Gluten-free Cooking and Swallowtail Aerial Dance

The Gluten-Free Chicano Cooks

Gluten-free Enchilada Pie / Foto Gallery 

Michael Sedano 

I’m happy realizing I now struggle to remember some of the hectic discontinuities of fulltime caregiving, like grocery shopping. Going to the store is a major production with challenges that often add to the hundreds of reasons you don’t go out, again. Living with Dementia's like this; when everything’s merely hectic that means you’re having a good day. 

At first, I resisted delivery. The seductive power of making a list on the computer got me. A few hours pass and someone sends you a foto of groceries at the front door. But when antoja doesn’t match what’s in the hielera, even with grub hub and delivery, let creative hunger guide your cuchillo. 

That’s where I stood, mas o menos back in ’21, when hunger and a bare cupboard inspired some creative hunger problem-solving and that became a La Bloga-Tuesday column.

A version of this recipe was published Tuesday, November 02, 2021

  https://labloga.blogspot.com/2021/11/enchilada-problem-solving-chilaquiles.html 

there’s no tortillas, I don’t eat bread 

there’s no tortillas, for my refrieds… 

That’s not exactly how Lalo Guerrero sings it, but that’s what my refrigerator sings when I begin the process of making dinner. In my life, cooking a meal is one thing that’s certain, and it’s all mine, to plan, shop, prepare, and share. There's special importance to this duty along with its inherent joy. Mealtime ought to be automatic enjoyment as the day’s one respite-- 

These days there’s always an obstacle. It’s not that there’s no tortillas, there aren’t enough. And I knew it yesterday when I moved the small can of Las Palmas enchilada sauce, picante, out to the kitchen. But I couldn’t get to the grocery store. 

Old mother Hubbard and I went to my reefer to see what’s to see: everything today is down-to-the-dregs leftover: a few slices of pork chop from stir-fry, chunks of white and yellow cheddars, a nub of fresh mozzarella, a manchego wedge. There’s cilantro and half a brown onion. 

Four torts, what to do: Quesadillas, Tacos, Tostadas, something else. More than anything, I have the antoja for enchiladas. But not to make just four. When I make enchiladas I want to make a dozen at least. Compromise: chilaquiles. 

I grew up eating rolled enchiladas de queso. When I was in the Army and overseas, my Mom taught Barbara how to make enchiladas. My gramma and my mom made onion-cheese red chile rolled enchiladas. Rolled. No other. 

One relative serves her husband a tortilla folded over the filling and baked. Barbara and I call that “no-love enchiladas” and my Mom agreed and never got over that slight. But I understand “quick & dirty”; that’s evidently how Manitos Manitas do theirs: red or green, folded.  

The past 40 years or so, I’ve routinely rolled meat and cheese inside my enchiladas. I served this variation—her sauce--to my mom when she lived with us, and she liked them, no secret disapproval of how her son gets fed. When you eat my enchiladas, you’re eating my gramma’s cooking, those are my mom’s enchiladas. 

That’s not what ran through my thoughts holding that bag of four tortillas. I am tired and worn out. Wednesday can’t come soon enough—that’s my day off. So tonight it’s gluten-free cooking, estilo quick and desperate. 

The Gluten-free Chicano’s Quick & Desperate Enchilada Pie 

Ingredients • about 85g carbohydrates total. 

4 tortillas 

4 oz meat 

½ brown onion 

1 cup grated cheese of mix varieties 

Cilantro 

Corn starch, absolutely pure corn 

Las Palmas picante enchilada sauce. (Hot or mild red enchilada sauce (no tomato).Green enchilada sauce works equally well.

Comino 

Refried frijoles 

Sour cream or Crema 

Pie pan 

No-stick spray (see the carb counter at the bottom of the page) 

Work At Your Own Pace

 

Spray the pie pan and set it near the work area. 

Pre-heat oven 375º. Middle or top rack. 

Wrap tortillas in a dishtowel, microwave 30 seconds. Let rest and they'll grow supple enough to use to roll enchiladas, as was my intent today. But the first tortilla I take from the towel cracks, from age, or manufacturing defect. Ni modo. I'm not rolling this tortilla. This decides my menu. Instead of rolled enchiladas. Chilaquiles for dinner. 

I tear all the tortillas into strips and divide those into pieces. Delight is in the details, in a  kitchen. I lose myself at the chopping board and I treat all ingredients with proper respect.

Mince onion, chop cilantro into the cebolla.  If I'd gotten to the store, I would have chopped in some black sliced olives. 

Grate cheeses. A food processor like Cuisineart makes grating no challenge. As a child in the 1950s, and until 1963, I was my mother's cheese grater. I went away to college and Mom replaced me with a Cuisineart.

In the Microwave oven, I reheat refrigerated beans, stir in a few splashes of water, remicro the frijoles to spreadable consistency.

I'm using leftover porkchops. You could fry up some taco ground beef or pick meat off a chicken carcass. I chop the pork and set it aside. 

Pour half the can of chile sauce into a microwaveable vessel. Stir 2 TBS corn starch into the cold chile sauce and dissolve all the lumps you see. Cover with a dish or film and micro 2 minutes. Stir and micro 1 minute. You want the chile-cornstarch more than twice as thick as straight from the can. 

Spoon a couple TBS of sauce into the bottom of the pie pan.

Put the torn corn tortillas in the pan on top of the sauce. 

Add onion-cilantro, stir together.

You have a lot of sauce still. Reserve 2 TBS sauce when you pour the warm sauce into the tortillas. 

Mix it all up. Use a fork and separate the tortilla pieces that stick together. Every dry tortilla surface needs to get wet.

Spread the wet tortilla pieces across the bottom of the pan as a base of the meat and bean layers.

Spread the ground meat across the top, forming a thin layer. 

Spoon beans around the edge of the pie pan and flatten them in a circle toward the center of the pan. Be decorative and make a ring around the pie pan. 

Slather sour cream atop the ring of refritos. 

Cover the open surface with cheeses. 

Dribble reserved red sauce across the cheese. Also spatula the red sauce out of the cooking vessel. Use all your red or green enchilada sauce.  

Place the pie pan on a flat cookie pan and Bake at 375º for 40 minutes. 

Cool for at least half an hour. 

The tortilla become completely saturated with the thickened chile sauce as it boils in the oven. As the pie cools from boiling, the tortilla custard settles and thickens. When you cut your gluten-free quick&desperate tortilla pie, the insides flow only a little if it's cooled enough. 

Serve generous scoops that you cover with an egg or two. I served a side salad of chopped lettuce with a scoop of cottage cheese and canned pear slices. 

The next day is a wonder! The refrigerated leftovers have solidified into a beautiful dish. Reheat for a minute or so in the micro, or turn on the oven to 350º and give it 10 minutes, covered. 

And if you got delivery before breakfast/lunch the next day, some sliced tomatoes and aguacate, a hot salsa on the side.

Carb Counting via http://www.carbohydrate-counter.org/advsearch.php 

8g 4 tortillas 

0g 4 oz meat 

8g ½ brown onion 

2g 1 cup grated cheese of mix varieties 

18g Las Palmas picante enchilada sauce 

1.5g Cilantro 

14g Corn starch, absolutely pure corn 

.01g Comino 

28g Refried frijoles 

6g Sour cream or Crema 

about 85g carbohydrates in the entire meal.

⸺

Swallowtail Double Helix: The Center Holds

Turning and twisting about one another in the garden air, two Swallowtail Butterflies form a widening gyre as they rise high above tree tops. The pair of Swallowtails descends toward my lens, then rise again. Flying into an ever-tightening spiral, the butterflies touch wing-to-wing. The Swallowtails fly as one, rising dipping soaring turning and turning, not breaking apart. 

The center holds until at the apex of their flight they separate. 

Two paths diverge in the sunny sky only a moment. The Swallowtails wheel back toward one another, spinning into synchrony, pursuit, and convergence.

Day of the Dead 2023 at the Writers Place por Xánath Caraza

Day of the Dead 2023 at the Writers Place por Xánath Caraza

 

Este 2023 el Writers Place llevará a cabo la XIV edición de la Celebración de Día de Muertos, Day of the Dead Celebration, el viernes 3 de noviembre a las 7 p.m. CST en Zoom. Tendremos como poetas invitados a Lorna Dee Cervantes, Daniel Olivas y la que escribe. Así mismo Flor Lizbeth Cruz Longoria nos acompañará con música. El grupo de danza mexica, Calpulli Iskali, nos presentará un video. Con mi altar mostraré algunos elementos que hace esta celebración tan importante.  Ojalá nos acompañen y se registren de manera anticipada a la sesión. Gracias a Maryfrances Wagner, S. Holland, Greg Field y, por supuesto, al Writers Place por apoyarnos con la organización.

 

La música:

Flor Lizbeth Cruz Longoria holds a BM and BME from Texas A&M University-Kingsville, an MA in Music from the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory and studied Nonprofit Management and Innovation from the UMKC Bloch School. They were selected as an Emerging Artist for the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival (2013), won the TAMUK Concerto Competition (2015), was selected as first flute for the NFA Collegiate Flute Choir (2016), and was an intern for NFA (2017, 2018). Flor’s convention presentations include TMEA, MMEA, NFA, the Kansas Flute Festival, Electronic Music Midwest, the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association, and the College Music Society. They received performance and teaching fellowships from the New York Summer Music Festival (2013, 2014) and Blue Lakes Fine Arts Camp (2015).

Ms. Cruz served as Adjunct Professor of Flute at TAMUK, is an Ambassador for Notes for Growth Foundation, and is a member of New Music USA’s Program Council, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee for Sigma Alpha Iota International Fraternity, and NFA’s IDEA committee. Flor is the Founder of Colectiva Huēhuecoyōtl whose purpose is the advancement of People of the Global Majority in the music industry. She has performed under the batons of Steven Reineke and Joseph Silverstein and alongside Project Trio. Ms. Cruz’s principal teachers were Dr. Cristina Ballatori, Dr. Elizabeth Janzen, and Dr. Mary Posses. 

 

Calpulli Iskali es un grupo de danza mexica.

Los poetas:

Lorna Dee Cervantes, awarded NEA Fellowships, Pushcart Prizes, a Lila Wallace/Readers Digest grant for poetry, state arts grants and best book awards, is the author of 6 books of poetry including her first, EMPLUMADA, and latest APRIL ON OLYMPIA (Finalist, Theodore Roetke Award for Best Book - Poetry in past 3 years). The former professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at CU Boulder now writes in Seattle.

Daniel A. Olivas is playwright, attorney, and the author of ten books including How to Date a Flying Mexican: New and Collected Stories (University of Nevada Press), and Crossing the Border: Collected Poems (Pact Press). He is also the editor of Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature (Bilingual Press). Olivas has written for many publications including The New York Times, Alta Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Huffington Post, La Bloga, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Follow him on Twitter: @olivasdan.

 

Xánath Caraza is a traveler, educator, poet, short story writer, and translator.  She is the author of twenty books of poetry and two short story collections. She writes for La Bloga and Revista Literaria Monolito. In 2018 for the International Latino Book Awards she received First Place for Lágrima roja for “Best Book of Poetry in Spanish by One Author” and First Place for Sin preámbulos / Without Preamble for “Best Book of Bilingual Poetry”.  Her book of poetry Syllables of Wind / Sílabas de viento received the 2015 International Book Award for Poetry. She was Writer-in-Residence at Westchester Community College, NY, 2016-2019.  Caraza was the recipient of the 2014 Beca Nebrija para Creadores, Universidad de Alcalá de Henares in Spain.  She was named number one of the 2013 Top Ten Latino Authors by LatinoStories.com. Caraza has been translated into English, Italian, Romanian, and Greek; and partially translated into Nahuatl, Portuguese, Hindi, and Turkish.   

El altar:

 

Como cada año construiré un altar para honrar a los ancestros y dejar que lleguen a visitarnos y disfruten con tamales, pan de muerto, papel picado, poesía y música.

 

 

Chicanonautica: Pandemic Nostalgia With Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files

by Ernest Hogan

 

Is it too early for pandemic nostalgia? Please excuse me if it is. I’m a sci-fi vato, a mutant for whom the future never comes soon enough. I get high on future shock. 

Also, I’m a futurista because I’m not allowed to exist in the present. Just ask whatever bureaucracy is watching over us right now.

The chaos of the last few years has had me running myself ragged keeping up with it transformations. Nothing like a global monkey-wrench smashing into everybody’s business to do that. Suddenly, the word surreal is in news reports. The pandemic did that.

Now we are under the delusion that it’s over, but Covid ain’t gone. It’s just going through some mellower mutations. Even though a lot of people want to forget it ever happened, there’s wisdom in the meme, “That which does not kill us, mutates and tries again.”

Note that you also see the word mutation in news reports these days.

Back in the thick of the lockdown, Guillermo Gómez-Peña started reporting on it on his radio show/podcast (the terms are becoming interchangeable–the internet is absorbing radio), Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files.

I tried to be a loyal listener at first but turned out I was an essential worker and ended up in a bandido bandana and an orange, glowing vest running stuff out to cars in the library parking lot instead of finishing my novel in the summer of 2020. I also learned about Zoom, thanks to Guillermo and his wife, Balitronica.

Recently, Facebook reminded me about Mex Files, so I binged what was on the website.

¡Guao!

Not only does it deliver the Mad Mex’s harrowing, transborder Covid experiences that outweird the latest science fiction, it provides an excellent introduction to his work and the incredible world of performance art.

How can I describe it?

There are similarities with my work–Gomez-Peña and I both arrived on this planet in 1955, him in Mexico City, me in L.A.  we overlap over Chicano territory. He writes, and also performs, which takes him to interesting places. Art and politics cohabitate. It’s often funny but is more than satire. Alternate realities aren’t just described—they come to life, threaten to alter our world.

Sometimes it gets sci-fi (Chicano is a science fiction state of being) but is never restrained by the limits of the genre. 

And it adapts well to different media, live performance, gallery and museum installations, film and video, and radio. 

Sometimes it’s like bizarre comedy skits, other times it’s music that has been altered. Still other times, it’s honest accounts of fantastic experiences. 

And it’s not all nonstop dystopian bring downs. Often there are flashes of the kind of utopias we could create if we could just let La Cultura ride free on new technologies.

Where does the sci-fi end and the real life begin? Or should I say magic realism? Or is magic realism from a high tech society indistinguishable from science fiction? Is it all performance art?

Our bizarre times are masterfully captured here. I know that a lot of folks just want to forget it. Some would erase all the memory, the history. But we need this knowledge. 

You think the last few years were something? Just wait for the future. How long before 2020 is considered the good old days?

We need the wisdom of the Mad Mex to help us navigate the weirdness.

Ernest Hogan, the Father of Chicano Science Fiction has been in touch with Guillermo and Balitronica. Expect some wild stuff soon. He also highly recommends the documentary 100 Ways to Cross the Border.

GRANDMA, WHERE WILL YOUR LOVE GO? / ABUELA, ¿A DÓNDE IRÁ TU AMOR?

By Adriana Camacho-Church

Illustrations by Gastón Hauviller

 

ISBN: 978-1-55885-984-5

Publication Date: October 31, 2023

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 32

Imprint: Piñata Books

Ages: 4-8

 

The joy of intergenerational relationships is explored in this bilingual picture book.

 

“Grandma and I dance together, sew together, bake together and go to the market together.”

 

This engaging picture book depicts the loving relationship between a young girl and her grandmother and the girl’s growing realization that her grandmother will not always be physically present. Her beloved abuela “walks slower, sits longer and takes more medicine.”

 

Abuela comforts her granddaughter by using nature’s beauty, power and mystery to reassure her that life continues—and so does love. The child will feel her touch in the sun’s warmth and her kiss in each raindrop. When the wind lifts her hair, she will know her grandmother is there. The beauty of sunlit dragonflies and the smell of baked bread will be reminders of her love. “Feel my love in the power of waterfalls,” Grandma says. “Feel it in a moonlit darkness and in the sprout from a seed.” The love they share will surround her always.

 

With beautiful illustrations by Gastón Hauviller depicting a child enjoying activities with a special adult, this bilingual book about loss, healing and a unique bond will connect children to the idea that we come from and return to nature. Kids will eagerly recount—or even write about—their favorite memories of time spent with a beloved family member or friend.

 

“This is more than a bilingual book for children. It reaches to the core of our need to understand those we love… The tenderness and the compassion in this book acknowledges that love can be expressed and remains eternal.”—Robert Abel Jr., MD, author of Lumi’s Book of Eyes

 

 

ADRIANA CAMACHO-CHURCH was born in Colombia and grew up in Chicago and Los Angeles. She currently lives and works in Delaware. This is her first book.

 

GASTÓN HAUVILLER, a native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, has lived in many countries. He has worked as an illustrator and children’s book author for more than 20 years and his work has been recognized in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Spain, the United States, France and China. His children’s books include Viajeros extraordinarios / Roque (Ediciones TTT, 2019) and ¿Un mundo? Muchos mundos (Editorial Océano Travesía, 2016).

Guest Essay: Listening to Voices; Hay Otra Voz

Editor's Note (Michael Sedano): 

Nicki De Necochea contributed her first La Bloga Guest Column in 2021 (link), as a Caregiver of someone living with Alzheimer's dementia, Nicki's mother. La Bloga-Tuesday welcomes this essay on self-talk. Nicki lives After Alzheimer's and it's hopeful that this essay has no obvious connection to those years of living with dementia.

Some psycholinguists claim the limits of one's language are the limits of one's world. That might be so, of spoken, linear speech. Inner conversations occur at the speed of memory, everything all at once and better than a movie. De Necochea identifies the phenomenon as a tool for personal good. Because some readers may find the subject ambiguous, De Necochea offers what I call an apologia by way of prologue, offering context and disambiguation.

Nightfall

By  B. Nicki De Necochea

Apologia by way of Prologue

Quietly Loud. Since childhood, I’ve been aware of my brain’s gift of personal power to use my inner voice to survive and flourish. Without permission, a choice presents itself, quietly. But loud, an inner voice that directs, redirects, uses, or discards, my innermost thoughts. 

I remain in awe that “the voice” provides a running daily monologue and unsolicited commentary throughout my day. It’s an opinionated mini-me in my head, insistent on giving perspective or critique. 

My self-talk can be optimistic and supportive, or negative and self-defeating. I focus my innermost silent conversations, self-talking about the beneficial and positive, calming fears and bolstering confidence. 

I’m aware my inner-talk can be a personal tool for good, or a weapon of self-punishment. My thoughts can encourage, discourage, or keep me safe from stupid compulsions, and even teach me to listen to hidden messages for self-soothing. It’s a voice I take for granted and can silence or ignore – as needed. Humans have been empowered with this powerful mind-trick. It’s a miracle of evolution. 

It's a choice to give this noiseless voice its strength or embolden or scold it into submission. This inner voice, my self-talk, combines conscious thoughts and likely some involuntary beliefs and biases to encourage me to interpret and process daily experiences. It can save or destroy, reassure, or nurture. 

That said, I use it in my writing as well. Nightfall is a short conversation about acknowledging this quietly loud voice exists. 

NIGHTFALL 

At nightfall when the day has been exhausted and my mind and body its mirror, my voice is stilled, and I give in to restful acceptance of my inner thoughts. 

They begin like a diagnostic imaging on my state of mind, stopping to better assess the tender places of confusion, turmoil, or chaos. 

What an intriguing human gift to be able to talk in silence to oneself. This is when the conversations are formed that are only for me to hear, and they are none that I can share for fear of the dark shadow’s misinterpretation. 

These words whispered on the vapor of each breath held-in, are protected in silence from their being carelessly scattered by any unworthy breeze. 

There are the painful ones, and the truthful ones, although some can be vengeful and misguided. They are the feelings and thoughts that allow me to be authentic in my disappointment, or in sadness and self-doubt, without any need to apologize or protect myself from being revealed. 

Resolute, although sometimes like a living mosaic; broken, crushed, mended, and reinforced. These are my mind’s whispered truths, laid bare for mending when night falls. 

What feels broken is gathered up and soothed by a night stream of calm. By breathing-in perspective and breathing-out serenity I am stronger and more courageous in the night’s assessment and inventory of my state of mind, with no distractions or busy denial. Then, after gathering the good shards of wisdom, my thoughts and self-talk transform into a mental photomosaic of hope and healing-pain, cauterized by gratitude. 

I’m transformed again. 

After nightfall, there is better discernment, a clearer path and another more useful manner of mental discourse and presence. The creation resulting from my mind-talk is a new frame of awareness, and acceptance. 

In nightfall, words are the quietest they’ve ever been -- transformed into a healing dream and if I’m blessed, the same ones are not recalled when the night goes down on my soul once again. We are at rest. 

B. Nicki De Necochea

〰

Swallowtail Foto Gallery

Michael Sedano

When I was living with Alzheimer's Dementia, my camera took on a role like B. Nicki De Necochea's use of her inner self, except I used the viewfinder to empty my thoughts and concentrate on framing and focusing something interesting occupying a small portion of the landscape and nothing else.

After Alzheimer's means change, lots and lots of changes. One thing that doesn't change is respite found at the end of a chunk of optical glass. Nowadays, of course, I'm no longer working to ignore or forget. Alzheimer's offers little room for hopeful stuff. Now, I'm working to memorialize sightings of Swallowtail butterflies. Memory is futurism, sabes?

Swallowtails are "commonly seen" in certain locales, as if seeing a swallowtail is a ho-hum routine event. I hope never to become so jaded a swallowtail won't give me a bit of healthy tachycardia. 

 

Burden of Knowledge

                                                                                             

Fruits hanging from the Tree of Life

     A friend of mine, a master at plumbing, once asked my opinion about a particular issue in education. It was a complicated question, and I needed to provide some historical information, context. When I finished answering, he said something like, “Man, I wish I knew all the stuff you do.” 

      I responded, “I’ve been teaching for twenty years. I know education like you know construction. Hell, I wish I knew plumbing like you do,” and I wasn’t joking. 

     The encounter got me to thinking about "education", and the pursuit and dissemination of “knowledge,” the essence of a good educator. The classroom is our place of business. Teaching is a craft, plain and simple, and just like any other craft, to be masterful, we must work at it, which means hours and years of training, and even then, there's always more to learn. 

     Teachers are lifelong students, always developing our skills, honing our craft, the subject matter, often, secondary, maybe, even, irrelevant, as legendary San Francisco defense attorney Tony Serra says of the law, "Whether our clients did it or is irrelevant. We are building an ideological castle based on precedent and symbolic justice." Think about that one a minute. I feel it's the same with education. We're teaching students to think even more than learn about a particular subject. After all, it's been shown most students forget 90% of what they learned a week after their last class.

     Whether someone operates a cash register, directs a P.R. firm, runs a business, designs buildings, or works with his or her hands, to be good, it takes practice, to be masterful it takes commitment. Of course, the idea of knowledge, as a profession, is often abstract, dealing with ideas and theories, our tools – words. 

     As a kid growing up Mexican in a working-class community, I had a lot of catching up to do when I decided I wanted to be teacher. I'd never been a good student, nor can I say I even enjoyed school. Attending Catholic school helped, though I didn't realize it at the time. Our teachers, nuns and brothers, dedicated their lives to teaching. They referred to their work as a vocation. They passed the idea down to us, students, that a profession wasn't simply a career or a job but a "vocation," as if anointed by the divine, something to be taken seriously. 

     Of course, one of their objectives was for us to enter the religious life, which wasn’t likely for L.A. suburban kids in the 1950s and ‘60s -- Baby-Boomers, but they did their jobs well. One of the first lessons we learned was the pursuit of “knowledge,” our primary source, the Bible, of course. It’s powerful when you teach children they were born in the “image and likeness” of God, like Adam, the first creation, a being, alone, in a beautiful garden. 

     Then, as we read, Eve, the woman was created of man’s rib, making “her,” logically, a second-class citizen in Eden. Of course, we gobbled up the narrative. It was a cool story, with all the elements of storytelling, drama, suspense, sex, a beginning and an end, the alpha and omega. and it was our story, about how we all got here and who we were. That’s some strong stuff, and we hadn't even gotten to the tree, yet. “And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” 

     There it is – “knowledge” but connected with “good and evil.” So, is knowledge one or the other, or is it both? Did that mean “knowledge” was something to avoid? Yet weren’t our teachers telling us to study, earn good grades, and learn how to think? How was it then when we got home and questioned something, our parents, or an adult, would say, “Don’t get smart with me,” or "why do you ask so many questions."

     Maybe “knowledge” could also get us into trouble, like when God warns the young Adam and Eve, “…till [the garden] and keep it… you may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” 

     That’s a heavy message to lay on a kid, but what does it mean? I’m not sure how “apples” got a bad rap. There is nothing in the story about an apple tree. So, the story goes, the devil masquerading as a serpent, convinces Eve if she eats from the tree, her “eyes will be opened,” and she will be like God, “knowing good and evil.” 

     We all know what happened, they ate, their eyes were opened, and they knew they were naked. Message: Adam is weak for doing what the temptress, Eve, tells him. Message: blame it on Eve, the female, or does Eve, and femininity, get the short end of the story, blamed for man’s weakness. How much does a story like this resonate in a culture. Consider, women didn’t get the right to vote until 1920. They couldn’t even open credit lines or have credit cards until 1974. Men have always held the majority of seats in legislatures, both state and federal, and we still haven't had a woman president. Maybe the bible stories take hold of a culture more than we realize. 

     And how about the impact of a story like this on snakes? Since the devil was disguised as a serpent, seems, in Western culture, snakes are the most hated in the animal kingdom. I read about a study where a group of graduate students were studying people's reactions to snakes. The class put a rubber snake out on a desolate Arizona highway. The students hid behind bushes and observed. Every car that passed by ran over the snake. One driver was so indignant, he ran over the snake, backed up, and ran over it again, just to make sure, I guess. 

     Next, the class put a rubber turtle on the road, and nobody hit it. One driver nearly crashed trying to avoid the turtle. Now, someone might argue that some snakes are poisonous and dangerous, but so are other animals. Why the snake? Is there power to biblical prophecy? When Adam and Even ate from the tree of knowledge, “God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man….” Pissed off because you have to wake up every morning and go to work, to toil, blame it on Adam and Eve? 

     Is the story literal, some people think so. Or is it a metaphor, a parable about the first two humans on earth who were punished for not following their creator’s will? Is it telling us that we should obey our elders, our teachers, the police, our "betters"? Is there another lesson, not only about disobedience to the king but about the nature of knowledge? If we educate ourselves and learn more than our elders, our teachers, the king, it might get us into trouble. After all, it’s no accident God named it the tree of knowledge. and he warned Adam and Eve not to eat or “…their eyes are opened.” 

     Does God, or whomever wrote Genesis, not want our eyes opened? Am I hearing echoes of Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis warning us not to be “woke,” to not eat from trees (or books) of knowledge? Or is the story more complex, a warning about the pursuit of knowledge? The vehicle most cultures use to acquire and spread knowledge is education, and one way to educate children is to tell stories. I even heard a lawyer once say, something like, the best lawyers aren't those with the best evidence but those who tell the best story. 

     I also wonder why so many people in society call teachers “liberal.” I was thirty-years in education, community college, in the liberal arts, language and literature, and I found many of my colleagues anything but liberal. In fact, education itself may be one of the most conservative occupations, especially in "languages." Educators evade change. It takes nearly an act of God to get an education department to change course. Sometimes, I think people don't understand the word "liberal," as it applies to education.

      Historically, the liberal arts or the word "liberal" didn’t have anything to do with politics, progressive or conservative. From Pythagoras, Socrates and the Greek’s “enkuklios paideia” to the Latin, “artes liberales,” meant that a certain field of study, the liberal arts, the Trivium, would make for a “well-rounded student,” or it would “liberate the mind.” No wonder the Greeks and the Romans took their stories of gods and turned them into lessons to educate their citizens, just like the Jews and Christians with the Bible. 

     Usually, when I hear people say teachers are so "liberal," I think, no, it's not that we're liberal. It's that the nature of our work forces us to study subjects in more detail, to dig deeper, to look for answers in the deep recesses of a library, where other don't go, not unlike a plumber who can't find the clogged drain and needs to search deeper, farther into the line, which not only takes work but "know-how." So, our answers to any problem will always contain "context."

     What I find today is people want a "yes" or "no", "right" or "wrong" answer to their questions, like why are so many immigrants invading our border? Should we support Ukraine over Russia? Who was more brutal, the British, the French, or the Germans, Fidel and Ho Chi Minh, Saudi Arbia or Iran, Iraq or Kuwait? Is communism or capitalism better? Democrat or Republican? Trump or Biden, on and on? 

     There is always “context,” which frustrates people. They don’t want context. They want an answer that affirms their position, usually political. If you don’t agree with them, or you provide context, you are anti-something or other. In 1940s Germany they burned books and killed teachers, same in Cambodia, and Latin America, during the dirty wars. Why? I think -- too much context.

     That’s what I call the "burden of knowledge," knowing too much, or knowing what people don't wnt to hear, maybe, what Genesis intended. That once Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge and their eyes were opened, they’d have to figure things out, consider their nakedness, their labor, the nature of good and evil, cursed by knowledge. like Pandora’s Box, which I know many people haven’t read, but they do know what story means. Open the box and who knows what terrors you might release, or steal fire (light) from the gods, enlighten and warm humanity, but find yourself pushing a rock up a mountain for eternity. The great classical poet, Alexander Pope warned, “Too much knowledge can be a dangerous thing.” 

     So, since I taught the literature of Mexico and Latin America, and studied the cultures, and someone asks me about uncontrolled immigration from Latin America, my mind doesn’t conjure up an image of masses at the border. My mind goes back to particular facts, incidents, and events, like U.S. and European colonialism, policies that exploited Latin America from 1520s to the present, policies that affected the different migrations of people from the south to the north, including the ones that affected my own grandparents.  

     Now, I’m not saying my conclusions are right, but I am saying there are many factors to consider when answering complex questions like immigration, war and peace, and poverty and wealth, whether people are savages and animals or reasons for animalistic behavior? 

     The acquisition of knowledge, like Adam and Eve eating from the "tree of life," must consider both good and evil, not one or the other. It’s difficult because we’re humans, carrying our own prejudices, likes and dislikes. So, like Prometheus, for teachers, and for me, opening a book or listening to someone’s observations, or reading an article, or witnessing an event is like putting fire in our hands. Our vocation tells us to share it, even if it upset the gods, knowing we might be doomed to push a rock up a hill for eternity or be chased out of the most perfect garden ever created.

2023 Latinx Kidlit Book festival- October 13

 

From: https://www.latinxkidlitbookfestival.com

 

 

Join us LIVE from your classroom, library or home for FESTIVAL FRIDAY. Meet your favorite Latinx creators of picture books, middle grade and young adult novels, poetry, comic books and graphic novels!  

 

Enjoy four Fridays (September 22, September 29, October 6, and October 13) of creative language arts and visual arts content for students of all ages.

 

 

October 13

 

ALL TIMES ARE EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME (EDT)

 

Watch the Latinx KidLit Book Festival streamed live (for free) on the festival’s YouTube channel! 

Sessions can be safely streamed into the classroom and shared with students using an educator's account. Classrooms can engage with festival authors and illustrators using the live-chat option! All video content will be recorded and available after the festival.

 

Throwing Out the Rule Book

10:00 AM  11:00 AM

Join award-winning authors Vincent Tirado (Burn Down, Rise Up), Sonora Reyes (The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School), and moderator David Valdes (Brighter Than the Moon) as they discuss the inspirations for their award-winning novels, their killer characters, the writing process and more. 

 

Craft: World-Building in Fantasy: Strengthening and Refining Your Writing Technique

11:00 AM  12:00 PM

Whether you’re writing a contemporary romcom or an epic fantasy, world-building is a key component of a compelling story! In this craft session, R.M. Romero (A Warning About Swans) and Francesca Flores (The Witch and the Vampire) will discuss how to create an interesting world with depth without overloading the reader with too much information, as well as making the setting a character itself, and how world-building factors into their own work. Bring your notebook or laptop and come ready to write!

 

Draw Off: Nuestra Naturaleza

12:00 PM  1:00 PM

Explora la flor Dahlia, el ave quetzal y las muchas plantas y animales de Latino America que aparecen en libros ilustrados. Pidanles a los ilustradores Juana Medina (Elena Rides), Beatriz Gutierrez Hernandez (Benito Juárez Fights for Justice), Ana Aranda (How to Make a Memory), and Andrea Cáceres (My Dog Just Speaks Spanish) que dibujen algunas de sus criaturas y plantas favoritas en esta sesión en español.

English: Explore the dahlia flower, the quetzal bird and the many plants and animals from Latin America that appear in your favorite picture books. Ask the illustrators Juana Medina (Elena Rides), Beatriz Gutierrez Hernandez (Benito Juárez Fights for Justice), Ana Aranda (How to Make a Memory), and Andrea Cáceres (My Dog Just Speaks Spanish) to draw some of your favorite creatures and plants in this special Spanish session.

 

Storytime: Let’s Celebrate!

1:00 PM  2:00 PM

Join award-winning and debut picture book authors Sheila Colón-Bagley (La Noche Before Three Kings Day), Judith Valdés B (An Ofrenda for Perro), Linda J. Acevedo (Breaking to the Beat!), and e.E. Charlton-Trujillo (Lupe Lopez: Reading Rock Star & A Girl Can Build Anything) for an interactive read aloud on Latinx music and celebrations! Grab a pillow and a blanket and snuggle in!

 

Draw Off: Graphic Novels

2:00 PM  3:00 PM

Graphic novel artists Yehudi Mercado (Shazam Thundercrack), Camilo Moncada Lozano (Codex Black), Christine Suggs (¡Ay, Mija!), and Monica Magaña (Doña Quixote: Rise of the Knight) come together to create a 4-panel story with prompts and suggestions from viewers at home!

 

Games: Would You Survive?

 3:00 PM  4:00 PM

Alone in the night, no cell service, a house you know to be haunted is your only safety. Do you dare enter? Join us as we pull scenarios from authors Diana Rodriguez Wallach (Hatchet Girls), Alex Crespo (Saint Juniper's Folly), Adrianna Cuevas (Ghosts of Rancho Espanto), and Ann Dávila Cardinal (Break Up From Hell)'s  fantasy, horror, and thriller worlds to see if their own writers would survive! Featuring on-screen prompts and live voting from the audience.