Elenamary

One of my favorite memories was in tercero de secundaria (equivalent to 9th grade) when I was living in Taxco. Class started at 730am and so I was up bright and early. I would wake with the dawn and walk down the mountain to class.

It was that wonderful amazing part of morning, when the air is fresh and crisp, where everything seems perfect.   The coruscating sun shinned just the right amount, the temperature was ideal, few people are out, it was peaceful and it gave me that feeling of the world being mine!

I would only pass two types of people, either the nuns on their way from mass at Sainta Prisca back to the convent, or the bread delievery boys. The bread boys would have big basket-hats, the kind that could carry 100 individual pieces of sweet bread. I loved it when they passed me  because the bread was fresh and warm and the smell wafted to my nose.

I would stop at a bakery on my way to class and buy a sweet roll, my favorite were the borrachos coated in sugar and strips of pink dye through the inner doughy layers.  I would eat while either drinking a steaming cup of cafe con leche or atole.

This morning after work I passed a Mexican bakery. You must understand I am in Columbus, Ohio, the first Mexican grocery store in Columbus opened 7 years ago, and now we have multiple grocery stores, bakeries, salons de fiesta, dulcerias, it is exciting. I drove by the bakery, a new bakery, Bakery Otro Rollo, I have never been to. It is the best one I’ve been to in Columbus. Their slogan is only understood by us bilingual people! Ready?! Here goes?!

Our Flavor, Service and Quality is just …”Otro Rollo”

I asked the cashier at the bakery what time they open (seven am) so that I may return right when they are opening because that is the best when the bread is still warm. Oh my, anyone who wants to go with me is welcome.

Well, well, the blog is slowly coming together.   I got my gravatars working (remember you can register for your own gravatar here —which will allow you to make comments with any image of you–or anything else).  I still need to tweak the font, the comments, the tag clouds, upload old entries…but it is coming together and I have one person to thank for that Seyd!  Back in the summer of 2004 I wrote an entry declaring that my blogging days where over.  I had argued with my then boyfriend who also hosted my blog about the fact that he had moved my blog over to his the server of his new lover…he didn’t understand why that bothered me!  And so I posted a blog entry saying goodbye that I no longer had a server.  And who came to save me and my blog and provide not only a server, but maintenence?  None other than our favorite ethnoqueer superhero, Seyd.

I am excited to have a functioning blog.  And I hope soon I will have one that will display my personality.  For example, I think Cindylu and Gustavo have beautiful blogs that display their personalities.  I look forward to my blog displaying my personality. A sweet artist here in Columbus is supposed to be working on a design for me.  It will be awesome.

Alright everybody here is a toast to a new beginning of blogging!  Salud!

Truckers dread Mexican big rigs

Herndon, a driver for Panther Expedited Services Inc., Seville, Ohio, and thousands of other U.S. truckers may soon have to accept the presence of Mexican trucks and drivers. The Bush administration is pushing forward with long-stalled plans to open U.S. highways to Mexican trucks to fulfill an obligation under the North American Free Trade Agreement signed in 1993.

Mexican Mobile Consulate shifts visit to Appleton

One of two mobile programs in the country, Chicago’s was established five years ago to serve a region in the Midwest roughly the size of one-third of Mexico. The consulate targeted communities where there was a relatively large Mexican population and whose residents could not afford to travel to Chicago for the paperwork. At the time, the consulate’s service also included Minnesota, Indiana and Ohio.

City toughens lead rules (Cincinnati

Some children’s toys and cheap jewelry contain lead, he pointed out, and in the Hispanic community, some candies also contain lead. One popular Hispanic folk remedy used to treat colds “is almost 100 percent lead,” he said.

**what are they talking about in regards to “Hispanic folk remedy”? 1. What do you mean ‘Hispanic’? 2. What folk remedy are you referring to?**

Ohio test scores up overall

Although Ohio’s black and Hispanic students were passing achievement tests at lower rates than white and Asian students this year, there was some progress at narrowing achievement gaps in the past year:

A majority of black students did not pass this year’s math tests in fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades. A majority of Hispanic students in fifth grade did not pass the math test this year. A majority of white students and Asian students passed math in all grades.

While 71 percent or more of white students passed the new science tests in fifth and eighth grades, less than a third of black students did, and less than half of Hispanic students passed.
While most white and Asian students passed social studies in eighth grade, only 20 percent of black eighth-graders passed it, and 30 percent of Hispanic eighth-graders passed. Similar gaps appeared in the fifth-grade social studies results.

**The headline wants to distract us from the fact that only 20% of black eighth graders, and 30% of Hispanic eighth-graders passed the social studies portion, compared to the majority of White and Asian students who passed? **

U.S.’s First Broadcast Media Training Program for Spanish-Speaking Students

July 18, 2007 — Denver, Colorado — The Ohio and Illinois Centers for Broadcasting today announced plans to start the United States’ first broadcasting training program dedicated to Spanish-speaking Americans. As part of the program plans, the school today launched www.mediosuno.com , a comprehensive website dedicated to the School’s Hispanic Media Broadcasting Training Program

Richardson plays trump card at Latino meeting.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio also won applause for his labored reading of a closing speech in Spanish, by which he meant to demonstrate his commitment to Spanish as “something that is promoted in our schools.”

This T-Shirt is awesome.  My mother  joked when going through immigration that my adopted (black) brother was the child of the Lechero.

El Lechero (el’ le’che’row) n. [Sp.] [Slang] 1. the milk man. 2. the father of all illegitimate children * hijo del lechero.

This shirt can be bought here.

Dear Bloggers,

I know I haven’t been blogging.  I know my site looks like a rookie blogger page.   I haven’t been on the up in up in almost two years now when it comes to Blogtitlan.  But lord, I now remember why I disliked Kos so much.

I went to the convention website just now and then I recalled why; oh yeah, ya’ll are  a bunch of mother fucker elitist white people who carry around white mans burden.

$275 to register? $150 a night for four nights?  And then you have sessions like:  The Middle Class: The Problems it Faces and Progressive Solutions.  WTF?  And as I looked for stuff on issues I am interested in I come across this:   Immigration and Hispanics: The Policy and the Politics.  Please tell me Liza of Culture Kitchen is doing this and titled it like this so that uninformed people would come and learn that the term Hispanic is only enjoyed by HP and that immigration is NOT a Hispanic issue.

Whatever,  I am pissed.   I am tired of people being like “I am so liberal I always vote for the Democrats.”   We blog to share our voice.  While the digital divide most definitely exists, it is still much cheaper to blog then to attend Kos.  Kos is exclusionary, and that is not what we blogeros are about.When we doing our Blogtitlan convention?…I’ll volunteer to be one of the organizers.  Who else is in with me?

With my constant changing of the blog design I have lost all my entries and posts from the end of 2004 on. As such I’ve also lost my page that listed my reviews of Blogtitlan sites and links to their sites. Here is a rough start with the ‘A’s. As I improve the site keep checking back to my Blogtitlan page for the most up to date Blogtitlan, also if you want to know what I read there is always my public bloglines.

My definition of Blogtitlan:

A community of bloggers of different backgrounds brought together by their interest in Latino identity in the United States. The blogs are not just political, not just personal, and the people that read them form the community that may have started reading for the intellectual stimulation but stayed for the warm coffee too.

The A’s of Blogtitlan. (if you want me to change a definition please let me know or if I forgot someone please let me know)

Ana Castillo: Official Blog of Ana Castillo - poet/novelist/artist/essayist

Angry People of Color, Inc.

The Art of Brownsville: A blog about art and life in Brownsville, Texas and the Rio Grande Valley/Tamaulipas, Mexico Frontera.

ART-Late Czechia: Diary of a Colombiana Americana that lived in Prague

Author’s Diary: Raul Ramos y Sanchez News and views from the author of America Libre.

Autumnoval: El trayecto acabó, el conductor paró el taximetro y,…me hizo a quedarme a acabar de oir otra canción en la que Morente añoraba a la mujer que había dejado en su tierra natal y que lloraba como la lluvia… Igual sigo desconcertado

Day before yesterday I was on amazon.com trying to get to my wishlist and I typed in my handle “elenamary” into the amazon search engine and up popped this book: The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English. I was shocked they had used The Daily Texican’s word of the day Naco, and the conversation that ensued over disagreements on the definition.

When I saw that this dictionary had published a random comment I’d left on a blog I was excited. History really is made by those who write it down. Who am I to define anything? Yet, I was still excited and forwarded it to a close friend. A friend who lovingly calls me his Cracka’ ass Cracka’ or his Consuela. He teases me for being white and being Mexican. I found his response to my definition of Naco quite funny:

Haha, a pocha is setting the definition for naco. That’s like an upper arligtonian white chick being quoted for the definition of niggerish. LMAO

While he is joking he is also kind of right. People will look back and say we see the term “Naco” documented on a website back in 2004. Who are we to be defining Naco? Are we the ones that now manipulate mainstream Chicano studies and identity solely because we have access to the internet?

I sometimes wonder if I will ever run into that ex boyfriend. You know the one. That one that broke my heart and killed the innocence of first love that can never be regained? Yeah, that one.

I figure I will run into him. I am in city full of his friends and family. I am bound to run into either him or his family. It will have been three years this January since the end of our relationship, and I have yet once to run into either him or anyone related to him. I’m lucky I guess. I fear it.

I did not do anything bad at the end of our relationship. He was the one that made it a terrible dysfunctional conclusion to what had been a loving supportive relationship, yet i fear it.

I FEAR the moment when I’ll run into him. It is not a matter of “if” but “when”.

I joked with a good girlfriend that i am bound to run into him on a bad day, that is not a good day. A good day to run into him would be perhaps after receiving the good news about a fabulous new career opportunity, acceptance into a wonderful medical program, and being proposed to by my sexy boyfriend. A good day would be at my favorite coffee shop, me happy with all the good news and dressed in a sexy yet comfortable black t-shirt and ass lifting jeans, with my adorable cute and intelligent boyfriend next to me with the NY Times and Financial time strewn between the two of us. He will ask me how life is going and I will say “Perfect!”
This is NOT how I will run into him. I am sure of it.

Instead, I will run into him, most likely right after failing a terrible difficult exam that causes me to doubt my abilities and encourages me to purchase a pint of chocolate and box of cookies. I fear I will run into him at the grocery store, my eyes blood shot, my hair a mess, sweat pants with multiple food stains, and a dozen donuts in hand. I will fake a smile and he will ask me “How are you?” and I will think about the fact that I am bloated, unemployed, failing school and without a partner. I will lie, and I will respond “Life is good. How are you?”

Truth is life is good. School is good, work is good, I have plenty of time to travel and am really enjoying time with my friends and yes even have that *special* guy. But that isn’t when you run into ex’s you run into them on the bad day’s, so, I guess I am safe for now!

Ohio High School Transformation Initiative
According to Education Week’s “Diplomas Count” report, one in four Ohio high school students failed to graduate on time in 2004. For African American and Hispanic students, the numbers are even more alarming, with one in two failing to earn a diploma.

GOP Candidates Skip Hispanic Conference
Since the 2000 presidential election that Bush won by 537 votes in Florida, other states such as Ohio and parts of the Southwest (where the Hispanic vote is also growing) have emerged as swing states.

Immigration bill’s defeat leaves many in lurch
Maribel Quezada, a graduate of Groveport-Madison High School and Ohio University, has been in the United States since she was 12. The 23-year-old native of Mexico, who remains here on a student visa, was hoping the immigration bill would make it easier for her to get work in the country she considers home.

Democratic presidential candidates speak at Latino forum
Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, saying he believed all American children should learn to speak Spanish, gave his closing statement in Spanish.

Modest scholarship fuels confidence in Hispanic students
Of the 40 teens who will be awarded Esperanza scholarships Friday, most hail from low-income families, and almost all aim to become the first in their families to go to college. They’ve been accepted to Cuyahoga Community College, Cleveland State, Ohio State and Princeton.

Police offer civilian academy for Hispanics in Hamilton
The Police Department is conducting a citizen police academy next month specifically for the city’s growing Hispanic population. Police believe it’s the first law enforcement citizen academy in Greater Cincinnati strictly for Spanish-speaking residents.

JournalNews captures Best in Ohio
Judges cited the paper’s seven-part series on Hamilton’s growing Hispanic population as a factor in the award.

My stomach upset, I decided I wanted some seltzer water. I was on my lunch break. I was working at the welfare office and there wasn’t a CVS nearby! Imagine that not a CVS nor a Walgreens?! I went to a Target. Inside were families buying cheap mass produced plastic necessities. None of which I really thought about until I placed my four items on the conveyor belt. I was looking at my four items when I had that moment of clarity. I had purchased; a glass bottle of mineral water, an overpriced hair product, a piece of dark chocolate, and Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors. It was then I had a relization, I am a self-indulgent yuppie. I may not have health insurance, I may not be making tons of money, but I am a self-indulgent hipster.

I though of El Oso’s blog entry Taste and Class I am not working class, I am not struggling although I may not have health insurance of even a savings account. I am also not truly committing myself to making this world a better place. What am I doing? I am the person described in his blog entry:

…class divisions in the United States have more to do with lifestyle and social stratification than with income. In other words, all of my anti-capitalist college friends who work in cafes and read Engels are not working class just because they make $14K a year and have no benefits. Class divisions in the United States have more to do with social networks…

What am I doing? What am I going to do about changing this situation? Which is not to say I don’t somewhat enjoy it. Last night, on my friend/neighbor’s porch we had a lovely wine and Amuse bouche get together. Olgita was there and loved it as she had portion after portion of pasta drenched in fresh organic pesto. She sipped out of her wine glass filled with water and slices of lemon and mint. She felt so grown-up and on the ride home kept talking about the pasta as she fought to stay awake. I wondered whether it was the right thing to have her there. What are the long term implications of her being with us? What does it all mean to her when she goes back home to her family, all fourteen of them in a 3 bedroom ghetto apartment? We joke about our trashy neighborhood, our  lack of health insurance and income but really we are spoiled brats. I wonder though what it would be like if we had children?