The Krane

Crafting Art on Both Sides of the Hyphen: A Discussion on Latin-American Art

2011-09-17T09:37:00.001-07:00

Latin-American Art -- this was the topic of a panel discussion I curated/moderated this past week in Miami, Florida. Actually, the talk revolved around the figurative place that lies between South and North America; the "Latin" artists that live with a foot in both worlds, straddling the hyphen itself. Some of them grabbing on to it, embracing it, some of them longing to be free of it, shaking it off daily -- not with a rumba, let's be clear, but with a vigorous force of intellect.

When I was younger and people asked me if I was a Cuban-American writer or a "Latina" artist I'd get annoyed. "Your colors are so Latin," they'd say, as if "Latin-Americans" were the only people that could enjoy the bright flare of magenta. Today, due to pragmatic reasons I use the term myself, call myself Cuban-American; sometimes even "Latin," but only because they, these terms, reference the past and the past always influences the present. I never call myself "Latina" -- it just seems like too much sometimes, to say that.

All of these terms are growing increasingly complicated in a world that seems to further collide cultures, countries, hemispheres, continents -- erasing borders and creating them at the same time. Instead of complaining, I've always thought the best thing to do is to continue to talk it out. Until the terms themselves carry the weight of dialogue rather than any kind of ancient or neo-colonialism.

** The panel took place at the BUENA VISTA BUILDING, where an exhibit of Cecilia Moreno-Yaghoubi continues to exhibit through Oct. 8 (date of closing reception). 180 NE 39th Street is the Address. The image attached to today's blog is the invitation to the show.

Educating Cubans & Americans

2010-06-30T07:53:00.000-07:00

In her June 26th blog (http://desdecuba.com/generationy/), Yoani Sanchez complains about the Cuban school system – inept school teachers; students faced with a series of standardized tests that are in such constant flux that it confuses students instead of aids in their learning; and Physical Education hours that are spent haphazardly. Sound familiar?

FCAT scores; the **** we pay our teachers, thereby ensuring that the best and the smartest are lost to other professions. As for PE – well, we’ve seen the size of our kids.

However, Yoani then adds a line about how it has become common practice for teens in Cuba to trade sex with their teachers for good grades. One would hope that, despite “grade inflation,” this kind of behavior does not actually exist in the States to the extent it seems to in Cuba. Perhaps it did once, before all those sexual harassment rules were added to student/faculty handbooks.

Regardless, she ends the blog like this:

“We cannot continue to be satisfied with the fact that at least while our children are sitting at a desk they are not roaming the streets at the mercy other risks. Within the walls of the classroom very serious vices can be developed, permanent ethical deformations, and an incubation of mediocrity of alarming proportions. No parent should remain silent about it.”

I’d say that’s pretty good advice for parents, even here in the grand ‘ol US of A.

Big Fat Cuban Families

2010-06-10T19:40:00.000-07:00

Today, I read an entry on a blog called My Big Fat Cuban Family www.mybigfatcubanfamily.com. I know this isn’t a blog coming from inside of Cuba, which is what I said I’d be blogging about lately. But, I think this blog is incredibly relevant to the Diaspora and to what “Cuban” means. The entry I read today was called “My Life Has Been as Crazy as a Fiddler on a Roof.” At the beginning of the blog, the blogger, a Cuban-American mom who lives in Orange County, California, states that she hasn’t been able to blog because she’s been pouring all her creative juices into supporting her daughter in her high school production of Fiddler on the Roof.” I have been eating, sleeping, and breathing Russian Jews. ;-)” [The smiley face is hers too]. And the thing is, I believe her. I believe her whole heartedly. And I love it. I believe her and love it because I have a Cuban mother too, who, since were little is, for better or worse, as enmeshed as it gets.

Here’s to all the over-protective, uber-involved, "who-says-you-can’t-do-it-all" Cuban moms. We love you, with our whole hearts.

Droughts and Summer Doubts

2010-06-08T16:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Yoani (http://desdecuba.com/generationy/)wrote a blog about the summer heat in relation to deflated expectations – melting hopes; and heat flashes on buses. The political prisoners who have been making the international press for several days – the political prisoners that are said to be released soon – are still behind bars. Summer plays out her drought-full role and, meanwhile, on the other side of the sea, and across quite a bit of land, I sit in a coffee shop, working, in California – doubtful.

My doubts are of a different place and time, but belonging to the same summer. Doubts about the future, decisions made, loves lost, and the fact that I’m sitting here, tired and desperately sad. I will not list my set of concerns because they will, doubtless, seem trite in comparison to the plight of those imprisoned in Cuba or those feeling locked in by the waters that surround them with a tight sky releasing no relief. But, still, I do feel overwhelmed by a particular bout of 31-year old growing pains, another course of searching on the horizon. Because that’s what happens when you grow –there’s this moment of absolute misery, when your pants are too short and you have nothing to wear. You’re naked until you go out and fill your closet again with an adjusted size. And while I minimize my feelings in comparison to that of the citizens of Cuba, I will say they are no less real, no less painful. I long for the day when everything fits again.

Cuba, itself, is going to have to go through an enormous bout of growing pains if it ever sheds its old bag of a leader. Buildings will outgrow their purpose; prisoners their bars; black markets their purpose; prostitutes their profession; bloggers their urgency; exiles their desolation…

Church and State

2010-06-06T13:28:00.000-07:00

On June 3, in a blog coming out of Cuba called Voices Behind Bars (http://voicesbehindbars.wordpress.com/), Pablo Pacheco Avila, a Cuban political prisoner, lauded the Catholic Church for intervening on behalf of Cuban prisoners, for their human rights and for their eventual release.

For many months, the issue has been bubbling to the surface – for the Cubans, with as much vigor as the oil that is bubbling up in the Gulf. One prisoner, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, died in Feburary, after an 85 day hunger strike. Another Cuban, Guillermo Farinas, a journalist, has been on hunger strike since Tamayo’s death. He promised to continue his strike until 10 prisoners were released.

Enter the church, which Pacheco calls the “mediator” between Castro (Raul, these days) and the Damas de Blanco (Cuban women -- the mothers, sisters, and wives of those imprisoned, who have been marching for days, for months, for years, protesting, despite threats and tribulations). Now, here arises the question, that age old question, about the actual role of the church and its relation to government – Church and State. Pacheco makes an argument in favor of the church’s intervention. And, in this case, it does make sense. If the church is supposed to spread a particular teaching; a Christ-like way of life, then it makes perfect sense to fight for those whose rights are being abused behind bars in Cuba. These, after all, were journalists, protestors, writers, that were writing and speaking their minds, simply that. In 2003, the Cuban government cracked-down and took them in. They are still behind bars, in dire conditions, some of them dying.

I just wonder, however, what goes on behind closed doors (not to mention behind bars). What the church and state are actually working out. I wonder how much of this is just Raul Castro buying time? I wonder how much of any of this will truly be effective. And, I wonder, how it is that one is effective at all when the Cuban government is involved. “God willing” these prisoners will be released, and one must be thankful for the intervention of the church, or its “mediation.”

But, what about the prisoners that will remain behind bars, after the church stops showing up on front pages; and the others that will be captured after.

I wonder, how do you really slay this dragon?

Lightning Speed

2010-06-02T08:51:00.000-07:00

ASIDE: Today’s blog is in response to Yoani Sanchez’s post on Generacion Y on May 28 -- http://desdecuba.com/generationy/ For a while, I'm going to try and respond to blogs coming out of Cuba instead of newspaper articles, as they are also news.

What if the pace of our days was different? On May 28, Yoani Sanchez wrote in her blog, Generacion Y out of Havana, about a particular mode of transportation in Cuba – a particular type of hitchhiking. The blog ‘s title is translated, in the English Version, as “Taking Advantage of the Light.” At first, I thought I was going to read a tale about how Cubans have to take advantage of the daylight in Cuba because of power outages, and of course, there’s a double entendre in there somewhere, but what she means is more concrete – having more to do with street and sidewalk. It’s about how people in Cuba harass people in cars at stoplights for a ride. [Notice my interpretation (harass) is completely American – I admit it].

Some drivers give in to the “harassment” but ask for favors in return (get “harassed” in return – they feel a girl up, for example), while others drivers simply make up excuses. Some women (because, as Yoani explains, it’s easier to get a ride if you’re wearing a short skirt), have decided to use their own two feet and walk and walk and walk. Which slows everything down, but which, sometimes is worth the longer route; the wait.

Which brings me back to my question – what if we lived like that? How would that pace affect our lives? I can think of a million ways it would drive me up the wall. Me who, after living in Manhattan for nearly a decade, almost died of boredom my first year back in Miami (despite it being my hometown). People were slow, they arrived late, and worse, they didn’t even have any excuses – they simply arrived late to a get together or a meeting and that was that. They weren’t having to hitchhike at red lights, they all had their own cars.

Here’s a story: The other day I went to a gathering in Miami Beach. Everyone was late of course (a cultural phoneme, I’m telling you). Many of the people at this get-together were Cuban-born dissidents. Once everyone finally arrived, the BBQ and the talking started up and one young woman in particular began talking about how much she missed Cuba. She had come to Miami twelve years ago, dreaming then of a better place with opportunity. Today, she feels the urge, daily, to return to Cuba. “People may not have jack over there, but they have fun,” she said, and for the first time that day a big smile appeared on her face as she expressed the kind of joy people have in Cuba. It seems like a cliché. And, really, it could all be nostalgia – a dangerous and complicated thing because the land is always greener on the other side of the sea, so to speak. But, perhaps she had a point; and perhaps it has something to do with the forced pace at which people in Havana must/are forced to live. And yet, are they really forced? That’s another questions all together (about why a revolt by the people against a dictator has not come sooner, ages ago. But, again, another topic for another day).

On my particular end – I think to myself: How would life be different for me as a writer if the pace were here, in the States, as it is in Cuba? How would it be for bloggers? One of the reasons Yoani’s blogs are so good is because she’s forced to write them out before hand, before even getting to internet space and time. Or, if not writing them out before, at least thinking about them for a good amount of time. Here, everyone has constant access to high speed wireless from almost everywhere . The result: American twittees (twits?) and face-bookies seem to write constantly but you’re hard pressed to find something of substance. Would our blogs be better if we were forced to slow down?

But then again, would blogging exist? Would the internet exist? If we Americans didn’t live at the pace at which we do, taking advantage of every bit of light, everywhere.

Perhaps we are lucky (or unlucky, depending on which way you look at it; I’m going to stick with lucky) enough to simply have more light to draw power from.

FATWA ON RE-VIRGINIZERS

2009-10-08T16:11:00.000-07:00

Today's article comes from The LA TIMES (I'm in LA for the moment, so I'll be writing from the LA TIMES for a couple of days) -- It's title: "Gadget to help women feign virginity angers many in Egypt" --http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-fake-hymen7-2009oct07,0,6868813.story

As if the title isn't enough to catch your attention.

Forget Salman Rushdie, forget the power of politics, and of literature, or any of the other "dangerous" personas that fatwas have been issued against. No - now it's the power of the Hymen and the savvy Chinese Businessmen that are turning a coin because of that tricky mucous membrane. The article quotes: "Cleric Abdul Moeti Bayoumi has issued a fatwa urging that peddlers of the $29.90 device be charged with banditry and punished for spreading immorality and sin."

Wow, need I say more?

Knewsing 9: Singing and Dancing at 80

2009-09-08T05:25:00.000-07:00

Today’s story comes from the Portland Press Herald Online/Sun Journal: Grandmother Launches Music Career. By Eileen M. Adams.
http://www.sunjournal.com/node/271857/

In Maine, lighthouses will have an open house on the 12th of September for all to visit; a man is convicted of child pornography because he placed hidden cameras in his bathroom and caught his girlfriend’s teenaged daughter on the toilet, as well as dressing and undressing; the Yorktown Paper Mill has caught fire; and Burmese immigrants are calling the northern state home.

But the article that I’m picking for the day is about an 80-year old woman who has started a new career in music. My grandfather, since his retirement, has deteriorated, mostly out of an awful boredom. Sometimes he’s so bored he takes long walks up and down the parking ramps of the garage in his apartment building. Not so with Joyce Gammon, who has ventured upon a new career path, tapping her feet and strumming her Dobro guitar the whole time through. It all started when she wrote her husband a song for his birthday. He wanted a convertible, which she couldn’t afford. “So I wrote him a song instead,” says Gammon. It turned out pretty good. Now she’s jotted down forty songs and recorded eight.

I hope I’m like that at 80 – still singing and bringing out the dancing shoes.

Knewsing 8: The Maquiladoras & The Nature of Change

2009-09-07T10:47:00.000-07:00

The article for today comes from The Arizona Daily Star: Maquiladoras in Global Squeeze. By W.J. Hennigan.

When you read a newspaper from a border state you always get a tale of two cities, at least. In this article, what we are getting is a tale of three countries, feeling the effects of both globalization and economic crisis. The Maquiladoras, in Nogales, AZ are losing ground. Nogales is city known for its Maquiladoras – factories in which mostly Mexican workers receive materials/products form a particular country and then assemble goods to ship back to where the materials/products came from for retail. We’re talking everything from notebooks to airplane parts.

The reason Nogales is losing ground is that the work is being shipped to China, where labor is cheaper. Obviously, this is an interesting article to look at on Labor Day. For many reasons. Mostly, because the nature of our work is changing and we are in a state of, often painful, transition.

So many mornings, when we pick up the paper, or get online, it feels like the world is suffering a long, hard ache. Like the heartache after a serious relationship has broken (the feeling of not wanting to move-on, not wanting another lover, wanting still to linger in the comfort of a familiar bed, in familiar arms); or like a growing pain; or like the homesickness of migration. But this is the nature of change.

A year ago, when we voted in a new president in for the United States, we were calling for change. Change is happening all over the world now – in healthcare, in the car industry, in the book industry, in politics, in technology, in foreign trade, in the stock market, and in Nogales. It’s everywhere and sometimes it hurts. And before we can see any kind of light, we’ll have to whether the tides of change and tread through the transition.

There’s a country song by John Rich called Shuttin Detroit Down. It’s a song about the working man. One verse reads:

Because in the real world they're shuttin' Detroit down,While the boss man takes his bonus paid jets on out of town. DC's bailing out them bankers as the farmers auction ground. Yeah while they're living up on Wall Street in that New York City town,Here in the real world they're shuttin' Detroit down.

The situation in Nogales isn’t all that different.

The question that rises out of all of this is: What’s next? Because hopefulness for the future is also part of the nature of change. Yes, there’s always the chance that it will all turn out worse, but perhaps it will be better than we know; more than we know. Perhaps we are shuttin’ Detroit down to make room for a revolutionary kind of transportation that doesn’t rely on fuel and thereby changes our entire global/political dynamic. Perhaps the Maquiladoras will shut down and perhaps Hispanics will have a better tomorrow – better than those grueling days, and the pains of putting together someone else’s goods for preposterously little pay. Anything is possible. That’s the great part about the brink of change.

Knewsing 7: Jesus Knocks out the Devil in Africa

2009-09-06T08:53:00.000-07:00

Today's article comes from The Oklahoman: U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe Leads in Trips Abroad.
By Chris Casteel.

Jesus sure does get around. Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma has been traveling the world on the “taxpayer’s dime,” says this particular article. One of the places he’s been going to is Africa. Sen. Inhofe also said, at one point, that one of the reasons he went to Africa was because it was a “Jesus thing.” Uh-oh. Red Flag. Red Flag.

I’m not going to wax on here very long, it is a blog after all, and I’ve been talking too much lately. But, I will say that this particular Senator says he holds prayer meetings with African leaders. Do you get a mental picture? This is what I think about. I think about a trip to Ghana I took in 2004. We were driving on the way to Cape Coast, where the slaves were shipped out of Africa and into America to work for King Cotton. Along the way there were small shanty shops, beauty salons and barber shops, and the like. They were all named something like “Jesus Saves Beauty Salon,” and “Mary, Queen of Heaven Salon,” or “Saint-something-or-other Barber Shop.” And then, sandwiched amid them there was a particular little shanty shop called “The Fuck You Beauty Salon.” Ah, Colonialism.

Apparently, Jesus really likes to travel because Sen. Inhofe has been taking trips like drinking water – from Australia to Paris.

Knewsing 6: Control

2009-09-05T09:08:00.000-07:00

The article I am choosing to talk about for today is called: Pursuing God and Sex: The Warring Obsessions of Phillip Garrido’s Life. By Maria L. La Ganga.

The article is about Phillip Garrido’s struggle between the Jesus and his sexual fantasies. About his Manifesto re: Jesus saving his life from the dark corners of pornography, lit by the florescent bulbs of guilt. And then there’s all that LSD he took. His father said he was ruined after that…

God, we are creatures of extremes. I’m not saying we all Rape and Pray, not exactly. But, to some extent Garrido is just an extreme of our extremes. Deranged, yes, definitely – regular brain wires on speed, distorted, off-track.

All of us have wars inside us. The good and bad angel on each shoulder; our nations’ balance between war and peace; our binging and purging; our fighting and making up…If what keeps us in check is the ability to balance our extremes, keeping us from not going too far off each end, isn’t Garrido just what happens when we lose control. Maybe that's obvious. But it makes me think about the word "control" and what it really means. Makes me wonder where this control comes from to begin with and if it isn’t the core of what we call morality? But then, do we ever truly have complete command over ourselves – isn’t that the biggest struggle there is; why people go to therapy and read self-help books, dip themselves in holy water, light candles, and celebrate “new” years as clean slates?

Other things learned/gleaned from the LA Times today:
1. The LA Times is a great paper -- Journalist Ashley Powers, for one, writes like an angel: “The Strip kept adding hotel, and suburbs chewed through the desert.” Nice rhythm, nice image.
2. Speaking of writers – Nicholson Baker has a new book out: The Anthologist – going to go buy that.
3. Christian Poveda, French-born documentary filmmaker was killed by the gang he documented and talked bout “trusting.” – “If you look long enough down the throat of the lion, he will eat you.”

Knewsing 5: Life & Death from Juarez, Mexico to Carrollton, Texas

2009-09-04T06:13:00.000-07:00

The two stories for today are from the Dallas Morning News: Drug Treatment Center Targeted in Mexico, 18 dead. By Olivia Torres and Alicia A. Caldwell (The Associated Press) http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D9AG3VTG0.html; and a Video/Photo story called Choosing Thomas. http://www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/photography/2009/thomas .

In Dallas this morning, the news goes something like this: Sports, of course, The Dallas Cowboys kickoff their season with a luncheon; Schools all around North Texas fear that Obama’s speech to students is “liberal indoctrination;” and Dallas-area home listings are falling. But, the two stories that struck me hardest were the story of a bloodbath at a drug treatment center in Juarez, Mexico; and the story of Baby Thomas in Dallas.

Apparently, when you go into rehab in Mexico, you not only have to deal with the hard road of recovery, but you might also face death. In Juarez, drug Cartels are using rehab centers as recruiting and training centers. I quote: “Garcia Luna said in Michoacan, Cedeno's rehab centers held retreats to train members, and if addicts did not cooperate, they were executed. He said the La Familia gang preferred recovered addicts because they were less likely to touch the drug loads.” Luna is Mexico’s Public Safety Secretary -- a tough job, needless to say, at the turbulent border between Juarez and El Paso (which is clearly in sight from Mexico’s most dangerous city). Juarez claims more than 1,300 lives a year. In this particular case, at the Aliviane site, what was happening, according to another article in the Dallas Morning News was that one Cartel was attempting to exterminate another. The Sinaloa have been hitting up the Linea (the Juarez cartel), trying to exterminate every last one of them – “killing people at will, hitting them like sitting ducks” (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-juarez_04int.ART.State.Edition2.4bcfae5.html)

I think about so much as I read these stories about Juarez. I think about how when people meet Israeli’s or Iraqis they always ask them how they do it – wake up every morning in the midst of such violence; how they live a day-to-day existence in it, how are they not afraid to walk outside their door. They are, just as people in Juarez are afraid. “It’s scary,” said one resident, “I’m ready to move.” You don’t have to go as far as the Middle East to see the kind of violence that freezes and infiltrates the minutes and hours and long days of innocent bystanders– here it is, massacre, just miles away from our American borders. How much are we responsible for, as Americans, and, more generally, how much does this say about our humanity? That last question may seem trite to some, but it’s not, not when you really delve into the heart of it.

If the first article was about death; lives cut short. So is the second story I’ve chosen for today, about Baby Thomas. Except it’s also about life and love.

“Baby Thomas” is the son of TK and Deidrea Laux, a Carrollton, Texas couple. Thomas who was diagnosed with Trisomy 13 while still in the womb. The Laux family knew that due to his genetic disorder, this baby would die within minutes or hours or at the very most a few days after birth (if he even survived the birth). But the couple decided to have the baby anyway.

On the one had, I think immediately about how awful it is that Baby Thomas is now going to be the poster child for Anti-abortion activists. But, on the other hand, I can’t get my head around this story as a testament to the need for love (both giving it and receiving it, we have within us).

Half of my thinks this is a strange masochism on behalf of the parents. And, didn’t the child suffer more by having to live out a disease that was meant to kill him within days (he died five days after birth)? However, another part of me is so deeply moved by the video – by what seems to be a true act of love. And therein lies a counterpart to the Juarez story, the complex layerings that make us up – the layering that allows us to laud Ted Kennedy was a wonderful senator while knowing that Chappaquiddick and the death of a young woman lie in his past and on his (and our) conscience.

Amazing how the news can not only provide the daily happenings of what’s important to a particular urban center, but also really make me sit her and delve deep into the stuff we’re made up of, as people.

It makes me think of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. I should say more about that, but I won’t. I’ve said enough.

Knewsing 4: Anchor-women, Governors, and Escorts – A Lesson in Point of View

2009-09-03T08:37:00.000-07:00

Today’s stories come from The Seattle Times. There are three of them I’m responding to today – all threaded by a common link: Women and the way they are written about.

The First article is: Charles Gibson to Step Down as Anchor, Diane Sawyer to Take Over. By Bill Carter and Brian Stelter.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2009796197_gibson03.html

The second article is: Levi Johnston: Palin Wanted to Adopt Grandchild. By The Associated Press.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2009793602_apuspalinlevijohnston.html

And, the last article for today is: Police: ‘Chunky” Escorts Rip Off Intoxicated Men. Posted by John de Leon From Times staff reporter Christine Clarridge.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/theblotter/2009787305_--_from_times_staff_reporter_2.html

The first story is about Diane Sawyer finally making it to anchor on ABC. I quote: “Sawyer, the longtime – some would say long-suffering – co-host of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” was named successor to Charles Gibson, who is stepping down as the anchor of ABC’s “World News.” Barbara Walters called it, “a great day,” and I would have to agree. For the first time ever, two of the three main networks will have a woman at the helm. This is wonderful because, let’s face it, aren’t women the true “anchors” of society anyway – the ones that are constantly holding down the ship, no matter what the weather?

What sticks in my brain most, however, about this article is a quote by Richard Wald. “You’re going to have, for the first time ever, two women competing as solo anchors in the television framework that just – within living memory – sort of destroyed every woman who tried to do it,” said Wald, a former news exec at ABC and NBC. I want to know what he means by that? The article simply puts it out there and then lets it go. And, really, what he means and why he is saying what he is saying is at the crux of this story. Why?

Next, we have an Associated Press story, having also to do with politics and women: Palin, in particular. It lists the complaints of Levi Johnston (the father of Sarah Palin’s grandchild and Palin’s daughter Bristol’s ex-fiancé) about Palin. Johnson, who apparently wants to be a model and an actor, bashes Palin. He says she moped around the house after she lost the election; that she doesn’t really know how to shoot a gun; that she wanted to adopt his and Bristol’s child in order to cover up the pregnancy of her 17-year-old daughter. But, what’s really sort of pathetic is when he begins to talk about her parenting skills: “Sarah doesn’t cook…” I don’t even like Palin, but I am setting this out here to make a point, which I will make after setting up the next example.

Finally, the third story is about escorts. It’s about a group of guys in Mountlake Terrace who get drunk and call an escort service. When the escorts get there, they don’t look like the girls in the picture they saw, which had incited them to dial-up for prostitutes in the first place. Instead the escorts look “larger and thicker” than they did in the picture, says one of the men to the police. The escorts, when they got to the men’s house, went about stealing blackberry’s and such instead of giving the boys a blow job. I have to say: good for them. However, the point is this. This is not a story about the fact that these women are selling their bodies for money, or why they are (there’s that question again: why?). This is not a story about a crime. No, this is a story about three drunk-of-their-ass men who are disappointed by their “fat” escorts. The title says it all – Police: ‘Chunky’ escorts rip off intoxicated men. The drunk men then go on to rate the escorts on a scale of one to ten. The writer makes it a point to say that one of the men called the women a “2” while the most drunk called them a “4.”

So, what do we have here – we have a view of women set in today’s paper. I’m not sure who wrote the Associated Press article, whether it was a male or a female. But mostly, what we are getting are men writing about women, and doing it poorly. And, quite honestly, it’s upsetting. The spin all of these articles take is neither funny nor informative, perhaps to the exclusion of the first article on Sawyer, which is why I have placed at the top in order to prove a point about the actual strength, intelligence, and power women can have in the world, when they are not being hit over the head by articles such as the latter two (or pigeon-holed into “long-suffering” jobs for morning shows). And still, even that one leaves questions unanswered.

As for the Palin article – it is important to know that I am a Democrat, that I voted for Obama/Clinton and that I do not agree with any of the things Palin thinks and says. But, I also don’t care whether she “cooks.”

In regards to the third story mentioned above: I believe that escorts should be taken off the streets, because it is an objectifying profession that is detrimental to women. I don’t care if the escorts that are out there are “chunky.” And, finally, I want to know: WHY has the position of anchor on a major network “destroyed” the women that have taken up the job?

Every story has a point of view, no matter how objective a journalist attempts to be. And point of view, is almost always subjective. What does this say about how society regards women, even today?

Knewsing 3: Slap the Kid

2009-09-02T05:22:00.000-07:00

Today’s story comes from the Atlanta Journal Constitution: Man Slaps Stranger’s Crying Kid. By Kate Leslie

So, imagine, you’re in a supermarket, or a department store, or (worst of all) an airplane and the kid behind you won’t stop crying. Crying and crying and there’s nothing the mother/father can do (or sometimes even try to do) to stop it. You have options. You can ignore it, as most people would. You can roll your eyes and curse the kid and mother under your breath. You could turn around and give the kid and/or mother that dirty look you’ve been perfecting, just for the occasion. And, if you’re on an airplane, you can even ask the flight attendant to see if she can get you some earplugs (unless you’re the type that carries those around due to trauma left by a super-snorer boyfriend – then you’re all set. That also applies to the anti-social, airplane reader who is always prepared to shut the world out).

Or, if you live in Gwinnett County, you could do as one 61-year-old man did in a local Stone Mountain Wal-Mart. Turn around and smack the kid. You’ll be arrested, of course. And, in this man’s case, held without bond and charged with a felony: cruelty to children. And herein lay the difference between the people who do, not think.

Knewsing 2: Peter Pan Kids

2009-09-01T08:19:00.000-07:00

Today’s article comes from The Miami Herald: Pedro Pan site Hits Milestone as Social Networking Connection. By Luisa Yanez. http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/1211386.html

The interesting thing about the Miami Herald is that it’s probably the only city in America where Cuba makes front page news almost daily. Today they posted a story about a new database/social networking site that the Miami Herald has made for and by Cuban-Americans, specifically for Peter Pan Kids (keep reading if you don’t know what this is).

Forget what you know about Facebook or Twitter or any other kind of “social networking” – this is a website that connects people linked by a particular socio-historical moment in time. Operation Pedro Pan (Operation Peter Pan) was a movement that transported children from Cuba, alone without their parents, to America from 1960-1962. It was directed mostly by Monsigner Bryan O. Walsh and the Catholic Church. The idea was to get these kids out of Communist Cuba, where the parents were becoming fearful of the new regime and what it meant for their children. Later, they would reunite with their children, when they themselves could get out. That was the plan. Some of the kids, however, remained orphans, never seeing their parents again.

Just imagine it: being in Cuba, a kid, your parents whispering in the kitchen and all of a sudden you are being shipped to a camp in Florida with other Peter Pans, and eventually taken into foster care. Talk about growing up fast – the irony of the title of this operation never ceases to amaze me. Some stories are happier ones, granted. Regardless, these stories make up a part of American history as much as they do Cuban history and the database the Miami Herald has created is allowing for this story to be told in the first person. A great effort, I think.

KNEWSING 1: Fighting Food

2009-08-30T08:48:00.000-07:00

I have decided that everyday I will respond to an article I read in the newspaper. Sometimes these articles will be front pagers; sometimes they will be paragraphs found right in the underbelly of the nytimes.com. I will read a different newspaper from a different city everyday, choosing something that stands out. It will be a combination of knowing the news and musing – I’ll call it knewsing. Why not? It’s also a way of opening up a discussion, so I welcome comments here, anytime, from anywhere.

Today’s article is from The New York Times. It’s called: Parenting and Food: Eat Your Peas. Or Don’t. Whatever. By Frank Bruni
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/weekinreview/30bruni.html

The article is about how to deal with your children and food – how to keep your sixteen year old from imitating the bulimic/anorexic model in the fashion magazines that sit at the check out aisle in the grocery store; how to keep your son from becoming the next case of childhood obesity.

Food strikes a personal chord for me. My father died of obesity, at 50 – a life cut short by too much eating. I myself went through a different disorder and almost cut my own life short by lack of eating. Food is something that I have hated for a very long time; fought with, Tyson-fisted. I have never been able to receive pleasure from food -- not the kind that soothes and eases, like the way the French eat, at Cafes, slowly. Or the Spanish and their Serrano, happily loving the fruits of the earth. I’m sorry for that, for that loss of happiness.

It's a happiness I channel by watching the food network and writing restaurant reviews -- talk about paradoxes and irony. I love doing both of those things. I love watching garlic sizzle on the pan on Iron Chef; the carots on the chopping block; I love writing about the way a succulent piece of broccoli tastes dipped in butter and coconut curry.

But it really is about so much more than food. My father’s appetite and eating was so much more than gluttony. Bruni’s article ends with a statement about the “mysteries of appetite.” And it’s telling, I think. This animalistic drive within us, like a pregnant woman who eats dirt, seeking minerals. The other day I saw a woman on the airplane, she took up two seats, and was so bloated I had the sudden violent urge to yell at her, while at the same time feeling like I should hug and ask her what she was really hungry for. What was it, in her, driving her to fill herself up to the extent that she got to the point where she had to buy two plane tickets just to take a vacation and fly back home to Tennessee. How is it that we have allowed food to stop nurturing us and start nullifying us? Why has food become something we fight instead of flavor?

Early Morning Elvis Blues

2009-08-18T20:45:00.000-07:00

This morning on the plane back from Memphis to Miami. I realized my brain was working in starts and starts and particularly visually. Maybe because I had woken up at 3am to catch a red-eye. Maybe because I was looking out, above the sky above the clouds, onto a magnificent view of the universe.

I had this vision in my head, as I was god knows how many feet up in the sky, of a blue stove, crackling in rust, dripping, as if I were looking at it through a window sill during a rainstorm. Or, like its paint was melting off. Right on top of this blue, melting stove was an orange tea kettle. The orange and the blue were spectacular in the image, next to each other like that.

I think this has to do with Elvis.

Years ago, when I lived in a shit-hole apartment in Washington Heights, I had a gaudy image of fat Elvis in a blue suit on top of my fridge. I also had poetry books in the kitchen at the time, which is where I still think they belong. Blue-suited, bloated Elvis was in a gold frame. A couple of feet to the right, on top of my white, rusting, NYC-shit-hole-apartment-stove was an orange tea kettle I used to have (that I left behind when I moved).

Because I’ve been thinking of Elvis while visiting Memphis, I think these two fused in my head (the Elvis picture and the tea kettle), taking me back to Manhattan from Memphis on my way to Miami (which was merging with a Mozart soundtrack, because I was writing a book based on Mozart at the time I was living in Manhattan…a lot of M’s here, I know. I apologize). In other words, the blue from Elvis’s suit was merging with the orange tea kettle and the feeling of New York and of the kitchen poetry. It was making me remember what I used to think of as Elvis back then. I think differently now, but the image is still relevant.

Now, I’m falling in love with Elvis. Which is a good thing. It’s always a good thing to fall in love with people you are writing about.

Shrinking Pains

2009-08-15T19:39:00.000-07:00

So, I’m seeing a shrink. It’s been about 8 months and it’s starting to get really hard. It was okay at first, then months rolled by and it started getting good, and now it’s just awful. I’m beginning to hate going and if my pleasure buttons had a say in it, this would all be over. I would sign out, say goodbye, I’d put my credit card away, happy to not have to pay for pain. Because the last time I went in for a session I left with an ache I couldn’t stand, it rattled around in me for days.

But, I guess this is what happens before you heal – these shrinking pains. The bones of all the past cracking and shaking before they disappear and turn to dust. Ouch. I know I can’t stop going. Not now. The skin is only starting to crack and I know there’s so much buried beneath it – canals and rivers. I want to be able to swim in them, bask in the sun, be happy in myself for the long haul. And so…on to the next session.

“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.”
- Lance Armstrong

Choosing Rain

2008-08-18T12:47:00.000-07:00

The other day I had a strange thought. I wished, for a moment, that we were back in the days where we had arranged marriages. It seemed to me, at that moment of uncharacteristically conservative thought, that there was something beautiful about the idea of learning to love somebody that your parents had picked out for you -- believing that they, as your parents, knew you well and would know who could be a good match for you. In other words, giving Love a chance to grow and build; and not, not ever, giving up on it simply because one didn’t have the choice of giving up. Love seemed, in these thoughts, all the stronger. Of course, this is a fleeting thought that carries many different repercussions – I don’t think I’d be very happy if my parents imposed a groom upon me, in all truth. It’s just, it seems like people, having the choice of divorce, and of so many people in the world to play with and choose from – it just seems that people mess up by giving up too easily and relying to readily on the glamour of over-rated choice.

As I was having all of these thoughts, I recalled something I saw at a supermarket about two years ago. There was a man, looking like he had just come from Cuba yesterday (or the day before, or the day before that) and he was staring at row of canned foods. He seemed completely overwhelmed by the variety of companies and brands offering the same food. And so, bogged down by choice, he just stood there – unable to choose; motionless. “In Cuba, we’ve got corn. Corn is corn. Peas are peas. Jamon es Jamon.” I could see him thinking this in his head. And the expression on his face told me he wasn’t so sure whether all this choice was as great as he thought it was going to be. I know Cubans (as a Cuban-American it is part of my daily existence to know many generations of Cubans from different migration waves) that come to the States and want nothing more than to go back home. Just as I know Cubans that come to the States and think: this has to be some kind of capitalist heaven. And in these latter cases, choice becomes the end all be all…a way of life. How many things can I acquire? Why not buy one of each? Why not? If I can…If I’m free to do so…If the market allows me…well then, why not? Why in god’s (or is it Dios, or Chango, or Allah ….you get the idea) name not?

Choice is a funny thing. Like today, for instance…

Today, I decided to go for a run, despite the fact that I knew a storm was approaching. Perhaps there was a slight feeling of invincibility about me this morning. So I went out, and I ran for fifty minutes before the dark clouds that were looming above me opened up their wide mouths and gushed spear-like rain in my direction, hurling its arrows in the face of my seeming invincibility. And in that moment, I thought about how little choice I actually do have. How little autonomy in the world I truly practice. I cannot control the clouds and the way they spin in and out of my life; the ocean and its currents; the sun and the way it scorches or soothes. Of course, I do have a choice to go out in the rain, or stay home. But who is to say that at home a tree would not fall through my window, trashing every bit of machinery, literature, and whatever else I have so gathered and possibly horded? And who is to say it might not even give me a bit of a thrashing.

I tried to run home, fast as I could, making my long-distance running legs sore -- Soon, however, the rain lifted, but not before taking with it whatever certain thought I may have had about the nature of choice.

The Life of the Mind: A Sign of the Times

2008-08-13T13:17:00.000-07:00

Thoughts for the day (or at least for the past couple of hours)

1. Thinking about how I just played my first hand in the stock market...this could be fun.

2. Thinking about a friend I met not very long ago who is in “the desert” – at war in an undisclosed location.

3. Thinking about how I am inching away from agnosticism and into a true belief in something greater than myself and how it’s a shame to feel to have to excuse a belief in a greater force at work in our lives and in the world.

4. Thinking about how I asking that greater force to be by the side of my friend in “the desert.” Also at the side of my good friend who is about to have a baby. Her third girl.

5. Thinking the person I love. How there were two times I lost my virginity, with two different people. How the first time, it was simply an act, the breaking of tissue. And how the second time it was more gradual, over days of sex and champagne and conversation. How the second time felt like it was the true loss of virginity along with the very real gain of something else. This second person is the person I still love.

6. Thinking about how my first love was a platonic one – not too very long ago, full of a unique kind of hunger – a literal physical hunger, a sexual hunger, a desperate hunger. Love should never be desperate. I’m glad we remained friends and didn’t, at that moment in my life, become lovers – it might have ended in disaster. It was a wise decision on his behalf.

7. Thinking about how the Chinese Gymnasts look so young and how Phelps has to consume 12,000 calories a day in order to keep up with those speedy laps. Every time I watch him swim I think to myself: is this man human? And then that leads me on a train of thoughts about humanity and where we come from and how our gymnastics are not so far from fantastic documentaries like Planet Earth…and how really we’re just mammals with minds. But then isn’t that combination a very powerful thing? And then I say, ok, ok…avoid the philosophizing and BS, move on, move on.

8. Thinking about another set of human acts: creation and commerce and how that comes together in the selling of a $26 dollar grape ($910 for the bunch) in Japan.

9. ...Obama, Mc Cain, Paris Hilton. Georgia and Russia. Putin. Hijo de Puta?

10. Back to Japan; how I love Japan. And how in Kyoto I had a spiritual experience that’s difficult to express in a bullet point. Thinking about the book I’m reading by Murakami about running. And how I’m training for a marathon and how all of these thoughts came to me while I was just outside running. And then thinking about how all these thoughts come full circle…and how tomorrow there might be another circle to ride.

11. Thinking about traveling, in circles in lines, across borders and boundaries, cities, states, and countries…Hawaii (I want to go back to Hawaii...). Thinking about love, the roundness of my life, about fruit (like the grapes), and the fruit of the earth and the fruit of my mind, and the fruit of my efforts, and my second love, and all whom I love, and my life; and then I think of death…as always, the day has not gone by without thinking about the death of my father. The anniversary of his death is next Friday, the 22nd…I think I want to add him, my father, to number four on this list…that the greater force be also with him, to guide him through what I don’t yet understand, in whatever transition of self and form he might be going through…

…There are always more thoughts…but, today, I’ll end here.

Cerebral Celebrity

2008-07-31T09:44:00.000-07:00

Ce*leb"ri*ty\, n.; pl. Celebrities. [L. celebritas: cf. F. c['e]l['e]brit['e].]
1. Celebration; solemnization. [Obs.]
The celebrity of the marriage. --Bacon.
2. The state or condition of being celebrated; fame; renown; as, the celebrity of Washington.
An event of great celebrity in the history of astronomy. --Whewell.
3. A person of distinction or renown; -- usually in the plural; as, he is one of the celebrities of the place.

c.1380, "solemn rite or ceremony," from O.Fr. celebrité, from L. celibritatem (nom. celebritas) "multitude, fame," from celeber "frequented, populous." Meaning "condition of being famous" is from 1600; that of "famous person" is from 1849

*********

The world has taken to “celebrating” Obama. For some reason, McCain seems to think this is a bad thing. McCain believes that by equating Obama with Britney Spears he is making some kind of a negative statement about the way in which the world (particularly its “kids”) are viewing Barack Obama. But perhaps he has missed the point. The fact that we, the people, are turning an intelligent man; a brilliant orator that seems to be evolving into a unifying presence and leader not only for America but for the world; as well as someone who, up until now brandishes an untarnished record is, I’d say, a good thing. The fact that “kids” are placing Obama’s name above the ranks of troubled singers like Spears or Winehouse in daily conversation is a hopeful sign. It is also a signal towards the world America’s youth wants to live in.

That’s my general idea – a positive one about the seemingly negative celebrity advertisement McCain ran on Obama in recent days -- but, just for fun, let’s throw in a quote that complicates things a little:

“We choose presidents, but we do not choose them on the basis of their experience or even their political views. We choose them based on how well they tap into our basic beliefs, how expressive they are of our own deepest national mythologies.”

This is a quote by Russell Banks recently in his own published oration on America called Dreaming up America. It is also a statement that seems to envelop all the criticisms as well as positive compliments that have been said and given to Obama regarding his candidacy for president of the United States. First, he was not experienced enough and now he was too “presidential” – a “celebrity.”

Strangely, Banks’ quote is also a quote that seems to envelop the reasons America voted for Bush. Americans chose George W because he joined with the Christian Right to tap into the dream and mythology of “American Values.” America chose him not so much because he was experienced, but rather they chose him because of a certain “charm” (one which I never found, but which most of America seemed to have clicked with). And yet, this was a “charm” that was also capable of leading us straight into a war most of America is now against. Moreover, Obama’s “charm” is also somehow experience-less and he’s tapping into an American Mythology -- an older, more basic American Mythology – that we are “all created equal” and that we all have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The truth is that we have no idea what Obama will do when he takes office, if he manages to take office. I am not clairvoyant and cannot tell yet whether the man will “charm” us into ill as W did…but I, along with America’s “kids” remain hopeful. And I think that to celebrate, for now, this man; to “frequent” and repeat and make “populous” his message is not a bad thing. A couple of months ago when I visited Nigeria, I saw that Nigerians held in great esteem Wole Soyinka – that they made of celebrity of him. And I thought: wow, if only Americans would make a celebrity out of a writer like that, instead of out of Madonnas. But isn’t that just what we are doing? In fact, what McCain might be admitting to is that he is too much of an “oldster” to understand America, America’s “kids” and, hence, America’s future – children of the Baby boomers, Gen X and Yers, and whatever comers there are next into the fold.

Drawing Blood & Bridges

2008-07-31T09:42:00.000-07:00

If you saw me walking down the street this past Tuesday, you’d think I was a heroine addict – my arms full of track marks, my face pale with exhaustion. The reason: two incompetent nurses that poked me four times and still couldn’t find a vein to draw blood from. In fact, I had to go back to my doctor’s office on Wednesday, when finally a more competent nurse found her way to my juice.

I felt horribly insecure at the end of my Tuesday visit, as the first, incompetent, male nurse fiddled and told me how “spidery” my veins were and how I had to “relax.” I was perfectly relaxed (I’ve never been afraid of blood), until I realized he had NO IDEA what he was doing. Then things started to get scary. He didn’t seem like the brightest berry in the bush, and it got me to thinking, as (Ouch!) there went one poke, and then (Ouch!) another. Then came another nurse who said: “wow, this is hard!” And I thought: What is going on? And I’m not just saying “what’s going on with American Healthcare?” I’m going beyond that. “What’s going on with America? And can we trust the kind of people we are producing in this country?” This is a bigger question and one that feeds straight into healthcare and all of American life (a life which spreads globally due to the ways of the 21st century).

Not too long ago I wrote an article about how the healthcare profession is becoming popular because it is “recession proof;” but what kind of nurses and health care professionals are we dishing out when the only reason they enter the field is because they are secured a job? What happened to the days when nursing was a vocation? And, more importantly, what are they teaching kids (or not teaching them) in elementary and high schools that prevent them from understanding their lessons (for instance the one about drawing blood) when they get to nursing school (and other kinds of schools)? Have we totally lost it?

I read recently a quote by Bette Midler in which she was asked her greatest fear and she said something to the tune of: “I fear the best days of my country are over.” It’s a bleak thought. But, I thought, on Wednesday: maybe she’s right. As bridges collapse around us, and our infrastructure weakens (both physically and intellectually) I have to ask myself whether Midler isn’t right to ask herself this question.

However, and there is always a however in this double-faced and contradictory land we call America, there are a number of hopeful elements to our story as American path. One of which is what leads me to my next blog (which I’ll enter right above this one) – the very idea that McCain finds so negative, and which I find quite positive – that the junior senator from Illinois and presumptive Democratic Candidate for President is a “celebrity.”

Death of a Journalist

2008-06-16T15:26:00.001-07:00

The Death of Tim Russert, last week, sent me off on an emotional treadmill that involved Peter Jennings, 9.11 and my father. Just days before father’s day, I thought first of all of Russert’s family – Russert, who died in a way similar to the way my father died just this past year: suddenly, without warning, and in his fifties.

I thought about the absolute pain and feelings of loss – and not just the void that losing a person creates in the heart; but also the aimless feeling of rootless-ness and of being, oneself, “lost” in the world now, suddenly unable to make sense of anything -- that are brought on by death.

I don’t ever mourn for celebrities – but somehow, this one was a bit different. Mostly because he was a TV journalist – I’m not sure I should call him an anchorman, though he was, in fact an “anchor” in many a household on Sunday mornings.

The reason I think it’s different – why I feel different for TV newsmen/women, than for other celebrities when they die (for instance, I didn’t shed a tear for Yves Saint Laurent, though god knows he feasted my eyes with his designs many a time) is because of what these TV journalists mean. For me, I can bring it home most clearly with Peter Jennings. When the towers came to a crumbling, dusty crash one early morning in early September, I was in New York, and Peter Jennings was there with me – he was there to talk me through it, to inform me, to give me the most peace I could get anywhere, from anybody, while at the same time, agitating my momentarily shocked person. I’ll admit – I got an unbelievable crush on the man…and when he died…when he died I was sad, even though I hadn't ever, literally met him. I mourned him; I think I might have even cried.

I never cry for people I don’t know…but somehow we know these men, we know them through their work and their presence is part of their work, and hence, there is a very real human connection to what they convey to us.

My heart is with Russert’s family.

Heartbreak, Writing, Birth & The Mop

2008-06-11T08:39:00.000-07:00

This mid morning I’m not going to write about Obama, or Hillary, or even Obama’s potential running mate – Webb, which was my other option for today. No, I’m not going to write about them because, well, because I’m heartbroken and I can’t think straight – and it’s best not to do write about these things in haste or while going through chest pain (the figurative kind that feels, truly, physical). Instead, I’ve decided to give my apartment a good cleaning. And, truthfully, I’m cleaning because of two reasons. The first is that I’m heartbroken. This is what is leading to the second reason which is a stop in the flow of creative juices. I’m almost done with the first draft of my novel, you see…and this morning I can’t seem to write. It’s never an issue because I usually force myself. And I realize, more than I realize anything else, that writing is like birth – it’s the excitement of conceiving; the ninth months of working towards a draft; the contractions of writing the end of that first draft; and then it’s the hard part – the labor. The pushing and pushing and pushing through until the damn thing’s finally out. And when it’s out – when it’s out, god does it feel good – a miraculous little bundle of bliss. Perhaps this is what letting go will be like, as well -- perhaps this is what it feels like when the heartbreak is over.

Oh, god, please heal my heart…

Well, back to the mop – and then to then onward towards the pushing. Next time I hope I have something more meaningful to say…My apologies. Forgive me gods of politics, arts and science – today I have given into the gods of love.

Sweet Talk & the Uphill Battle

2008-06-04T13:27:00.000-07:00

A Night of Speeches

Last night, listening to John McCain’s speech before Hillary decided “not to make any decisions,” and Obama claimed the nomination, I kept thinking about how awful it would be to have to hear McCain talk for four (or, god forbid, eight years) as our president. Not only is the man a god-awful orator, but he’s also the opposite of what they so-often call him – the opposite of that “straight shooter.”

In fact, I think I would leave the country if the man got nominated to office. When he talks, it feels like he thinks he’s back in his ‘football days’ in high school; like he thinks the American people are the stupid cheerleader he’s trying to woo with his “suave” smile, convincing her, years later (and one divorce later), to get the plastic surgery that will make her look like a Steppford wife, rather than a first lady. While Obama makes us think, and enriches us with vocabulary of worth and weight, McCain talks down to us and smiles that strange, canned, and twisted smile. Truth is -- the man freaks me out.

As for Hillary. The way I feel about Hillary is almost how I feel about Sex & the City. It’s a strange combination of contradictions. Powerful women that, instead of empowering us, make us look bad, for instance. There are so many paradoxes in Hillary, it’s hard to know where to start.

Last night, listening to Hillary’s speech – at the beginning of it – I regained all my lost admiration for the woman. She seemed to be that feisty woman I had once liked, speaking with sincerity. She seemed to be addressing issues, no matter what – you have to admire that kind of perseverance. But, and this is a big but – the fact that she did not “make any decisions,” that she didn’t gracefully bow out, makes me feel like she’s waiting and waiting in order to gain some kind of deal-making leverage. It’s depressing and ungracious, and selfish, and not in the best interest of the democratic party, or the country…and it’s almost as bad as her biggest gaff: “well, we all know that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June…” What?!!

While McCain thinks his pseudo-charming smile and “straight-talk” -- which is really just arrogant “down-talk” -- fails to seduce us; Hillary “struggles” through her words -- angry at times, bitter at others, but always “working” so evidently and obviously hard. Isn’t the trick to make us think it’s easy? Isn’t the trick, to make us feel, as Americans, that we aren’t going to have to “struggle” anymore when you’re president? Listening to Hillary makes me feel like four (or eight) years with her would be uphill, yes, but it would be, as is everything with her, an intense uphill battle.

Meanwhile, Obama makes it seem so easy. We know it’s not. We know that no matter what it will be hard to reverse the years of damage created by the Bush Administration(s). But, it feels possible with him; it feels like less of a struggle. And, mind you, this coming from a black man in America who just became the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. Point is, he doesn’t, to use one of his words, bludgeon us with his “struggle,” he tells how to use it and learn from it, and what we will do with that struggle to make a better tomorrow. For me, that tomorrow is today, already. This is such a historic event that the Goosebumps from last night still haven’t left me.

And with that, I leave my computer, to say a little prayer for my country. That she is blessed with good judgment, so that the world, just like John McCain, might stop viewing the American People as a group of spoiled children.

Obama in Miami

2008-05-26T13:39:00.000-07:00

Rhetoric at the CANF: Obama speaks to Cuban-Americans

On May 23, I heard Senator Barack Obama deliver a speech for the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) during a luncheon at the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Miami. The luncheon was in remembrance of Cuba’s independence. What I took away from this day I learned, more than anywhere else, in the long line waiting for the valet to deliver my car. It was here that the unedited responses of many a guayabera-clad-young-professional-Cuban-American was overheard by my always open ears.

In this line, the general reaction did not surprise me, though I had hoped for better. “I loved Jorge Mas’s speech; and Marco Rubio never disappoints, but what did you think about Obama? I thought it was a bunch of rhetoric.” That was the general flow of conversation. And suddenly I was filled with a flood of sadness.

I realize that it will be difficult to penetrate what is a thick and stubborn coat of dogma long in the making. I wonder how it is that these people, my people, don’t realize that their stubborn, single-minded ways of thinking about Cuba have not gotten them anywhere in over forty years. Isn’t it time to change the course of thought and come to an understanding that diplomacy is key in dealing with Cuba?

Diplomacy. This was one of Obama’s points, among many. Obama’s point was also to, not only deliver a single-keyed keynote on Cuba, but to talk also about the Americas as a whole. With an understanding that America will not, and cannot, become “a more perfect union” if it does not, in fact, call upon the unity required in the Americas. Those that have heeded the call of the Globalized world have grown with it – the Euro is strong because of a union – the European Union. If America does follow suit, and lead in the Americas toward a similar union then we will fall back (and I daresay,we have already fallen a ways back).

In the same vein: if Cuban-Americans do not meet the changing pulse of the world, then Cuba will never have the freedom these self-same Cuban-Americans have so sought after, so long-talked-about. Jorge Mas Santos, chairman of the CANF, said, in a speech leading up to Obama's, that change will come from within the island. But, how can change come from within an island that is sealed off? In order to peel away the layers of imprisonment and barriers, we must seek diplomacy and infiltrate in this way – get inside, before we can “make a change from within.” Without this diplomacy, change will never come.

House Speaker, Marco Rubio, said (also in one of the speeches leading up to Obama's) “we will always be the sons and daughters of exiles.” This is true, and I include myself in this group. I too love the island of Cuba, without ever having set foot –sadly -- on its shores. I too want to see justice for the eight years my grandfather spent as a political prisoner. The only difference between myself and the men in guayaberas in the valet line at the Intercontinental is that I am open to the idea that change is necessary, especially at this juncture in time, when the seemingly infallible voice of Castro has quieted to the lesser force of his brother Raul. Change is inherent to the situation of Cuba, and hence our policies must change.

The men in the valet line mentioned “rhetoric.” They said that Obama was using “rhetoric.” However, Obama’s speech was a clearly outlined and well-structured speech based on FDR’s “Four Freedoms.” Adopting these to the Americas, Obama expressed how he would bring about (using clear examples), Political and Religious freedom; Freedom from want and Freedom from Fear in the Americas. He then went on to say that it would be easy for him to come here to Miami, and do what other leaders have done and offer a slew of false promises to Cuban-Americans: tell them what they want to hear, and then ignore them when they get to Washington (AKA: George W). Instead, Obama voiced his desires for speaking with Raul, using the embargo (which he would keep) as leverage in discussions to advance the purposes of the United States. Meanwhile, Marco Rubio and Jorge Mas Santos claim that even speaking with Raul would be a dramatic “surrender.” Which of these, I ask you, is the “rhetoric?” Rhetoric which is, according to dictionary.com, “an undue use of exaggeration or display; bombast.”

Yes, I too am the daughter of exiles. I too own a guayabera, and I too have defended my Miami-Cubans many times over. The only difference is that I take the advice that Jorge Mas Santos gave to Obama: to “Listen.”

I vow to listen to the times; to the world; and to the need to change our course of action, considering that that which we have clung to for so many years has not allowed us to progress. I hope that our leaders will do the same.

Jorge Mas Santos, when he addressed Obama, told him, very cleverly, that he too had been shaped by the “dreams of [his] father.” His father was Jorge Mas Canosa – which, as his son so eloquently expressed, brought the Cuban struggle from the streets of Miami to the Halls of Washington. The trick now is to take that struggle into the new millennium, appending changes where need be. Listening.

Giving Birth in the Time of Obama

2008-05-18T13:52:00.000-07:00

In the past several weeks, I have gone from a villa in St. Thomas to a theatre in Amsterdam, to a Nobel Prize laureate’s home in Abeokuta, Nigeria to the garbage ridden, and beautifully chaotic world of Lagos, Nigeria. And yet, everywhere I went, we spoke about the place where I am from: America. And, for once, it wasn’t solely in scorn – everywhere, we were speaking about Obama.

In St. Thomas, my friends, newly-wed, and cheerfully swaying away early marital bliss at a Caribbean destination wedding, discussed the promises of what it might mean to have Obama as a president. While putting on a play in Amsterdam, the Dutch told us they might stop hating us (Americans) if Obama won. And, perhaps the most interesting – in Nigeria, where I was lucky to be in the company of writer and Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, we lunched and dined – our dinner conversations revolving around the comparison of current corruption in Nigeria and America (under Bush – seemingly not so different from that of Nigeria. American corruption being more disguised, but just as powerful). And, then, later, in a marketplace in Lagos, when I was standing, buying old silkworm strands of cloth with a friend, the vendor asked us if we had any children. My friend is 27 and I am 29 – both of us are unmarried and childless. We explained this to the vendor and the vendor said: “Oh, I see, you are waiting. When Obama is president then you will have children.” And then he smiled, enormously. As if, in his own way, uttering the very essence of Obama’s campaign: hope.

In a world where Bush claims God told him to invade Iraq; when there are t-shirts of a monkey eating a banana with the slogan Obama ’08 inscribed (sold in Georgia), Obama is America’s only hope. It is also, our most difficult feat – to get him elected, under such circumstances. I can only hope that the vendor in Africa was right – that within the next eight years, I will live an America that I am proud of, under a president that I admire…and that I will, indeed, give birth to my children under such a state.

Sporting Obama

2008-01-28T06:37:00.000-08:00

I've never worn a candidate on my chest -- well, at least not in public; no hearts on my sleeve. There was that time, I'll admit, when I was in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the Clintonmania (for Bill, not Hillary) was so infectious that I bought a t-shirt from the Clinton Library Store -- a jersey-type T, with a big number 42 on it. Truth is though, that I was more excited about the design of the Clinton Library than anything else at that moment. Then there was the time when I was on the verge of buying a sticker that said: "Bush stay out of my bush." But then I thought: no -- that's just not my style. Generally, I stay out of the sticker, button, and t-shirt battles -- It's too alfalfa-sprouting-hippy-like to fill my car with flower-power, or wear shirts that say: "war is not healthy for children and other living things." Perhaps I've been a cynic...

Until now -- this morning I woke up, went straight to Barack Obama's official site ( http://www.barackobama.com/index.php ) and I bought myself a T-shirt -- a khaki affair of a thing imprinted with the face of the man I hope will be our future president. This says quite a bit: it says the cynic in me is hopeful; the cynic in me is excited...the cynic in me is dying.

Harmony and Dissonance

2007-12-20T07:02:00.000-08:00

If you haven't made it out to the the MAM (Miami Art Museum) for the Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller show, called "The Killing Machine & Other Stories," I would recommend it. It's over on January 20 -- and what I especially suggest is that you don't miss out on the branch of the show that takes place at the Freedom Tower. For more info: here is the MAM's website: http://www.miamiartmuseum.org/exhibitions-07-10-21-cardiff.asp

Also, here is a short, personal tale of my experience at the show -- hopefully, it'll make you want to go and see/hear/experience it, it sure moved the hell out of me.

Janet Cardiff's 40 part Motet @ The Freedom Tower

Near the edge of Downtown Miami there stands a Spanish-style Tower, casting its orange shadow of history over us. Once the headquarters of a newspaper – Miami News and Metropolis -- it later became the processing center for endless Cuban Immigrants fleeing Castro’s regime. It is from this period, between 1962 – 1974, that the tower gained its lofty name: The Freedom Tower.

My grandfather was one of the many Cubans that filtered through the tower, and so the other day, when he found out there was an art exhibit there, he told me to come along. The tower, after a period of disrepair, was bought and fixed, and now holds its corridors clear and strong to bear the weight of whatever kind of art its curators choose to make live inside it. These days, Janet Cardiff and her Partner George Bures Miller, show an installation piece there – it’s called 40 part motet and, at first sight, its just a room where, at the center, there are forty tall-standing speakers forming a broad circle around two sitting, museum-style benches. And then the music starts.

During our visit, when the music started, moved towards the center of the room, within the realm of the speakers. I go to sit, but Papan (my grandfather) says he prefers to stand. “I am a man that stands,” he says. The music that begins its quiet haunt is a 16th century choral piece by Thomas Tallis. Cardiff recorded an English cathedral choir – giving each of the boys (or young men) that composed the choir an individual mic, so that she could later transfer each of their voices into one of the speakers…

...And here we are, listening. Papan stands in the center of the space and all of a sudden I see his hand come to his brow, as the music makes the rounds around him. Sometimes several voices join and sometimes the voices are disparate, single, and solitary. Sometimes their high pitch is a screech and sometimes the choral blessing of divinity takes hold. My grandfather starts to sob…I go to him and hold him in my arms, his bony 84- year old shoulder fits in the cup of my hand. There are no muscles supporting it, except the ones that are in my own, younger hand…His face reddens with tears and I want him to stop crying, but he doesn’t want that, he wants to cry and cry, allowing himself to be moved by the gentle, rough, and furtive voices around him.

Mapping

2007-12-12T07:02:00.000-08:00

The name of this mixed-media piece is "Area of Loss" -- it's by an artist named Francesca Berrini, represented by Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art in San Francisco, CA. It's a piece I bought during Basel at The Bridge Art Fair, and which I wanted to share with you all -- because I think her work is particularly pertinent right now. What she does: she takes old atlases and cuts pieces out of them, re-arranging them and creating new countries and rules. Here, for instance, there is a great "area of loss" in the middle of the sea and amid invented land masses, reminiscent of bodies lost at war and taken in by the tide. Or, perhaps this "area of loss" is a failed attempt at claiming the sea itself. There are other pieces in Berrini's series where she points out areas that are "beautiful" or simply that one area is point "A" and another point "B". These small fictive maps (they are about 7 X 5 inches) are important now, considering our own American perspective on the world -- perhaps she is trying to point out the ridiculous efforts of neo-colonialism and empire in a global world, while at the same time paradoxically revelling in similar ideas of claim and creation. There is a play on both Utopia and a world gone wrong in these, just as there is something both fascinating and preposterous about map-making, which points to our strengths and weaknesses as human beings -- and which she seems to have tapped into with these pieces.

Designer Days

2007-12-10T10:48:00.000-08:00

...So, Basel Miami Beach is over. And with it has gone a sweep of design days, sprinkled with visions for those among us who like our occasional dose of visual saturation. There's plenty to say about what sold, what didn't, who got their big break, who didn't...and so on and so forth. But there's also a good deal to say about the things that surrounded us this weekend. I mean everything: from the pristine mosaics at CIFO to the bottles we drank from. Take for a moment, a stroll through Sushi Samba's GINZATROPICALIA: Graffiti gone global (which went on all weekend). Here, the neo-urban paint-can scrawl took over the walls, but paint wasn't the only pigment on the palate -- there was also the Canton Ginger Mojito which left a soft zing in your mouth -- fresh and sweet. It's a nice twist on the Cuban-style Mojito and I give Kudos to whoever decided to bring East and West together here, appropriately. But also, and here's the point: Kudos on the design and marketing of this brand -- it's elegant and sexy and it's just right. http://domainedecanton.com/home.html

Consider this an invitation to chime in -- tell us what you saw (and not necessarily on walls) that's worth a bit of art-talk.

Today's Pick

2007-12-07T11:08:00.000-08:00

My Favorite Artist of the Day: Kamrooz Aram -- Find him at NADA...at the 5BE gallery (Oliver Kamm)

All about the G's

2007-12-06T05:16:00.000-08:00

Oh G: G-Art at Basel

It’s hard to describe the kind of work that’s around. It’s thick and colorful, and there’s a lot of it. It has something in common- you can’t quite place your finger on it; but it has something to do with Google.

“G-Art.” That’s what I’ve decided to call it. G, as in G-for-Google, but multiplied and spread to other, infinite G’s. It’s an art that is fully G-lobalized; G-ender-savvy; G-ory; G-reen (trendily); all about the G’s (money); a response to our ideas about G-od (as always) – seen through and made by Google Eyes. And by Google Eyes I mean a system by which we take-in information, in layers and all at once, and then only with time do we start to filter it - this is the way we see the world today, and hence art – through a process of overwhelming sensation and information that we then begin to put together. Just like running a Google search. No answers – just a lot of options. No truths, just a lot of truths.

These Google Eyes – we can see them in a number of artist’s work: Sirous Namazi, for instance – who’s playing with that good-old grid (digitized this time) -- just to name one.
http://www.artnet.com/artist/423895634/sirous-namazi.html

And, what about the brilliant Xu Zhen: ShanghART Supermarket
http://www.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/exhibition.htm?exbId=1519
This is literally a 24 hour mini-mart replicated for our thought and pleasure here at Art Basel Miami Beach. You can buy everything in the mart, except it’s all empty – empty shells of coca-cola and chinese goodies. It’s a gimmick, but it’s smart. And touches upon all of the above-mentioned G’s. The prices are in Yen (but ask one of the cashiers and in five seconds flat she’ll tell you how to convert it into dollars).

more later. Too much to see, too little time.

2007-12-04T06:46:00.000-08:00

CURRENT & UPCOMING:

I wanted to extend an invitation to join me during Basel. My work will be in various places; I hope you can make it to one or all of them during the all mighty Basel-athon.

EXPOSED!
[A juried show of Miami Artists at Artformz gallery]
Saturday Dec. 8 is the Wynwood Basel Walk open 7pm-LATE
Miami Design DistrictAtlas Plaza 130 NE 40th St., #2Miami, Florida 33137

Hours:
Tues-Fri: 11:00am - 6:00pmSat: 11:00am - 4:00pm
also by appointment
phone/fax 305.572.0040
alette@artformz.net
www.artformz.net

WOM @ The Bridge Art Fair!
W O R D O F M O U T H : F I T S I N A B O X
DE C E M B E R 6-9, 2007 @TH E BR I D G E AR T FA I R
JU R I E D EX H I B I T I O N
The Catalina Hotel
1732 Collins Avenue

ART FOR A CAUSE
To benefit The Dellutri Christmas Foundation
@ Sal’s Abatement
301 NW 36th Street
PH: 305-576-8866
Opening: DEC 5, 6-8pm
Also open for the Wynwood Block Party!

For STUDIO VISITS DURING BASEL
PLEASE CALL IN ADVANCE or EMAIL:
Vanessa Garcia 305-450-9931
contact@vanessagarcia.org