Covid-19: I Let My Guard Down

 Melinda Palacio

So nice to have a friend you can quarantine with.

A home test confirms that I have Covid, a first for me. I had gone since the beginning of the pandemic without catching the awful Rona. Plus, I am double vaccinated and twice boosted. A telephone doctor visit and I am now taking the same medication prescribed to President Biden. Paxlovid is an antiviral made by Pfzizer, three horse pills taken twice a day for 5 days. The interesting thing about the medicine is that it is free, no copay or monies needed. I sure hope I am better after the five days. Both the doctor and the pharmacist confirmed that my mouth would taste like tin. Tin can mouth, check. All the other aches and pains, check. I hope to return when I am recovered. In the meantime, enjoy a poem I had published yesterday in SWWIM Everyday. 

A Little Bit of Everything

by Daniel Cano                                                         

Natural symmetry of river, forests, and mountains

                                                                                

          

     There was crisp chill in the morning mountain air. The sun had cleared the thousand-foot cliffs across the river. Bright rays shot through the Sequoia redwoods. Smoke rose from the campgrounds, people finishing their breakfasts. The Canyon was crowded, a lot of families, more Spanish than English hung in the air, unusual, I thought. I first came here in 1970, after surviving Uncle Sam's madness in Southeast Asia, to find answers, peace, and inspiration in nature, my neighbors, hikers, hippies, bikers, and outdoors people seeking their way, as well. 

      After breakfast, I sat in a chair, sipping one more cup of coffee before heading out on my daily hike. I had decided to come up alone, and leave behind the rush of the city, which is mostly suburbs in my part of Los Angeles. The family was busy. Besides, they don’t enjoy the long drive into the Canyon, and that’s what I like about it, the scenery during the drive, Buffalo Springfield on the CD player. Then there's the steep descent to the Canyon floor, which means only the heartiest campers make the trip. 

     Behind me I heard a metal rustling on the footpath leading to the bathrooms and wash basin. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw four women, short, dark skin, speaking Spanish, in low voices, and carrying pots and pans. I’d run into them the night before as I waited at the washbasin to cleanup my own plates after dinner. I had smiled, not sure what to say. They had returned the smile, shyly, probably careful not to stand out among the English speakers. 

     As I took a sip of my coffee, I could hear one of them say something about a brother-in-law. I looked over at them. We were aware of each other. They had to pass my campsite each time they made the trek to the bathrooms and wash basin. They slowed, their eyes straight ahead, like they wanted to speak, but unsure if they should even look my way. Who wants to look at somebody and get a cold stare, or a blank look, as if the person is saying, “I belong here and you don't”? 

     I’ve found on my trips to Mexico and Latin America’s rural towns, it’s impolite to ignore strangers, even if it’s only to say “hello”, smile, or nod. I heard an American sociologist say that among African and Mesoamerican cultures it’s important to acknowledge one’s presence; though, not so much among “Whites,” who don’t take it personally. 

     It isn’t just a matter of saying “hi,” like in other cultures, but for Africans and Indigenous Mesoamericans, acknowledging another person’s presence is like saying, “I see you. I recognize your humanity. You are somebody.” Maybe, that’s why, for as far back as I can remember, upon encountering another Chicano or Latino, or a Black, if there were no Latinos, we’d give the “nod,” you know, the quick lift of the chin, as if to say, “Orale,” or as today’s kids say, “Wassup.” That was enough. When I was in the Army, even the Cubans and Puerto Ricans understood the nod. 

     So, I turned, and I said, in Spanish, to the women, “Good morning.” Immediately, their faces brightened. They returned the greeting, smiling. I pointed to a campsite down the hill and asked if that was their spot. One of them said it was, and that they have three campsites next to each other. 

     “You must be having a party,” I said, making sure my tone was friendly. “You all seem to be enjoying yourselves.” 

     They told me they’d been coming up each year in August, for the past ten years, same date, the second week, celebrating two family members’ birthdays. Most came up from San Gabriel area, and they pick up relatives along Highway 99, those who live in the San Joaquin Valley. They asked about me, and I told them my story, the short version. 

     As they spoke, I was able to distinguish a slight difference in their Spanish accents. I told them I’d done quite a bit of traveling in Mexico and Latin America. I wanted to ask where they were from, but I didn’t want to insult them, as if saying, “I know you aren’t American.”  

     Like my own Mexican grandparents -- now passed -- who had come North a lifetime ago from Jalisco's highland, they never learned English fluently, just like the early Irish, Italians, and Poles. I had no idea how long the women might have been here, or if they were Americans. When I finally got around to asking about “their country,” they looked at each other and broke out into serious chuckling. Finally, one answered that she was Mexican and had come from Oaxaca. She pointed to the woman next to her and said, this was her sister-in-law, who was from El Salvador. The last two women said they’d married into the family, but they were from Guatemala. They laughed, clearly enjoying themselves. “Well, our children, are a little bit of everything.” 

     The four women had been in the U.S. more than twenty years, and their children had graduated from American high schools and were now in college or working. So, like many immigrants arriving in the U.S. after 1980, their kids, were the new wave of immigrants, sons and daughters, who didn’t have just one identity. Culturally, they were a blend of various nationalities, Mixtec, Zapotec, Mexican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan, but they were, typically, American kids, skateboards, long hair, cowboy hats and boots, Nikes, jeans and t-shirts, heavy metal, banda, baseball, football, and soccer. 

     At the time, I had been teaching English and Chicano Literature at an upper crust community college near the shores of the Pacific. Where for years, it had been a predominantly upper-class “White” J.C., by the year 2010, the student population was pushing 40% Latino. (Today, it’s well about 50%.) 

     The majority of my students were the children of Mexican immigrants, with the numbers of Central Americans increasing, fast, each year. What surprised me was that many of the Mexican students who had been born in the states didn’t identify as Chicano, and not for any political reason. The name just didn’t fit them, or it made no difference to them. Those who did identify as Chicano were usually activists in high school and mentored by a teacher. Overall, it seemed this new harvest of students was listening to Chalino Sanchez and Rockabilly, as well as Iron Maiden and Metallica. 

     There was still a MEChA on campus but dwindling in numbers. There were also two other “Latino” clubs, students who said they had goals different than MEChA’s. One club said their goal was to provide more academic support for members, while the other group said its goals were more social, parties to make students feel welcome. 

     Among Chicano/Latino faculty, there had been discussions about changing the name of the Chicano courses to Mexican American or Latino Studies, History, Sociology, Art, and Literature, etc., to be more inclusive. “Latino” students from Central America said they didn’t see themselves represented in the Chicano curriculum. It got to the point where the campus stopped offering some “Chicano” oriented classes because of low enrollment. Me? I started teaching Ethnic Literature, which opened my eyes to a different view of the United States cultural landscape, and a different professor took over Chicano Literature class. 

     As I walked along the banks of the King’s River where bathers had staked their claim, I couldn’t help but notice raza, in large numbers, had discovered the Canyon. English and Spanish mixed together. White and brown kids jumped from a large boulder into the frigid river, everyone sitting side by side, eating and enjoying nature. I’d hear Toby’s Keith’s country twang on one side, and Los Tigres coming from another direction, neither competing but respecting boundaries, and sharing space. 

     Later that evening, the women returned, pots and pans in hand. One carried a carton of eggs. She said they were leaving early the next morning. As if we were friends, she offered me the eggs. Usually, this would be awkward for me, but since we had been talking, I took the offering, not wanting them to be embarrassed. I’m sure it took courage for them to even ask. Two days ago, we were complete strangers. Now, here we were sharing food, even better than a simple nod.

Growing an Artist: The Story of a Landscaper and His Son

 

By John Parra

Publisher: ‎ Simon & Schuster/ Paula Wiseman Books 
Language: ‎ English
Hardcover: ‎ 40 pages
ISBN-10: ‎ 1534469273
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1534469273
Reading age: ‎ 4 - 8 years
Lexile measure: ‎ AD620L
Grade level: ‎ Preschool – 3
 
 
From award-winning artist John Parra comes a touching and deceptively simple picture book based on his childhood experience about the bond between a father and son, hard work, and the links between nature, art, and creativity. 
 
Today is a big day—the first time Juanito gets to help his papi on the job as a landscape architect! Throughout the day, Juanito sketches anything that catches his eye: a nest full of baby birds, a nursery with row upon row of plants and flowers, and more. Father and son travel from house to house, pruning, weeding, mowing, and turning overgrown and chaotic yards into beautiful spaces. 
 
A few of the clients don’t appreciate Papi’s hard work, like Juanito’s classmate who pretends not to see him. But Papi always feels pride in owning his own business and in a job well done. And at the end of the day, Juanito may get the chance to turn his artistic eye toward landscape design—just like his papi.
 
John Parra is an award-winning artist, illustrator, author, and educator, best known for his Latino themed, children’s picture books. For his work he has received many awards and accolades including: Three American Library Association’s Pura Belpré Honors, Two Golden Kite Awards from The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and a Christopher’s Award. Parra’s original artwork has also been showcased and displayed in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad, with many paintings now residing in private collections. He has taught art at the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard, CA and regularly speaks as a visiting artist at schools and literary conferences across the country, advocating art and reading education.

Where Have All the Periodicals Gone, Long Time Passing?

August Reflections On the State of Literatura Chicana

Michael Sedano

Chicano Literature is the only world literature we can point to and say this is its first day.

 

In 1969, Quinto Sol Press published the first book, a literary collection, with the word “Chicano” in the title. It is the fifth printing of El Espejo: The Mirror. 

Initially subtitled as Selected Mexican-American Literature, the 1969 edition tosses numerous writers, adds a pantheon of soon-to-be household names, and now calls itself Selected CHICANO Literature, and just like that, Chicano Literature comes into existence. 

 Quinto Sol Publications also publishes a hybrid journal, El Grito, that combines criticism and scholarship with the literature that provides the raw materials for El Espejo as well as the heartbeat of a vital literary enterprise. Quinto Sol Publications creates Premio Quinto Sol, every other year honoring the best of Chicano Literature.

 

This foundational publisher selects Tomas Rivera, Rudolfo Anaya, Rolando Hinojosa, and Estela Portillo-Trambley the first four Premio Quinto Sol honorees. The honored works, along with El Espejo’s table of contents, and the ongoing intellectual ferment of the journal, set standards for writing defining itself as Chicano Literature and Chicano Scholarship.

 

Then there was pedo. People felt left out by left coast raza.

 

Scholars and creative writers said Quinto Sol and its enthusiasts are a bunch of cultural nationalists and they’re excluding everything else not Mexican. They formed a rival enterprise to publish their own journal. 

Quinto Sol dissolved in 1974 while Revista Chicana-Riqueña would die and get reborn under different titles and lasted years. Eventually an outstanding anthology comes of that multi-named journal, The Floating Borderlands: Twenty-Five Years of U.S. Hispanic Literature. (1988)

 

Those were the good old days of Chicano Literature. So many stakeholders risking time, money, and pedo to bring product to market. There was a need for those voices, even if they couldn’t all just get along. 

 

This nutshell history is the ongoing subject of academic inquiry and journal publications. For example, a quick Google search turns up a 2010 piece in MELUS (Multi-ethnic Literature in the US) “Good-Bye Revolution—Hello Cultural Mystique: Quinto Sol Publications and Chicano Literary Nationalism.” Literature historians will recognize Juan Bruce-Nova’s 1986 “Canonical and Non-Canonical Texts” as the first intellectual to challenge Quinto Sol’s universe. Bruce-Novoa started the pedo.

 

Thankfully, raza’s cultural rivalries settled down in favor of accommodation and a worldview based upon inclusion. The east coast tipos had a point, even if they can live with calling themselves “Hispanic.” Hijole.

 

Technology has also played an important role by making individual publishing more democratic—i.e., less expensive—enabling small publishers to reach a market that has always existed across a widespread geography, where access to booksellers, and distribution of product, add expense and nearly-insurmountable logistics hassles that a mass publisher handles in stride.

 

Small, entrepreneurial enterprises like Aztlán Libre Press, FlowerSong Books, and Golden Foothills Press, publish ever-growing catalogs without needing warehouses filled with unsold books and fat advances. Publishing becomes a matter of selling the book first. Marketing, getting out the word, becomes a publisher and author's only avenue to sales. A corollary of all capitalist enterprise takes hold: books won't sell themselves.

 

Any publisher, not just small enterprises, can advertise, market, and use print-on-demand to control inventory/consignment headaches. Readers no longer struggle seeking titles hard-to-find owing to a publisher’s small run of a few hundred books; any independent bookseller can order a POD title and deliver it as fast as the post office can run. Remember the frustration of going through Books In Print and lamenting the impossibility of getting a particular title?

 

El Grito and Revista aside, Chicano Literature’s two best literary magazines emerged in recent years. Sadly, Más Tequila Review and Huizache, have not published in years, perhaps won’t. The driving spirits behind the projects, Richard Vargas and Dagoberto Gilb, maintain their busy literary lives so their reluctance to put on their Editor/Publisher’s hat is understood.

 

That’s why it’s time for you to step up to the print-on-demand plate. I know the web offers a potpourri of raza-flavored places to visit, like La Bloga, que no? November 28th marks our eighteenth birthday. 

But I'm thinking of Print.

For all I know, there’s already a successor to El Grito, Revista Chicana-Riqueña, Más Tequila Review, Huizache, out there but it hasn’t crossed my eyes yet. If you know of such a resource, fix my eyes, por favor.

 

I nominate The Cheech in Riverside, California, to be the cultural centro that takes on a literary dimension. Imagine a monthly journal—print--a hybrid bringing original art and literature combining informed art history and literary criticism, serious stuff but written for general and YA readers.

 

Is Print dead? 

 

 

*** LA BLOGA INBOX *** JUST RECEIVED ***

Note: La Bloga-Tuesday usually doesn’t “rip and read” political copy, but this exceptional opportunity both to celebrate Pat Paulsen’s memorable 1968 presidential campaign, and to fix what’s wrong with LA, is too juicy to ignore, so with a sense of public service and not ignoring it, here's the release

 

Pat Paulsen Commemorative Write-In Mayoral Campaign Announces Candidate, Platform

**immediate release**

Credit: Campaign Portavoz. Contact: Rusty Cuchillo, Benjamin Dejo.

(Los Angeles, Aug2, 2022) Following weeks of intensive closed-door negotiations, the Pat Paulsen Commemorative Write-In Mayoral Campaign, PPCW-IMC, narrowed its choice to Galardonada García, a retired elementary schoolteacher, and the overwhelming choice, Michael Sedano, retired Vernon warehouse worker and United States Army Veteran. 

 

Sedano, who declares, “I’d rather be right, than Mayor”,when scoffers call the platform absurd, expects bruising criticism from the real estate developer and the career politician on the Ballot and supposedly the only choices in the race. 

 

"That’s why there’s a Write-In," Sedano reminds. 

 

García, calling for unity and jamas sera vencido politics, endorses Sedano wholeheartedly.

 

The single issue the PPCW-IMC runs on relates to the city’s new Sixth Street Viaduct, a bridge across the cemented channel of the Los Angeles river.

 

Cuchillo and the campaign already released the Platform, now tweaked by write-in candidate Sedano:

 

PPCW-IMC Campaign to Write-In Michael Sedano and Elect Him Mayor and Make the Bridge the People’s Puente Promises Your Write-In Vote for Sedano means
•Weekend closure to vehicles. 

•Free puestos for community vendors

•Thursday night drag races for troubled youth versus clean-cut youth.

•Saturday night all-comers quarter-mile championships

•Sunday menudo competition climaxing in a 4^th of July cook-off. Red only.

•Dam the LA River at 7^th Street. Fill the channel with water from Frogtown to 7^th.

•Divert funds from LAPD and eliminate other armed agencies to pay for the dam, water purification, lifeguards, and trout.

 

The Pat Paulsen Commemorative Write-In Mayoral Campaign urges voters eligible to vote in the Los Angeles Mayoral election to Register Today.

 

In lieu of campaign donations, which are refused, PPCW-IMC urges people support Planned Parenthood and GOTV, never vote R.

 

**Append**

Rusty Cuchillo apologizes for some reporters’ misimpression that Sedano disrespects LAPD handling of the first days of the new bridge, when police closed the bridge rather than shoot drag racers and vehicular hobbyists. “I credit their restraint,” Sedano says, “and you can quote me,” adding his platform reduces the department’s budget to pay for converting the Sixth Street Bridge into the people’s Puente with weeknight drag races and Sunday menudo sales, "but you gotta write-in Sedano" or it's S O S.

 

Sobre _As Meaningful As Any Other_ por Xánath Caraza

Sobre As Meaningful As Any Other por Xánath Caraza

 

As Meaningful As Any Other de Donna Snyder fue publicado recientemente este 2022 por Gutter Snob Books.  El libro incluye cinco imágenes creadas por Tezozomoc a las cuales la autora responde y dan inicio a cada una de las cinco partes del libro.  Donna Snyder es coordinadora y creadora del taller de poesía Tumblewords Project y ha sido artivista en el suroeste de Tejas y Nuevo México por muchos años.

 

Tres conceptos claves me vienen a la mente cuando pienso en As Meaningful As Any Other: literatura ecfrástica, estructura fragmentada y una voz femenina férrea. Las cinco imágenes que son parte de este libro son la excusa ideal para responder con soltura a ellas en cada sección. En estas secciones también la autora intercala, con sus palabras, el arte de Hopper, Guglielmi, Guaguin, Van Goh, Kandinsky y Nikolaev, entre otros, en el ámbito artístico. “Upstreched arms hold the earth steady. Legs splayed, bare feet point / toward the ground below her. A city at her knees..”, “Hopper and his lonely readheads…”, “Down in Guglielmi’s slums..”. Así mismo responde a Chekhov y Ginsberg al crear piezas donde los ritmos de estos escritores son palpados en la lectura. “Howl for ten minutes then send the publisher to jail. Un grito for our antepasados / we owe our very blood of words, our paper of words, our ether of words, rebelling against the shuttered windows, the bars and chicken wire against a slice of sky.” Snyder incluye y responde, con otra pieza escrita, a la Entropía de Boltzmann; queriendo mostrar las diferentes posibilidades de organización, no en las moléculas, sino en el texto que Snyder usa como sistema termodinámico. “Entropy the only constant and that may not be true either.”

 

As Meaningful As Any Other contiene treinta y seis piezas en inglés que oscilan entre poemas, prosa y prosa poética, dando como resultado una lectura grata de estructura fragmentada, de ahí que el todo sea un sistema termodinámico con múltiples posibilidades de organización, aunque el libro presente cinco partes.  La fuerza femenina de las palabras incrustadas entre sus poemas y prosas es un toque distintivo de la autora. “…She who speaks truth to power / An aspect of the Triple Goddess / She who embodies abundance / She who effects change / She who wields the power of words.” En este libro la autora también nos cuenta de su vida y de su manera de percibir el mundo. En su primera pieza nos confiesa quién es ella y nos sume en un mundo mitológico donde nos dice quién no es y quién sí es en realidad. “…But she is not those people who struggle, who live like vegetables put away for the coming of darkness. No… she sings songs to herself, sings to the animals who gather around her, stay close to her knees, hoping for a caress or a sniff of her skirt…You come to her.  She’ll tell you a story.” La transformación es otro concepto que podemos visualizar en la lectura, el cambio de lo trágico a lo pacífico, del miedo a la calma, de lo finito a lo eterno. “…You can find her at the crossroad between death and life. She takes horror and makes it beauty. Oracles run in her blood…She takes sorrow and makes it glow.” 

 

Ya sea como voz poética, como personaje mitológico o como protagonista de eventos, la lectura de As Meaningful As Any Other es desde lo femenino y sus múltiples posibilidades de existencia.

 As Meaningful As Any Other de Donna Snyder

Editorial: Gutter Snob Books

ISBN: 979-8-9858223-3-5

 

 

Shedding Light on Fading History

Recently, some of La Bloga's contributors have written stories or essays that support the notion of preserving the past by making sure history is not casually erased by neglect.  For example, see this month's posts by Daniel Cano (Listening to Our Elders) or Michael Sedano (Letters Found in a Shoebox.)  It may be that "history is written by the victors," but since the struggle isn't over yet, who is to say who won or lost?  Cano, Sedano, and others recognize the value of writing down (preserving) that which has come before.  When we remember the successes and failures of the past, we can be inspired to act in the present.  The old truth is that we look to the past to avoid repeating mistakes in the future.  Even if that "truth" is false, it's a fine sentiment.  

Several individuals and groups have come together in a project organized around the basic idea that although massive changes (gentrification) may be the reality, the past is meaningful, sometimes sacred, and can and must be preserved, often by the people who created the history.  Artists, academics, poets, activists, and even a politician or two are involved in this project with the state historical museum, History Colorado.

Here's a flyer announcing the next event for the Northside Memory Project. All former and current Northside residents are invited to participate. 

The Northside is where I've lived for more than forty years.  Obviously, Northside history is part of my history, and vice versa.  Contact History Colorado for information about similar events in other Colorado neighborhoods.

_________________________________________

Manuel Ramos lives in Denver. His latest novel, Angels in the Wind: A Mile High Noir, is a finalist for the 2022 Shamus Award in the category of Best Original Paperback P.I. Novel.

Chicanonautica: The Hazards of Writing While Chicano

by Ernest Hogan 

I recently finished a novel and am thinking about what I’m going to do with it, how I’m going to market it, and to whom, which brings me to the uneasy subject of the hazards of writing while Chicano. Also, I need to send a tip of the Hogan sombrero to Daniel Cano for bringing up the subject here a while a back. It’s a subject I can’t seem to escape from.

Being tainted by the Billy the Kid/New Mexico Irish strain and having an Irish surname, it only confuses the issue. I outed myself as a Chicano in a letter to Asimov’s Science Fiction after Norman Spinrad, in his review of my novel Cortez on Jupiter, assumed that I was an Anglo. I still insist on calling myself a Chicano, because it provides a lot of information about me without having to go into a detailed bio. I don’t mind being published in Latinx anthologies, getting published is hard enough, and I can’t afford to get choosy. I’ve also been in an Afrofuturist anthology, no to mention all those white publications I’ve been in.

The problem is the word Chicano carries some complicated baggage. I once tried to explain it to a guy in Mexico, who ended up thinking I was from Chicago. East Coasters who only run across it via Hunter S. Thompson and cop shows get the idea that it refers to a cannibalistic tribe that cruises around in lowriders selling dope and looking for virgins to sacrifice. Chicanos also aren’t traditionally considered literate, let alone writers. My very existence tests the limits of a lot of imaginations.

Editors tend to like my work, but their bosses see “Chicano” as a limited, barrio market. It’s like going up to bat with two strikes against you. And then they still feel that you have to be careful when writing about “those people” because “they get offended.”  Besides, they’re looking for bestsellers that will start franchises and be considered for TV and movie adaptation.

The pendejada is that I don't write for a small group of barrio intellectuals. I see my books as selling like crazy, shaking the world. I’ve got fans scattered all over the planet. Also in the last couple of years, I've had inquiries for the TV/film rights to all three of my novels and one of my short stories, so this may not be delusions of grandeur on my part.

So, what do I do with a novel about a Chicano science fiction writer who loses track of where his life ends and the sci-fi begins?

Should I call it science fiction emphasizing the extrapolation on the development of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology into the Singularity with an alien invasion and a Swiftian satire on 21st century U.S.A. for laughs? Or speculative fiction? In ten years working in a bookstore, and more than that in a library, no one has ever asked to see any speculative fiction–does anyone know what it is? Dare I try to pitch it as a mainstream bestseller? Can a Chicano do that?

Let’s give that a try: “It’s a modern day Don Quixote with elements of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In the traditions of T.C. Boyle, Kurt Vonnegut, William S. Burroughs, Harlan Ellison, and Philip K. Dick.”

Uh-oh. I swerved into sci-fi territory again.

That’s a Chicano thing, though, always sauntering off where we aren’t supposed to be. 

But then where am I supposed to be? Who says I can’t be a writer? And why not sci-fi? Ain’t the whole fonqui rasquache enchilada of La Cultura of the Latinoid continuum–my beat, home turf, barrio, whatever--full of weird stuff? And doesn’t that qualify as “write what you know?”

I guess the best thing to do is just do, be as Chicano as I can, go stark raving cucuy on their asses.

Stay tuned chamacos, it’s gonna be fun!

Ernest Hogan a Chicano writer, a writer who is Chicano, and a lot of other things.