Elenamary

I had a wonderful night at Rumba Café just a few blocks from my home where I got to see Tim Easton preform. I first heard about Tim Easton almost a decade ago when my friend Chris Burney told me he was dropping out of The Ohio State University, leaving the student radio station and heading to California to make music with Tim Easton. Chris asked me if I wanted his position as Promotions director for the radio station. I thought that Chris was the coolest person ever!

The show provided me with great music and good old friends from the radio station days; Zak Moses (Flotation Walls), Jeff Fernengel (Tree of Snakes), Miles Curtiss (Marvin the Robot), and Chris Burney (The Sun). It was odd in that I had so many of my music friends around me; I of course have always been the person who didn’t know the new bands. I am still the person who rifles through the CMJ lists not recognizing most of the names but that doesn’t mean I don’t love going to the shows.

Tim Easton has never failed in moving me. He played for four hours last night and consistently pleased with only one exception. My favorite song of his, Dear Old Song and Dance (downloadable for free), started wonderfully and beautifully but it was cut short. It was terrible, like saving your favorite dessert for last and then just before you get to it finding that your roommate ate it.

I wish I’d had some money on me, for if I had I would’ve bought some of his CD’s. So if you are like me and enjoy good music but never seem to be the one that discovers it, I encourage you to go discover Tim Easton and of course Rumba Café.   Rumba Café has a great laid back lay out, good beers, and awesome music…and I just might be there tomorrow night to see The Flotation Walls.

I applied for Hsipanic Business Magazine Woman of the Year Scholarship.

Last years winners were quite amazing. Then I realized I was in for some competition but I still couldn’t help but get excited about it. The scholarship was based on a essay with the following requirements:

“The focus of this essay should be your long-term goals and aspirations, as well as the challenges you face in meeting these goals. Judging will also assess creativity, motivation, and inspiration. Your essay may also include your family background, scholastic achievements, educational and career goals, commitment to the Hispanic community, financial need, and any other relevant information. The essay should be limited to 500 words.”

It is hard to get that all down in just 500 words. I did my best and unsuccessfully tried to not get my hopes up. In the end I was not selected for the honor. I am sure the women they did select are amazing Latinas and I tip my hat to them. Now if only, they had listened to Matt Ortega. Below is my essay.

Read the rest of this entry »

A white female friend of mine emailed me and asked me about Obama and his church affiliation and how she was bothered by his church.

Quite honstly, I think that the more you mention someone’s color, the more we are driving a wedge. It bothers me when people even mention it, because it doesn’t matter. If you really want to move on from racism, my opinion is that you forget about color and just deal with the person. I guess that is what is so unusual to me about the site and the church. I don’t recall the catholic sites or jewish sites talking about the white values and the white way.

I was angry at first. How could my friend be so ignorant? So obtuse.

I told her we had the Greek Orthodox church, the Russian Orthodox Church. That I go to catholic mass in Spanish, a mass dedicated to the helping of Latinos. And my church runs the Latino Center of Hope.
I used to go to a German Lutheran Church that came into being to protect German cultures and beliefs.
And that our mutual friend wanted to attend a Polish Lutheran Church but can’t find one in Columbus.

We can’t disregard race, ethnicity, gender. While Obama won in Iowa , we should recognize that Iowa has a 2% African-American population and that 27% of the prison population in Iowa is African-American. We have to recognize that we need to support disenfranchised groups. This is why we unite as feminists in the womens movement, not because we are trying to drive a wedge but because we are trying to support each other in an unfair and imbalanced society…the same can be said for my church.

I thought I had made a good argument but she responded to my rebuttal with “I’m not saying you should disregard your roots, I’m just saying I don’t care what color you are.”

How can you not care? How can she not, as my friend, recognize that color is important in this society and that effects my life every day, even if she doesn’t care? I care what color you are because I recognize that it effects your personal experience. I care what gender you are, what country you are from, what languages you speak, because it effects your personal experience. Doesn’t she know that it is white privilege that allows her not to care about race, that allows her to not have to deal with it? How can my friend be so ignorant? I emailed another friend asking for advice on how to deal with the ignorance. And she responded, among other things, that my friend will never care until she decides to care and that it doesn’t sound like she wants to care.

I don’t really know how to convince someone that race matters. Or that I sting from within when my friend, a person I love, says she doesn’t care what color I am, and ignores a part of who I am. The best way to articulate why it is wrong to just ignore race as the problem, that I have seen yet, is from my friend who I went to for advice, and she put it in this light:

Ignoring race is like saying - you know, I don’t think we should mention money. Poor people will just be more marginalized if we mention that they don’t have money. Let’s just ignore it and focus on individual people- but not their circumstances.

My mom raised us on local, organic foods.   We were vegetarians, my sister and brother later became and still are Vegans.  The three of us did not use drugs, or drink alcohol, as adolescents and both of them identified as sXe.  For this reason I was shocked to find out that my brother was hosting a kegger.  He made flyers advertising free beer and wine.  He told me that he had purchased 24 bottles of wine and four kegs of beer.  I didn’t really understand it but if this is what he waned to do so be it.

I stopped by his party had a slice of pizza but skipped out on the beer and there was no wine available, which in the end I decided it was okay not to have a glass since I was going to be driving home.  My brother living on OSU’s campus and having made tons of flyers advertising free beer, had successfully drawn people he did not know and that did not mesh well with his sXe, freevegan, punk friends.  In fact, my brother smiled and said “I only know about 20% of these people”.

Tired and not really interested in the party I left.  In the morning I found that the four kegs contained O’Douls non-alcoholic beer, the wine was non-alcoholic but tasted so awful it was not served.  His party had been overwhelmed with young kids looking for free beer and to get drunk and everyone went home sober.  LOL.

Zero (El-Amin Asadi) has created new art work, as he describes it, “Pencil powered mayhem”. It is to me some of his best work. My favorite piece of his is not available for viewing online but, I believe, will be up at the C-Note Art Show.

His pieces are raw and sometimes, painful for me to look at. They are frequently self reflections and the anguish is clearly evident. I find myself with a familiar pain and compassion that is too much to bear and am forced to look away.

C-Note is having both an online on art show, where you can vote for your favorite artists.

PS Remember, Columbus is the Indie Art Capital of the World. Support local artists!

Read the rest of this entry »

I am a women.

I am a Latina.

I am a feminist.

I am working class.

I like Hilliary Clinton.

I am voting for Barack Obama in the primary.  Barack Obama is the best candidate for women, latinas, feminists and the working class.

I went to a bar tonight.  It was a bar on OSU’s campus.  It is a stereotypical frat/sorority bar.

I felt out of place.   Everyone was white.  Not kind-of white, like me,  but very white.  Like Ohio white.  Like blue eyes, blond hair, tanning salon bronzed skin, lots of make-up, middle/upper middle class, Ohio, not-like-me white.  I kept thinking “I will never be that kind of white”.  The white that doesn’t notice there aren’t any people of color around.  The white that feels completely in their element that they will never be questioned on their background.  It was uncomfortable, but it was an interesting social experiment.  No one knew I was uncomfortable.  The men still stared at me lusting to share their nasty bits and STDs.  The women still sized me up as their competition.

It sucked.

I went to the grocery store in the suburb of Grandview, Ohio, tonight. I saw two things that left me somewhere between puzzled, slightly offended, and amused.

I was looking to buy some tea which was right next to the Hot Chocolate. I noticed, that Hershey’s has what they call their “Cacao Reserve” line that includes both the “Spiced Aztec Blend” and “Classic Mayan Blend”. Great, Abuelita got bought by Nestle a few years ago. And now everyone is getting in on this Mexican Hot Chocolate. I can’t articulate why I dislike it so much. It isn’t just that since Nestle bought Abuelita the tablets don’t taste as good and are smaller. Part of it is that with time we get further and further away from Xocolatl and more owned and re-appropriated by the white dominate culture where it becomes bastaredized and cheap and no longer smells or tastes like mornings before school. And even if it did still stimulated the same senses, it is no longer ours.

After looking for my tea, I went by the “bakery” and saw something that made me burst out laughing. There were bags of white rolls and above them a sign that read: Bolillos - a typical Hispanic bread.

Hilarious! A definition for the mainstream dominant white culture of Grandview of a bread that we use as a moniker to define them…bolillos.

One persuasive argument on why we should vote for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton.

Check out this blog entry “20 minutes or so on why I am 4Barack“

One of my phrases I often repeat is “I am fornicating, gay advocate, planned parenthood working, pro-choice, Catholic”.

I really dislike it when people think that because I am Catholic, I am not liberal. Or that because I am liberal I am not Catholic.

A formerly Catholic friend of mine who now calls herself an atheist, laughed when I told her I was Catholic.  Without pause she said “You are a bad Catholic”, I grinned “No, I am the best kind of Catholic.”  I view my Catholicism the same way I view my patriotism and my commitment to the democratic party.

My government, my country, may be funding a war in Iraq, abstinence education, enlisting undocumented immigrants to fight wars, and commits war crimes, but this is still my country and I am still an American.  I do my best to make my country better, not by giving up on it but by declaring loudly I am an American.  I am an American who voices her opinion against her appointed president, against unjust laws, against misappropriated funds.

I may not agree with the democratic party but it is still my party.  I work within it not to give up on it but because I want to make it my party.  I want government officials who truely represent me.  I want my Catholic Church to be my Catholic Church.

I have not given up on my party, on my country or on my religion because I love all of them and want them to truly represent me.  I want them to represent me because I believe in the end, they can be good and helpful institutions.