Wondrous Weekend of Arte, Poetry, Zuppa, Honoring A Poet, A Book Review

 Michael Sedano

Mid-September brings a rich cornucopia of arts events, a surprise award, and oncoming cold weather demands hearty, gluten-free soups. La Bloga-Tuesday is happy to share the week's joys.

Pintor de Poemas: Unseen Works by Alfredo Ramos Martínez Exhibition at Scripps College

Among the best other-than-classroom elements of institutions of higher learning are the diverse contributions to community arts and culture. In Claremont, California, Scripps College exemplifies the best of these with an involving exhibition of a foundational Mexican muralist, Alfredo Ramos Martínez.

Detail: Pareja India. Alfredo Ramos Martínez, 1932

The exhibition features unseen studies in life-size scale of Ramos Martínez' notable paintings and outdoor works. Assembled from private collections and a Los Angeles gallery, the compact gallery thronged with visitors from across the region during the opening reception 

Claremont, California's Scripps College has the final mural Alfredo Ramos Martínez painted, Las Vendedoras de Flores. In connection with the exhibition, Ramos Martínez'  hundred-foot long treasure will be honored with an altar created by Ofelia and Rosanna Esparza, on October 23. 

Scripps College has put together an impressive program to celebrate the exhibition, including a deluxe catalog, and lectures on the muralist's paint compounds, as well as a lecture on Ramos Martínez' distinctive style paying homage to laborers and indigenous gente. For details on the events, here's a link.

The Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College 

251 E. 11th St. Claremont, California 91711

September 13–December 14, 2025

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks Comida Italiana

Zuppa Con Polpette, Lee's Green Soup

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The Strouds were an Air Force family who’d moved next door. My Mom shared Mexican/Chicano cooking with Lee, who’d been all over the world, acquiring a repertoire of foods wherever Colonel Stroud was stationed. As a special treat, Mrs. Stroud promised us real Italian pizza.

The year was 1956 or 1957. Pizza had yet to enter the food chain in my part of Califas. The only pizza I’d tasted was a delicious, and expensive, tomato sauce-covered treat at the drive-in theatre. Now, I was going to eat, for free, the genuine article.

Lee made a rectangular pizza pie that fills the air with wondrous aroma. But before serving us pizza, a first course.

The first course arrives in a bowl—a green soup with tiny meatballs exuding its own rich aroma of parmesan cheese, garlic, and the je ne sais quoi of great cooking. The soup is so tasty I ask for seconds, which Lee gladly ladles into my empty bowl. 

I’ve eaten so much soup I have room for only a single square of that wondrous pizza. Lee laughs and explains, that’s the idea:

Pizza takes a lot of work, and time. Yeast dough has to rise, get beaten down, and rise again. Tomatoes get cooked down and pulverized with herbs and spices to make the sauce. Cheese needs grating; then the baking. Feed people soup and you have to make only one pizza!

We Celiacs and other gluten-intolerant gente know the rarity of a good gluten-free pizza. I know of only two restaurants in California making edible gluten-free pizza, Giuseppe’s in Palm Springs, and Settebello in Pasadena. Pero, ni modo, I’d rather eat this soup. 

Zuppa Con Polpette - Lee’s Green Soup.

Ingredients to serve four with second helpings, or good left-overs (carb counts are approximate for your own soup, as quantities reduce or increase the gram content. Some of us diabetics count carbs, so remember to divide the total carb count by the number of servings. )

Polpette/Albondigas/Meatballs:

½ lb ground beef (0g)

½ lb ground pork (0g)

1 lg egg (.4g)

Parmesan cheese (1.15g per oz or 5 TBS)

4 cloves or more garlic (1g /clove)

1 brown or white onion (11g)

salt (0g)

black pepper (.06g / dash)

Zuppa/Caldo/Soup:

frozen chopped spinach 11g)

3 or 4 carrots (6g/carrot)

4 stalks celery including tops (1g/stalk)

½ bell pepper (7g/cup)

flat rice noodles (120g/cup)

olive oil (0g)

chicken stock (1g/cup)

red chile flakes (1g/tsp)

½ lemon to squeeze (1g)

Meatballs:

Wash hands and under nails.

Squish ingredients in hands making a homogenous mass

Use three fingers to pinch meat mixture

Roll in palm of hands to form spoon-size bolitas

Soup:

In a generous soup pot over medium flame/level 4 on electric range 

Wilt the onion and garlic in olive oil

Add carrots and bell pepper

Add the meatballs

Add canned or homemade chicken broth and equal volume water

Add the celery

Cover, lower heat, simmer 20 minutes (meatballs will float to surface)

Add frozen chopped spinach

Add a bit more parmesan cheese

Add a pinch of red chile flakes

Squeeze lemon juice into pot

Stir

Cover, simmer ten minutes

Ladle into bowls, distribute four or five polpette per bowl. Squeeze a bit of lemon juice. Dust with parmesan cheese.

On the table, serve a bowl of dried parmesan and another of chile flakes for garnish.

Make your own broth, boxed gluten-free broth is a good shortcut.

Use the celery root and all the carrot. Lots of extra flavor in those.
Use good olive oil to wilt the first batch of vegetables.

Layering ingredients builds flavors.

Wilted veggies under meatballs and liquid, ready for the next layer.

25 minutes cooks everything just right. Spinach finishes it off for color and taste.

A second helping in that empty bowl!

Some cooks make soup the day before to take advantage of the fact that soup flavors blossom overnight, left-overs prove the point.

La Bloga-Tuesday will feature diverse gluten-free soup recipes in coming weeks. Cold weather approaches, and that's hot, hearty soup weather.

Review: Ron Arias. Gardens of Plenty

When I laid grateful eyes on Ramos Martínez' La Pareja India, at the Scripps reception, my thoughts immediately went to Ron Arias' new novel, Gardens of Plenty (link) given the novel's principal setting is Mexico, spanning over twenty years and ending in fifteen eighty-eight.

This first-person novel traces the career of an English boy who goes to sea on a slaver ship, goes overboard to be captured and enslaved by indios. He escapes with another slave, a teenage girl. They find shelter and marry. He flees the inquisition only to be enslaved again by a red-bearded nemesis from the ship. Escaping again, he sails to Spain, makes his way to Portugal, returns to Mexico. The New World is ravaged by a lethal disease, perhaps syphillis, and the man finds empty villages and black clouds of vultures feasting on human carrion. Finally he's reunited with his wife and children bringing the swashbuckling tale to a satisfying conclusion. It's a far cry from Errol Flynn or Horatio Hornblower but equally imaginative, heroic, and thrilling.

Arias spins an excellent and exciting tale, crafting admirable characters, giving the hardships a feeling of authenticity with a caveat: readers need a generously willing suspension of disbelief. The boy learns a few words of Spanish from a chained slave and in short order holds elaborate conversations with the slave and gente in Mexico, including his indio captors via the teenage slave he eventually marries. He adapts quickly to indio values and becomes a skilled archer.

The historical context adds to the novel's interest. Gritty shipboard details, people burned at the stake for being Protestants, crypto Jews hiding in plain sight as merchants, sailors, soldiers--the boy learns he himself is a hidden Jew. A variety of indigenous gente populate the plot. Food consists in insects, snakes, lice, mules, and birds shot out of the air with arrows, as well as tamales and barbacoa. Gardens of plenty, indeed!

I'm happy to recommend Gardens of Plenty to readers of all ages, YA to jaded adults. Moreover, I recommend ordering copies from the only Chicano bookstore in Orange County, Libromobile in Santa Ana (link). Libromobile's service is fast and the community-based store needs support.

Thelma T. Reyna Lifetime Achievement Award 

The announcement arrives the day after the Altadena Poets Laureates reading marking the release of the 2025 Online edition of the Altadena Poetry Review, Dr. Thelma T. Reyna is Recipient of the 2025 Armando F. Sanchez Production Lifetime Achievement Award.

Reyna's books have collectively earned 22 national and international literary awards. She is an Altadena Poet Laureate Emerita, having served as the sole Laureate from 2014-2016. As Altadena Poet Laureate, Reyna expanded the program's community outreach and launched the publication of the Review. Such productivity demonstrated the need for two Laureates and the program now appoints Co-Poets Laureates.

Reyna's Golden Foothills Press (link) publishes the Altadena Poetry Review. Her collections include short fiction, and poetry such as When The Virus Came Calling, and her memoir in poems, a eulogy for her late husband, Dearest Papa. La Bloga-Tuesday reviewed the latter two, linked above.

Marking the award, producer Armando F. Sanchez invites poets and Reyna's former students to share their best wishes and thoughts on Reyna's generosity and artistry. Only a select number appear on the video; many more offered to record messages. Click this link to view the extended tribute video on YouTube.

La Bloga is pleased to announce the award and congratulate Dr. Thelma T. Reyna and recognize her 30-year career contributions to numerous journals and online resources. Congratulations, Thelma. Ajua! and ¡Órale!

2025 Altadena Poetry Review Online and Free for All

One of the nation's most active community poet laureate programs lives in the down but not out Southern California community of Altadena. Hundreds of homes were leveled by the Eaton Fire, but the conflagration spared the Altadena Library, host of the Laurate program.

Laureates, appointed for two-year terms, distinguish themselves with an active program of readings and workshops, and for the second consecutive year, Co-Poets Laureate Sehba Sarwar and Lester Graves Lennon are recognized by the Academy of American Poets with the organization's Poet Laureate Fellowships.

Click here to read the online edition--a virtual book--of Altadena Poetry Review Anthology 2025, edited by Lester Graves Lennon, Associate Editor Sehba Sarwar.  This is a beautiful work of book art, opening with Before the Fire, in memory of Peter J. Harris, and a second half, From the Ashes, dedicated to the victims and survivors of the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire.

Lennon and Sarwar will issue the Call for Submissions for the 2026 Altadena Poetry Review anthology in December. 

In coming weeks, Sarwar in her role as Poet Laureate for Community Events, will host workshops and readings. Saturday, September 20, Xitlalic Guijosa leads Poetry and Garden - Poetry and Zine Workshop. October 11, Teresa Mei Chuc conducts Fire and ICE: A Haibun Poetry Workshop. Both run from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in the library's community room. On Tuesday, October 14, Sarwar and Lennon host a reading, Fire and ICE, with open mic, from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30. November 8, 2-4 p.m., Queer Poets Resist and open mic. November 15, in the commuity room, Writing About the Difficult: Borrowing A Form to Break into Your Story, with Carla Rachel Sameth, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday, December 10, A Wall is Just a Wall and open mic comes to Loma Alta Park Gymnasium from 6 p.m. to 7:30. 

Poetry readings are livestreamed at the library's YouTube channel.

Celebrating the release of the virtual book, the Altadena Library hosted an afternoon reading featuring an open mic and spotlighting eight voices from the anthology, each of whom you can view on the library's YouTube channel (link). 

Here are portraits of the spotlighted readers. You can read their work in the online anthology, and view each at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WTFSrW7VvM :

Anna Mixtlan

Lynne Thompson

Sehba Sarwar

Lester Graves Lennon

Pam Ward

Alene Terzian-Zeitounian

Ron Koertge

Don Kingfisher Campbell

Thelma T. Reyna

Final Words: Invitations

La Bloga welcomes guest columnists on subjects dear to the writer's heart. La Bloga is the oldest Chicana Chicano Latina Latino literary y más blog in the universe. 

In November we celebrate our 21st year sharing poetry, short fiction, critical essays, gluten-free comida, foto essays, community events, new books for children, YA, and general readers. Y más.

Click the mug shots at the top of the page to email your ideas.

La Bloga especially welcomes community dialogue on issues raised by one of our seven regular writers. There's a link at the bottom to join in with your commentary. Be sure to check the Notify Me box to follow yours and others' comments.