Amanda Gorman, our country’s first Youth Poet Laureate, stood proudly, if not nervously, before the country and the world during President Biden’s inauguration as she delivered her poem, aptly entitled “The Hill We Climb.” It was a formidable image, reminiscent of watching Barack Obama delivering his inaugural address to the nation as our first African American president.
The past few days in our country have been exhausting, frightening, sickening, traumatic, dispiriting. The attack on the Capitol, with threats of even more violence in the coming weeks and months, starkly demonstrated the power of words.
An impeached and diminished president stands accused of incitement to riot. He may well believe that his words were “appropriate,” but then he believes many things that are not true. Even several of his supporters in Congress have admitted that his words carried the weight that crushed any remaining sense of stability we might have had.
Many of us consider ourselves to be “healthy eaters,” possibly to the dismay of others around us who chide us for our discipline and call us “fanatical.” We’re conscious of our health and proud of our food choices.
Even so, we might well have one or two little “weaknesses” that food companies like to exploit, not unlike the coronavirus seeking to exploit any weakness it detects in our behavior and circumstances. Our alimentary lapses may occur with others, or in secret. In their extreme form, these deviations from our better judgment might be more accurately classified as eating disorders. But generally, our occasional missteps do us no harm and can be attributed to us “being human.”
We’ve just bid adieu to The Terrible Year. Yes, 2020 was the year that many of us simply want to forget and make believe it never happened. But it did happen. And we are not going to snap back to normal in the very near future, at least, just because a vaccine on a white horse is about to ride into town. Maybe we’re “done” with the pandemic and believe that we should “take our chances” because we’re so tired of the lockdowns and restrictions that robbed us of life as we knew it.
When Latinos in this country think of indigenous music originating in Mexico, our thoughts and hearts turn wistfully to the Aztec dancers we see performing at our cultural festivals, political protests and religious celebrations. The music consists of unfiltered rhythms from the sacred beating heart of Aztec ritual that celebrated life and death as both sides of the same mystical coin. Copal incense wafts past us, reminding us of the frankincense and myrrh that is cast into the air along with our prayers at Catholic rites such as the exposition of the Eucharist and funerals.
Classical music composers throughout history have taken cues from their own cultural roots. They wove the fabric of their ancient and folk heritages into their music to produce masterful works that resonate with listeners. The composers were influenced by music that stirred their spirits by dint of its power. These compositions are melded together by forces that we dare not try to understand. As we listen to them, we discern the echoes of something that accompanied our ancestors as they danced, prayed, or celebrated. Our DNA is imprinted onto the soul of these classic works.
For the past half-dozen years or so, there have been two warring governments in Libya. The resulting disorganization and chaos had led to a power vacuum that terrorists were only too happy to fill.
Venezuela’s presidential elections in 2018 resulted in two presidents claiming victory. The United States was quick to condemn the strongman who refused to concede, despite a vote count that was deeply flawed. …Could these scenarios presage our fate here in the United States, where only months ago we’d said, “Oh, that could never happen here”?
So there you are standing by yourself at a party, or at a dance, and you wander over to someone you’d like to get to know. Maybe you’re just curious about the person, or you find him or her attractive. Or perhaps you’ve been attending those webinars or listened to podcasts that instruct you in the art of determining whether someone is or isn’t a prospect for your business.
Maybe you’re an introvert and you feel clumsy in social milieus. But you just read a book with a title similar to, “How to Make Friends,” and you want to practice your new skills, as unpolished as they might be. So you approach someone. Now the hard part: what do you say? After all, “small talk” is a social minefield. One misstep could blow up a chance to make a good first impression.
We often hear about having to hire, refer to, or consult an “expert.” But what exactly is an “expert”?
Technically, an expert is someone with either substantial knowledge or skill in a particular endeavor. A data analyst might be consulted for his expertise in statistical studies, whereas a professional musician might be hired for her adroit skill with a particular musical instrument that she has practiced playing throughout her entire life.
What if a man is overheard calling his sister “skinny”? Or, worse yet, suppose a wife is seen in public calling her husband “fatty.” Can you imagine the firestorm if a father were to be caught calling his daughter “my little dark girl,” or if a light-skinned woman were to refer to herself as a “little black girl”?
A Twitter flare-up, the likes of which hell hath never known, is exactly what happened when the song “Lonely,” in which Jennifer Lopez, describing herself as a “negrita from the Bronx,” was released a little over a month ago.
In 1945, my father returned home from World War II after taking part in the Normandy Invasion, fighting the Nazis in France and Germany, and surviving the Battle of the Bulge against the German army. Having entered the U.S. Army as a Mexican kid from the streets of Los Angeles, he came out on the other side of the war as an American citizen, battle-hardened and fully expecting to live the American Dream.
Olvera Street in Los Angeles is where history, culture, multicultural livelihoods, and now a pandemic all intersect. This street is the cornerstone of the very character and identity of Los Angeles. But now this iconic testament to Mexican culture in one of the nation’s oldest metropolises just south of us here in Ventura County is suddenly having incredulous visions of its demise.
I have many of my mother’s paintings in my home. She was an artist specializing in portraiture and images depicting religion and Mexican culture (which are hard to separate): the Virgin of Guadalupe, biblical scenes, vaqueros (Mexican cowboys) on the “rancho,” heroic Mexican legendary figures.
My mother never went to art school. In fact, one highly-regarded art school in Los Angeles refused her application for admission when she graduated from high school because they regarded her as “too advanced” for their level of instruction. As a girl and later a teenager, she had learned by watching her father, professional Mexican artist Candelario Rivas, as he painted masterfully in his home studio.
A “crisis” most often refers to intense difficulty or danger that is temporary. A “mid-life crisis” will eventually burn itself out. A “crisis of conscience” will work itself out over time. A “political crisis” will normally resolve itself, ideally without the loss of life or cherished institutions.
There once was a time when we Americans didn’t seek shelter in our echo chambers where we soak in the news that corresponds to our world view and ideology. We weren’t a nation of Fox News vs. CNN viewers, scorning each other and inhabiting very different but parallel universes. We didn’t accuse each other of subscribing to conspiracy theories. We didn’t have leaders at the very top rungs of government actively promoting some of the vilest, most unimaginably preposterous and downright quirky fabrications that we hear today, every day, everywhere and all the time.
Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the greatest classical musicians of all time, composed a musical piece entitled (in translation) “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, Opus 112.” Beethoven was inspired by the eternally stirring poetry of the renowned philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whom he had met and to whom he dedicated this work.
As promised last week, here are some highlights of the biographies for the racial-minority professors of mathematics at our local university, California State University, Channel Islands, right here in Camarillo. These biographies are available online at the university website. Their role in the community is outsized because of the example they set for the second largest population sector in Ventura County, which is Hispanic/Latino.
Last week I wrote about representatives of minority populations who study STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) topics in school and emerge into our communities as scientists, teachers, engineers and role models. Within our local community, we have a substantial number of college students majoring in STEM fields. Likewise, we are fairly well represented professionally in math education. I may be a bit biased because of my background, but many of us know, or at least intuit, that mathematics is the gateway to all branches of science and the foundation of areas as diverse as music, logic, business, finance and cryptography.
There will always be a special place in my heart for those students who pursue a solid math education. I once had—and continue to have—the same fascination as they have with the mysterious beauty of mathematics.
When I started teaching college mathematics several decades ago, Latinos in the field of math education were relatively rare. In the more recent past, there has been a surge of interest in encouraging minority students to pursue classes in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields. The technical sphere is where more lucrative careers beckon those who have the education and the wherewithal to survive the rigors of a STEM education.
A couple of weeks ago, as temperatures in other parts of the Southland were starting to climb, we here in coastal Ventura County once again found ourselves blessed. Sometimes we’re a bit too blessed.
We who live on the coast often enjoy a sea breeze as other parts of the region swelter (that’s good for us). Our “marine layer” acts as a sort of preternatural air conditioner that cools and soothes us.
We all need to be prepared for a vicious political season ahead. It’s starting to get serious. Two visions for America are beginning to take shape as they prepare to go toe to toe with one another. This will be an epic battle for the destiny of the United States, culminating in the November presidential election. In like manner, the Civil War and subsequent world wars were also arduous struggles that forced us to reevaluate our values and objectives, our character as a nation.
Ivanka Trump, daughter of President Trump, serves as a co-chair of the National Council for the American Worker. Several weeks ago, I, like many others, waxed skeptical of Ivanka’s suggestion that Americans laid off from their jobs “find something new” as they are displaced from their livelihoods by the tsunami-strength ravages of the coronavirus pandemic. She was roundly criticized for being the let-them-eat-cake embodiment of Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France before the French Revolution, who was ultimately executed at the guillotine.
The apparently never-ending coronavirus pandemic has punched a hole in the panorama that was our American diet up to now. Suddenly, beginning earlier this year, meat became scarce. Delicately balanced supply chains were knocked off-balance, partly due to meat production workers “dropping like flies” as the virus surged through factories and warehouses. Meat counters in grocery stores became sparse and the cost of the meat that was available started to rise due to demand for the limited supply. Major grocery outlets started rationing quantities of meat to its customers to avoid the toilet-paper-hoarding fiasco that occurred at the beginning of the pandemic.
This past weekend I had the opportunity to wander around the “settling ponds” by the water treatment plant in Ventura. To the casual outsider, this might sound like the last place on earth to go for a stroll, but it’s really a bit of a hidden treasure in our community.
One of the highlights of this location is the quantity and quality of the bird-watching that is available. I’m learning that birds have much to teach us, and the more I learn about them, the more in awe I am of them.
Last week we rummaged through Oxnard’s past and found some interesting and unsettling history regarding the former Colonial House restaurant and motel complex in the city’s downtown. The ambiance had been designed to invoke the feeling of the “Old South,” as if people were visiting a Southern plantation, with all that that implied.
Last week I wrote about the change in a local school’s name, from that of Richard B. Haydock to that of Dr. Manuel Lopez. The former was a segregationist in Oxnard’s early history; the latter was a beloved unifier and promoter of civil rights in Oxnard’s recent history.
This week I want to bring attention to a former landmark in downtown Oxnard, the Colonial House, a restaurant and motel built by developer Martin V. Smith in the 1940s.
Some of us who are “old enough” remember when racism was so prevalent and “accepted” that it seemed to permeate the very air that we breathed. It surrounded us. Just as a fish doesn’t think about breathing underwater, and a bird thinks that flying is “no big deal,” many of us growing up in the 50s and 60s were vaccinated against the guilt that would shame us today.
We live in a great country with a history that is both magnificent and, at times, not so magnificent. Until very recently, we were the light of the world, the “shining city upon a hill,” as our country has been called in flights of oratory throughout modern history. Nonetheless, there have been several ugly periods of time in American history that should have us hanging our heads in shame: the massacres of Native Americans in the nineteenth century; the internment of Japanese Americans in the mid-1940s; the persecution and humiliation of Mexican American youth in Los Angeles by military servicemen and white Angelenos during World War II. Few of us are aware of the Reconstruction era, just after the Civil War when the black slaves were given their freedom. In school, many of us were taught that the slaves were freed and we went on to become a great industrial power. And we lived happily ever after. But the truth is otherwise.
Last week I wrote about the obvious impact of white privilege on the African American community. There has been an uptick in dialogue in this country regarding white privilege. Lynching of blacks in different forms continues to this day. Last year the college admissions scandal, in which affluent white parents gamed the system to their children’s advantage, came to light. And then this year, incidents of murderous police aggression against the black community were caught on video and widely circulated on social media. The good behavior of most police officers is completely eclipsed by these outrageous occurrences.
Lost in the conversation is the discussion about the repercussions of white privilege in the Latino/Hispanic, Native American and Asian communities as well as a myriad of others. In this article, I want to focus on the Latino—and specifically Mexican—community, since locally we are very much a majority-minority in some parts of Ventura County.
At this time, once again, we find ourselves discussing the unfortunate reality of “white privilege” in our unspoken, pernicious societal rules. “White privilege” is that social construct that makes it easier for whites to work within the grand system, to manipulate it in their favor if they choose to do so, to benefit from the blessings of a social order without even trying, simply by virtue of the color of their skin. Whites often are not even conscious of the privileges extended to them at the expense of non-whites. Whites can almost be forgiven for being unaware—indeed, clueless—of the generational suffering of those who do not participate in the grace that flows from the fountain of privilege.
It’s happened throughout history: a catastrophic event occurs, whether that be war, pestilence, a sudden attack or a pandemic, and then the people who are impacted emerge into a very different world. Think of a destroyed Europe immediately after World War II, the people of New York City after 9/11, the survivors of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fires that destroyed the city, the surviving dazed and severely injured citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the only atomic bombings in history and the people who had the good fortune of surviving the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1917 – 1918.
We are summoned to “fly with the eagles” or “watch like a hawk,” but few of us have ever heard of a “towhee” (pronounced “toe-hee”), although the California variety is prevalent throughout the west coast, from the very northern part of California to the southern tip of Baja California, Mexico. We’ll never hear anyone urge us to “be a towhee,” nor to act like one.
As we go about our communities stifled by the coronavirus, we see people who are behaving as if nothing different is happening in the world. No masks, no social distancing, and anyone who doesn’t like it—too bad. They demand a certain degree of “normalcy” in their lives, which under ordinary circumstances would have some psychological benefit.
We are not alone. One way or another, the coronavirus has upended the life of practically every individual in the world. As a country, we confront this threat and look for ways to assuage the severe damage that it is inflicting on our livelihoods, our lifestyles, our relationships and the global economy. Meanwhile, we are all observing an intense tug-of-war between the forces that agitate for a brisk re-opening of the country and those that caution us about the potentially dreadful consequences of a rapid return to a “normal life.” Achieving an optimal response is one of the most fraught challenges ever experienced by at least the past three generations, so achieving an optimal balance is guaranteed to be painful.
Some fortunate souls are able to work from home during this pandemic, which seems to have no end. If some of the more pessimistic health experts are right, it just may not.
On the other hand, there are many of us who don’t have the luxury of working from home. We may be a service provider whose livelihood was suddenly yanked away. We might be in the retail industry, which in some quarters is struggling to breathe and may not survive an environment that is essentially hostile to its products (think clothing and fashion) or to sales in general (for traditional summer fun, back-to-school, Black Friday and Christmas), which are completely unpredictable at this time.
For my two older grandsons, living and playing online is nothing novel, even in the face of this “novel” coronavirus. Several years ago, I saw them playing high-stakes games (in their minds, at least) in cyberspace using their headphones, microphones and X-boxes. Sometimes they would play with their cousins on the other side of town, and sometimes with strangers—somewhere in the world. They are not living in the world in which I grew up, where tournaments of paramount importance for us at the time consisted primarily of physical board games such as checkers, chess, Parcheesi, Scrabble and Monopoly.
There seems to be only one thing on our minds right now—everything related to the coronavirus.
As a result of the social and economic upheaval of the past few weeks, one of the biggest changes that many of us are making is learning to adapt to an online environment.
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. By David Magallanes •…
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…
