Toti O'Brien |
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