AmoXcalli

New Post Up On the New AmoXcalli Website

2008-06-24T08:05:00.000-07:00

Want to find out what I thought of The Ballad of Wilbur and the Moose? Head on over to AmoXcalli's new home and find out!

AmoXcalli and Cuentecitos Are Moving

2008-06-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

AmoxCalli and Cuentecitos are moving. I found that having blogs scattered all over the place was wearing me out and decided to consolidate to make it easy on myself and for everyone else. I'm still working on moving over the link lists and fixing glitches but I've imported all the posts from both blogs to the new website and will be posting anything new there. The homepage is www.ginaruiz.com and from there you can link to all the sub-domains like AmoXcalli (amoxcalli.ginaruiz.com) and Cuentecitos (cuentecitos.ginaruiz.com). Hope to see you all there!

Graceling

2008-06-17T14:49:00.000-07:00

Graceling
Author: Kristen Cashore
Publisher: Harcourt
ISBN: ISBN 9780152063962

In a world of seven kingdoms where seven very different kings rule there are . A special people called the Graced. The Graced have eyes of different colors and their graces manifest in different ways. Katsa has been graced with killing and the rumors of her bare-handed and terrible skill is famed throughout the kingdoms. Katsa has learned to live with her grace but it is a lonely life. She is a key player in a secret organization called the Council and tries to make use of her grace in a positive way.

One day a venerable grandfather of kings has been kidnapped and Kasta is determined to find out what lies behind it. In her quest, she meets Po, a prince of another kingdom unlike anyone she’s ever met, with a fighting grace that is uncanny and mysterious. With Po, she has found a friend and together they set out to solve the mystery of who kidnapped the grandfather.

Not all is as it seems with Po or the very creepy King Leck who is known for his kindness to animals and children. There is something strangely unsettling about this king who lives very far away.

Katsa and Po are wonderful characters, rich and breathing life, fire and intelligence. I found myself completely caught up in this wonderful story of intrigue, mystery and romance. I was almost breathless at the adventure and admired the loner Katsa more and more as the story progressed. Prince Po is equally wonderful and complex, his mysterious fighting grace coupled with his sensitivity to nature, his deep kindness and warm heart made him a hero worth cheering for.

Kristen Cashore in her publishing debut has penned a rollicking good read. Political intrigue, adventure, a richly imagined world with well-defined characters that leap off the page make this book one that will be read again and again. I sense a sequel and I can’t wait! Katsa is my new favorite heroine and the brave Princess Bitterblue is someone I want to hear more about. Both boys and girls will want to read this story if they can wrest the book away from their parents.

BEA in L.A.

2008-06-17T11:44:00.000-07:00

BookExpo America is over now and I’ve finally finished unpacking my books. I’m settling in for a long summer of reading and it looks like it will be a good one based on what I’ve read so far. It’s a darn good thing I quit my day job and am now freelancing which gives me time to catch up on my reviewing and reading.

Having BEA in Los Angeles this year was a special treat for me. It had both pros and cons but no matter what, it remains my favorite event each year and one I eagerly look forward to.

Exhibitors setting up on Thursday

No shipping meant I could pick up whatever I wanted without worrying about the cost of shipping it or those agonizing moments in line going through boxes and deciding what to leave and what to take. That was sheer joy. On the other hand, I missed my visit to New York and quite honestly, I prefer the Javits Convention Center. To me, it makes perfect sense. It goes straight across on two floors of convention hall making it easy to navigate and easy to get back and forth to shipping with piles of heavy books. The Los Angeles Convention Center (sorry L.A.) is a nightmare. Granted it’s huge and beautiful but why in God’s name does it meander so? The Children’s Book section was in the West Hall miles away it seemed from the shipping area. The panels were spread out all over the place and I missed several just trying to find them. The Main section was nice and the booths were easy to find but trying to get from there to the West Hall and the theatre was like visiting another country. At the end of each day, I was too exhausted to go socializing at parties and events. Instead, I went home and passed out with throbbing feet.

oooooooooooooh Inkdeath!

Another detriment to having BookExpo in L.A. for me meant I missed out on seeing publishing friends I know who live in New York and couldn’t make it out for the trip. For those of you who stayed in NYC this year, I missed you. I miss Times Square and shopping and oh God, I missed the food and the pizza. New York, I missed you!

I so did not win the signed Led Zepplin guitar.

Donald Kaplan and Jeph Loeb

BEA in Los Angeles also meant that my five-year old granddaughter Jasmine and my two-year old grandson Aiden got to come for a bit. Their mom and my photographer Marissa Ruiz, brought them for a couple of hours on Saturday. J & A got to meet Carl the dog, who was quite taken with Aiden and they played catch for a bit while we blocked the aisle. Jasmine was able to come with me to a Candlewick Press event in the theatre where the likes of Katherine Paterson, Jane Yolen, Kate DiCamillo and MT Anderson discussed their portions of the marvelous new book Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out. Jane Yolen, one of my literary heroes read her piece for the book – a poem of an imagined conversation between John and Abigail Adams. Jasmine was entranced. The artwork for the book looks astounding and you’ll be seeing my review later.

Good Dog Carl and Aiden Ruiz play ball in the aisle

First Book has a great new campaign to promote books. Posters of famous book characters lined the halls at BEA with the taglines, What if you had never met this explorer, this bunny, this mouse? It was fantastic.

Here is Jasmine with the Dora poster - um live action anyone?

BookExpo for Rachel meant a surprising meeting on Friday in the shipping area with her long-lost, never met before Australian cousin. We were trying to find out if we could find a dolly and the man in front of us turned around to answer Rachel and he turned out to be her cousin from the Australian branch of the family! That was wild.

Rachel B and her new found cousin Tony Nash

I had a chance to meet Brittany Duncan, the publicist at Candlewick that keeps me up to date on everything Candlewick is doing. She’s just as lovely in person as she is in our email correspondence and it was a pleasure meeting her.

The Dragonology event

I had also gone to the previous Candlewick Press Dragonology event with Donald Kaplan, the son of our local booksellers Debbie and Jeremy Kaplan who were at BEA. The Kaplans own Read Books, a fine establishment of used books and new magazines. We spend lots of time there and it was fun to hang out with them at the show. Donald got to play the new Dragonology game for Nintendo Wii and I was quite taken with the animation and graphics on it. I learned of Monsterology, publication date of 8/12 and Spyology (10/28) and I can’t wait.

I ran into Yoda

If I were still working for AWN, I’d be nagging them to write about that game and the announcement that was made that day that Universal had optioned the Dragonology books film rights. A Dragonology movie! We used to have this tally at the office of how many books I could call that would be optioned. I seem to have this uncanny sense of what will be picked up and Dragonology was one of my calls, along with Tale of Despereaux, Spiderwick, Eragon, Coraline, Skullduggery Pleasant and many others. I wonder if I could turn that into a job…and yes I know I should have dragged myself away from the books to go to the Books to Film panels.

I met new friends at BookExpo in Los Angeles too. I missed the Latino panels because I got lost in the books. There were some that really caught my eye and a few I went hunting like Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book and Corneila Funke’s long awaited Inkdeath. The convention center was packed and I often heard exclamations of people oohing and ahing over the books. I’m not the only book geek in town, which makes me very happy.

My roommate Rachel came along to photograph the event on Friday and quickly became a BEA fan. She was a joy to have around and often spotted things I missed. Her effervescence and joyful energy made it that much more fun. At one point I turned and asked Debbie Kaplan, “Where’s Rachel?” and she said, “Oh she’s back there with some guy. I think his name is Slash.” Sure enough, there was Rachel B chatting away in the HarperCollins booth to Slash of Guns ‘n Roses who was nice as nice can be. We both got pictures taken, although my face looks a little bizarrely twisted.

Slash!

Rachel and Slash

Slash, me and my strangely twisted face

Rachel and I also met the marvelously talented team of Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart at the First Book booth and got the Peter Pan pop up and Megabeasts signed. Rachel works for GLAD, Inc. (The Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness) and it just popped into my head to ask if they had ever considered writing a pop-up book on signing. Turns out they have and that’s all I’m saying at this juncture other than I’m a long time fan of paper engineering and arts as well as a huge pop-up/mechanical book collector.

Sabuda and Reinhart signing

I missed Neil Gaiman who I would have dearly loved to speak with, Barbara Walters whom I admire greatly and Jamie Lee Curtis whom I had met at the Glad Gospel Brunch a couple of weeks beforehand. I met John Dean who signed his book on Barry Goldwater, Laura Numeroff, Elizabeth Blumel who was an absolute darling and more authors than I can count. I missed out on Susan Orlean’s (The Orchid Thief) first book for children and one I am dying to find. I missed Cory Doctorow, whom I greatly admire (sigh) and Cecil Castelucci, of whom I’m a great fan. She is local I hear, so maybe I’ll meet her one of these days. One of my biggest thrills was meeting Nikki Giovanni on Sunday. She is one of my favorite poets and to meet her was a great honor. A lovely, sweet and gracious lady she was too. Another special moment was meeting the very sweet Jessica Barksdale Inclan (featured on La Bloga by Daniel Olivas) whom I met through Event Mingle, the BEA social calendaring tool. Darn it! I just now realized I missed one of my favorite authors signing one of my all time favorite books….Christopher Moore and the special edition of Lamb which has to be one of the funniest books I ever read and completely twisted too. That hurts that I missed him. My idea of heaven - lunch with James Morrow (Only Begotten Daughter, Towing Jehovah) and Christopher Moore (Lamb, Bloodsucking Fiends, Island of the Sequined Love Nuns). Yeah, I know, I’m probably a little twisted too. Have you read Towing Jehovah? Oh. My. God. And Lamb? Oh please tell me you have…it’s absolutely wonderful and completely irreverent.

Jessica Barksdale Inclan and me

The books! The books were there in all their glory; big, beautiful stacks of them. There were so many that I missed and so many that I brought home. I can’t wait to get to reading and reviewing them all. Some of the books that made it home and onto my reading list are:

Graceling
I Am Apache
Edward Hopper, Painter of Light and Shadow
The Toss of a Lemon
Sea of Poppies
The Enchantress of Florence
Pure Goldwater
Planet Walker
War Journal
Too Many Toys
Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out (gorgeous)
Inkdeath (highly anticipated)
The White Mary
2666 (OMG Roberto Bolano!)
Sweetsmoke
The Graveyard Book (highly anticipated)
I’m With the Band
River of Words
The Viewer (Shaun Tan!)
A Growling Place
The Runaway Dolls (oooh Selznic did the illustrations)
and many, many more.

Nikki Giovanni and me

One of the panels I did manage to make it to (late) was one on marketing and one of the panelists was Mark Sarvas of the Elegant Variation. There was a woman (didn’t catch her name) who started a company pushing literary events to big companies (sounds like a dream job to me) and it resonated as I knew exactly how she felt to be bursting with new ideas that would take a company to a new level and direction but be ignored because people are adverse to anything that is out of the box thinking and think you’re doing something wrong. Yeah, that’s one reason I quit my day job. (If you ever think of starting an L.A. branch of your company I want to work for you).

I also stopped by the Dark Horse booth, which was busy and fun. I stopped and spoke to Jeremy Atkins and met Dirk Wolf. I also noticed a particularly interesting book on cartoonists and animators that I’m terribly interested in. I’ll have to look into it.

Jeremy & Dirk at Dark Horse Comics

Everywhere I went, people were doing the brisk, interesting business of books. Rights were being bought and sold, authors were signing, publishers were stacking rapidly decreasing piles of books, meetings were being held. Librarians, those wonderful heroes were everywhere loading up for their local libraries. I have an extra soft spot in my heart for librarians. When I was ten years old, we moved to a crappy little town called Cudahy or as we called it, Crudahy. I hated it and wanted nothing more than to get out of that town as fast as I could and never go back. There was one bright side. One day I found the local library that was attached to the park. I’d never been in a library before. I walked in and roamed amongst the stacks mesmerized but not knowing what to do. I was super shy too and would never even have asked. The librarian there found me and took a long time explaining the library, how to get a card and how it worked. I took my application for a library card home to my mother to sign and was back the next day. That librarian took me aside and talked to me long enough to figure out what she thought I’d like. I loved the book she handed me and it forever changed me. I became a book person overnight. I went to that little library every day, wrote book reports for the Summer Reading Program and read everything that I could get my hands on. It pains me know that libraries are in danger, that our tax money is more geared to war than literacy. That nameless librarian all those years ago changed my life, she touched me, and who knows how many countless other children’s lives were changed, made better, more expanded by the books she recommended. How many people’s lives have been touched by their local librarian? It makes me happy to see the librarians, so many of them at BookExpo. I always have the best time speaking with them and in each that I speak to is that unquenchable love of books and their desire to share them with the world within and without their libraries. Whatever would we do without them? Let’s hope we never have to find out.

HarperCollins was a fun booth to visit, as was Scholastic where I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of Inkdeath, which I coveted. Penguin, Random House, Harry Abrams, McGraw Hill all were fun booths. At Taschen, Rachel and I were mesmerized by the beautiful art books. We opened The Big Penis Book, which was (not so surprisingly) about penises, lots of them and very big ones, very BIG. We were in shock and couldn’t stop turning the pages and exclaiming. A crowd had formed behind us and there was a lot of exclaiming and murmuring as we turned the pages. The books photography was beautiful, if bizarre and it certainly was a conversation piece. I didn’t know one could actually tie a penis into a knot. This is one coffee table book sure to entertain.

All in all, I’d say BookExpo, the City of Angels version was quite the show and I had the best time. According to the BookExpo America website BEA 2008 was a great success with over 37,000 registered attendees representing over 80 countries. Please do visit the BEA website and check out the podcasts of all the sessions I missed. There is also a touching tribute to Tim Russert and a podcast of his 2006 BEA appearance.

I look forward to it being in New York next year and maybe this time, I’ll finally make it to the Guggenheim.

In Memorium - Paula Gunn Allen

2008-05-31T20:22:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a long day at BookExpo America and was deeply saddened to find this message of Paula Gunn Allen's passing in my email from Denise Chavez:

Dear BBF Friends,
We received this news from Feroza Jusawalla, now teaching at UNM, about the passing of Paula Gunn Allen. I have loved Paula and her vital and impassioned work for many years and read with her several years ago. Please keep her in light and lift her to the ancestors.
Denise Chavez
-----Forwarded message-----
Paula Gunn Allen, b.1939, Laguna Pueblo/Sioux/Scots/Lebanese New Mexico native, passed away peacefully on the night of May 29, 2008 at her home in Fort Bragg, California, after a long and courageous battle with lung cancer. Family and friends were at her side.
This poet, philosopher, scholar, and teacher grew up in Cubero, New Mexico. She received her doctorate in American Studies from UNM in 1976; that dissertation evolved into The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions(1986), a pioneering work in Native American , feminist, and GLB studies. She also edited the benchmark book for the MLA about teaching Native Studies: Studies in American Indian Literature: Curriculum and Course Designs. She was also a prolific writer of poems, fiction, essays; her last scholarly book, on Pocahontas, was a nominee for the National Book Award. She retired from UCLA in 1999, but always checked back into New Mexico, never stopped being a teacher and mentor, never stopped cracking and appreciating outrageous jokes and bad puns. (The last one she and I shared, about 3 weeks ago, was "Well, you know what they say: What happens in the Zuni Mountains stays in the Zuni mountains,,,"---oh, my, her laugh. )

Her posthumous volume of poems, America The Beautiful, will be published by West End Press within the year.

How Cool is This? Get Your Buffy Fix Now.

2008-05-22T20:31:00.000-07:00

I so want the Tarot deck!!

Press release from Dark Horse Comics:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Mystical Parlor Games

MILWAUKIE, OR—Twentieth Century Fox Licensing and Merchandising and Dark Horse Comics are proud to present two magical products that are sure to provide hours of sleepless slumber parties this fall. Joss Whedon's mythology comes alive with the official Buffy the Vampire Slayer Tarot Deck and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer “Conversations with Dead People” Board!

Named for an award-winning episode from Season Seven of the BVS television series—and written by Buffy Season Eight: Wolves at the Gate author Drew Goddard—the Buffy the Vampire Slayer “Conversations with Dead People” Board is a great game for fans, in this world and the next, to communicate with each other about life, death, and other mysteries. In the tradition of the Sunnydale Hellmouth, through which countless entities gained entry, fearless souls can let voices from the other side guide the planchette along the board to spell out the answers to their queries. Folks can channel their inner Willow and hone their witchy skills, providing hours of fun for the whole séance! Accompanying the game board and planchette, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer “Conversations with Dead People” Board includes an exclusive, comic-style instruction book featuring sequential art by Buffy SeasonEight guest illustrator Paul Lee!

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer Tarot Deck was written and conceived by renowned tarot writer Rachel Pollack, author of twelve books on the tarot, including the renowned 78 Degrees of Wisdom. She teams with long-time Buffy artist Paul Lee to create this fully painted 78-card deck, drawing on characters, themes, and legends from all eight seasons of Whedon's masterpiece. This special deck was created by Pollack not merely as a collector's item, but as an actual, working tarot deck: the cards come with a book explaining their divinatory meanings and use. The traditional symbols of the tarot are reinterpreted through the vision of Whedon's Buffy universe.

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer “Conversations with Dead People” Board and Buffy the Vampire Slayer Tarot Deck will both be available in September 2008 and retail at $14.99-$29.99

About Twentieth Century Fox Licensing & Merchandising

A recognized industry leader, Twentieth Century Fox Licensing and Merchandising licenses and markets properties worldwide on behalf of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Twentieth Television and Fox Broadcasting Company, as well as third-party lines. The division is aligned with Twentieth Century Fox Television, one of the top suppliers of prime-time entertainment programming to the broadcast networks.

About Dark Horse Comics

Since 1986, Dark Horse Comics has proven to be a solid example of how integrity and innovation can help broaden a unique storytelling medium and establish a small, homegrown company as an industry giant. In addition to publishing comics from top talent like Frank Miller, Mike Mignola, Neil Gaiman, and comics legend Will Eisner, their highly successful line of comics and products based on popular properties includes Star Wars, Aliens, Conan, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Emily the Strange, Tim Burton, Trigun, and The Incredibles. Today Dark Horse Comics is the third-largest comic-book publisher in the U.S. and is recognized as the world's leading publisher of licensed comics material.

Fundraising for China Earthquake Victims

2008-05-15T09:31:00.000-07:00

I read this in my email this morning from the childlit list_serv. I've copied the message and hope it helps.

Hello everyone,

Below is an email from a University of Illinois student. Please feel
free to share this email with your students and colleagues - it is in
regards to the earthquake in China. The email has some facts as well
as ways to help. I'm sure there are many similar emails circulating
around too. Thanks!

Dear friends,
As you may know, an earthquake struck the Sichuan province on Monday,
causing massive amounts of damage to property, infrastucture, and over
ten thousand deaths, lives which will never be recovered; students
whose studies came to a terrible, unexpected end, fathers who will
never return home, and children who, most tragically of all, will
never get a chance at life. If you didn't know the details, please
take a few moments to look over the cold, hard facts presented below,
and to think of the human lives who are still in desperate need of
help.

Facts:
- The Sichuan province was hit by a earthquake rated 7.9 on the
Richter scale on Monday
- There are nearly 900 trapped students in Juyuan Middle School this
moment, only ONE survivor has been found so far.
- In some areas, 80% of the buildings were reported to have been destroyed
- Over 12,000 reported dead or injured
- Dozens of aftershocks felt as far away as Beijing (960 miles away)
and the Thai capitol Bangkok (1,200 miles away)
- 3.5 million homes were damaged or destroyed
- 25,000 may be trapped
- Sichuan, not historically known for earthquakes, was unprepared for
an earthquake of any magnitude
- This is the largest earthquake on record in China for over 30 years
China is still reeling from the massive and catastrophic snowstorms
earlier this year. In the face of another disaster only three months
later, an earthquake whose death toll will eclipse that of the
snowstorm, the people of China need all the help they can get.

These are some donations methods. There are on-campus donations
available through OCEF and CSSA.

(1) Red Cross in China or in US
Go to www.redcross.org.cn, Click the " " and follow the instruction
there. Visa Credit Card is accepted and
international transction fee is around $1.94 for $100 transaction.
OR
Simply www.redcross.org and under FIND IT FAST, click Response to
CHINA's EARTHQUAKE.

(2) Hong Kong Red Cross
http://www.redcross.org.hk/home.cfm?langId=1&Ver=G
Click the "Donations" Button at the left upper corner.

(3) American Red Cross Central Illinois Chapter
Mail check to:
404 Ginger Bend Dr., Champaign, IL 61822
Please make the check payable to American Red Cross, and please
CLEARLY MEMO it : for disaster relief of earthquake in China.

(4) Tsinghua Alumni Association in Greater Chicago Area (registered
501(c)(3) non-profit organization)
Please make your check payable to
Tsinghua Alumni Association in Greater Chicago Area.
Also indicate "China Earthquake Relief" in the memo
area of the check.
All transactions of donations will be published online
with the last name listed, also the company match will
go with the donation to earthquake and will be listed
also.
Receipts will be provided by request.
--------------------
For more Information or stories:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2008/05/14/2003411903
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/13/china.school.ap/index.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=agcLVaG1xYz4&refer=asia
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7396400.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7396650.stm
------------------
If you have any personal questions or concern, feel free to contact me.
Thank you and please help spread awareness of this catastrophe!
Yankun Guo
------------------
Yankun Guo
University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign
Asian American Association | Outreach Chair
Minority Student Business Association | Publicity Chair
Actuarial Science Club | Newsletter Chair
Cell: 224.622.7124
Email: y.guo.521@gmail.com

The Countdown to Book Expo America Begins!

2008-05-07T09:50:00.000-07:00

Book Expo America is in Los Angeles this year and I'm thrilled because L.A is my home town. I'll miss New York this spring but I'm happy to be close to home. AmoXcalli will be covering the event each evening. There will be photos, tales from the busy floor, hopefully interviews with authors if I can get them and party coverage. Most of all BEA is about the books and I'll be doing a lot of reporting on the books.

Is anyone going? Would you like to meet up? I'd love to hang out over coffee or a drink. First time in L.A.? Need suggestions of things to do after the show? I'm an Angeleno born and raised and LA is my town. I know where the best out of the way (non-fancy) places to eat are in downtown. Send me an email or a comment and I'll do my best to answer your L.A. questions.

Authors and illustrators, publishers and booksellers, I want to meet as many of you as I can and find out what's new, what's hot, what you're doing.

If you're a Latino children's or YA author, illustrator or publisher, I'd love to do interviews for Cuentecitos, my other blog that focuses on Latino Children's and YA literature. I'll also be covering the Latino panels, the graphic novel panels and all the editor buzz sessions. I'm going to be a busy, busy girl. Good thing I'll have help from my lovely photographer/daughter-in-law Marissa and a few other friends who are attending to get news, photographs and maybe even some video for AmoXcalli and Cuentecitos.

It's going to be fun! Welcome to L.A. Book Expo!

What Do Children Read?

2008-05-05T17:16:00.000-07:00

Interesting article in the Washington Post about the reading habits of children. It may surprise you. There's also a PDF'd 56-page report on the study. Very interesting reading, indeed.

The article in the Post is here.

I Want One!

2008-04-29T16:20:00.001-07:00

It's totally cute!

Read more at Chronicle books website

and Chronicle Books has a blog!!

News from That Yarn Store

2008-04-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

Here's news from my local yarn store, That Yarn Store. If you don't live in the area, they have a website and amazing yarns. Be a pal, help them stay in business. Sign up for their newsletter, visit them in the store and one the web, read my recommendation of them on LinkedIn.com. That Yarn Store customers are big readers and support the local bookstores. Let's return the favor.

AmoXcalli supports local and independent businesses. The economy isn't too great right now and we all need to pitch in and help small businesses stay in business. Buy local, by often. That's my preachy soapbox for the day. On to the news...

Now you have two flavors of sock classes, and a few sock
yarns to choose.

Frannie teaches her sock class on Saturdays at 1:30

Julia Hiser will be teaching a two-part class covering all your
sock-knitting basics - Heels, toes, the whole-shebang!
First-timers and the newly sock-conscious all welcome.
Learn to make a pair of lovely foot-coverings or improve upon
your techniques.
Items required: Set of size #3 douple-pointed needles and
Sport weight yarn.
Bring them, or buy them here.
Thursdays at 7 pm $45
You have to pre-register for this class.

,,,,,,,,,,,,

Learn to Knit Lace, Tuesday nights at 6. $30

***************
Atelier Zero is an email newsletter that lists cool Los Angeles
events and shops. Even if they hadn't listed That Yarn Store
events we would still love the list.
Check them out at http://atelierzero.com/

Here is the link for our Ravelry group:
http://www.ravelry.com/groups/that-yarn-store

………………………
Knit in Public Day, June 14th
Knitting in public is a wonderful way to spread the craft and
inspire all those would be knitters and crocheters to join in.

Beverly, Suzanne, and Deborah have been kind enough to
make suggestions on what we can do to celebrate the
World Wide Knit in Public Day on June 14th
Help us make this a memorable event please send us your ideas!

We're thinking about sitting outside at SWORKS,
and a Pic-Knit under the trees at Eagle Rock or Yosemite Rec Centers

………..
Spring Craftaganza. May 10, 1 to 5 pm
Thea from across the pond, and Mila, one of the 15 or so vendors,
have been planning this year's biannual event. Please come!
We've made an Evite,
http://www.evite.com/app/publicUrl/WWDXGNFVRLFMMUSXADVM/yarn
so you can send it to friends.

What: Spring Craftaganza, a hand-made craft fair
When: May 10, 1-5pm
Where: That Yarn Store - 5028 Eagle Rock Blvd
Why: Handmade is better! Plus free refreshments.

Spring Craftaganza is our yearly arts and crafts event where you
can purchase funky and unique handmade products created by
local artisans and crafters.
They offer everything from jewelry to clothes to handspun yarn.
Pick up a one-of-a-kind gift for your Mom (the next day is Mother's Day),
start your holiday shopping early, or snag something cool for yourself.
We’ll have free refreshments.

…………………….

We have a space at the Los Angeles County Fair in September.
We can't sell our goods, apparently, but we can show them off,
including our knitting and crocheting samples and even give lessons
and demonstrations. You are invited to help us hang out and show
stuff and answer knitting questions.
Other things where you can participate – submitting your projects for a
blue ribbon, and a fashion show.
Free admission to volunteers, a hefty perk for participating.

*******************************

You've asked for them….
Sewing Classes

Beginning Sewing *
Learn use a sewing machine and sew in straight lines
and curves. Bring home a pillowcase you’ll make yourself.
Materials provided.
~~Thursday, May 6, at 7pm~~ $30

Beginning Sewing, Part 2: pattern reading*
bring a simple pattern and your own material and supplies.
~~Thursday, May 29, at 7pm~~ $30
~~Saturday, May 31, at 11:30 am~~

Skirts Without Patterns*
Bring in measurements,
and your own fabric, thread and tools.
~~Thursday, May 1, at 7pm~~ $30
~~Saturday, May 3, at 11:30 am~~

*Please note that we have limited space and limited
sewing machines available for these classes.
When registering, please tell us if you will
need to borrow one of our sewing machines.
And please sign up early.

Since we keep eccentric hours, we'll always include..

Hour Ours

Sunday 12:00 to 5:00 pm

Monday closed

Tuesday 11:07 to 7:35
Closed 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Wednesday 11:30 to 8:30 ish
Closed 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Thursday 11:00 to 7:00 pm
(we will often be open evenings)

Friday 11:30 to 8:00 ish
Closed 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Saturday 11:00 to 6:00 pm

Ask a Mexican at Vroman's Bookstore

2008-04-29T08:01:00.000-07:00

Everyone's favorite Mexican, Gustavo Arrellano will be signing his book, Ask a Mexican at one of my favorite Booksense bookstores, Vroman's in Pasadena.

Saturday, May 3, 2008 4:00 p.m.
Gustavo Arellano discusses and signs Ask a Mexican
Location: Vroman's Bookstore

Vroman's has a pretty interesting slate of authors coming up...check their event calendar for details and the site for directions to a truly fabulous bookstore.

Lisa Alvarado's New Installation

2008-04-29T07:51:00.000-07:00

From my friend Lisa Alvarado, the following bit of news. Congratulations Lisa!!

Lisa Alvarado's Mexican Woman's Toolkit, Sin Fronteras is a large floral
tote bag hanging on wooden pegs, which visitors are invited to rummage
through. The bag belongs to a Mexican domestic in WWII-era Chicago: her
life is service to others, she has no privacy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/markart/2414858942/

Reimagining The Distaff Toolkit

"Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit" is an exhibition of contemporary art,
each of which has, at its visible core, a tool that was important for
women's domestic labor in the past (the 18th century through World War
II). The old tool becomes the fulcrum for a work of art. Each work and the
exhibit as a whole have the power to speak to viewers independently,
Artists are placing objects such as a dressmaker’s figure, diapers,
graters, grinders, needles, pins, pots, pans, baskets,
garden-seed-packets, rakes, hoes, dress patterns, dish-rags, rolling pins,
brooms, buckets, darning eggs, knives, rug-beaters, and other tools at the
center of their work. One piece will have an early 19th century distaff at
its visible core. Part of the point of this exhibition project is to
explore the idea of "seeing as context." As I imagine the process here, I
look at a tool that facilitated very hard and repetitive labor and that
evokes women's degradation as domestic drudges. I look again, through my
early 21st century eyes, at a moment when "old tools" have become
commodified and expensive, and I see costly beauty. Reimagining the
distaff toolkit for the purposes of this exhibition might include
(overlapping) gestures in any of the following directions – or other
directions – history / memory / gender / labor / material culture /
household objects / family relations / power and powerlessness / drudgery
/ craft and beauty. Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit puts utility in
conversation with art, the past in conversation with the present.

March-May 2008 Bennington (VT) Museum
Oct-Dec 2008 The Mead Museum, Amherst College
Jan-Feb 2009 Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ
March 2009 Oklahoma State University
Sept-Dec Union College, Schnectady, NY

http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2008/04/double-double-toil-and-trouble.html

--
Lisa Alvarado, poet, novelist, literary critic

A Curse Dark as Gold

2008-04-27T13:54:00.000-07:00

A Curse Dark as Gold
Author: Elizabeth C. Bunce
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
ISBN-10: 0439895766
ISBN-13: 978-0439895767

Do you love fairy tales? How about re-imagined ones? I do. I’ve always been fascinated by fairy tales and am always keenly interested when someone comes up with a new spin on an old tale. Sometimes I like them, sometimes I don’t, sometimes I’m bored and sometimes I really love them. A Curse Dark as Gold completely blew me out of the water. Elizabeth Bunce took the tale of Rumplestiltskin and not only brought something completely new and innovative to the story, but also completely changed it around to something completely wonderful.

A Curse Dark as Gold is the story of Charlotte Miller, a young woman struggling to save the family mill. Charlotte is a fascinating character. Her inner turmoils, her thoughts, hopes and dreams are all completely normal with a few exceptions, but intensely interesting. She is one of the strongest female characters that I’ve read in quite a while and I found myself completely entranced in her story and routing for her all the way. She is no vapid ingénue and there is no greedy, gold-loving king.

The story is complex, magical, dark and deep. There is whimsy, romance, normalcy, struggles and of course, a curse. There’s a mill to save and the lives that are entangled in it. It’s more than just a mill; it’s the town that depends on it. The story is set in the England of the pre-industrial revolution age and it resonates with whispers of big conglomerates taking over the small business owners of today.

This is tight writing. Each paragraph is well crafted and fluid. The book had me on the edge of my seat throughout and I could not put it down. Highly recommended!

Book Description from the Publisher:

"If you'll allow me to demonstrate, I do think I could be of some help to you here."

I smiled tightly. "You'd have to be able to make gold appear from thin air to be much help to us now, I'm afraid."

"Gold, you say?" he said quietly. "Well, not out of the air, maybe, but--" He reached toward Rosie and drew a length of straw free from her hat. From out of a pocket in his jacket appeared an old-fashioned handheld drop spindle, the kind no one uses anymore, and he sent it spinning with a turn of his hand. Slowly, as we watched, he drew out the straw and spun it--spun it!

As if it were a roving of wool! Rosie and I stood there and watched him, moment by moment, as the spindle bobbed and twirled. Something pulled out from the brown straw and through his knobby fingers, and where it should have gone onto the spindle, the finest strands of gleaming gold threads appeared. Round and round the spindle went, and the gleaming of gold turned with it. I don't know how long we watched it, turning and turning, flashing gold with every revolution. I could not take my eyes away.

Pat Mora's Bookjoy

2008-04-26T10:17:00.000-07:00

Pat Mora, one of my favorite authors has entered the wonderful world of blogging. Her Bookjoy Blog is all about finding the joy in books. She's hoping that we all contribute and comment on ideas for El día de los niños. What gives you bookjoy? Visit Pat often at She'll be a permanent link on the sidebars of both Cuentecitos and AmoXcalli. http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

From Cuentecitos and AmoXcalli, welcome to the kidlitosphere Pat!

A History of Western Art: From Prehistory to the 20th Century

2008-04-19T18:26:00.000-07:00

A History of Western Art: From Prehistory to the 20th Century
Author: Antony Mason
Editor: John T. Spike
Publisher: Abrams Young Readers
ISBN: 0-8109-9421-6
EAN: 9780810994218

The publishers aren’t exaggerating when they write that this book is lavishly illustrated. Each page is sumptuously, decadently illustrated with amazing works of art. It’s a visual feast as well as an informational one. The book is set up in format that makes it the subject easy to understand. There are well-defined descriptions of not only the art depicted but in some instances, of the process involved in creating it. I loved simple, yet clear arrows pointing from a description or a process or symbology of a particular piece of art to the section of work that it’s describing. I found the descriptions of how mosaics were made particularly fascinating.

I loved that this book depicted time periods and movements in art like Surrealism or Rococco. I had a lot of fun teaching my grandchildren about sculpture or architecture which is Jasmine’s favorite part of the book. She loves how the illustrations of the buildings like the Guggenheim have a slice taken off so that you can see the inside. I find it remarkable that a five-year old is this keenly interested in Frank Lloyd Wright and I attribute her interest in a large part to this excellent book with its friendly style.

This is a book that spans age groups. I get so much out of it each time we open it to another page and the grandchildren, ages 2 and 5 find so much to love about it. They ask me to pull it down from the shelf again and again and each one has pages that they just love to touch and point at. I on the other hand am entranced by the quality of the paper, the illustrations and photographs of the artwork and can gaze in awe of the David Hockney collage for hours on end.

I wish our schools could have copies of this book in every classroom for every student. I think this book and books like this are timeless and should be every child’s right. Art is so very important and this book does so much to educate about it. You can’t help but fall in love with art after reading this and it inspires the creativity within. I know that for me, its shown me new meaning to a painting I’ve loved and lit a spark in me to find out even more. Books that fuel the thirst for knowledge are treasures.

Highly, highly recommended for anyone of any age.

Book Description from publisher:

Lavishly illustrated with more than 250 full-color reproductions of artworks, details, photographs, and documents, this informative book provides a sweeping overview of Western art. The book begins with the cave paintings at Lascaux, France, and continues on with the art and architecture of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome through Early Christian, Byzantine, and medieval art and on to the Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. Then it proceeds from Neoclassicism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Modernism up to the art of the late twentieth century. The book is filled with paintings, sculpture, mosaics, and architecture by such renowned artists as Paolo Uccello, Jan van Eyck, Filippo Brunelleschi, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Gainsborough, Goya, Turner, Monet, Renoir, Auguste Rodin, Georges Braque, Edward Hopper, Jackson Pollock, David Hockney, and Andy Warhol.

An essential tool for classrooms and libraries as well as a wonderful gift for young people interested in art.

About the author

Antony Mason is the author of more than sixty books. In addition to more general histories of art, he has written biographies for children on Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Monet, Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, and Chagall. He lives in London, England. John T. Spike is an internationally recognized art critic, curator, and noted historian of Italian art of the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries. He was born in New York City and resides in Florence, Italy.

Shameless Promotion of the Best New/Used Bookstore in L.A.

2008-04-18T16:19:00.000-07:00

Come see this free, fascinating presentation & signing by acclaimed author, Gary Marcus. He's going to have an LCD projector!

READ Books Presents:
Gary Marcus
Discussing & Signing
His New Book:
Kluge: The Haphazard
Construction of the Human Mind

“Are we noble in reason? Perfect, in God's image? Far from it, says New York University psychologist Gary Marcus. In this lucid and revealing book, Marcus argues that the mind is not an elegantly designed organ but rather a "kluge," a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption. He unveils a fundamentally new way of looking at the human mind -- think duct tape, not supercomputer -- that sheds light on some of the most mysterious aspects of human nature.”

April 20th, 2008, Sunday @ 2:00
4972 Eagle Rock Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90041
(323) 259-9068
www.readbookseaglerock.com
Call or email to pre-order books

Poetry Friday - Save the Tacos!

2008-04-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

Ok Gente,
For Poetry Friday, I just want to save the LA Taco Trucks and street vendors (mmmm esquites). Sign the petition and I'll love you forever.

After all, some of my favorite poets are The Taco Shop poets.

The round-up today is being hosted at The Well Read Child, thank you for hosting!!

Las Comadres and El día de los niños

2008-04-14T15:51:00.000-07:00

My comadres over at Las Comadres Para Las Americas have sent the folowing email about a very important teleconference.

To learn more about Las Comadres please click here.

Queridas comadres...it's TELECONFERENCE TIME! To
Register...

http://www.lascomadres.org/home_e/events/teleconference7.html

We ask that you consider purchasing the children's
book we selected for April and donating it to an
elementary school in your area.

In celebration of El día de los niños/El día de los
libros (Children's Day/Book Day)on April 30, we are
combining an interview with authors of a children's
bilingual book on activism with a university professor
studying when and how children should be taught about
racism. This is a different format just for the month
of April. In May we'll be starting our partnership
with the American Association of Publishers and
Borders, Inc. Reading With Las Comadres where we
interview Latina authors about their newly
published book and their work.

TELECONFERENCE DATE AND TIMES:
DATE: April 24, 2008 / duration approximately 1 hour
TIME: 5:00 PM PST
6:00 PM MST
7:00 PM CST
8:00 PM EST

Call in number (long distance charges will apply)
1-712-432-2323 / Access Code: 162718#

That's Not Fair! / ¡No Es Justo!

by Carmen Tafolla and Sharyll Teneyuca

Illustrated by Terry Ybáñez, Spanish translation by
Carmen Tafolla, Translation editors: Celina Marroquín
and Amalia Mondríguez, Ph.D.

THE STORY
In the 1920s and 1930s, the pecan shellers of San
Antonio, Texas, were some of the lowest-paid workers
in the nation. They were all Mexican-Americans, who
had fled the revolution in their home country. Pecan
shellers worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week,
for as little as six cents a pound. In addition, they
had to work in dusty, closed rooms. This made many of
them ill. And then, in 1938, their wages were cut in
half. They needed someone to be a voice for them,
someone both brave and caring. They needed a hero. A
young woman, barely twenty-one, answered their call.
Her name was Emma.

But Emma Tenayuca was not born a hero of the poor.
That's Not Fair! / ¡No Es Justo! tells how the seeds
of Emma's awareness and activism were sown when she
was very young. This story of courage and compassion
shows how each of us, no matter how young, can help to
make the world more fair for everyone.

SOME PERTINENT RESEARCH ON THE TOPIC

White Children More Positive Toward Blacks
After Learning About Racism, Study Shows

Challenging the idea that racism education could be
harmful to students, a new study from The University
of Texas at Austin found the results of learning about
historical racism are primarily positive. The study
appears in the November/December issue of the journal
Child Development.

"There is considerable debate about when and how
children should be taught about racism," says Bigler,
director of the university's Gender and Racial
Attitudes Lab. "But little research has examined
elementary-school-aged children's cognitive and
emotional reactions to such lessons."

TELECONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS

Carmen Tafolla is one of the most anthologized of all
Latina writers with work for both adults and children
appearing in more than two hundred anthologies. With
work translated into Spanish, German, and Bengali,
Tafolla has been published in a great variety of
genres. Carmen Tafolla has also published five adult
poetry books, seven children's television screenplays,

and numerous short stories and articles.

Sharyll Tenayuca is an attorney in San Antonio and the
niece of Emma Tenayuca.

UT Professor of Psychology Dr. Rebecca Bigler,
director
of the University of Texas at Austin, Gender and
Racial
Attitudes Lab

Interviewed by:
Adriana Dominguez is the Executive Editor who manages
the children's division of HarperCollins' Latino
imprint, Rayo. Before joining Harper, she was Críticas
magazine's Children's Review Editor. She has many
years of publishing experience in the children's
market, and has worked for most major publishers.

Nora de Hoyos Comstock, Ph.D.
LAS COMADRES PARA LAS AMERICAS
Connecting Latinas Everywhere!
http://www.lascomadres.org ;
noracomstockphd@lascomadres.org
Comstock Connections, Austin, TX
512-928-8780 voice/fax; 512-751-7837c

Las Comadres is not responsible for the content of
this email, and text in this email does not necessarily
reflect Las Comadres views or opinions.

10th Annual Walk for Cesar Chavez

2008-03-27T12:57:00.000-07:00

I'll be there, will you? Register here.

Join thousands in continuing the call for social justice by participating in the 10th Annual CESAR CHAVEZ WALK

Walk alongside Chavez family members, students, elected officials, celebrities, and community members and celebrate Cesar Chavez Day 2008. Walk sponsors include Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa and Councilmember Jose Huizar, 14th District.

SATURDAY, March 29, 2008
10:00am
at Historic Olvera Street
125 Paseo de la Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90012
(Main Street between Arcadia and Cesar Chavez Avenue)

Cuentecitos News

2008-03-19T12:49:00.000-07:00

Adriana Dominguez of HarperCollins has joined Cuentecitos as a contributor and her first post is up. Learn about el dia de los ninos by clicking here.

Ask a Mexican on YouTube

2008-03-18T12:38:00.000-07:00

I guess this 'splains why my blog is so ahem colorful...

URGENT!!! F1rst Pages Conference

2008-03-06T13:51:00.000-08:00

Four New York editors, an agent, and a bestselling
author are coming to Connecticut on Saturday, April
26th for another F1rst Pages conference, one with a
new imprint launching in Fall 2008! One of those
prominent editors, making her own path in the business
is Adriana Dominguez, Executive Editor of Latino
imprint, Rayo, at HarperCollins. If you want to learn
more about publishing in the Latino market and receive
feedback on your work, make sure not to miss Adriana's
workshop. (See link below)

So if you can make it, the networking experience will
be worth your while and there are opportunities to
work with professional editors and an agent in an
intimate group and have the chance to submit. There
is an opportunity to be acquired if you have the right
stuff.

Just make sure you read the guidelines carefully.
Just a reminder that the navigation bar is at the top
of the page and the payment links are at the bottom of
each publishing professional's page.

Go to www.f1rstpages.com - click on conference tab or
go directly to the conference at
www.f1rstpages.com/conference.

Super Chicana

2008-03-05T11:51:00.000-08:00

Saw this on Ana Castillo's blog which I read religiously and had to re-post. It's awesome.

Poetry Friday

2008-02-22T06:23:00.000-08:00

In memory of a dear friend who's birthday would have been today. You died too young and you're missed every single day. You were a shining light and the world is a far darker and drearier place without you.

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
by John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say, "The breath goes now," and some say, "No," So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love. Moving of the earth brings harms and fears, Men reckon what it did and meant; But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent. Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it. But we, by a love so much refined That our selves know not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind, Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion. Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two: Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do; And though it in the center sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like the other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun. The roundup is over where it began at Big A, little a. Thank you for hosting Kelly!

Poetry Friday

2008-02-14T23:10:00.000-08:00

I was going to post about raulsalinas, who died a few days ago and reference some of his marvelous Chicanindio poetry but I remembered that I did post about him when I learned that he had he died and I stumbled onto this while looking for something else and, well I just had to post it. It made me laugh out loud when I was feeling very sad about the loss of a great poet like Raul. The wry sense of humor in the poem that chose me for Poetry Friday reminded me of my grandfather and his jokes and I thought to myself, "this is perfect for today."

My Affair with Rumpelstiltskin
by Ina Loewenberg

He wasn't really bad to look at
if you don't mind your men so short.
His head was disproportionate
but forceful, and his neck was taut,
his eyebrows were pointed and curly
and of course his black eyes burned
with mad glee, his arms were fully
muscled, his booted feet neatly turned.

He made his offer, good as gold,
so confident I would accept his special skill
to save my skin, but I, surprisingly bold,
countered with the skin itself, the heart, the will.
The straw was scratchy but the man was smooth,
he brought down pillows to cushion our elation;
I slept then while he labored to produce
the glitter that insured my royal station.

Read the rest here. The round-up is here at Hip Writer Mama's. Thanks for hosting!

Cybils Award Winners Announced

2008-02-14T07:04:00.000-08:00

The 2008 Cybils Awards were just announced. I had the honor of serving as a panelist in the graphic novel category and am excited to Artemis Fowl in the winners list.

You can view all the winners here.

raulsalinas has died

2008-02-13T11:35:00.000-08:00

The great Xicano poet, writer and activist Raul Salinas, known as raulsalinas died last night in Austin. I, along with many others are saddened by the loss of this amazing and enduring spirit of a man.

Descanse en pas hermano.

raulsalinas was a longtime fixture at South Austin's La Resistencia Bookstore. He wrote several influential books of Chicano poetry, including "East of the Freeway: Reflections de mi Pueblo," and "Un Trip Through the Mind Jail y Otras Excursions."

His most recent book, "raúl salinas and the Jail Machine: Selected Writings of raúl salinas" was published in 2006 by University of Texas Press.

To learn more about raulsalinas, you can check out his website.

Raul will be greatly missed.

A BIO OF RAUL SALINAS (quoted from the announcement I received this morning)

Raúl Roy “Tapon” Salinas was born in San Antonio, Texas on March 17,
1934. He was raised in Austin, Texas from 1936 to 1956, when he moved to Los
Angeles. In 1957 he was sentenced to prison in Soleded State Prison in
California. Over the span of the next 15 years, Salinas spent 11 years
behind the walls of state and federal penitentiaries. It was during his
incarceration in some of the nation’s most brutal prison systems, that
Salinas’ social and political consciousness were intensified, and so it is
with keen insight into the subhuman conditions of prisons and an inhuman
world that the pinto aesthetics that inform his poetry were formulated.

His prison years were prolific ones, including creative, political, and
legal writings, as well as an abundance of correspondence. In 1963, while in
Huntsville, he began writing a jazz column entitled “The Quarter Note”
which ran consistently for 1-1/2 years. In Leavenworth he played a key role
in founding and producing two important prison journals, Aztlán de
Leavenworth and New Era Prison Magazine, through which his poetry first
circulated and gained recognition within and outside of the walls. As a
spokesperson, ideologue, educator, and jailhouse lawyer of the Prisoner
Rights Movement, Salinas also became an internationalist who saw the
necessity of making alliances with others. This vision continues to inform
his political and poetic practice. Initially published in the inaugural
issue of Aztlán de Leavernworth, “Trip through a Mind Jail” (1970)
became the title piece for a book of poetry published by Editorial Pocho-Che
in 1980.

With the assistance of several professors and students at the University of
Washington - Seattle, Salinas gained early release from Marion Federal
Penitentiary in 1972. As a student at the University of Washington, Salinas
was involved with community empowerment projects and began making alliances
with Native American groups in the Northwest, a relationship that was to
intensify over the next 15 years. Although Salinas writes of his experiences
as a participant in the Native American Movement, it is a dimension of his
life that has received scant attention. In the 22 years since his release
from Marion, Salinas’ involvement with various political movements has
earned him an international reputation as an eloquent spokesperson for
justice. Along the way he has continued to refine and produce his unique
blend of poetry and politics.

Salinas’ literary reputation in Austin earned him recognition as the poet
laureate of the East Side and the title of “maestro” from emerging poets
who seek his advice and a mentor. While his literary work is probably most
widely known for his street aesthetics and sensibility, which document the
interactions, hardships, and intra- and intercultural strife of barrio life
and prison in vernacular, bilingual language, few people have examined the
influence of Jazz in his obra that make him part of the Beat Generation of
poets, musicians, and songwriters. His poetry collections included
dedications, references, and responses to Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac,
Charles Bukowski, Charlie Parker, Herschel Evans, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles
Davis, for example. Academics have primarily classified Salinas as an
important formative poet of the Chicano Movement; yet, while he may have
received initial wide-scale recognition during the era, it would be unfair
to limit a reading of his style, content, and literary influence to the
Movement.

There were many dimensions to Salinas’ literary and political life.
Though, at times, some are perplexed at the multiple foci of Salinas’
life, the different strands of his life perhaps best exemplify what it means
to be mestizo, in a society whose official national culture suppresses
difference: his life’s work is testimony to the uneasy, sometimes violent,
sometimes blessed synthesis of Indigenous, Mexican, African, and
Euro-American cultures. Salinas currently resides in Austin, Texas, were he
is the proprietor of Resistencia Bookstore and Red Salmon Press, located in
South Austin. Arte Público Press reissued Salinas’ classic poetry
collection, Un Trip through the Mind Jail y otras Excursiones (1999), as
part of its Pioneers of Modern U.S. Hispanic Literature Series. He is also
the author of another collection of poetry, East of the Freeway: Reflections
de Mi Pueblo (1994).

Salinas resided in Austin, Texas, were he was the proprietor of Resistencia
Bookstore and Red Salmon Press, located in South Austin. Arte Público Press
reissued Salinas’ classic poetry collection, Un Trip through the Mind Jail
y otras Excursiones (1999), as part of its Pioneers of Modern U.S. Hispanic
Literature Series. He is also the author of another collection of poetry,
East of the Freeway: Reflections de Mi Pueblo (1994).

Poetry Friday - Post Annies Round Up

2008-02-09T18:10:00.000-08:00

My apologies for the delayed round-up. As indicated in the previous post, I was crazed getting ready for the Annie Awards, the animation industry's biggest night. It was an amazing night too. The food was great, Ratatouille and Brad Bird won just about everything there was to win, one of my favorite shows El Tigre and it's creator Jorge Gutierrez won awards and I met and saw lots of interesting and fun people. I thought you'd might like to take a peek at the dress I ended up with so I'm tacking in a picture. There's this kind of weird guy in between me and my date, maybe you'll recognize him. He's a really nice guy.

I apologize if I didn't get to comment on your poems, I'll be swinging by throughout the week to do so. I did read them all and they were wonderful and I've so many new poets to add to my list.

On to the round up, I really enjoyed making these mashed up nonsensical story poems of our postings so I'm going to give it another shot.

It began in Frenzy over at the little house
Where Billy, charming Billy was looking for a pearl.
At the Wild Rose, there's everything from Lincoln to Moses, so why dream?
"Well" said The Blue Rose Girls, "how about a love poem with toast?"
Each of us has a name given by God, even when the clouds come.
The red wheel barrow puzzles us while the mother in the refugee camp
breaks out hearts and Lady Macbeth reminds us to be ourselves.
Wherever in the wastes of our days, there should always be time for haiku
At the very least poetry in 15 words or less
or things like painting in the sweet spring.
In every heart there is a room still and quiet
when it is peace.

Though I am old with wandering (welcome Laurel!),
I imagine children's faces are replacing flower pots
in a fabulous March to the Sea.
Oh to be of use!
Beetle-bop, beetle-bop!
The mouse of Amherst calls
It's time for Langston's train ride.
There's a conference you see, on the neuroscience of Mother Goose.

In the land of Nod
there is a fury of overshoes
Death's second self, the Armadillo is preening
as much as the books that fillt it.
A clear midnight, in an Irish winter
they are getting ready as if for a Bronx masquerade
He is already beside me, that honeybee
and if you will be my valentine
and write me epyllions of love
then i will stop forcing spring

Climb inside a poem
puppy poems
are good to start with.
This little bag of poetry is becoming heavy
or maybe it's just that
I'm tired.
Defenseless under the night,
the blind men and the elephant dream
of Snow White and apples, while
Miss Lee and Mrs. Fuller end Poetry Friday.

Poetry Friday Hosting

2008-02-08T00:01:00.000-08:00

I love hosting Poetry Friday. It's something that I am quick to sign up for and eagerly look forward to as well as every Poetry Friday whether I am hosting or not. This month is crazier than usual in my insanely paced life.

February is here and with it the heavy convention season begins for my company, of deals, heavy workload, trying to find rooms at Comic Con (come on San Diego be a little more organized will ya), trying to keep my food blog updated, starting up my book reviewing again for BOTH AmoXcalli and Cuentecitos along with my regular duties of being a grandma, trying to have a social life, trying not to be a total laptop hermit when I get home and just darn cleaning the house.

Before I even realized I was hosting sometime in February, my trusty Blackberry calendar pinged at me and told me it was tomorrow. TOMORROW!!! Holy crap! Tomorrow is the Annie Awards and I'm going crazy. I have to find a dress, decide on shoes, get my hair done, get my nails done, get back home and get ready by 4:00 p.m. To add to my stress, I have a date. My first real date since the ex who shall be nameless and I broke up. I haven't dated in 12 years! ACK!

My frenzy reminded me of a poem I've always loved by Anne Sexton, (one of my favorite poets) and I thought I'd share it and ask the Poetry Friday question, what makes you frenzied? What helps to ease it? For me, it's the realization that it always turns out right in the end and if not, well there's always poetry.

I'll be out and about tomorrow getting early Saturday getting my hair done, etc. then I will be at the awards ceremony till late. I'll be checking in and putting up your posts as much as I can, but the round-up will be most likely be a separate post as always and it will be up on Saturday morning. Leave your lovely offerings with Mr. Linky and do remember to stop back to see what poem we collectively come up with in the round-up on Saturday. Don't forget to leave a comment. Happy Poetry Friday everyone!

Anne Sexton - Frenzy

I am not lazy.
I am on the amphetamine of the soul.
I am, each day,
typing out the God
my typewriter believes in.
Very quick. Very intense,
like a wolf at a live heart.
Not lazy.
When a lazy man, they say,
looks toward heaven,
the angels close the windows.

Oh angels,
keep the windows open
so that I may reach in
and steal each object,
objects that tell me the sea is not dying,
objects that tell me the dirt has a life-wish,
that the Christ who walked for me,
walked on true ground
and that this frenzy,
like bees stinging the heart all morning,
will keep the angels
with their windows open,
wide as an English bathtub.

Poetry Friday

2008-02-01T10:22:00.001-08:00

I found this and thought it was lovely. The round up is over at Karen Edmenstein's shockingly clever blog.

On Speaking French after Twenty Years by Catherine Jagoe

for Massan

Strange, these words in my mouth—
the disappeared returned.
I am no longer agile,
but I offer them hamfistedly to you,
new to America from Mali,
your print skirt
the cloth of my childhood in west Africa,
the tongue between us
the green summer
I spent in France feasting
on freedom and being
twenty-one.

Strange, what is still here
and what has been removed
to somewhere deeper.
Tomorrow and today are here
but yesterday is gone
as is the verb for missing.
Low is here, but high
has vanished.

Read the rest of the poem here.

Poetry Friday

2008-01-25T08:54:00.000-08:00

It's been raining here in Eagle Rock for days off and on, but last night it never stopped and is still going strong. Great torrents and sheets of hard rain, a blessing on drought-ridden Southern California but I've had enough of it. I've been sick with the flu and if I go out into the wet, I start coughing. Blah. Puts me in a mood because I know I have to go out in a few hours to the doctor's office and then from there to work.

I heard a bird singing outside my bedroom window this morning, just a few minutes ago and it changed my mood. How can it sing so sweetly? It must be drenched, the poor thing. I hope it's found shelter in some strange, dry spot in the huge magnolia tree in our backyard. I hope its song isn't a cry of despair.

The brave bird (for somehow in my mind, he is now a he and a very brave he) gave me some of his courage to go out and slog through the rain and cold. He put a smile on my face and got me to thinking about birds in general. I found a poem about swallows that I fell in love with from a poet I didn't know. The bird brought me courage, a smile, a poem and a new poet whose beautiful name I covet, think is perfect for a poet and makes me smile more. I think that makes my bird an angel.

Swallow by Paige Hill Starzinger

barbs of outer wing-feather
recurved into minute hooklets
from base to tip a rasping

dusky throated northern rough

as a bolus is pushed pons and pharynx
the anterior tongue lifts to hard palate
elevates to soft and seals

lores darker than eyes bill black
forager with forked tail weak feet
more wing than any other song

To read the rest of this magnificent poem click here. Poetry Friday is being hosted by Mentor Texts and More. Thanks for hosting!

The AWN 2008 Oscar Showcase

2008-01-22T07:39:00.000-08:00

Woohoo! The AWN (I work there) 2008 Oscar Showcase is up and running, with no glitches or errors. I'm home sick today but Deron, Darlene, Bill, Kevin and Rick did an outstanding job preparing this thing to go off without a hitch. So much behind the scenes work goes into our Oscar Showcase for Animated Features and Short Subjects that I just have to stop and give the team a big shout out for being so fabulous.

Take a look below at the end product of weeks of work, getting permissions to use content, tracking down the right people, writing articles, posting images, designing things, making sure the voting mechanism works, the clips play, etc. AWN has the best people and they do the best work. They care and it shows. Stop by and show them some love. You can even vote for your favorites to win.

The AWN 2008 Oscar Showcase.

By the Hair of My Chinny, Chin, Chin

2008-01-22T07:09:00.000-08:00

We love pigs at AmoXcalli. In fact, we review Piglit just for my granddaughter Jasmine who loves pigs so much that instead of a princess party for her 4th birthday, she wanted a pig party. Yay Jasmine! She marches to the beat of her own drum and isn't afraid to be herself in spite of pre-school peer pressure to be princessy. She and I review piglit together in our own special series.

I found this article on Washington Post and couldn't resist adding the link to AmoXcalli. Jasmine, we've got quite the list to review. We'll hold off on Lord of the Flies and the like till you're a bit older.

To read the Post article, click here.

Edgar Award Shortlists

2008-01-19T08:25:00.000-08:00

The Mystery Writers of America have just announced the shortlists for
their Edgar Awards.

Best Novel Nominees

* Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (Henry Holt and Company)
* Priest by Ken Bruen (St. Martin's Minotaur)
* The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)
* Soul Patch by Reed Farrel Coleman (Bleak House Books)
* Down River by John Hart (St. Martin's Minotaur)

Best First Novel By An American Author

* Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell (HarperCollins - William Morrow)
* In the Woods by Tana French (Penguin Group - Viking)
* Snitch Jacket by Christopher Goffard (The Rookery Press)
* Head Games by Craig McDonald (Bleak House Books)
* Pyres by Derek Nikitas (St. Martin's Minotaur)

Best Paperback Original

* Queenpin by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster)
* Blood of Paradise by David Corbett (Random House - Mortalis)
* Cruel Poetry by Vicki Hendricks (Serpent's Tail)
* Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill (Hard Case Crime)
* Who is Conrad Hirst? by Kevin Wignall (Simon & Schuster)

Best Critical/Biographical

* The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction by Patrick Anderson (Random House)
* A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Gothic, Sensational by Maurizio Ascari (Palgrave Macmillan)
* Deviance in Contemporary Crime Fiction by Christiana Gregoriou (Palgrave Macmillan)
* Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley (The Penguin Press)
* Chester Gould: A Daughter's Biography of the Creator of Dick Tracy by Jean Gould O'Connell (McFarland & Company)

Best Fact Crime

* The Birthday Party by Stanley Alpert (Penguin Group - G.P. Putnam's Sons)
* Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi (W.W. Norton and Company
* Chasing Justice: My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn't Commit by Kerry Max Cook (HarperCollins - William Morrow)
* Relentless Pursuit: A True Story of Family, Murder, and the Prosecutor Who Wouldn't Quit by Kevin Flynn (Penguin Group - G.P. Putnam's Sons)
* Sacco & Vanzetti: The Men, The Murders and the Judgment of Mankind by Bruce Watson (Penguin Group - Viking)

Best Short Story

* "The Catch" - Still Waters by Mark Ammons (Level Best Books)
* "Blue Note" - Chicago Blues by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Bleak House Books)
* "Hardly Knew Her" - Dead Man's Hand by Laura Lippman (Harcourt Trade Publishers)
* "The Golden Gopher" - Los Angeles Noir by Susan Straight (Akashic Books
* "Uncle" - A Hell of a Woman by Daniel Woodrell (Busted Flush Press)

Best Young Adult

* Rat Life by Tedd Arnold (Penguin - Dial Books for Young Readers)
* Diamonds in the Shadow by Caroline B. Cooney (Random House Children's Books - Delacorte Press)
* Touching Snow by M. Sindy Felin (Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing - Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
* Blood Brothers by S.A. Harazin (Random House Children's Books - Delacorte Press)
* Fragments by Jeffry W. Johnston (Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing - Simon Pulse)

Best Juvenile

* The Name of This Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
* Shadows on Society Hill by Evelyn Coleman (American Girl Publications)
* Deep and Dark and Dangerous by Mary Downing Hahn (Clarion Books)
* The Night Tourist by Katherine Marsh (Hyperion Books for Young Readers)
* Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things by Wendelin Van Draanen (Random House Children's Books - Alfred A. Knopf)

The Simon & Schuster -
Mary Higgins Clark Award

* In Cold Pursuit by Sarah Andrews (St. Martin's Minotaur)
* Wild Indigo by Sandi Ault (Penguin Group - Berkley Prime Crime)
* Inferno by Karen Harper (Harlequin - MIRA Books)
* The First Stone by Judith Kelman (Penguin Group - Berkley Prime Crime)
* Deadman's Switch by Barbara Seranella (St. Martin's Minotaur)

Robert L. Fish Memorial Award

* "The Catch" - Still Waters by Mark Ammons (Level Best Books)

NBCC Award Finalists

2008-01-14T14:04:00.000-08:00

For more info on the awards, please visit Critical Mass. They have live blogging and all kinds of good stuff.

Autobiography

Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone by Joshua Clark (Free Press)
Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat (Knopf)
The Journals of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982 by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)
Writing in an Age of Silence by Sara Paretsky (Verso)
Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption and Death in Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya (Random House)

Nonfiction

American Transcendentalism by Philip Gura (FSG)
What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe (Oxford University Press)
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington (Doubleday)
Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA by Tim Weiner (Doubleday)
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s)

Fiction

Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra (HarperCollins)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Riverhead)
In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar (Dial)
The Gravediggers Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates (HarperCollins)
The Shadow Catcher by Marianne Wiggins (S&S)

Biography

Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer by Tim Jeal (Yale University Press)
Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee (Knopf)
Ralph Ellison by Arnold Rampersad (Knopf)
The Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932 by John Richardson (Knopf)
Thomas Hardy by Claire Tomalin (Penguin)

Poetry

Elegy by Mary Jo Bang (Graywolf)
Modern Life by Matthea Harvey (Graywolf)
Sleeping and Waking by Michael O'Brien (Flood)
The Ballad of Jamie Allan by Tom Pickard (Flood)
New Poems by Tadeusz Rozewicz (Archipelago)

Criticism

Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints by Joan Acocella (Pantheon)
Once Upon a Quniceanera by Julia lvarez (Viking)
The Terror Dream by Susan Faludi (Metropolitan/Holt)
Coltrane: The Story of a Sound by Ben Ratliff (FSG)
The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross (FSG)

The 2008 ALSC Award winners

2008-01-14T11:57:00.000-08:00

John Newbery Medal

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz (Candlewick)

Newbery Honor Books

Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis (Scholastic/Scholastic Press)
The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt (Clarion)
Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson (Putnam/GP Putnam's Sons)

Randolph Caldecott Medal

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (Scholastic)

Caldecott Honor Books

Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad, illustrated by Kadir Nelson, written by Ellen Levine (Scholastic/Scholastic Press)
First the Egg by Laura Vaccaro Seeger (Roaring Brook/Neal Porter)
The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtin by Peter Sís (Farrar/Frances Foster)
Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity by Mo Willems (Hyperion)

2009 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecturer

Walter Dean Myers

Mildred L. Batchelder Award

VIZ Media, publisher of Brave Story, by Miyuki Miyabe, translated from the Japanese by Alexander O. Smith

Batchelder Honor Books

Milkweed Editions, publisher of The Cat: Or, How I Lost Eternity, by Jutta Richter, illustrated by Rotraut Susanne Berner, and translated from the German by Anna Brailovsky
Phaidon Press, publisher of Nicholas and the Gang, written by René Goscinny, illustrated by Jacques Sempé, and translated from the French by Anthea Bell

Pura Belpré Author Award

The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano by Margarita Engle, illustrated by Sean Qualls (Holt)

Belpré Author Honor Books

Frida: ¡Viva la vida! Long Live Life! by Carmen T. Bernier-Grand (Marshall Cavendish)
Martina the Beautiful Cockroach: A Cuban Folktale, retold by Carmen Agra Deedy, illustrated by Michael Austin (Peachtree)
Los Gatos Black on Halloween, written by Marisa Montes, illustrated by Yuyi Morales (Holt)

Pura Belpré Illustrator Award

Los Gatos Black on Halloween, illustrated by Yuyi Morales, written by Marisa Montes (Holt)

Belpré Illustrator Honor Books

My Name Is Gabito: The Life of Gabriel García Márquez/Me llamo Gabito: la vida de Gabriel García Márquez, illustrated by Raúl Colón, written by Monica Brown (Luna Rising)
My Colors, My World/Mis colores, mi mundo, written and illustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez (Children's Book Press)

Andrew Carnegie Medal

Kevin Lafferty, producer, John Davis, executive producer, and Amy Palmer Robertson and Danielle Sterling, co-producers, of Jump In: Freestyle Edition

Theodor Seuss Geisel Award

There Is a Bird on Your Head! by Mo Willems (Hyperion)

Geisel Honor Books

First the Egg by Laura Vaccaro Seeger (Roaring Brook/Neal Porter)
Hello, Bumblebee Bat, written by Darrin Lunde, illustrated by Patricia J. Wynne (Charlesbridge)
Jazz Baby, written by Lisa Wheeler, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie (Harcourt)
Vulture View, written by April Pulley Sayre, illustrated by Steve Jenkins (Holt)

Odyssey Award

Jazz, Live Oak Media

Odyssey Honor Audiobooks

Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy, Listen & Live Audio
Dooby Dooby Moo, Weston Woods/Scholastic
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Listening Library
Skulduggery Pleasant, HarperCollins Audio
Treasure Island, Listening Library

Sibert Medal

The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtin by Peter Sís (Farrar/Frances Foster)

Sibert Honor Books

Lightship by Brian Floca (Simon & Schuster/Richard Jackson)
Nic Bishop Spiders by Nic Bishop (Scholastic/Scholastic Nonfiction)

Poetry Friday

2008-01-11T15:55:00.000-08:00

I recently broke down and bought a Blackberry and now wonder what I ever did without it. One of my favorite things to do on the busride home is to go through my Google Reader and read my subscriptions to all the literary and poetry feeds, I never had much time to do more than scan.

This was in today's feed from Poetry Daily and I was completely taken aback by the sumptious, evocative language. It's from the Portuguese and luckily I can read in Portuguese as well as Spanish and I have to say that the translation captures the cadence of the original beautifully. They do include the link to the original poem if you want to take a stab at it.

Someone opens an orange in silence by Herberto Helder
translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin

Someone opens an orange in silence, at the entrance
to fabled nights.
He plunges his thumbs down to where the orange
is rapidly thinking, where it grows, annihilates itself, and then
is born again. Someone is peeling a pear, eating
a bunch of grapes, devoting himself
to fruit. And I fashion a sharp-witted song
so as to understand.
I lean over busy hands, mouths,
tongues that devour their way through attention.
I would like to know how the fable of the nights
grows like this. How silence
swells, or is transformed with things. I write
a song in order to be intelligent about fruit
on the tongue, through subtle channels, unto
a dark emotion.

Read the rest of this poem here.

The round-up is at The Book Mine Set. Thanks for hosting John!

Zapatista New Year

2007-12-29T02:55:00.000-08:00

Cuauhtemoc Mexica Dance Group

Le invita a celebrar

Año Nuevo 2008

El Parque de México

North Main & North Misión -Lincoln Heights

Diciembre 31, 2007 de 6:00 PM a Media-noche

HOY

DECIMOS: BASTA!

Somos producto de 500 Años de luchas:

Primero contra la esclavitud.

En la guerra de Independencia contra España

encabezada por los Insurgentes, después

por evitar ser absorbidos por el expansionismo Norteamericano,

luego por promulgar nuestra Constitución y expulsar

al Imperio Francés de nuestro suelo,

después la dictadura porfirista nos negó

la aplicación justa de las Leyes de Reforma yel pueblo se rebelo

formando sus propios líderes, surgieron Villa y Zapata,

hombres pobres como nosotros a los que se nos ha negado

la preparación más elemental

para así poder utilizarnos como carne de canon

y saquear las riquezas de nuestra patria

sin importarles que estemos muriendo de hambre y enfermedades curables,

sin importarles que no tengamos nada, absolutamente nada

ni un techo digno, ni tierra, ni trabajo, ni salud, ni alimentación, ni educación,

sin tener derecho a elegir libre y democráticamente a nuestras autoridades.

Sin independencia de los extranjeros,

sin paz ni justicia para nosotros y nuestros hijos.

Pero nosotros decimos ¡BASTA!

SOMOS LOS HEREDEROS DE LOS

VERDADEROS FORJADORES DE NUESTRA

NACIONALIDAD, LOS DESPOSEIDOS.

Somos millones y llamamos a todos nuestros

hermanos a que se sumen a este llamado

como el único camino para no morir de hambre

ante la ambición insaciable de los que hoy

nos quitan todo, absolutamente todo!

Acompáñenos a celebrar el 13avo aniversario del levantamiento zapatista.

Porque un mundo donde muchos mundos existan

¡SI ES POSIBLE! EZLN 1994

Danza Azteca, comida, Videos y más

Enero 1º Saludo al Nuevo amanecer 6:00 AM

Mas información al (213) 481 8265

¡Acompáñenos!

EZLN EZLN

Cuauhtemoc Mexica Dance Group

invites you to the

Zapatista New Year’s Celebration

El Parque de México

North Main & North Misión -Lincoln Heights

December 31st 6:00 Pm to Midnight

TODAY

WE SAY: NOUGH!

We are the product of 500 years of struggles:

First was the enslavement, then we fought against Spain in the

Independence War led by the “Insurgentes,”

afterward we fought against the North American’s expansionism

After that we fought to establish our own Constitution and kick outthe French Empire

from our territory. Then Porfirio Diaz denied the rightful application

of the “Reforma” Laws for us and the people rebel against it

creating our own leaders, therefore Villa and Zapata appeared.

They were simple people like us, without any education

for them to serve as cannon flesh just like us, to starve just like us,

dying of simple sicknesses, having nothing absolutely nothing.

No land, no home, no work, no dignity.

With no right to freely choose our own authorities.

Without independence of others.

Without any peace or justice

But today we say: ENOUGH!

WE ARE THE TRUE HEIRS OF THOSE WHO FORGE OUR IDENTITY.

WE, THE POOR!

We are millions and we call all ourbrothers to join us.

This is the only way to stop dying of starvation,

because those who have always taken everything from us will continue to do so

until they take absolutely all!

Aztec Dancing, potluck, videos and more!

Sunrise greetings at 6:00 AM

More info: (213) 481 8265

Join Us!!!!!

Poetry Friday

2007-12-28T08:57:00.000-08:00

It's the last Poetry Friday of the year and I've found an amazing poem on the nature of belief on Writer’s Almanac today. It moved me so profoundly. It got me to thinking about belief, faith and all the things my grandparents taught me about living life well and being a good person.

It’s beautiful when poetry digs deep into your very soul and gets you to start looking deeper at the person you are and wonder if it’s enough, makes you want to do more, be more.

I’ve included the first few lines.

What My Father Believed by John Guzlowski, from Lightning And Ashes. © Steel Toe Books, 2007

He didn't know about the Rock of Ages
or bringing in the sheaves or Jacob's ladder
or gathering at the beautiful river
that flows beneath the throne of God.
He'd never heard of the Baltimore Catechism
either, and didn't know the purpose of life
was to love and honor and serve God.

Head on over to Writer’s Almanac for the rest.

The round-up is here.

Have a Happy New Year everyone and thank you for letting me part of this amazing Poetry Friday experience this year.

Poetry Friday - The RoundUp

2007-12-21T19:52:00.000-08:00

Isn’t it fabulous that every week, close to 50 people stop whatever they’re doing in their so busy lives and think, consider, research, write, find and compile all these wonderful poems and stories?

I think it’s astounding and I think each of you amazing contributors are making the world a better place one poem at a time. I’m so thankful for you all. You’ve opened up the window on my world and made it a richer, more colorful tapestry. Here’s to you all and I hope you have a wonderful holiday season filled with joy and hope.

I thought I'd do a nonsense poem as a round-up, like I did last time I hosted, but your poems wanted their own way and it became a story of two friends who look to each other when illness strikes. It's still a little nonsensical thought.

This epistolary round-up is dedicated to a friend that is far away. I'm thinking of you and hope I can be as good a friend as Tom.

Holiday Round-up

Hey Charley , writes Tom
Did ya know that each night a child is born is a holy night,
Which fills the poet’s happy soul while
frogs dream the winter away?

Charley writes back that he's had the chest pains for weeks,
Why do we bother with the rest of the day?
Come out and greet with me
the moment the dark begins.

Tom writes back to Charley.
The bird on the terrace has his own name in French, but I don't
know it.
Gull and pull away from the dark man!
Eat pride with your doggerel and lace it with rum.

Communing with nature onthe night before Christmas, Charley's memories
of Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea.
The sea said, see i will comfort you.

His house is in the village though, a long walk from the sea.
He liked wolves and eagles and grizzly bears
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
a strange sight to the sunbathers who had never seen
the junipers shagged with ice.

Sleeping in snatches, Tom worries about his friend
He wakes, gets up and sits down
to write some cards…
thinking, I will turn it around.

Charley is thinking too.
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on
Searching through the darkness,
his thoughts sped through the snow, then under a river...

Tom wrote, fight the good fight!
One must have a mind of winter
Walking into the face of wind,
Praise be to the distant sister sun
All just to say, you are my friend.

Charley laughs, his first in weeks
at the line from Tom that says,
Hate to take the castor-ile they give for bellyache!

Tom thinks
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
I'd use them to
Take up the strain that wings it's way,
You have to hold him up.

The wind howls, hisses, and but stops to howl more loud
The longest night and the shortest day.
Tough Boy Sonatas, Charley thinks
The Christmas of my life.

Something I just noticed, said Tom
The tropical moon gave the city a glow,
Things grew brighter, more distinct, themselves.
Yes, your throat is froggy,
But it's better than it was.

Your friendship did it, said Charley
the swirling curves of spiraled space and time
with feasting and good cheer
and the Tamalitos de Cambray!

Poetry Friday Hosting - Rain, Alegria and Secession

2007-12-21T00:01:00.000-08:00

Happy Solstice everyone!

Last time I hosted, I made a fun poem of all your links - am I up for the challenge again? We'll see...I will round it up in a separate post late tonight so be sure to check back for the round up.

Wow, it's only 7:30ish in the morning here and there are already 27 poems up! That's fantastic. I'm headed off to work, but will be trying to look through and read each of your poems throughout the day. Sounds like we have quite the diverse and interesting batch as usual! I'm so grateful to Poetry Friday. I'd never get a chance to find all these great poems, discover new poets and read original works without you all. I'm so looking forward to a new year of poetry with you all!

It's Solstice, the Lakota Nation has announced that they will secede from the U.S. and become their own country (!), I turned 46 and I just launched a cooking website. It's been a crazy, wild, wonderful December. What a way to end the year.

Happy Holidays everyone! Here's Mr. Linky and please do leave a comment.

My Poetry Friday offering is Claribel Alegria (her name just makes me smile), with an interesting little poem in Spanish called Tamalitos de Cambray. I'll do my best to translate it for you. I've also attached two Youtube videos, one in English, one in Spanish so you all can get to know the lovely Ms. Alegria a little better. I love when she talks about how how important reading is.

TAMALITOS DE CAMBRAY

(5,000,000 de tamalitos)

A Eduardo y Helena que me
pidieron una receta salvadoreña.

Dos libras de masa de mestizo
media libra de lomo gachupín
cocido y bien picado
una cajita de pasas beata
dos cucharadas de leche de Malinche
una taza de agua bien rabiosa
un sofrito con cascos de conquistadores
tres cebollas jesuitas
una bolsita de oro multinacional
dos dientes de dragón
una zanahoria presidencial
dos cucharadas de alcahuetes
manteca de indios de Panchimalco
dos tomates ministeriales
media taza de azúcar televisora
dos gotas de lava de volcán
siete hojas de pito
(no seas mal pensado es somnífero)
lo pones todo a cocer
a fuego lento
por quinientos años
y verás qué sabor.

Claribel Alegria

Little Cambray Tamales

(makes 5,000,000 little tamales)
- for Eduardo and Helena who asked me
for a Salvadoran recipe

Two pounds of mestizo cornmeal
half a pound of loin of gachupin
cooked and finely chopped
a box of pious raisins
two tablespoons of Malinche's milk
one cup of enraged water
a fry of conquistador helmets
three Jesuit onions
a small bag of multinational gold
two dragon's teeth
one presidential carrot
two tablespoons of pimps
lard of Panchimalco Indians
two ministerial tomatoes
a half cup of television sugar
two drops of volcanic lava
seven leaves of pito*
(don't be dirty-minded, it's a soporific)
put everything to boil
over a slow fire
for five hundred years
and you'll see how tasty it is.
*pito means to whistle, it's also an sleep-inducing herb; but there's another translation. It's slang for penis (which is why she is saying don't be dirty minded).

So wow! The Lakota Nation and Russell Means are seriously doing this. Wow. I wonder how events are going to unfold. Any thoughts? When I hear the word secession, I think of Ashley Wilkes leaving Melanie and Scarlett at the barbeque. This is serious. Wow.

That's it! You're rounded up here.

Doña Lupe’s Kitchen

2007-12-17T06:49:00.000-08:00

I've been a little busier than usual lately launching my own cooking website and trying my hand at writing recipes. It's hard because then I actually have to think through the process while I'm cooking. It's also a little weird trying to figure out measurements because I never measure. I'm finally getting it though and having a lot of fun in the process. Cooking is such a huge part of my life and my history - it ties to so much I do that I wanted to share it.

On the website you'll find recipes, family stories and history, traditions, experiments and much more. You'll meet my family and friends, attend a tamalada and go on quests for ingredients. We eventually are going to have video instructions, so stay tuned.

The first few recipes are up and more are coming.

The link is here. Welcome!

Poetry Friday - Dedicated to La Virgen de Guadalupe - Tonantzin

2007-12-14T08:20:00.000-08:00

On December 12th, at 2a.m. I was out at Placita Olvera (Olvera Street) dancing barefoot on the cold ground along with many, many others to pay homage to the Virgen de Guadalupe. Before I left, I wrote up a post about her and how much she means to me, my family and to the Mexican people. See the December 11th post for more about La Virgen Morena.

There is poetry to her as well as songs written in her honor. I thought I'd include some here along with the words to Las Manañitas - the traditional birthday song that we sing to her on her feast day.

Las Mañanitas is a traditional Mexican song that is sung on birthdays and other important holidays. It is often sung as an early morning serenade to wake up a loved one. At birthday parties it is sung before the cake is cut.

Las Mañanitas Lyrics:

Estas son las mañanitas
que cantaba el rey David
a las muchachas bonitas
te las cantamos aquí

Si el sereno de la esquina
me quisiera hacer favor
de apagar su linternita
mientras que pasa mi amor

Despierta mi bien despierta
mira que ya amaneció
ya los pajarillos cantan
la luna ya se metió

Ahora sí señor sereno
le agradezco su favor
encienda su linternita
que ya ha pasado mi amor

Amapolita adorada
de los llanos de Tepic
si no estás enamorada
enamórate de mí

Despierta mi bien despierta
mira que ya amaneció
ya los pajarillos cantan
la luna ya se metió

Here's just about the whole of Mexico singing it to her in the Basilica

and check this out!

The round up is here at The Miss Rumphius Effect. Thanks for hosting Tricia!

Tlaxocamatl Tonantzin

2007-12-11T19:57:00.000-08:00

In Mexico, I think nothing is more honored and adored than the Virgen de Guadalupe or, as I know her, Tonantzin. Her image is everywhere. Statues, candles, blankets, sarapes, scarves, murals, roadside shrines - her peaceful and radiant countenance blesses you. She lives in homes, tattoos, in the marketplace, in song, everywhere, she touches everything. Even one of the most popular singers in Mexico wrote a song for her! In fact, singers of all types - rock bands, mariachis, the
pop stars, the rancheros, EVERYONE loves the Virgencita Morena, the Goddess of the Americas.

She was the image on the banners and flags of Father Manuel Hidalgo and his followers in the Mexican Revolution. She is entrenched so deeply into our culture and ideology that she’s like an old and very beloved friend. We call her little mother. She’s our collective mother, the mother of a conquered but not defeated nation, the mother who fights for us, protects us and loves us no matter who or what we are and become. We live and breathe Guadalupe. In every family, someone, boy or girl is named Guadalupe and carries that name with pride.

The Catholic Church has it's story of the Virgen de Guadalupe and Juan Diego, we indigenous people have another. Somehow, like so much in Mexico the two things blended and we have Catholic dogma mixed with indigenous belief. Tonantzin wouldn't be erased and she lives stronger than ever in our hearts and minds.

Every year on her day, December 12th - thousands of people gather at her shrine on Tepeyac to give her honor, to pay homage, to dance prayers for her, to sing Las Manañitas to her and to show their devotion. Indigenous people from all over Mexico leave their villages and walk or crawl up to the sierra de Tepeyac in an ancient pilgrimage. The actual holy ground is a little hill behind the Basilica. This hill was sacred to Tonantzin and consecrated to Her by the indigenous people of Mexico long before the conquest. The pilgrimage was happening in pre-Columbian times as well.

As far back as I can remember my life was dominated by the Guadalupe. In the sala (living room) my grandmother Lupe’s house (her name was Maria Guadalupe) in the place of honor on the wall was a huge, framed print of the Virgen de Guadalupe standing on the hill of Tepeyac with Juan Diego kneeling at her feet, tilma open and filled with roses. It was a beautiful print with a soft washed from age look to it. You could clearly see the nopales (cacti) that were growing on the hillside. Every day my grandmother would put fresh flowers in front of that print. “Flores para la virgen”, she would tell me, “Flowers for the Virgen”. I learned to cut fresh roses and other flowers from the garden for vases throughout the house, keeping only the best and showiest to put in front of the print. Just like my grandmother, I’d say a little prayer to her as I left her her flowers. She was as real to me as my sisters were and I talked to her far more freely. La Lupita was my confidant, my protector, my dear little mother.

At church, my grandmother was a member of a society called Las Guadalupanas and they were devotees of her. Every morning, my grandmother Lupe would don her lacy mantilla and head off for mass where she’d pray to the Virgen de Guadalupe. See, she’s everywhere and in everything.

In Aztec culture, Guadalupe was Tonantzin, the mother of all, Mother Earth, The Goddess of Sustenance, Honored Grandmother, Snake, Aztec Goddess of the Earth. She brought the corn, Mother of the Corn. Even then She was All and Everything. She represented mothers, fertility, the moon, the sacred number 7. In fact, she was sometimes known as 7 Serpent. She was always there and she was always our little mother.

Corn is sacred to Tonantzin. The flowers we know as poinsettias were called Cuetlaxochitl were also very sacred to her and they grew on Tepeyac in wintertime as tall as ten feet high. Tunas (cactus fruit or prickly pear) are also especially sacred to Tonantzin growing as they do on the cacti that grows on her sacred and holy ground. Filled with seeds inside and a rich, juicy red fruit, the tunas represent both fertility and the womb, the blood of women and the sweetness of life. Tomatoes are another sacred fruit to Her. On my altar, I often put flor de noche Buena (another word for poinsettias meaning flower of the good night), tunas, chiles, cacao beans and tomatoes. The colors red, white and green, the colors of the Mexican flag are sacred to Her as well.

Early tomorrow morning, the morning of the 12th at 2a.m. at the Placita Olvera (Olvera Street) in Los Angeles, mariachis, devotees of the Virgen de Guadalupe, Aztec dancers, folklorico dancers, deer dancers, musicians, priests, nuns, and many more will start paying homage to Her. We will sing Las Mananitas, the traditional birthday song, we will pray and dance. Aztec dancers will dance at Catholic masses everywhere and they will do the prayer dance Tonantzin first. They will dance various variations of Tonantzin and give Her honor. In Mexico, on a much larger scale, celebrities, the elite, the politicians, Zapatistas, narcotrafficantes, men, women and children will all pay homage to our beloved Virgen de Guadalupe. We will give thanks to her for all we’ve received from her merciful hands, we will pray for the sick, the prisoners, the homeless, the helpless and we know that She is mercy, kindness, acceptance and love. She commands a tremendous devotion from the people that love her just by being Guadalupe. I believe she has given me much – my life, my children, my grandchildren, the food I eat. She is the goddess of the harvest, she represents the mother in me and in all women. She simply is and so I say Tlaxocamatl Tonantzin, thank you virgen de Guadalupe for all you have given. Tlaxocamatl Tonantzin. Ometeotl.

From the City of the Queen of the Angels, desde la ciudad de Nuestra Reina de los Angeles,

Atonatiuh Eloxochitl
Mar y Sol Datura Flower
otherwise know as
Gina MarySol Ruiz
Who is on her way to dance for the Virgen de Guadalupe and one for her Grandmother Lupe too.

Free Rice

2007-12-08T20:14:00.000-08:00

How'd you like to increase your vocabulary, have fun doing it and by doing so be contributing to fighting world hunger?

Head on over to Free Rice and see how many bowls of rice you can donate. I managed to donate 2000 grains in about ten minutes. I'm addicted! They have great words like weald and taiga. Go! Visit! Donate rice!

Fred Patten Reviews Dramacon, Vol. 1

2007-11-21T12:44:00.000-08:00

Dramacon, Vol. 1
Author: Svetlana Chmakova
Publisher: TOKYOPOP
ISBN 10: 1-59816-129-8
ISBN 13: 978-1-59816-129-8

Christie Leroux is a high school student and anime fan attending her first anime convention, with her boyfriend Derek, to sell their amateur comic book – she writes it, he draws it. This 172-page young teen comic tells what happens to Christie during the three days at her first convention; but it is less about the chaos and traditions of big fan conventions – although that is certainly captured here authentically and hilariously – as it is about the emotional turbulence experienced by a sensitive teenager on her first solo outing from home.

How will she and Derek react in the “artists’ alley” to the fan public’s response, and to the criticism of professional cartoonists, to their amateur comic book? Is Derek just being friendly and a good salesman to attractive girls who look at their comic, or is he flirting with them? What should she and Derek do when their school roommates/chaperones stay out all night, leaving the two alone? Christie realizes that both she and Derek are immature, but how much self-centeredness should she tolerate from him? When Christie meets Matt, a sophisticated college student from across the country, she is torn between an instant attraction (is this just adolescent hormones or True Love?) and loyalty to Derek – but does he deserve it? “My first anime convention… did not go smoothly. But all things considered… I can’t wait to go back.”

Svetlana Chmakova is the young Russian-born commercial artist and anime fan who is one of the leading creators of what fans call “American manga” or “OEL (original English language) manga” – original American comic books written/drawn/published in the traditional Japanese manga style. DRAMACON reads front to back and left to right like standard American books; otherwise it is almost indistinguishable from a Japanese comic book. The art is black-&-white, presented in a thick paperback format. The style varies sharply from realistic when the characters are acting seriously to grotesquely “squashed” when they are acting silly. The art is heavily shaded and toned to compensate for the lack of color, and romantic scenes are full of the “shojo sprinkles” such as hearts & stars that Japanese romance cartoonists put into their art. The dialogue is full of fan slang such as “cosplay” and “J-Pop” .

DRAMACON Vol. 1 was published in 2005, and is currently in its fourth printing. Each volume takes place at the fictitious annual anime con, and shows Christie a year older with both her personal and creative relationships more advanced. It is a success both as a romance comic book, and as a primer for what to expect at your first anime convention. Vol. 3 will be published this December 10th.

Sayle Away on a Snowflake with Shakespeare, Poetry Friday and Robert's Snow

2007-11-16T00:00:00.000-08:00

Poetry Friday is here and with it my last feature of a Robert’s Snow snowflake and artist. These weeks have been a tremendous feast of visual delights and creativity. I can’t get over how beautiful each snowflake is. Just like a real snowflake, no two are alike and this one, “Titania’s Flowery Bed” is no exception. It’s based on Victorian lullaby and it features a sleepy little fairy.

Today, I’m featuring Elizabeth Sayles, who has illustrated more than 20 books for children. Her latest book is "The Goldfish Yawned" (Henry Holt) and it is the first book that she wrote as well as illustrated. It is a winner of the Bank Street College Best Childrens Book, 2005. She also illustrated "I Already Know I Love You" written by Billy Crystal which was a NY Times #1 best selling picture book.

Her Titania made me think of Shakespeare and A Midsummer Night’s Dream so my Poetry Friday offering is Elizabeth Sayles, her magical snowflake and Shakespeare. Makes a nice trio, doesn’t it?

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;

William Shakespeare, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Scene 1

Liz was kind enough to send me a long email telling me all about what inspired her snowflake, how she came to Robert’s Snow and a bit about herself.

“My Snowflake -- Titania's Flowery Bed -- was inspired by a book that I just illustrated called "Mother's Song." It is a Victorian lullaby and many fairies have found their way into the art. Some are fishing for pearls, or dancing on a spider's thread, or escorting the Queen over the River bridge. This little fairy seemed to fit pretty well in the snowflake, which is actually a flower. "Mother's Song," which was adapted by Ellin Green, will be published in Spring '08 by Clarion Books.

The fairy, somehow wound up looking an awful lot like my daughter, Jessica. I see it now when I look at it, but was not aware of it when I was painting it.

I usually work in pastel... but I have been incorporating acrylic paints in my work lately and this snowflake was mostly painted using acrylics.

In the summer of 2005 Grace had asked me to do a snowflake for the first Robert's Snow auction. I was so impressed by her, and her concept and energy. Most of us are paralyzed when someone we love is sick, at least I am. I can only think of how to get through the day, but Grace put all that anxiety into hopeful action. So I was happy to do it. Last year I was too busy, so I was more than happy to do it again this year, especially in light of the fact that Grace lost her husband in August.

One of my favorite books is "Five Little Kittens" (a New Public Library 100 Books for Reading and Sharing Selection) My artwork has been on display at the Society of Illustrators in NYC, The New York Public Library, The Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, Every Picture Tells a Story gallery in Los Angeles and Chemers Gallery in Orange County, CA. I am an adjunct professor of Illustration at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.”

Liz Sayles is one busy woman! Along with all her work, she has a website and a blog that feature her delectable art. snowflake and others at the Robert's Snow online auction. . I fell in love with her work and it’s dreamy, soft feel.

Getting to know about artists like Liz and discovering their art has made this experience a joyful and fulfilling one. Please visit the Robert’s Snow Online Auction and bid often for these selfless and thoughtful pieces of themselves the artists share. Each snowflake, the work creating them and the stories behind them are worth far more than will ever be fetched at auction.

Poetry Friday's round-up is at the place it began, Big A, little a.
Prox It

Lookybook Site to Promote Picture Books - 11/15/2007 - Publishers Weekly

2007-11-15T13:42:00.000-08:00

Lookybook Site to Promote Picture Books - 11/15/2007 - Publishers Weekly

Robert's Snow: Akemi Gutierrez and I Love Me New Boots!

2007-11-13T00:00:00.000-08:00

Joyful is the word that comes to mind when I look at Akemi Guitierrez’ work. Her sketches and paintings are filled with joy and such an amazing exuberance. I start smiling and keep smiling for a long while after visiting her colorful and happy website which is filled with fun things like The Curio Corner which features a monthly quiz, a Book Nook, her gallery, Animal Crackers and more. If you're having a down day, swing by Akemi's site - it's sure to put a smile on your face.

Akemi is the illustrator of such fun books as The Pirate And Other Adventures of Sam & Alice and The Mummy And Other Adventures of Sam & Alice which are both published by Houghton Mifflin Co.; What the Elephant Told and A Nap in a Lap are published by Henry Holt & Co.; and Three Little Bears published by Candlewick Press. She has a new book coming in 2008 entitled I'm Just Like My Mom/ I'm Just Like My Dad to be published by HarperCollins.

Akemi Gutierrez has been illustrating and writing children's books for seven years, and is currently working on her seventh book. Akemi lives in northern California with her husband Ed. She has won the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Award for two of her book illustrations: “Three Little Bears” and “What the Elephant Told.”s: “Three Little Bears” and “What the Elephant Told.”

Her story about what brought her to Robert’s Snow is a touching one and her snowflake is filled with that joy and exuberance that he brings to his paintings. I love the idea of an ice skating pirate named Dead-Eye Dirk, don’t you?

Here are Akemi’s words about her involvement with Robert’s Snow and a bit about her snowflake.

Dear Gina,

Thanks so much for writing & thinking of me for your blog!

I first heard about the Robert's Snow event from my editor at Houghton Mifflin in 2004. It sounded like such a great idea and a wonderful cause, I really wanted to get involved. My brother passed away in 2000 from cancer so this charity felt especially close to my heart. After contacting Grace, I painted a snowflake for the first auction and the following two. I strongly believe in all the good that can come from people working together, such as the artists & coordinators of Robert's Snow and plan to participate in this charity as long as they'll have me.

When I was designing this year's snowflake, I thought back to my first (and only) attempt at ice skating. There's just 2 kinds of people that shouldn't be on ice skates: pirates & me. So it seemed like a good chuckle to put my pirate "Dead Eye Dirk" on the same slippery skates that I once wore. I think he's better at skating than I was, and it helps that he's properly distracted from the icy peril by the sweets at hand.

I hope this was helpful to you! Thanks again for writing & I hope this year's auction is another big success!

Happy Autumn,
Akemi

Isn’t she nice? I just want to give her a big hug! Akemi's snowflake is adorable and like each of the snowflakes I see, I want it. It’s not every day you can have a pirate skating on a snowflake.
So bid, bid, bid! Let's help to make this the most successful Robert's Snow ever. Many, many thanks to all the wonderful illustrators that gave of their time to create these beautiful works of art.

On My Block: Stories and Paintings by Fifteen Artists

2007-11-10T08:01:00.000-08:00

On My Block: Stories and Paintings by Fifteen Artists
Editor: Dana Goldberg

Artists: Cecilia Alvarez, Carl Angel, Cbabi Bayoc, Kim Cogan, Maya Christina Gonzalez, Yasmin Hernandez, Felicia Hoshino, Sara Kahn, Conan Low, Joseph Pearson, Elaine Pedlar, Ann Phong, Jose Ramirez, Tonel, Jonathan Warm Day

Publisher: Children’s Book Press
ISBN-10: 0892392207
ISBN-13: 978-0892392209

On My Block is an incredible homage to neighborhoods, those childhood neighborhoods that were filled with enchantment and the wonder of young eyes and minds. Each sumptuous and very different page features a different artist talking about the neighborhoods of their childhood and what made them wonderful. Some pages are the stuff of dreams, others are filled with magic while some are grounded in reality, yet others contain the wispy quality of memory.

The fifteen artists are each completely wonderful in their own right and there is a small bio and photo of each at the bottom corner of each page, giving children and parents the opportunity to learn more about them. Each page is a journey of discovery.

Travel to Cuba with the artist known as Tonel and let his bright colors liven up your day.

Take a walk with Cecilia Alarez through her grandmother’s garden in Tijuana and feel the power of Mother Earth and view nature as a Goddess.

Visit with Los Angeles artist and teacher, Jose Ramirez in his East L.A. neighborhood on Ithaca Street (I lived there too!). His lush earth tones and warm brown faces will make you smile.

Yasmin Hernandez takes you through a gritty city dressed as Wonder Woman on her magical tour.

Maya Christina Gonzalez sweeps you away with her gorgeous use of color and sweeping dreamlike style.

Felicia Hoshino takes you to San Francisco where you have the fun of working at making tofu. Her soft colors made me think of the delicate, pale nature of tofu.

Cbabi Bayoc takes us to the park and that joy of just hanging on monkey bars. His wonderful illustrations of children’s faces smiling with the simple joy will bring back memories and make you smile long after you close the book.

I could go on and on about each artist and find more and more to ooh and ahh over. I open this book after a long day and I can’t help but be transported to that magical place of childhood where everything has magical potential. This is a book for both children and adults and is highly recommended. Each of the artists is well worth learning about and their websites or websites about them are easily found. On My Block is a wonderful way to teach children about art and artists, styles and diversity.

Poetry Friday - Dylan Thomas' Birthday

2007-11-09T06:42:00.000-08:00

Today is the birthday of Dylan Marlais Thomas, one of my favorite poets.

In My Craft or Sullen Art

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labor by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

To read the rest of this poem, click here. To find out more about Dylan Thomas, click here.
The round up is being held at A Wrung Sponge. Thanks for hosting!

The Meaning of Amoxcalli

2007-11-08T16:32:00.000-08:00

I’ve been getting a few questions on how to pronounce and spell my blog name AmoXcalli so I decided to give a little Aztec/Mexica culture lesson 101 from the indigenous point of view.

An Aztec book showing the folds

The Aztec people were called the Mexica before the Spanish Conquest. The name Azteca was given to them by the Spanish conquistadores. From what I’ve been told by my family and fellow Aztec dancers is that as the Spanish were coming over a mountain and they pointed and asked the indigenous people who the people were that lived over that mountain. The people said, the Azteca – meaning the feather workers who lived there, the Spanish took it to mean the people as a whole and the name stuck. We call ourselves the Mexica, which is pronounced Meh shee ka. The letter X in Nahuatl (the Mexica language at the time of the conquest and still in use by over a million people in Mexico today) is also soft, almost like a whisper. Ssh. So if you’re saying flower Xochitl – you say Sho sheetl – the l at the end kind of get thrown to the back of your throat.

Aztec pictographs for the days on the calendar

Nahuatl is an accentuated language, where the emphasis occurs on the adjacent syllable of the last syllable. Nahuatl is what is called a Uto-Aztecan language. The majority of speakers live in central Mexico, particularly in Puebla, Veracruz, Hildago, San Luis Potosi, Guerrero, Mexico (state), El Distrito Federal, Tlaxcala, Morelos and Oaxaca, and also in El Salvador. There are smaller numbers of Nahuatl speakers throughout the rest of Mexico, and in parts of the USA. There are numerous dialects of Nahuatl.

One of the few existing Aztec codices

Classical Nahuatl was the language of the Mexica people, also called the Aztec Empire and was used as a lingua franca in much of Mesoamerica from the 7th century AD until the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. The modern dialects of Nahuatl spoken in the Valley of Mexico are closest to Classical Nahuatl.

An Amate tree

Nahuatl was originally written in pictograph script and was often carved on stone or painted into books made of Amatl paper. Amatl paper was made from the bark of the amate tree and is still made in the traditional way today in various parts of Mexico. The Spanish called these books Codices or Codex and they destroyed most during the Conquest. The books were considered sacred and were filled with histories, knowledge of herbal medicine, astronomy, ritual, surgery and so much more that is lost forever. The books were folded accordion style and were read back to front, right to left. Sometimes they were written on animal skin, but usually with the Amatl paper. A book was called Amox (ah mosh) and a house was called Calli. Together Amoxcalli means library or literally book house.

This gives you a good idea of the detail within a codex and a sense of what we've lost.

Whole libraries were burnt to the ground and almost every codex or book destroyed during the Conquest. The few that remain are stored in museums in other countries like other important historical things from that era. For example, Montezuma's quetzal feather headdress resides in a museum in Austria. Aztec dancers like myself and other Mexicans have been protesting for years to have it and the codices returned to Mexico.

This is the Aztec pictograph for Amoxcalli.

Hungry?

2007-11-06T14:28:00.000-08:00

I'm there!

3rd Annual Los Angeles International
Tamale Festival
at "The tamales capital of the world"
MacArthur Park - Mama's Hot Tamales Café
(2124 West 7th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90057
between Parkview & Alvarado Street on 7th Street)

FREE ADMISSION
November 9, 10 & 11, 2007
Friday: 3pm - 8pm
Saturday:10am - 9pm
Sunday 11am - 6pm

Best Tamale Contest Tamale Eating Contest Biggest Tamale Contest
Tamale Making Demo Non-profit Booths Commercial Booths Art & Crafts
Booths Kids Zone

Entertainment Schedule:
Friday
3:00 P.M. Perdy Montes
4:30 P.M. Emilio Tejeda
5:00 P.M. Banda Sinaloense Los Angelinos
5:30 P.M. Sol Latino
6:10 P.M. Fama Nortena
6:45 P.M. Ruben dela Cruz
7:30 P.M. Juan Carlos "La imagen de Juan Gabriel"
8:00 P.M. Closed

Saturday
10:00 A.M. Juan Elizulde
10:30 A.M. Julio Molina
11:00 A.M. Natalie Reyes
12:00 Noon Alan Reyes
1:00 P.M. Best Tamale Contest - Stage
2:00 P.M. Rosy Gonzales
3:00 P.M. Rico Mago
4:00 P.M. Rock en Espanol
5:00 P.M. Sangre Fria
6:00 P.M. Gustavo VII
7:00 P.M. Yaky La Indomable
8:00 P.M. Alerta 3
9:00 P.M. Closed

Sunday
11:00 A.M. Danza Folklorico Netzahaul
12:00 Noon - Stage Honoring all Veterans
1:00 P.M. Tamale Eating Contest
2:00 P.M. Sangre Fria
3:00 P.M. Ballet Folklorico Azatlan
3:30 P.M. Lupita Fernandez
4:00 P.M. Lenny Lopez y su lluvia Tropical
4:30 P.M. Los Ases del Tamboraso
5:00 P.M. Pateles Verdes
6:00 P.M. End of Event

Fred Patten Reviews The Game

2007-11-03T18:10:00.000-07:00

The Game
Author: Diana Wynne Jones
Publisher: Firebird/Penguin Group
ISBN: 10: 0-14-240718-6
ISBN: 13: 978-0-14-240718-9

Hayley is a young girl living in London with her grandparents since her parents disappeared when she was a baby. Her overly strict grandmother keeps her virtually a prisoner at home, especially denying her knowledge of the mysteriously beautiful “mythosphere” which her grandfather studies on his computers. Finally she is banished in disgrace (but without being told why) to the home of relatives in Ireland.

Glumly expecting an even harsher household, Hayley is pleasantly bewildered to find that “the Castle” is a lively place overflowing with friendly aunts and young cousins her own age who seem to have been expecting her for ages.

The children eagerly introduce her into their secret game, a scavenger hunt for objects like a scale from the dragon that circles the zodiac, Sleeping Beauty’s spindle, a drinking horn used by Beowulf, and a hair from Prester John’s beard. Since Hayley has grown up uneducated, she does not realize how rare these are; but she is delighted when the search takes them into the forbidden mythosphere:

“They could see the strand they were on now, a silvery, slithery path, coiling away up ahead. The worst part, to Hayley’s mind, was the way it didn’t seem to be fastened to anything at the sides. Her feet, in their one pink boot and one black boot, kept slipping. She was quite afraid that she was going to pitch off the edge. It was like trying to climb a strip of tinsel. She hung on hard to Troy’s warmer, larger hand and wished it were not so cold. The deep chilliness made the scrapes on the front of her ache.

To take her mind off it, she stared around. The rest of the mythosphere was coming into view overhead and far away, in dim, feathery streaks. Some parts of it were starry swirls, like the Milky Way, only white, green, and pale pink, and other more distant parts flickered and waved like curtains of light blowing in the wind. Hayley found her chest filling with great admiring breaths at its beauty, and she stared and stared as more and more streaks and strands came into view.”

It is obvious almost from the start that Hayley is a special child. Just how special is revealed slowly as the story progresses and Hayley learns who she and her parents really are. Jones has used the plot device of walking between worlds in previous novels, but The Game is separate from her other books.

A knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology may help the reader recognize some of the characters whom Hayley does not know, but Jones introduces them all in a curtain-call endnote. This short novel or novella is in the Firebird series for young readers, although it, like Jones’ other novels, will charm readers of all ages.

Dia de los muertos - Parque de Mexico, Danza Mexica Cuauhtemoc

2007-11-02T11:26:00.000-07:00

Day of the Dead Altars- Olvera Street

2007-11-02T10:25:00.000-07:00

Los Muertitos

Pan de muertos

Altar to our fallen military

Altar to the Women of Juarez

Rest in peace Erika Estrada - it was an honor knowing and dancing with you.

Altar to the fallen immigrants

Praying to the Santo Nino de Atocha

A fallen danzante

Altars at Olvera Street

Poetry Friday - El Altar - Dia de los Muertos 2007

2007-11-02T01:00:00.000-07:00

This week's poetry Friday lands on All Saint's Day, the day AFTER Dia de los Muertos. Two years ago I wrote a poem celebrating the birth of my grandson Aiden and honoring my grandfather - Salvador Medina Camarillo who passed away from complications of cancer in 1987. The poem is called Cien Años - 100 years because his favorite saying was that he was going to live 100 years. He didn't quite make it but he was the strongest man I've ever known and battled cancer from the 1960s till the day he died. The year my grandmother died in 1984 - he had 7 major surgeries in one month and a few months later was out breaking concrete with a sledge hammer. You'd think that with such vitality and strength he'd be rough and gruff - but no, he was the gentlest, kindest man I've ever met. He believed in paying it forward, doing good just for the sake of doing it. He did the right thing simply because it was the right thing and never had an agenda. He and my grandmother Maria Guadalupe Gonzales Camarillo or Dona Lupe as she was known, would be proud of what all these bloggers are doing for Robert's Snow and I honor their memory with each post for it.

My Poetry Friday post is a Day of the Dead altar of sorts. I hope you enjoy this little taste of my culture. I welcome you to leave a little candle of a comment on this altar for your loved ones who have passed.

I've attached my Papa Chava's (that's what we called him) picture along with pictures and video of the Day of the Dead ceremony last night in Lincoln Park. Please keep in mind I was dancing so the video isn't very good.

Cien Años

“Cien años”
You would say
In that
Raspy, gruff
Yet curiously gentle
Voice
“Voy a vivir cien años”

“Naci en el 1900”
You’d tell me
As together we sat
In the patio filled with my
Grandmother’s plants
Playing
Canicas, marbles that
Lived in the bright
Green MJB
Coffee can

“Cien años”
Square, determined jaw
Resolute cara de nopal
Face of un indo
Beloved grandfather
Affectionately called
Papa

“Deje Mexico durante el revolucion”
Sadness and shadows
Flittering through your warm
Brown eyes
That must have seen
So much
Loss and pain
Brave, brown man
Strong and honest
A working man

“Cien años”
As we hoed the neat
Rows of
Corn, chiles, cilantro, tomate
Bright red strawberries
Freckled like me

“Conoci al Al Capone en Cheecago”
Proud, smiling lightly
As we picked the lemons, membrillo and laurel
Destined for Grandma’s kitchen
To become intoxicating smells
Of a distant land.
Later
I learned of
The stockyards, the stench
Backbreaking work
Racism and hatred
He never once spoke of

“Cien años”
Rolling massive flour tortillas
In three quick thumps
Of the
Rolling pin
Sas! Sas! Sas!
And hands a perfectly round
White moon
To Grandma standing
At the comal

“Somos Aztecas, indios”
Crinkly eyes flashing
Big dimple showing
In your left cheek
Same as mine
Only deeper, much deeper
The “X” marks the spot
In a treasure map of a smile
As we watch
Los Voladores perform

“Cien años”
As you sat at the table
With the ever present
Playing cards
Shuffling with all the
Finesse of a Vegas dealer
And told me
Of the first time you worked
With your father
At age 3
And earned
Tres centavos
One you bought an olla with
Gave it and the remaining
Centavos
To your mother

“No cobramos por ayuda”
Every time someone tried to pay
For the sobadas
Given
By the healing hands
Of a sobador, a huesero
Those same hands
That carved a cherry stone
or a porous rock
into the face of a monkey

“Cien años”
Body racked with nausea
Losing your thick black hair
Fighting
That asbestos-caused evil
Cancer
From working in that place
That manufactured dishes
Gave you a turkey a year, Franciscanware
The apple pattern
Desert Rose
And the “Big C”

“Dios te lo pague, hija”
Each time I did something
For you
Or my Grandma
Out of love
For no other reason
But to lighten your load
Do something for those
That gave me so much

“Cien años”
As you kissed the
Forehead of your bride
Still in love
After decades of marriage
Dancing with her
To a bolero reminiscent of
Times past

“Tengo que trabajar”
After seven major surgeries
The month after
My grandmother’s death
As we tried to get
You to stop
Working
The hard muscle
Of your indio labor
Tucked under the wrinkled
Mask of frailty

“Cien años”
When the hospital
Sent you home to die
A thin man hiding his
Pain
Looking like
A woodcut
By Guadalupe Posada

“No tengo hambre”
As I parade your favorite foods
Chicharones en chile verde
Frijoles del olla
Burnt blackened tortillas
I never understood
Why you liked them that way
Almost 86
On that April Fools
Sunny day
I called to see how you were
And found you had gone
To Mictlan
"Fitting", I said
As I held my children and cried
Fitting for the practical joker
You were

Today
A great, great grandson
Came backwards into this world
Bearing your name – Salvador
In the Aztec veintena of
Tlaxochimaco
The Offering of the Flowers

In his name
Aidan Cesar Salvador Ehecatlpochtli
I gift to you this
Flower, this poem
This bittersweet tear
May you live on
In our memories, our stories
Our hearts and dreams
Por much mas que
“Cien años”

I began my Dia de los muertos early. I put in almost a full day of work at the office and then hopped a train to downtown L.A.'s Union Station. Once there, I walked through the train station at a fast clip carrying my bag of regalia. I crossed the street and walked through Placita Olvera - or Olvera Street. I took a few pictures of the altars there (more on that in another post). I ran across the street, swept through the inner plaza of La Placita - the oldest Catholic Church in Los Angeles, took pictures there and ran to catch a bus to Lincoln Park - Plaza de la Raza. I was lucky, the bus came within five minutes and I arrived at Parque de Mexico just in time to help set up the main altar.

This is some of the guys putting up a banner of Emiliano Zapata.

The main altar

The pungent smell of marigolds and copal perfumed the air as we worked together in harmony. I saw dear old friends, children who had played with my children now had children of their own. We worked hard and laughed a lot. We did the usual helping each other with headresses and regalia, admired each others handiwork and chatted away till the conch shells and drums called us to circle. Then we danced.

This is me in my regalia right before we entered the circle.

Dancing is praying for us. We dance in a circle. The main altar in the center belongs to our muertitos - that's where they dance. We danced for hours, well into the the night. Some of us took breaks but most did not. We danced in the four directions, giving honor to each. We prayed to Father Sky and bent down to Mother Earth. Rattles shook, drums were beating, flutes were playing, costumes and feathers were swirling. We honored our ancestors, we prayed on this sacred and holy night. We prayed. We honored. We kept our culture alive.

Some of the drummers.

The Virgen de Guadalupe is special to us.

We are the Mexica, we are Azteca, we are indigenous, indios, we are the sacred corn. We are devout people, devout to the religions of our choice, devout to our traditions, devout in our love of patria (country) and of our homeland. There is a prayer we say at the end of each ceremony that talks about how we are the sacred corn.

When I'm standing there exhausted after dancing for hours in prayer, when my senses are filled with copal smoke, drum beats and that otherworldy sense of sacred space, when I'm there with my face pointing to the sky, hands and arms raised to the heavens, when I'm saying this prayer aloud with 100 other dancers - then I know that we have something precious, a treasure in our culture and that it will live on forever so please don't ask me to assimilate and don't think I'm un-American because I love who I am. I stand on the strong roots of my past, I dance with my ancestors and I am so proud to be a Mexica woman.

Ometeotl. The round up is at Mentor Texts, Read Aloud and More. Thanks for hosting on this special day!

Victoria Jamieson and Jerry Performs Carmen

2007-11-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween. This is the 18th day of the Robert's Snow Blogging for a Cure internet blizzard and I am so proud to be a part of it.

Tonight, us Aztec dancers and Latinos will be celebrating Dia de Los Muertos (see post below to find out where I'm dancing). Dia de los muertos is a very special day for us danzantes (the proper term for an Aztec dancer). On this night, we honor our ancestors, the people we loved who have died. We believe that they have moved on to another world and on this night, they come and visit the earth and the families they left behind. For danzantes, each dance is a prayer. The steps of the dance all tell stories and thank the Creator for what we have in this life.

Our costumes symbols show our family line of all who have come before us so we are literally dancing and praying with our ancestors. They are with us in the dance. The copal smoke that burns during the ceremony sends our prayers up to the sky. The night is filled with magic, we build altars of fruit and flowers, we make our departed ones favorites foods, sugar skulls are lovingly created and placed on altars along with the muertitos made of paper machier. I bake, like so many other women the traditional pan de muertos. Music and poetry and stories fills the air. I think that Victoria Jamieson's whimsical and beautiful snowflake Jerry Performs Carmen fits right in with el dia de los muertos as does this whole battle against the cancer that has taken so many of our loved ones to Mictlan - the land of the dead.

Victoria's snowflake shows an ice skating, ice dancing really pig performing Carmen. You all know we love pigs here at AmoXcalli and Cuentecitos. Carmen just happens to be one of my favorite operas. The fact that I'm featuring the night before Day of the Dead and Jerry is dancing on ice skates strikes me as uncannily coincidental. I think Jerry is dancing his own prayer for a cure.

I had the great pleasure of chatting with Victoria Jamieson via email and found out some really neat and interesting things about this very talented, gracious and lovely artist. I hope you find her snowflake as wonderful as I do.

Here's a little bit about Victoria.

I was born in Havertown, Pennsylvania, and my family moved to Tampa, Floria when I was twelve. After graduating from the Rhode Island School of
Design in 2000, I'm now settled in Brooklyn, New York, where I work as a
freelance illustrator, as well as a designer at Greenwillow Books. My first
published illustrations will be in bookstores in February, in "The Gollywhopper
Games", by Jody Feldman (Greenwillow Books).

It took me a little while after graduation to realize that I wanted to be a
children's book illustrator. I traveled around for a bit, working as a portrait
artist onboard a Carnival Cruise ship. If you want to practice drawing facial
expressions, drawing portraits for 8 hours a day is a good way to do it!

Later on, I went to Australia to study Museum Studies, but characters and story
ideas kept following me! Actually, a trip to a "Sheep Fashion Show" in Sydney
planted the seed for "Bea Rocks the Flock", to be published by Bloomsbury in 2009.

Now I am happily pursuing other stories that have been nesting in my brain over
the years. I absolutely love illustrating children's books. It's exciting for me
to develop characters and their environments in my head, and then to create a
tangible record of my imaginings in a painting.

Thank you so much for contacting me to be part of the Robert's Snow blog-a-thon!
It's such a beautiful project, and I'm honored to participate along with so many
of my heroes (ie, children's book illustrators!) Like many others, I'm sure, I
first heard about Robert's Snow through the Blue Rose Girls blog, and Grace Lin's
blog. I'm not a scientist or a doctor, so this was a good way to use the skills I
actually do have to help in the fight against cancer.

The inspiration for my snowflake mainly came from the fact that I L-O-V-E ice
skating, to a degree that sometimes seems at odds with my daily life. After years
of staring wistfully at the Olympic skaters on TV (not to mention such fine
cinematic events as "Ice Princess" and "The Cutting Edge), I took my first ice
skating lessons last winter. Like Jerry on my snowflake, I did not let my very
evident lack of skill interfere with my excitement for each class. I can relate
to someone like Jerry, who does not let something like "talent" stand in the way
of his passion! I am proud to report, after 12 weeks of lessons, I am now able to
spin & even do a little jump (although I think it is called, literally, the Bunny
Hop).

My first self-authored children's book will be published by Bloomsbury in 2009.
It features a sheep, Bea, who is also not content with the hand life has dealt
her. I enjoy creating characters who I can relate to-- like Bea, I have had my
share of sometimes scary adventures, bad haircuts, and questionable fashion
advice. I look forward to creating many more characters throughout my career!

**********************************************************************

I don't know about you but I can't wait to read Bea Rocks the Flock!

To find out more about Victoria Jamieson, check out her website here.

Day of the Dead / Dia De Los Muertos

2007-10-26T10:15:00.000-07:00

Seguida por Versión en Español
Danza Mexica Cuauhtemoc
Invites everyone

To its celebration of
“The Day of the Dead”

On Thursday November 1st

6:00 PM to 10:00PM
At
El Parque de México
(North Main & North Mission, Lincoln Heights, LA)
Info: (213) 481- 82 65
Aztec dance! Music by “Tolteca!” and food!
YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO PARTICIPATE WITH YOUR ALTAR or OFFERING TO YOUR LOVE(S) ONE(S)

Oher Cuauhtemoc Ceremonies:
Saturday Oct 27 –Baldwin Park- 5:00 PM contact: Christ at cuauhtemocbp@ aol.com
Friday Nov. 2nd San Fernando at Sepulveda Park contact: boch@hotmail.com
Saturday Nov 3rd - Ventura at Mission Park- 100E Main St, Ventura CA 93001 cont: Theo at cenyeliztli22@yahoo.com

Danza Mexica Cuauhtemoc
Le invita

A su celebración de
“Día de Muertos”

Jueves 1o de Noviembre, 2007

6:00 a 10:00 PM
En
El Parque de México
(North Main & North Mission, Lincoln Heights, LA)
Info: (213) 481- 82 65
Danza Azteca, Música x “Tolteca” y comida

ESTA CORDIALMENTE INVITADO A ACOMPAÑARNOS A HONRAR LA MEMORIA DE AQUELLOS QUE DEFENDIERON NUESTRAS TRADICIONES Y NUESTRA CULTURA
¡Los esperamos!

Otras ceremonias de Cuauhtemoc:
Sábado 27 de Oct –Baldwin Park- 5:00 PM contact: Christ at cuauhtemocbp@ aol.com
Viernes Nov. 2 San Fernando at Sepulveda Park contact: boch@hotmail.com
Sábado Nov 3 Ventura at Mission Park- 100E Main St, Ventura CA 93001 cont: Theo at cenyeliztli22@yahoo.com

Robert's Snow: Jeff Mack and the Pensive Pig - Poetry Friday

2007-10-19T00:03:00.000-07:00

Robert's Snow was founded by children's book illustrator Grace Lin and her husband Robert as a fundraiser to benefit Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The story is a touching one and you can read all about it here.

I first heard of Robert’s Snow while doing my daily reading at 7-Imp, one of the blogs I read religiously. Eisha and Jules had a fantastic idea, get the kidlit bloggers to pitch in and feature an illustrator or two or five to drive traffic to the Robert’s Snow Snowflake auctions. The response was terrific (who wouldn’t want to pitch in?) and I eagerly threw my hat in the ring.

My first illustrator/snowflake feature landed on a Friday and I was torn. I couldn’t miss Poetry Friday! I love Poetry Friday and I loved the idea of featuring an illustrator. I was committed to the feature and determined to have my Poetry Friday cake too. But how? At 7:15 a.m. just before running out the door to work, an answer landed right into my laptop with the name Roald Dahl. I know! You’re mystified. Well, stay with me and you’ll see what I mean.

My illustrator today is Jeff Mack. Born in Syracuse, New York, Jeff Mack spent most of his childhood drawing monsters, writing horror stories, and building haunted houses in his basement.

Having spent five years as a full-time muralist, he began illustrating children's books in 2001, starting with Linda Ashman's Rub-a-Dub Sub, a Junior Library Guild selection and Bill Martin Jr. Award nominee. Since then he has illustrated thirteen picture books, including James Howe's Ready-to-Read Bunnicula series and Eve Bunting's Hurry! Hurry ! He has also written and illustrated Hush Baby Polar Bear to be published by Roaring Brook in 2008.

Now at home in the high peaks of Western Massachusetts, he continues to write and illustrate books, paint murals, and talk with school groups about his work.

Jeff is currently in Buffalo, NY visiting elementary schools but he still managed to take time from his busy schedule to write me a nice email about Robert’s Snow and a bit about his snowflake.

I chose Jeff’s snowflake for the title alone – Pensive Pig. Anyone who reads me here at AmoXcalli knows my granddaughter Jasmine has a thing for pigs. Together, we occasionally review books about pigs so when I saw a snowflake with a pig in the title, well I just had to choose it. When I saw it, I wanted it for Jasmine. I’ll be bidding but I hope I have lots of competition. Here are Jeff’s own words about his snowflake and Robert’s Snow below his very Piggerific snowflake.

About a year ago I heard someone on the radio talking about the structural similarities between pig and human brains. I starting imagining pigs using their brains to have some of the same moments of epiphany that humans sometimes have (like the ones pictured in old Renaissance paintings). I made a few portraits of pigs involved in deep concentration. When the snowflake project came along, I thought that the snowflake may someday be used as a Christmas gift. So I decided to put one of the thinking pigs on the snowflake to remind the receiver that "it's the thought that counts".

What brought me to Robert's Snow was meeting Grace Lin at the Smith College Campus School Book fair in Northampton, MA. We talked about illustrating books, and she asked me if I'd like to be involved in the snowflake project.

You can find out more about Jeff Mack’s work on his website. I’m especially fond of his murals.

When I read this email from Jeff this morning and his words about the thinking pig, I remembered that Roald Dahl wrote a very dark little poem about a thinking pig and that’s when I knew I had not only a post about Robert’s Snow, but my Poetry Friday post as well.

The Pig

In England once there lived a big
And wonderfully clever pig.
To everybody it was plain
That Piggy had a massive brain.
He worked out sums inside his head,
There was no book he hadn't read.
He knew what made an airplane fly,
He knew how engines worked and why.
He knew all this, but in the end
One question drove him round the bend:
He simply couldn't puzzle out
What LIFE was really all about.
What was the reason for his birth?
Why was he placed upon this earth?
His giant brain went round and round.
Alas, no answer could be found.
Till suddenly one wondrous night.
All in a flash he saw the light.
He jumped up like a ballet dancer
And yelled, "By gum, I've got the answer!"

Read the rest of the poem here.

The round up is over at Kelly Fineman’s today. Thanks for hosting Kelly! This post will also post on Cuentecitos.

DarkHorse Announcement

2007-10-15T17:53:00.000-07:00

Presenting Doctor Grordbort’s
Contrapulatronic Dingus Directory!!!

Weta Publishing is pleased to announce its upcoming Weta Originals/Dark Horse Comics publication: Doctor Grordbort’s Contrapulatronic Dingus Directory.
Doctor Grordbort: inventor extraordinaire! He’s got a gadget for everything! He’s also the creator of a meticulous catalogue of weaponry. Doctor Grordbort’s Contrapulatronic Dingus Directory is a thirty-two-page catalogue that chronicles a world where chivalry is not dead, advertising is beautiful, and ray guns look too pretty to be lethal.

The stars of the show are, of course, Doctor Grordbort’s Infallible Aether Oscillators, but you will also find the shiniest new bifurnilizers, metal manservants, and automated travel loungers. Also included for entertainment and scientific education is a compartmentalised picture story (some call them comics) of the world-famous naturalist, Lord Cockswain. He was the hit of this year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego, as convention-goers stopped agape at Weta’s hauntingly realistic, life-size memorial statue, celebrating Lord Cockswain and the Moon Mistress’ heroic endeavors on Venus.

Written and illustrated by Weta Workshop conceptual designer Greg Broadmore, Doctor Grordbort’s Contrapulatronic Dingus Directory showcases dozens of arcane inventions, contraptions, and weaponry. “As a kid I was massively inspired and awed by the black-and-white serials on Sunday afternoon TV, in particular the 1930s Flash Gordon and the many sci-fi movies of that era,” says Greg. “This book allowed me to pay homage to that world of science fiction and create something new at the same time. And it’s full of guns, did I mention guns? Rayguns actually, the best type.”
This hardcover book will be available from Dark Horse Books in January 2008.

Me Llamo Gabriela/My Name Is Gabriela

2007-10-13T23:54:00.000-07:00

Me Llamo Gabriela/My Name Is Gabriela
Author: Monica Brown
Illustrator: John Parra
Publisher: Luna Rising
ISBN-10: 0873588592
ISBN-13: 978-0873588591

This wonderful little tribute to Gabriela Mistral, the Chilean Nobel Prize winner for Literature and the first Latina to receive the award works on so many levels.

As a picture book, the illustrations by John Parra are simply beautiful. His almost etched looking feel to the pages give that unique Latino flair and flavor while his color palette brings a happy and joyful feel to the book.

As a history, the book is a wonderful way to introduce young children to important historical figures in a completely relatable way. The book opens telling about Gabriela and how she picked her own name because she liked the sound of it. Writen in the first person, Me Llamo Gabriela/My Name Is Gabriela draws in the young reader with its imaginative, day dreamy feel and a sense of play. My little granddaughter was captivated by the story of young Gabriela Mistral and how she realized her dreams and beyond. I could see that she was drinking in the story, seeing herself in Gabriela and imagining herself doing the same. Isn’t that what we want for our children? That they see themselves as strong and successful so that they can go out into that wide world with a strong sense of self and the belief that their dreams are possible? Monica Brown’s book does just that – it gives them a concrete example of someone who followed their dreams and made them happen.

On another very important level this book teaches the importance of literacy. It gives little Latinas a good look at an intelligent role model. People like Gabriela Mistral are people Latinas or Chicanas don’t always learn about till college. To have a young child’s picture book teaching about a Nobel Prize-winning author gives them a view that they as Latinas have value and much to contribute. That’s an extremely important view to have when you’re growing up. My Name is Gabriela is highly recommended.

Poetry Friday

2007-10-12T22:54:00.000-07:00

Once again it is Poetry Friday and this week the round up is over at Two Writing Teachers. Thanks for hosting!

My contribution this week is a bit of one of my favorites, Borderlands by Gloria Anzaldua.

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldua was an amazing woman and my copy of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color is almost worn thing from so much reading. Anzaldua remains one of my heroes. She fought racism, sexism and oppression and paved roads for Chicanas and women in general. She died in May of 2004 and the world is a lesser place without her.

Borderlands

To live in the borderlands means you
are neither hispana india negra española
ni gabacha, eres mestiza, mulata, half-breed
caught in the crossfire between camps while carrying all five races
on your back
not knowing which side to turn to, run from;

To live in the Borderlands means knowing
that the indian in you, betrayed for 500 years,
is no longer speaking to you,
that mexicanas call you rajetas,
that denying the Anglo inside you
is as bad as having denied the Indian or Black;

To read the rest of Borderlands click here. To see the web altar and learn more about Gloria, click here.

National Book Award Nominees

2007-10-10T09:44:00.000-07:00

Fiction:
Mischa Berlinski, Fieldwork (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End (Little, Brown)
Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Jim Shepard, Like You'd Understand, Anyway (Knopf)

Nonfiction:
Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I'm Dying (Knopf)
Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Twelve/HBG USA)
Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (Hill and Wang/FSG)
Arnold Rampersad, Ralph Ellison: A Biography (Knopf)
Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (Doubleday)

Poetry:
Linda Gregerson, Magnetic North (Houghton Mifflin Company)
Robert Hass, Time and Materials (Ecco/HarperCollins)
David Kirby, The House on Boulevard St. (Louisiana State University Press)
Stanley Plumly, Old Heart (W.W. Norton)
Ellen Bryant Voigt, Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006 (Norton)

Young People's Literature:
Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Little, Brown)
Kathleen Duey, Skin Hunger: A Resurrection of Magic, Book One (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
M. Sindy Felin, Touching Snow (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Scholastic Press)
Sara Zarr, Story of a Girl (Little, Brown)F

Poetry Friday

2007-10-05T05:46:00.000-07:00

Poetry Friday is here! I feel like that needs to be shouted off rooftops this week for some reason. Could it be that I've been completely swept away by poetry all this week? I'm currently reading Marjorie Agosín's phenomenal Among the Angels of Memory and I can't think of anything else but the beautiful and powerfully evocative language. My review of it will be up this weekend, hopefully with some snippets of it). Head for the roundup over at Whimsy to see what other poetry you find.

I've also been reading two other powerful poets, Drive: The First Quartet by Lorna Dee Cervantes and Bent to the Earth, a favorite of mine by Blas Manuel de Luna (reviewed here). I've been assaulted by poetry, embraced by it, am breathing it this week.

Here's a little portion of de Luna from The Sky Above Your Grave, his poem in honor of his brother.

“If you could see through satin and wood and earth and bits of grass,
if you could see through the trees in winter
when their leaves are gone.
if, little brother, there were a way for the dead to see,
you would see all the ways the sky has to be beautiful.

Another portion of his poem Today

Today, where my mother works,
a young man,
no older than myself,
lost his hand
in a machine.
He screamed when his hand came off.
My mother told me
she could not get the scream
out of her head. All around them,
the pistachios, on the conveyor belt,
and on the ground, reddened.

Or perhaps a bit of his title poem for the collection Bent to the Earth

spun the five-year-old me awake
to immigration officers,
their batons already out,
already looking for the soft spots of the body,
to my mother being handcuffed
and dragged to a van, to my father
trying to show them our green cards.

They let us go. But Alvaro
was going back.
So was his brother Fernando.
So was his sister Sonia. Their mother
did not escape,
and so was going back. Their father
was somewhere in the field,
and was free. There were no great truths

revealed to me then. No wisdom
given to me by anyone. I was a child
who had seen what a piece of polished wood
could do to a face, who had seen his father
about to lose the one he loved, who had lost
some friends who would never return,
who, later that morning, bent
to the earth and went to work.

The 2007 Cybil Awards - Nominations are Open!

2007-10-02T21:15:00.000-07:00

Okay I'm a day late. The Cybils officially opened up nominations in all categories yesterday. I'm just way behind schedule on lots of things. The good news is that I have the great honor to be returning as a panelist in the graphic novel category!

Check out the cool group I landed in this year, some are seasoned Cybilers and old pals from last year and some are new and very welcome names. Talk about traveling in fine company! I expect applause. I'm listening for it. Yay!!

GRAPHIC NOVELS

Category Organizer: Sarah Stevenson (Reading YA: Readers' Rants)

Nominating Panel:

Mary Lee Hahn (A Year of Reading)
Alyssa Feller (The Shady Glade)
Katie Zenke (Pixie Palace)
Elizabeth Jones
Gina Ruiz (AmoXcalli) - that's me

Judging Panel:

David Elzey (The Excelsior File)
J.L. Bell (Oz and Ends)
Anna (TangognaT)
Snow Wildsmith (My Reading Project)
Angie Thompson (Angieville)

Don't know what the Cybils are? Well then, head on over here to the Cybil's official website to find out more.

Want to know more about the other categories besides Graphic Novels and who the people are for a particular genre? There are eight (8) genres covered. Head on over here.

Who won in 2006 you say? Well the nifty elves over the Cybils website have that too! See, it's like magic.

Now for the juicy stuff - you can nominate any 2007 title in whatever genre you like here. Only one book per person in each category so be choosy. We're really looking forward to reading and voting on your favorites!

Don't forget to nominate your favorite books of 2007!

A Book About Book Bloggers? Really?

2007-10-02T14:00:00.000-07:00

Check out the cool article on The Guardian and then use their link to hop over and see the book.

Wonder who's in it...

A Conversation with Ana Castillo

2007-09-28T23:12:00.000-07:00

Ana Castillo is a celebrated poet, novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She is considered to be one of the leading voices to emerge from the Chicana experience. Castillo is an incredibly prolific author and poet whose work has been critically acclaimed and widely anthologized in the United States and abroad. She has long been an activist and feminist as well as a strong voice for social change.

Castillo’s books include the novel, The Mixquiahuala Letters (Bilingual Review Press, 1986; Doubleday, 1992), Sapogonia (Bilingual Review Press, 1990), So Far From God (Norton, 1993), Massacre of the Dreamers: Reflections on Mexican-Indian Women in the United States 500 Years After the Conquest (University of New Mexico, 1992) and I Ask the Impossible (Anchor Books, 2001).

Castillo has coordinated an anthology on la Virgen de Guadalupe entitled La Diosa de las Americas/Goddess of the Americas (Riverside/Putnam, 1996), Peel My Love Like an Onion (Doubleday) in 1999 and a children’s book My Daughter, My Son, The Eagle, The Dove. In 2005 she published a dramatic work Psst…I have something to tell you, mi amor (Wings Press) and most recently published her latest book The Guardians (Random House).

Born and raised in Chicago, Castillo currently lives in New Mexico, although she is currently teaching at MIT in Boston. The Ana Castillo website contains a complete bio and list of publications and awards.

For me personally, Ana Castillo is my hero, a role model and one of my favorite authors and poets. I've always admired her activism and her writing. Ms. Castillo very kindly took time out from her busy schedule at MIT to speak with me about her poetry, her books and her activism. I found her to be gracious, warm and brilliant. We had a lovely conversation and I gained both knowledge and inspiration from it.

GR: I loved your children's coming of age book My Daughter, My Son, The Eagle, The Dove - do you ever think you will write another book for children?

AC: Well, it's not always a matter of wanting to write something; sometimes it's a matter of getting it published. That book didn't do very well and is going out of print soon. I did write a book for babies from the huehuetlatolli but couldn't find a publisher that was interested in taking it on.

GR: It's a shame that the coming of age book is going out of print. It's such a beautiful book.

AC: I know, I know. And like I said I had the baby book, the huehuetlatolli, for the newborns and we passed that around. I wanted to do that about a year or so with this one. So you know you kind of lose your energy on it and then you move on to what else you have to get done like you know, a novel and so all those things are on the back burner right now.

GR: I loved The Guardians.

AC: Thank you.

GR: I loved Regina. She was a lot more timid and vulnerable than like say, Carmen La Coja of Peel My Love Like an Onion but she was wonderful. She was such a great character and I liked her so much. She was very easy to relate to.

AC: Thank you.

GR: What was your inspiration for The Guardians?

AC: Well I have been making my home in Southern New Mexico for the last four years splitting my time there and teaching and it’s out in the desert. The Franklin Mountains are in view. There’s a picture of me standing there outside of my house and you can see the Franklins behind me and actually that was the initial take off point for me in the story imagining someone on the other side of those of those mountains waiting to cross over. It was a cold morning and it was very misty – you couldn’t even see them but you knew they were there. That’s how it started for me. The first question is how would it be like for someone who’s waiting this morning to cross over and the other question was who’s waiting. And so I went over to my laptop and started writing the story.

GR: It’s a beautiful story, especially for someone like me who grew up with people who came during the revolution. My grandfather came over when he was about 14 years old from Guanajuato.

AC: Well my grandmother brought her son who had chased after Pancho Villa. He was 14 at that time too. She grabbed him in Torreon and then they went into Chicago and didn’t stop till they got there.

GR: A lot of people ended up in Chicago. My grandfather used to call it Cheecago.

AC: Yeah (laughs), so did we, ah ha Cheecago. But that’s how we got there and it’s just funny how people don’t know the history. Back in the 70’s people would say, “oh you’re from Chicago and you speak Spanish?” Of course a lot of Mexican people went up there. There were factories and the stockyards and the steel mills. So there was work for people.

GR: Yeah it’s how people ended up where they ended up during that time. My grandmother was born on the way and her family ended up in Piru – Ventura County picking oranges. They were hiding from Pancho Villa. So many of these families have these interconnected Pancho Villa stories.

AC: Exactly. That’s what the book does with el abuelito who is claiming these connections and say okay well fine we don’t have these connections but we could have had them.

GR: That’s why I think The Guardians is so important. It touches on so many of our personal immigrant stories and our family stories. It’s very relatable to what’s going on with the borders. It’s an amazing book and probably one of my favorites next to I Ask the Impossible.

AC: Thank you.

GR: One of the questions I had for you was about activism and what more do you think needs to be done? What advice would you give to young Chicana women today? How to keep it going?

AC: Well I’ve had a couple of inquiries as a result of the subject of the book that I haven’t had recently from young people, like you know new college kids maybe. I decided sometime back personally for myself most of my activism goes into my writing and the commitment I have to the books that I do and speaking and so on. That came because as a very young person when you discover, when you have some consciousness and you discover where you fit and where your people fit in society and you decide that it’s not just. You know you have that zealousness of the young person that feels like you can go out and do it all. You know you save the world, save your gente, save women and before you know it if you try to do that you will burn out very quickly. My feeling is that I always think that and my advice to young people regardless of what times in these decades we’ve been living in there’s always work to be done. The point is what can you do personally that you can live with so that you can get up the next morning and have the strength to start it all over again. So whatever it is that people find that they want to work on they also have to remember that they are human beings and they need to save some time for themselves for personal growth, for mental health, for their families, their loved ones so that they will have the strength to continue doing that work. So if you decide well you know I don’t have much time, my kids are in school and you want to get online and do letter writing to your senators, your local congressman on the Internet that’s something to do. That can be done. It doesn’t have to be doing it all, going out into the streets rioting, getting arrested. There are other ways to show your presence.

GR: Yes and it can consume you if you’re not careful.

AC: It does consume you because once you realize that one thing is related to the other, you’re outraged by injustice in general. So that’s what I would recommend. I have found my blog one source for that because I have readers. I don’t know how many readers but I know I have readers. I know there’s people out there because they respond every now and then and they’re not only in this country but they are in other countries and I think that is such a tremendous tool that we have these days with the internet. To be able to reach out to people all over the world that 20 years ago or 30 years ago was just impossibility. So I would say that and I think that another way to do that if you’re more hands on is to start in your own immediate community. That community could be your town, it can be your ward, your district, your town, your school and to see what needs to be done there. That’s one step. I also feel that it’s very important for young people to have a sense of history and do research and don’t re-invent the wheel and don’t think that you’re the first martyr to discover social injustice but to take advantage of previous generations of activists and find out what they did and how they resolved things.

GR: Right, right. It’s interesting. My mom was an activist and I saw her burn out very fast. I’m a danzante Azteca and that’s how that and book reviews – trying to get the Latino community reading is my personal torch to carry.

AC: And we absolutely need that as we have a growing body of Latino literature. We absolutely need it and I found myself on a tirade recently if you read my blog because you know it’s been happening obviously since the 80’s. You have activists coming out of the 60’s and 70’s and then you start getting people that are taking the opportunities for their education and then becoming Republican and becoming to my mind retroactive activity. One of them are we are living still in the time in which it’s not as if every Latino writer has the same opportunity as every white writer to get published. We are still seeing many of us, except for a handful are still seen as ethic or minority writers and therefore we are not writing to the universal experience. This has been a truism as far as I’ve known since the 80’s. The first people to go out and slam another Latino or Latina or another minority are their own people.

GR: Right, the crabs in the bucket.

AC: Yes! I was just outraged, not because people don’t have an opinion to like or dislike my work but why are you going to go do that out in the public? We already have enough going against us than to have our own people doing the dirty job for the mainstream.

GR: That kind of thing drives me crazy which leads me to my next question. What steps forward do you think we’ve made as women and Chicana women and what steps backward have we made since the 70’s, 80’s?

AC: Well we aren’t isolated from the rest of the country and the rest of the world and so as we were opening up those opportunities just as other ethnic groups, newer generations are able to assume that perhaps that they can get into college, that they can go away to school, that they can take certain careers. I think those are some of the wonderful things that have happened. The downside is that in my opinion we lost, some of the work that we also did as Chicana feminists that still needs to be done and that is and this isn’t the case of course with everybody but we also see now they’re not feminists, their not necessarily self defined as Chicanas, are young women marketing their careers vis a vis their bodies and that’s okay for them. And those are things that started evolving in the last ten or 15 years that when I started to see that I couldn’t believe what I had fought for was to see that. So I think that we’ve gone backward and I think that there is going to be a backlash with that. Maybe not today or tomorrow but there will be one. There was a reason that Chicanas wanted to be taken seriously for their intellect. To be able to get into positions of power for their intellect and not because you know they had cleavage, just the opposite in fact.

GR: Yeah I see a lot of the teenage girls and the way they dress and I just want to stop them and say mija – stop aren’t you reading? What are you doing? It’s a struggle with the girls – the media and the Internet and being so caught up in their looks. I think you’re right; we’re going to be hit with a backlash. Not just Latina women but women in general. We’re overly concerned about beauty, weight, etc.

AC: Well you know on the one had you can say that, when I hear for example that JLO is such a role model for Latinas, on the one hand I respect her for her business sense and I respect her for her ambition. But again, she’s in the entertainment world. She’s done it on her looks and very specifically on her anatomy. Madonna is also considered a great businesswoman and so is Yoko Ono. In the entertainment world that is a whole different story. I feel if I had a young daughter right now, I would feel a little discouraged if that was my daughter’s primary role model for success and for young people, for Latinas and Latinos. You know they think, oh she’s such a businessperson and she does this and that. Well yes, after you’ve made your money in a certain way whatever that way maybe. But again to me it is about social change and using your mind to implement those changes.

GR: Right. You know I just read a children’s book that I’m going to be reviewing. I have a children’s book review site for Latino children’s literature called Cuentecitos and I just read Monica Brown’s book on Gabriela Mistral. Now that’s a role model.

AC: Right and someone that we need to know about, that our children need to know about. In France where they have no shortage of adulation for their writers, I remember about 20 something years ago meeting some little girl, she was about ten years old and she had something like playing cards but they were about French writers. So that’s what I’m talking about. Those are the kinds of things we need to put out there for our young people.

GR: It’s important. Literacy is a big issue and sometimes I get a little discouraged but I just pick myself up and keep on going.

AC: What else can you do?

GR: One of my of my favorite things you write is your protest poetry. My favorite is Women Don’t Riot. It hits you in the gut. It’s an older poem but it still packs a punch.

AC: Yes, I wrote it right after the OJ Simpson case, after the decision was made. I think I wrote it right after that. It’s funny you mention that, I was just thinking that my son that is in his twenties now recorded me reading that and I think we posted it on the website. The way he sent it to me was Save My Mom and I saw that on my computer and I thought Save My Mom what is this and it was me reading that poem. It reminded me of what you were saying about your own mother. So that’s how he sees it.

GR: It’s a great voice and a beautiful poem that says so much. Are you going to be doing any more books of poetry?

AC: I never dismiss that possibility. I sure do hope so. It takes a very long time to get a collection that you want. You have to be selective and there’s also a theme and as I’ve gone more into prose there’s been less poetry. But you know Water Color Women was a 300-page poem that I did in 2005 so it’s not on my immediate agenda but I do hope that I am able to do another book in my lifetime. They take about ten years usually. Not Watercolor Women though.

GR: Well you have such a beautiful poetic voice it would be wonderful to see another book, another collection.

AC: Thank you.

GR: I read a Washington Post article recently about how you are haunted by your ancestors. Do you care to expand on that a bit?

AC: Well I think that’s one way, speaking of poetic voice I think that’s one way to put how writers come to their material. Especially postcolonial writers we come to our material haunted by our families, our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents migrations, haunted by history in a way that dominant society doesn’t have to do. You know things just have been going on as they’ve been going on, you know victory after victory. And we are reliving or working on a wound that we inherited and that’s the way it came to me to describe why I do write about Chicanos and Latinos, Mexicans I don’t even know how to describe us when we are American citizens who are always looked on as immigrants.

GR: Sometimes I think we do it to ourselves too. I mean I think of myself as a Mexican woman versus an American woman even though I am third generation, I was born here. My culture is so saturated in me that I consider myself a Mexicana.

AC: Well but that’s the debate that is given by people on the anti-immigrant side. They say that as long as you don’t assimilate like the good Europeans did who came to Ellis Island, you yourself are contributing to your own alienation. But I don’t really agree with that. I think that part of that comes because we have this unique relationship with being the Southwest of the United States became part of the U.S, in 1848 that no other country outside of the Native Americans really experiences that on this territory. At that time we are really made to feel alienated in this country forever. You know I live in New Mexico and there are people there in the village that I live in that their great, great, great grandfather established a town there and they definitely – I mean they may call themselves Hispanic (that’s the preferred term if your not a Mexican citizen) but they speak Spanish, they are you know look at Mestizo, proud of their Apache background but they definitely see themselves as marginalized or not white. And we’re not white. So I mean part of that has to do with we can’t assimilate because we have a very long history of being marginalized as people of color on these lands. You go where you feel most comfortable.

GR: I don’t think we want to assimilate because for me personally, I fight it kicking and screaming because I feel they are trying to take the color out of my life and kind of white wash me. Que no, que no! I am a danzante Azteca. I put on feathers and go out into the street and dance around in Native regalia. It’s very hard for me to assimilate.

AC: Well you know, this past weekend I was at the Brooklyn Book Festival and I was on a panel with two gentlemen writers and one was from Jamaica and one was from India and the point for me is that I am not from another country. Now I guess I live on the border but I do live on this side of the border.

GR: But we are treated as foreigners.

AC: Yes. So it’s a constant and you are treated as a foreigner and when they find out you’re not they lose interest in you. [Laughs]. Oh okay, one of those. You know what I’m saying? It’s like you lose credibility. When I’m asked if I write in English or in Spanish, I say I write in English why would I be writing in Spanish? I’m not Laura Esquivel. I’m from Chicago. So then they lose interest in you.

GR: Bueno, it’s a hard battle and it’s uphill but we gotta keep going.

AC: But I guess we signed up for it so it’s too late to turn back now!

GR: Right.

AC: Okay. Well thanks so much for the wonderful review that we received. You know you put a lot of hard work in your books and it’s easy for someone to say you know I didn’t like it.

GR: Well I loved it.

AC: Thanks for the work that you do too.

GR: Thanks so much.

Poetry Friday - Round 'em Up!

2007-09-28T19:54:00.000-07:00

A little story tells a tale of flowers and song,
while Life longs for itself through a father's eyes
and a daughter's memories.
A swing in the air; nebulas, the universe locked in
While elsewhere there is tap dancing on the roof.
Greene connection with the dirt and grass,
Teeth, sneakers, foxes and rhyme.
A spiral of translucent words
Leads the brave poet past her fear.
Who but Martha spins her tales
Nearby, the autumn bonfires burn
As fairies dance for Michaelmas
and women, brave and daring leave fragments of themselves
but don't riot.
Bright ladies with cold hands
Face it all alone
The resurrection fern of iron and wine
while the eyes of a hungry dog look on andGod takes time to write a book
in long low notes the path to peace.
A baby cries in a bed of roses
and the impression I get
here in Burma
is that nonsense makes sense as much sense say
as noodles for breakfast do or frogs singing lullabies in a swamp.
Joy such a small word for such a big thing
like geese flying at night beyond the face of fear - a blessing.
Promises on a hillside, the discovery of plums in an icebox
a summer rich oak under which, the degenerate sons
release their Greek and Latin to the brownish beetle
as the King Monarch watches intently and thinks on
the luscious, impeccable fruit of life.
The rabbit in the mirror stops to stare behind daylight
at an army of words
and cowboy poetry rounds up Poetry Friday.

Poetry Friday - Yikes I'm Hosting!

2007-09-27T22:44:00.000-07:00

It's been a tremendously busy week for me and an exciting one. I've interviewed Ana Castillo (what an amazing lady she is), I've been researching illustrators, preparing for the Cybils, talking my nice boss into giving Dana-Farber free banner advertising and picking out safe new car seats for my grandkids along with my everyday work madness. I almost clean forgot Poetry Friday which would have been terrible since (gulp) I'm hosting and rounding up.

In honor of Ana Castillo and Poetry Friday - here is the link to her speaking her seminal poem - Women Don't Riot from her book I Ask the Impossible.

Women Don't Riot

I hope I figured out Mr. Linky. I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with for my first hosting Poetry Friday.

Please leave a comment after dropping your poem off with Mr. Linky. Happy Poetry Friday everyone!

Rainy Day Reading, Contemplating and Cooking

2007-09-22T18:40:00.000-07:00

It rained all last night and off and on throughout the day. The grandkids and I were cheated out of our walk but we're happy to have the rain here in sometimes too sunny California. My Grandma Lupe's long-standing tradition was always to make either caldo de rez (beef and vegetable soup) or caldo de pollo (chicken soup) on the first rainy day. It's a great tradition and I've done a darned good job in keeping it. My children always knew the first rainy day meant soup and some kind of baking and now my grandchildren are learning. Traditions are important to me.

It's Saturday. If it had been a Saturday when I was growing up, I'd have been lying under piles of blankets smelling the morning baking my grandmother was doing, smelling chiles roasting, hearing my grandfather banging out tortillas with his big rolling pin. If I had been at my mom's it would have been cartoons, cold cereal and a blanket on the couch. In my house now, Saturdays mean the grandkids are here. Cartoons? Once in a great while. I do work in animation... But mostly, Saturdays - rainy ones mean cuddling on the bean bags and reading stories. Today we read the first chapter of The Wind in the Willows. Isn't that a great book?

After reading, we piled into the car at the first break in the rain and headed to the Mexican market to get groceries for soup. I meant to do chicken but ended up wanting beef instead. I had a great time teaching my granddaughter Jasmine how to pick out the right vegetables. We had so much fun smelling herbs, squeezing lemons, looking at tomatoes, discussing chiles and laughing at the funny sounds of words in Spanish, English and Nahuatl. Words like loroco, flor de calabaza, tomatl, tomate, tomato. She has a good sense of what we need and she's only four. She knows that we want the juiciest, darkest red tomatoes for salsa, the firmer Romas for Spanish rice and things like salad. She knows the difference between the smell of oregano and thyme, can tell you what we use it for and that spearmint tea will take away a tummy ache. She's steeped in tradition and in her culture and that makes me happy to know that things like my grandmother's recipes won't be lost.

We bought chamorros de rez (beef shanks), soup bones, loroco, mexican squash, chayote or chayotl squash, squash flowers, fresh thyme, fresh oregano, chiles of four different varieties, lemons, new potatoes white and purple, tomatoes, carrots, white Mexican corn on the cob, celery, cabbage, cilantro, garlic and onions. We bought fresh Mexican white cheese (queso fresco) that crumbly mild almost ricotta-like wheel of cheese that is my favorite and Monterey Jack. We also bought huge pink and white marshmallows and a big pumpkin.

At home again, we set the soup bones and chamorros to mingle with fresh thyme, cilantro, oregano, a head of garlic and two quartered onions in boiling salted water while we read more about our friends Toad, Mole and the rest. I got in some crocheting while the grandkids napped and thought about next weeks Poetry Friday (yikes I'm hosting), Robert's Snow and the upcoming Cybil Awards. I have the honor of featuring four illustrators on both Cuentecitos and AmoXcalli for Robert's Snow - Blogging for A Cure organized by Jules and Eisha of Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. Those two are the most organized people I've run into in a while! I also have the honor of being a panelist again for graphic novels with the 2007 Cybil Awards. I'm going to be a busy girl!

Several hours later, we had a great beefy stock going. We pulled out the herbs, garlic, meat and bones and strained out the stock. We then added quarted potatoes in their skins and the carrots chopped into chunks. We let that get halfway done, then added chopped celery, chunks of chayote squash and fresh Mexican white corn on the cob and while that was cooking we sliced into paper thin wheels, the zucchini and Mexican squash which we carefully laid on top to steam along with a quartered cabbage. We put the lid on the pot and let that simmer for five minutes just long enough for the cabbage to wilt and change color.

I had made fresh roasted salsa earlier along with squash flower and loroco quesadillas and Spanish rice. We cut quesadillas into little crispy triangles oozing the mix of cheeses with little green and yellow flowers cascading out and arranged those on a plate with a little bowl of salsa in the middle. I stirred the meat back into the soup and served it out into each bowl making sure everyone got an ear of corn. The traditional way is to scoop out a spoonful of rice in the middle of the bowl then serve the soup right over it. We sat down to squeeze lemon over the hot soup and rice, nibbled quesadillas along with the soup and most of us scooped the salsa right into the soup as well. For dessert I had made hot Mexican chocolate with cinnamon covered by the huge marshmallows in pink and white and the fresh pumpkin empanadas that are my son Albert's favorites. My grandchildren are sleeping now full of stories, food and tradition.

Aren't rainy days wonderful?