Author Archive

Hispanic Youth Symposium 2009 — Hispanic College Fund

30 Oct 2009 by SenoritaRuth

Video cour­tesy of Stina Augustsson.

Work­ing at South Val­ley Acad­emy as their Col­lege Coun­selor dur­ing the 2008–2009 school year was a gal­va­niz­ing expe­ri­ence. It forced me to bring into focus the strug­gles I endured in rela­tion to com­plet­ing my post-high school education.

Going to col­lege was an under­ly­ing assump­tion in our famil­ial cul­ture. My mother holds a bac­calau­re­ate degree from the Uni­ver­si­dad Autónoma de Chi­huahua in Chem­istry. My father com­pleted his emer­gency med­i­cine degrees and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions within two years of return­ing to the U.S. with his young fam­ily (us). How­ever, the exe­cu­tion of this expec­ta­tion proved to be messy and painful. Long story short, I quit UNM in the mid­dle of my sec­ond semes­ter. As an 18 year-old dis­tracted by a boyfriend, an apart­ment, friends and par­ty­ing, I walked away from UNM in the mid­dle of the spring semes­ter after my grad­u­a­tion from West Mesa HS.

Unfor­tu­nately, WMHS did not pro­vide the type of intense guid­ance that a first-generation, immi­grant ado­les­cent needs when com­mit­ting to becom­ing not only a col­lege stu­dent, but a col­lege grad­u­ate. We were a grad­u­at­ing class of about 350. We had been a fresh­man class of over 900. The sta­tis­ti­cal cor­re­la­tion between begin­ning and fin­ish­ing high-schoolers remains con­stant in large schools. In a pop­u­la­tion of over 2k, the college-bound poten­tial of a stu­dent or even a group of stu­dents becomes lost in the cacoph­ony of sur­vival that shapes the most crit­i­cal years of thou­sands of our stu­dents. National His­panic Merit Scholar semi-finalist? Sounds fancy! My under­stand­ing of what it meant to do well on the PSAT only became clear to me as an adult.

This long-story-short ram­bling intro out­lines my expe­ri­ence as a teenager in the Albu­querque, NM USA school sys­tem because of the unique oppor­tu­nity that I was granted after fin­ish­ing my B.A. in Lin­guis­tics & Span­ish and wrap­ping up course­work for my Master’s. I accepted a posi­tion at South Val­ley Acad­emy as an Edu­ca­tional Assis­tant. The work sounded intense and intrigu­ing, the pace seemed dynamic.

Well, I had no idea what I was in for. I will leave my largely-positive com­men­tary on char­ter schools for another time. That said, there is an inher­ent ben­e­fit to a small-population school envi­ron­ment. Com­mit­ting to ensur­ing that all 26 seniors would be enrolled and famil­iar with one of our local higher-learning insti­tu­tions was an incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence. It was chal­leng­ing, a bit insane, but eye-opening and morally awakening.

I attended the sym­po­sium to fol­low up with the SVA stu­dents that attended, and to get a feel for the type of event that HCF put together. What a thrilling time! I attended a com­pe­ti­tion where stu­dents put together com­mu­nity action plans to address social issues that keeps stu­dents from being suc­cess­ful. I watched a tal­ent show that show­cased skills and tal­ents from singing to tae kwon do. I vis­ited sev­eral booths at the career fair event. It’s the event that can be the pivot point for a stu­dent that oth­er­wise has not been taught where to find the bridge between “I want to be a … when I grow up” and the con­crete plan of action that will ful­fill that dream. If the His­panic Youth Sym­po­sium would have been around to help my gen­er­a­tion, suc­cess­ful as we are (go Mus­tangs! Class of ’98!), I’m con­vinced that the out­come of our efforts at col­lege and beyond would have been couched in bet­ter strat­egy and more knowledge.

Some­times it is dif­fi­cult to con­ceive that there are peo­ple younger than us. Most of the rest of the time, it’s easy to assume that they’ve got it under con­trol, since we turned out so well with no guid­ance or super­vi­sion (adjust to your own expe­ri­ence as needed). Yet, the fab­ric of a cul­ture and a soci­ety is only cre­ated by the con­nec­tions between peo­ple. It is our respon­si­bil­ity to ensure that those fol­low­ing the same paths as us have access to our insight.

Beyond access, it should be our pri­or­ity to pro-actively share our expe­ri­ences and exper­tise. Espe­cially at such a chal­leng­ing time as the tran­si­tion between teens and twen­ties. Some say that high school is hard. The real­ity is, the years right after high school are the most chal­leng­ing. For those of us that sur­vived, it may now seem ele­men­tary, but we should never under­mine the poten­tial for influ­ence and empow­er­ment that we can have in each oth­ers’ lives. After all, today’s high school stu­dents are tomorrow’s col­leagues, employ­ees, fel­low dri­vers and par­ents. Let’s com­mit to a bet­ter community!

The His­panic Col­lege Fund is an amaz­ing orga­ni­za­tion, and they need our help when it comes to ensur­ing that pro­grams such as the His­panic Youth Sym­po­sium remain avail­able for our stu­dents, and that they become excit­ing hubs of knowl­edge and infor­ma­tion exchange in the areas that will affect tomorrow’s col­lege graduate.

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Infrastructure fractures

10 Oct 2009 by SenoritaRuth

Cruis­ing west on Cen­tral, past Coors, is never going to be the same again. I’ve watched it change, pas­sive eyes scan­ning the long, brown flats chock full of weeds green or brown as the sea­sons changed, from 5th grade through…well…now. Granted, I’m the pas­sen­ger less often, and par­al­lel to that there is less dirt, cov­ered over by con­crete foun­da­tions and tidy, American-dream-achieved homes. Just as many weeds though, they just grow closer together.

Regard­less, it used to be a hel­luva ride. First from 98th, where we turned east out of West­gate to head to church on 57th street every Sun­day (every Sun­day– every one), to later on when 86th was cut out of the dunes and later paved. They even­tu­ally put some side­walks, too. The long-awaited side­walks were the indi­ca­tion of civ­i­liza­tion. For almost a whole decade we lived, seem­ingly stranded, sep­a­rated from the city and its ameni­ties by an ever-swirling spring wind storm, with­out much more than the infor­mal con­crete curb to mark the place where peo­ple should drive, ver­sus the place where peo­ple should tromp through the sand in the awk­ward way sand makes one do so; it has the same sense of humor as snow piled up in substance-less drifts. 

West­gate was for a long time before we ever arrived a neigh­bor­hood tucked out of the way, a micro-system that I par­tic­i­pated in as a ten year-old child and middle-schooler. My imme­di­ate, prac­ti­cal world view finally expanded while I attended West Mesa and ran around the greater north­west part of town. Coach Gee would lit­er­ally makes us run around all over the west side; from the ditch banks of the South Val­ley to the bike paths of Unser, in front of the pet­ro­glyphs, near St. Pious and Fly­ing J on 98th. Cross-country was my own per­sonal tour of the place where I lived, a place with which I suf­fered a con­flicted, slightly angry rela­tion­ship. Still, those places are for­ever embed­ded in my mind and in my emo­tional landscape.

As is Cen­tral; wide and dark, fast and dirty. It was an inevitable road in my life, the only way out of West­gate long before Unser, Blake, Tower and Bridge net­worked and expanded. 98th and Cen­tral, to Cen­tral and Unser, Cen­tral and Coors. To free­dom, new expe­ri­ences and the vast land­scape of a brand new coun­try, lan­guage and adven­ture. Sun­light enter­tained day­dreams and the deep­en­ing shad­ows cush­ioned dark fears as asphalt, white lines and adolescent-tall tum­ble­weeds rushed in place past us.

The ride from Cen­tral and Coors to Cen­tral and 98th was the per­fect stretch of road to lull one to sleep with a mind full of final, tired thoughts. After Wednes­day night church meet­ings, after long days of extra-curricular-related activ­i­ties, on the way home from friends’ houses or shop­ping expe­di­tions. The wide road curved up 9 Mile Hill in the dis­tance, vehi­cles of all sorts motor­ing their way steadily into the set­ting sun.

Ver­i­zon rose out of the desert sands behind Albertson’s and gave us a traf­fic light. The fash­ion spread like 21st cen­tury eco-mindfulness. Now, between Unser and 98th, there will be two more work­ing sem­a­phores. One is at as-of-yet uncar­ved inter­sec­tion, where the desert imme­di­ately south of Cen­tral is still curbed and unde­vel­oped. The other is at 86th and Cen­tral, the inter­sec­tion which became, unex­pect­edly, a rivulet of life & traf­fic, with the dol­lar store and the gas sta­tions rep­re­sent­ing the cul­mi­na­tion of human need for the dusty beings that live on the dunes, tucked away and oppos­ing the Sandias.

I’m not say­ing that there shouldn’t be traf­fic lights. First of all, BCFD Divi­sion Com­man­der Boris would, almost imper­cep­ti­bly and only momen­tar­ily, raise an eye­brow in dis­ap­proval of my fast and loose take on pub­lic safety. Hor­rific events play in my head, past human costs for the priv­i­lege of dri­ving fast in a metal death trap under the influ­ence of chem­i­cal inhibitors, cut­ting across the as-of-yet unlit roads of Albu­querque in the dark like a furtive noc­tur­nal rodent. 

When I was in 7th grade I cov­ered the Gor­don House deba­cle for the Tru­man Mid­dle School news­pa­per, crap­pily imi­tat­ing the AP style in my first attempt at jour­nal­ism. My young mind gained its first rudi­men­tary under­stand­ing of drunk dri­ving and how it affects life in the wild west. The traf­fic lights are good, nay, nec­es­sary. It makes sense to inter­rupt the con­stant flow of machin­ery at high speeds. It’s good we can’t ramp it up to 65mph by the time we hit 98th from the healthy 45mph we were doing down Unser. The ride now takes a bit more delib­er­a­tion down that stretch as a frown­ing red sig­nal mod­er­ates the urge to push on the gas pedal, just a lit­tle further.

Yet I can’t feel but a bit of nos­tal­gia as I stare down Cen­tral for the nth time in my life, the engine faith­fully fir­ing as I man­age the lane change to the inside lane, visu­al­iz­ing the lean­ing turn onto 86th in t minus 5 min­utes after I turn off Unser. I no longer see an open road of poten­tial, as gen­er­a­tions before me saw it in the shim­mer­ing sun­set light that cast the mun­dane real­ity of every­day liv­ing in a con­tin­u­ous golden dream light of romance and adventure. 

Route 66 is just that more civ­i­lized now as it courses through the lit­tle big out­post town of Albu­querque, New Mex­ico. We must be so proud to be so grown up.

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I grew up like a

24 Sep 2009 by SenoritaRuth

wild west weed wan­der­ing
tall and round, spiky.
dried and hol­low, drifting.

shot out of loose sand home,
dull fibrous bit­ter green.
raises a stink when torn.

sun dries to a hard snap
pro­tec­tive, razor lances.
scrape skin, embed in nap

Lots, gar­dens, street edges
squeeze, wrenched brown dry while
winds woo the wiry wenches.

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New Mexico Wine Festival 2009 – Sunday, September 6, 2009

10 Sep 2009 by SenoritaRuth

A Rag­ing Suc­cess cur­ing Social Amne­sia

OMG! There's wine here!

OMG! There’s wine here!

Com­ing where I come from, it’s not out­side the rea­son­able to pre­pare for just about any­thing when you decide to go to a large gath­er­ing of any sort. Years of state fairs, char­ity events, mas­sive out­door con­certs and other assorted social con­ver­gences have taught me to be ready for any­thing, bring every­thing, and get ready to wait on your way out of the park­ing lot.

I fully expected (and endorse) any of the typ­i­cal symp­toms of a desert get-together at the New Mex­ico Wine Fes­ti­val. I car­ried a light sweater. I had worn no pants (a skirt is much friend­lier to the vagrant breeze that cools off a hot sum­mer day), I wore a ban­dana, sun­glasses, san­dals. I had my phone, extra lip balm and a cam­era. I didn’t drive, so my plan for the extended crawl out of park­ing lots and streets was to snooze in the pas­sen­ger seat, pleas­antly wine-oed while we inched our way back to Albuquerque.

In full dis­clo­sure, it’s been years since I’ve spent any qual­ity time in Bernalillo. I zoom past it on my way north and careen close to it on my way to Santa Ana (with their glow-in-the-dark bowl­ing!). I spent a night in a motel there once, played with child­hood friends while par­ents vis­ited long before that. I’m just not that close to Bernalillo, even though it’s rather close to me. After the fes­ti­val, the plan was to have din­ner at the orig­i­nal The Range loca­tion, until we found out from a friend that it had burned down. Obvi­ously a lot of his­tory there that I’m not hip to.

After a late-morning Fly­ing Star break­fast, we shot up the free­way and were in town before we knew it. Being used to head­ing to Santa Fe, get­ting off the free­way so quickly made it seem like we were there in no time. The direc­tions to get to the grounds were so sim­ple, we didn’t even print out the Google Map. (*gasp* rebels!). Find­ing it was easy with the appro­pri­ate sig­nage lead­ing the way. We found park­ing in a fan­tas­tic field for the rea­son­able price of $5. In Albu­querque, sim­i­lar park­ing so close to the event would be impos­si­ble, or priced at twice the going rate in Bernalillo. We walked across the street to a still-growing line when we got there at 1:35. It looked intim­i­dat­ing, but I’ve licked longer lines wait­ing for amuse­ment park rides. We got to the back of the line and started mov­ing for­ward soon after. A police offi­cer on a Seg­way with all-terrain tires (this is still New Mex­ico, after all) rolled up and down the line, sug­gest­ing that those that could buy tick­ets online via Town of Bernalillo should, and to keep their pay­ment con­fir­ma­tion win­dow open.

I made some snarky com­ment about tech­nol­ogy and small towns; some­thing along the lines of “*snark* I won­der if a web­site called town of Bernalillo can han­dle such a thing.*snark*”.


Turns out it can. We didn’t get our tick­ets over the Black­berry (I made a tac­ti­cal mis­take in choos­ing the email the con­fir­ma­tion should go to), but sev­eral peo­ple around us pur­chased their tick­ets over the course of the line mov­ing for­ward, and were able to get in via the much-shorter VIP line. By the time I was fin­ished mess­ing around with mobile web, how­ever, we were already at the front of the line. 


This is where I was expect­ing the rougher edges of adult, ID-requiring social get-togethers to expose them­selves. Pre­dictably, there was a woman in front of us who was try­ing to pro­vide some form of ID that included valu­able papers and ziplock bag­gies. As soon as the atten­dant saw that she was hav­ing a hard time believ­ing that what­ever doc­u­ment she was hold­ing wasn’t going to work, he guided her toward a nearby police offi­cer. A quick con­fer­ence of fam­ily mem­bers to arrange for a meet­ing place occurred, and then she went to con­sult with said police­man, leav­ing the rest of us who actu­ally drink reg­u­larly move ahead with our appro­pri­ate driver’s license out and ready to be checked. So, get­ting in was a snap.


We began our after­noon at Dos Viejos, where I had a delight­ful glass of ice-cold Sym­phony. It was sweet, and it was enjoy­able as we began our walk-around in the hot after­noon sun. We were a group of four that met there, thus dif­fer­ent peo­ple were at dif­fer­ent lev­els of wine-dom. My sis­ter needed food, so we wan­dered over to the food court. While it was hot, the grass and mature trees pro­vided plenty of seat­ing and shade.There were sets of lawn fur­ni­ture with shade umbrel­las, and two huge jumps for the kids. The food offer­ings var­ied from plates of bread, cheese and grapes (what I would have cho­sen if I hadn’t already stuffed my face with deli­cious bacon), to the tra­di­tional turkey legs, Indian Tacos and hot dogs. My sis­ter the bot­tom­less pit went from an Indian Taco to a hot dog over the course of the afternoon.


After the first food inter­lude, we tasted Guadalupe Vineyard’s out­stand­ing Ries­ling though we shied away from the $8/glass price, and instead opted to wait in line at one of the tents under a mas­sive tree.


**Pro­Tip: try to get your loca­tion in the shade! You’ll be sure to attract folks all after­noon long!**


The wine caddy folks had the right idea. They had a sweet spot under the biggest tree there.

The wine caddy folks had the right idea. They had a sweet spot under the biggest tree there.

Going to the Math­e­son tent was the luck­i­est find of all. I loved all the offer­ings we tried, finally stick­ing with the Tres for my glass. The caber­net was also quite deli­cious. I’m sur­prised I’m remem­ber­ing this level of detail at all, con­sid­er­ing how excel­lently buzzed I am at this point.

I and nearly every­one else, I might add. The rules, how­ever, seemed to be enforced and obeyed in such a way that every­one seemed to be hav­ing a good time. I didn’t see a sin­gle fight/push/shove/unkind word or ges­ture, which was nice. We tra­versed back to the food court for the afore­men­tioned hot dog as it was con­sumed by my sis­ter. The last stop of the after­noon was at Pon­derosa Val­ley Win­ery, where the Jemez Red was my choice in the end. I remem­ber lik­ing their other selec­tions as well.

I can't blame the line. We totally took our time at the counter too.

I can’t blame the line. We totally took our time at the counter too.

We hung around after 5, even though the tast­ing was done. 


So was my sister.

So was my sister.

The crowd slowly dwin­dled in size, but there were peo­ple walk­ing around, shop­ping the wine tents and the arts and crafts tents until after we left. We stopped by the Pis­ta­chio Tree Ranch/McGinn’s Coun­try Store/Arena Win­ery for some shelled pis­ta­chios. We walked away with shelled pecans, Green Chile fla­vor. We wan­dered eas­ily over to Math­e­son, all the while stop­ping at jew­elry & pot­tery tents (one day I’ll go loaded with cash to one of these things and just buy up every pretty lit­tle thing that I can). When we arrived to Math­e­son, we inquired about buy­ing a bot­tle of the caber­net. They were cleaned out! They had nary a thing for sale, it appeared, and wouldn’t until the next day. Of course, the tast­ing room is open through­out the week to dou­ble check your notes and pick up that elu­sive bottle.


No wine for you! Come see us in Rio Rancho! So we were told.

No wine for you! Come see us in Rio Ran­cho! So we were told.

The walk from the fes­ti­val grounds, which were just the right size to be both com­fort­able and big enough to allow one to get around, even through the wine lines, rea­son­ably eas­ily, back to the field where we parked the car was short, and traffic-friendly, even though we had to cross the main thor­ough­fare by which peo­ple were dis­pers­ing. Turn­ing left was no prob­lem, and find­ing park­ing for The Range down the street was a cinch. Although it was pre­dictably busy, we had great food and good ser­vice. Feel­ing a bit more grounded and def­i­nitely a lot less “tasted,” we got on the free­way and zoomed home. The ride was quick and unevent­ful, and we were home as if we’d been just down the block.

I was pleas­antly sur­prised to not have needed my light jacket (yay weather!) or my cell phone emer­gency con­tacts (as a result of being stranded or a huge fight break­ing out). The police offi­cers and event orga­niz­ers worked well together to enforce the rules (I did not spot one sin­gle open bot­tle of wine– and I was look­ing!), and the crowd was respect­ful toward each other and to the grounds. I look for­ward to next year’s fes­ti­val, pro­vided it remains at such a nice loca­tion (or some­thing sim­i­lar) and that its suc­cess con­tin­ues to hinge on a great get-together for the whole family.

Good night, Bernalillo! Thanks for all the fun!

Good night, Bernalillo! Thanks for all the fun!


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2009 New Mexico Wine Festival — my first time

05 Sep 2009 by SenoritaRuth

While I’ve resided in Albu­querque for almost 20 years and have spent all my drink­ing years firmly ensconced between the moun­tains and the rio, I’ve never been to the Bernalillo Wine Fes­ti­val. You’d find this odd if you knew how oppor­tune I can be to arrive when it’s a gath­er­ing that involves “tast­ing.” Yes, that’s what the kids call it nowadays.

That I haven’t been is due to a vari­ety of rea­sons, mostly coin­cid­ing with out­ra­geous lack of plan­ning and the gen­eral social amne­sia that peo­ple deeply embed­ded in their daily rou­tine tend to have toward spe­cial events. Some­times I spaced it out, other times I’m already doing some­thing else. I’ve been try­ing really hard to over­come the Sat­ur­day Lazies (though they can hap­pen on any day, not just Sat­ur­day). For me, the symp­toms of SL often include an excuse for not attend­ing or par­tic­i­pat­ing, some­times my finances are the scape­goat, other times I develop a sud­den dis­dain for the rest of human­ity; the mere thought of being with other peo­ple makes me change my mind about going.

This Sun­day, how­ever, proves to be an excep­tion. Along with a cou­ple of fun friends, I’ll be traips­ing across the Bernalillo land­scape, sip­ping wine and mak­ing ama­teur­ish deci­sions about how much I like it while enjoy­ing the cooler post-summer dog days weather. There’s even chance of thun­der­storms! I’ll be grab­bing my umbrella on my way out the door. I’m look­ing for­ward to tast­ing wines from Blue Teal and St. Clair, who are my favorites, as well as dis­cov­er­ing new bot­tled friends to get me through the ran­dom, emo­tional Sat­ur­day night. Hey, it happens!

The crown­ing jewel of this achieve­ment of local, social par­ticip­tion would be totake the Rail­run­ner up to the shindig. How­ever, my mates are less keen on the envi­ron­ment and more keen on hav­ing an imme­di­ate exit strat­egy avail­able. I must say that I under­stand. Should some­thing unto­ward hap­pen, I don’t want to have to wait for the train; I’d like to be able to jet outta there as quickly as possible.

So this leaves me with not hav­ing taken the Rail­run­ner yet. That’s okay, my next daytrip to Santa Fe will be trans­porta­tion­ally spon­sored by our quick, if not some­times deadly, light rail sys­tem. It’s dif­fi­cult to move the Wild West out of the men­tal­ity that the auto­mo­bile rep­re­sents the con­su­mate indi­vid­u­al­ity, the ulti­mate free­dom to go any­where and do any­thing. Instead, our mod­ern Wild West soci­ety needs to empha­size and cham­pion the causes of com­mu­nity, coop­er­a­tion and that small-yet-huge amount of self-sacrifice it will take to shift the par­a­digm toward a cleaner, more effi­cient trans­porta­tion system.

All that said, I know I’m going to enjoy the car pool­ing up to the fes­ti­val, as well the com­pany of some great friends and fine local spir­its. I’ll be tweet­ing from the Fes­ti­val, in case you expected any­thing dif­fer­ent. See you around!

Rel­e­vant Links:

New Mex­ico Wine Festival

NM Rail­run­ner Sched­ule & Pricing

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¡Chismosa!

03 Sep 2009 by SenoritaRuth

This change in theme was long over­due. The other was dark and fore­bod­ing. Though it speaks to my less hos­pitable sometimes-tendencies, the point of this blog is to have an open and wel­come atti­tude toward find­ing and embark­ing on local adven­tures. It isn’t really the place to indulge my inner 16 year old goth. That’s what Live­jour­nal is for.

Oh snap. My renewed vision for an under­cur­rent theme among my posts is that of back fence gos­sip. I’m not by any means sug­gest­ing that I’ll be engag­ing in nefar­i­ous, degrad­ing or oth­er­wise dis­rep­utable behav­ior. How­ever, I’m struck with how infor­ma­tion is exchanged. A basic build­ing block of this con­stant, nec­es­sary exchange is also char­ac­ter­ized by the attach­ment of opin­ion or judg­ment. It’s often shared in casual, semi-intimate moments among peo­ple with enough shared back­ground and com­mon knowl­edge to under­stand a nuanced per­spec­tive. It may involve mak­ing fun of some­one, either lightly or scathingly. It prop­a­gates both truth and inac­cu­ra­cies. It’s called gossip.

As it ties together a com­mu­nity it has vary­ing effects at dif­fer­ent lev­els. The last few months have shown me, how­ever, that events that seemed oth­er­wise far-away and removed from my life by many degrees were actu­ally as close as a next door neigh­bor. It mat­ters a lot that we’re part of a greater net­work. Our lives are impos­si­ble to iso­late from each other. A fence is but sym­bolic, and often the nexus of the most inter­est­ing, valu­able sto­ries and news. Hence the new theme, actu­ally. It’s a snazzy look, I think, and cheery enough to make any goth kid scram.

What’s the most inter­est­ing thing you’ve heard recently? Are you close with your neigh­bors? Do you gos­sip with your sib­lings or par­ents to catch up on the quo­tid­ian aspects of friends and family?

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Judging from your response, you’re (still) the racist…

30 May 2009 by SenoritaRuth

The Repub­li­can reac­tion to the nom­i­na­tion of Sonia Sotomayor is pre­dictable and equally dis­ap­point­ing. I am baf­fled by their knee-jerk reac­tions. I learned how to con­trol that habit after I got mar­ried and to put up with some­one else’s opin­ion and way of doing things on a daily basis. Yet, it appears that the recur­sive advances made by this coun­try in socio-cultural mat­ters over­whelms the con­ser­v­a­tive right every sin­gle time. I fail to under­stand why they can’t take things in stride. They count on a sim­i­lar stride from oth­ers when they want the coun­try to amble in their direc­tion. Remov­ing reg­u­la­tions from banks, mort­gage lenders and other finan­cial insti­tu­tions? Sure! Buy­ing into the false notion of “clean coal” so that we may con­tinue to resist an energy par­a­digm shift? All it took was some TV ads. Accept a his­panic woman into the Supreme Court? HOLY SHIT ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS?

For­give the expli­tives, but you get the point more clearly that way. That was the reac­tion of the pun­dits, talk­ers and jig­gly ones on the right. I’ve heard some of the most out­ra­geous claims made against her as a result, includ­ing that of reverse racist. I become truly con­cerned when such notions and phrases begin to be tossed about care­lessly by those who ben­e­fit from their nor­mal­iza­tion and accep­tance in the social dia­logue. It’s a con­ve­nient cover behind which they receive reprieve from hav­ing to actu­ally work out the train of thought that proves otherwise.

The term itself is a red her­ring. It implies that is an ide­ol­ogy held by a minorty group that rec­i­p­ro­cates the ide­ol­ogy held by the major­ity. How­ever, racism exists across all of the social and cul­tural strata. One does not have to reverse it in any way for it to be less toxic an approach to life and oth­ers. To use the term reverse racism is to fur­ther entrench the racist atti­tude of the per­son mak­ing that claim. The pan-hispanic expe­ri­ence encom­passes a wide spec­trum of real­i­ties and beliefs. Sotomayor’s affil­i­a­tion with La RAZA means some­thing dif­fer­ent to her than the foun­da­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion meant to its founders. Yet, it’s easy enough to assume a racist atti­tude from her affil­i­a­tion with the orga­ni­za­tion, even if nei­ther her nor the founders truly felt that the browns were bet­ter than the whites (I am recoil­ing away from myself for hav­ing used such sim­plis­tic terms– but sim­plic­ity must be embraced in these cases). While I per­son­ally refrain from offi­cial affil­i­a­tions like that one for myself because of the com­pli­cated cul­tural cam­pus, it is out­ra­geous to accuse, assume or oth­er­wise amplify an erro­neous per­cep­tion of her mem­ber­ship and what it could mean.

I look for­ward to the day she is con­firmed and we can once again resusme our daily lives with­out being bom­barded by the fly­ing debris that results from the col­li­sion between Amer­i­can ideals and Amer­i­can real­i­ties. I admire Pres­i­dent Obama for under­tak­ing the cul­tural respon­si­bil­ity of bat­tling through such sites of racial ten­sion and growth. It’s not an easy task, which is why we haven’t worked on it as a soci­ety very often. I hope that the new gen­er­a­tions of Amer­i­cans, those my age and younger, regard­less of their views toward finances or soci­ety (whether con­ser­v­a­tive or lib­eral), will be able to sep­a­rate these objec­tive, quan­tifi­able issues from the irra­tional, unem­bod­ied fear that comes from the inevitable changes in the make-up of a large soci­ety and multi-shaded cul­ture like that of the United States. 

Feli­ci­dades, Juez Sotomayor.

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Señorita Ruth on: being Green

22 Apr 2008 by SenoritaRuth

I’m get­ting tired of toss­ing stuff in the trash. Espe­cially as I raise a child, the guilt I feel when I toss out another plas­tic con­tainer or glass bot­tle is get­ting pretty unbear­able. So, what to do? There are sev­eral options to change your Car­bon Foot­print, even if solar pan­els are still out­side your price bracket. In addi­tion, there’s a slew of web­sites and books out there with valu­able insight into the lit­tle things (and big!) that we can do to change our impact from neg­a­tive to pos­i­tive. Fol­low­ing are some of the most acces­si­ble ways to alle­vi­ate waste and guilt.

Recy­cling: The City of Albu­querque will pick up your recy­clables road-side pro­vided you have them sep­a­rated and bagged appro­pri­ately. Alter­na­tively, they also offer 22 drop-off points through­out the metro area. As the years have gone by, the city has expanded their recy­cling reper­toire, now accept­ing all plas­tic bot­tles regard­less of num­ber, as well as plas­tics #s 1 and 2. This is in addi­tion to cor­ru­gated card­board, not chip­board (i.e. cereal boxes), alu­minum, and any and all house­hold paper, includ­ing the godaw­ful obnox­ious shiny paper of junk mail­ings. They won’t pick up glass for safety rea­sons, but you can drop that off at the recy­cling point near­est you. Over­all, recy­cling around here can be pretty effort­less, pro­vided you’re will­ing to build into your rou­tine the extra sev­eral min­utes a week it would take to make sure waste is sep­a­rated from reusable mate­r­ial. Like any good habit, this can be hard to incor­po­rate into our already packed lives, but as a mat­ter of pri­or­ity, it’s cer­tainly worth the effort to get the recy­clable mate­ri­als to the curb by 7 a.m. on trash day. A way to do this eas­ily is to sort trash from the get-go. You can re-purpose sev­eral trash­cans to do the dirty work, or you can find a solu­tion like this one to keep all your cans and bot­tles out of sight. Or hell, you can build it if you’re car­pen­try inclined. A cheap and handy can crusher can be wall-mounted and kept out of sight in the laun­dry room or garage. This will help you save space and effort, as you’ll have to put out your alu­minum recy­cling less often. If you use a sturdy card­board box to keep all your old news­pa­pers & junk mail­ings in, you can cut deep slits down the mid­dle of each side, lay out the twine ahead of time, and viola! An easy way to keep paper tidy and mess-free when tying it up for the recy­cling man!

I was talk­ing to a fel­low grad stu­dent here at UNM who also works in Oper­a­tions. He broke the news to me that UNM recy­cles only 30% of its paper and metal. Hav­ing worked in Admin­is­tra­tion here, I know that even with our exten­sive online sys­tems, stu­dents, fac­ulty and staff still gen­er­ate MASSIVE amounts of paper waste. When I think of all the Daily Lobos dis­carded through­out cam­pus, used up nap­kins from the Mer­cado, and the paper that paper reams come wrapped in (very meta), even 30% is a lot. Addi­tion­ally, he men­tioned to me that aside from recy­cling cop­per, UNM actu­ally loses money by recy­cling. It costs .12 more cents to recy­cle paper and most met­als than it does to toss all our trash in the local dumps. I find this sta­tis­tic wor­ri­some and a lit­tle con­found­ing. As he pointed out how­ever, the social cost we must pay for recy­cling will last for a long time before we start see­ing the ben­e­fits (as in, lesser cost to recy­cle than dump) of our actions. This, how­ever, should not dis­cour­age us from doing our share. In fact, it should light fire under our asses to get on the ball and keep using the sys­tems in place to recy­cle, as the only way to bring down these costs is to stan­dard­ize and mech­a­nize these streams of mate­r­ial. Inter­est­ingly, I also learned today that a lot of our recy­cling goes to China as raw mate­r­ial, to be returned to our coun­try later on as all the “Made in China” prod­ucts that lit­ter our homes and lives. Inter­est­ing stuff! So, keep recy­cling, or start if you haven’t already.

Reuse stuff at home: Com­ing from a fam­ily with a crafty mother, I’ve learned to look around and re-purpose stuff within my home. Like my mom, I’ve stopped throw­ing away Bueno Chile plas­tic con­tain­ers because they’re the per­fect size for a left­over side dish or extra grated cheese. The glass jars from my yummy Maranatha peanut but­ter are now used to store bulk raisins and nuts, which are bet­ter to buy because you’re not pay­ing (or wast­ing) new pack­ag­ing. You’re sav­ing money & mate­r­ial. It’s a no-lose sit­u­a­tion! How rare are those? Egg shells and cof­fee grounds have stopped going in the trash. Since I rent I’m reluc­tant to start the type of com­post pile my dad has been work­ing on for years. How­ever, grind­ing up eggshells and mix­ing them and cof­fee grounds into the soil of your house plants is an egg­cel­lent (awww!) way to reuse mate­ri­als, giv­ing directly back to the earth, and you’re able to enjoy the results directly. Recep­ta­cles, con­tain­ers, and tubs with lids are things we use every day in our lives. It shouldn’t mat­ter from whence they came, as long as they’re liv­ing out their work­ing lives serv­ing and sav­ing extra food, but­tons, or other small items.

Change your car habits: I know, I know. Eas­ier said than done, right? And here is where I con­fess a dirty, nasty secret. I live 5 min­utes away from UNM. I haven’t timed it walk­ing, but since I can get there in less time than it takes to play one of my favorite songs on my favorite dri­ving CD, I’m pretty sure that the walk­ing is less of a hard­ship and more of the good exer­cise I need any­way. My excuses include: I’m always late, I have a kid that needs a car seat, it’s cold, it’s hot, etc, etc. I have per­fectly good, ratio­nal ways to over­come each one of these obsta­cles, and yet here I am, typ­ing this at school and accu­mu­lat­ing a mas­sive park­ing struc­ture fee for the day. I read in a recent issue of the Alibi that Albu­querque was voted one of the cities best suited for bik­ing. It’s true! Our bike paths are exten­sive and fairly rider-friendly. My next big pur­chase will be a good, depend­able bicy­cle. Our tran­sit sys­tem needs some work before some of us can depend on it reg­u­larly (ever try to get from West­gate to Tramway?), but it already serves many Albu­querqueans well (my neigh­bor included, his car sits qui­etly in the yard most of the time, unmoved), and the Red and Blue Lines have done won­ders to expe­dite one’s jour­ney down Cen­tral Avenue.

In short, there are a mil­lion dif­fer­ent tiny things to do in our every­day lives that can cumu­la­tively help shift the tide of waste­ful exis­tence we’ve been born into. It’s not gonna hap­pen overnight, and being from a cul­ture that’s used to instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion and imme­di­ate results, this may be a lit­tle frus­trat­ing. How­ever, we’re all respon­si­ble for our­selves and each other, as well as the land we use for our ben­e­fit. While my inten­tion is not to sound the Holier-hippie-than-thou horn of green judg­ment, I want to encour­age every­one to take a bit of time to reflect on their use and usage. It’s a jour­ney, not an instant achieve­ment, which means we all have room for improve­ment.

Happy Earth Day!

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Señorita Ruth on: Benito Juárez

14 Apr 2008 by SenoritaRuth

Tales from the Old Country 

Every Mon­day I will regale you with sto­ries from the old coun­try, my beloved Mex­ico. This weekly effort was moti­vated by my reflec­tions on the his­tor­i­cal fig­ures I learned about in my short time in the Mex­i­can edu­ca­tional sys­tem. Since com­ing to the U.S. I’ve become iso­lated with many parts of my own his­tory and back­ground, and I hope to reestab­lish some con­nec­tion for myself and oth­ers who may also feel there are cer­tain aspects of their self-identity that are murky or miss­ing. For the rest of you, this is a les­son in inter­na­tional his­tory and context.

O~o~O

Mexican President Benito Juarez
Ben­ito Juárez: Zapotec lawyer and Pres­i­dent of Mex­ico, 1858 –1872 

I imag­ine that the name Juárez con­jures up amongst my south­west­ern broth­ers and sis­ters assorted sor­did tales of a bor­der city where all your car­nal desires (and some not so desired) can come true. Tales of lost week­ends and lost free­dom in Mex­i­can jails have come my way since I was in high school. Not that I’m think­ing of any set in par­tic­u­lar *ahem NMSU*, but en masse migra­tions south of the bor­der to Ciu­dad Juárez dur­ing week­ends and breaks are not uncom­mon, and also not rec­om­mended, but we’ll save that for a future Col­lege Sur­vival in the South­west 101 entry. I myself have spent time in and trav­el­ing through Juárez. Every trip to the U.S. when I was a lit­tle girl required haz­ard­ing the crazy traf­fic, and I went to sum­mer camp at Vino Nuevo Church when I was fif­teen. My fam­ily has long-standing rela­tion­ship ties there, and its sig­nif­i­cance as a land­mark on the bor­der is long-established.

Yet, this ini­tial link between name and city has hid­den in its folds one of the gems of Mex­i­can his­tory. Indeed, Cd. Juárez, along with dozens of other cities through­out Mex­ico, is named after one of the country’s most hon­ored lead­ers, Ben­ito Juárez. He was a states­man and a pres­i­dent, famous for his staunch defense of human rights and his per­se­ver­ance in the face of many adver­saries and ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­nents.

Ben­ito Juárez rose from indige­nous poverty to the zenith of the Mex­i­can polit­i­cal sys­tem in his life. A Zapotec orphaned by age three, he struck out from his home in the vil­lage of San Pablo Gue­latao in the state of Oax­aca at age 12 to ful­fill what at the time was a vague yearn­ing for greater learner and what later would become a legacy. Involved in a polit­i­cal sys­tem that expe­ri­enced a tumul­tuous 19th cen­tury, his career stretched from defend­ing land­hold­ing rights for indige­nous peo­ples as a lawyer at the local and state lev­els begin­ning in 1834 to fed­eral judge posi­tion (1842), gov­er­nor of Oax­aca (1846–1852) and even­tu­ally as the leader of the Mex­i­can nation from 1858 to 1872, the year he died.

While in each of these posi­tions he cham­pi­oned and was the voice for the peo­ple in rural areas. He was respon­si­ble for strip­ping the Catholic Church of its exten­sive land hold­ings, build­ing roads and cre­at­ing schools. He worked in offi­cial capac­i­ties under both Con­ser­v­a­tive and Lib­eral admin­is­tra­tions, turned down posi­tions offered to him as Mex­ico faced the threat of becom­ing part of the French Empire between 1864 and 1867 (more about this on the Cinco de Mayo edi­tion of Tales from the Old Coun­try), and expelled an emis­sary sent by the Con­fed­er­acy in 1861, since sup­port­ing an entity that kept almost half of its pop­u­la­tion in bondage directly con­tra­dicted his phi­los­o­phy and work. He estab­lished reforms and a con­sti­tu­tion that guar­an­teed rights of free speech and press, among oth­ers.

Like any per­son, much less a national leader, his ide­o­log­i­cal stance was com­pli­cated and has since been heav­ily scru­ti­nized. Some his­to­ri­ans con­demn him of abus­ing exec­u­tive power by remain­ing pres­i­dent for nearly twenty years. How­ever, his ded­i­ca­tion can be under­stood as a reac­tion to the many lead­ers, includ­ing Por­firio Díaz and Anto­nio López de Santa Anna, whose ideas of Mex­ico were less demo­c­ra­tic and more dic­ta­to­r­ial. He has been rec­og­nized across the Amer­i­cas and across the world as a cham­pion for causes that res­onate across ethic and national bound­aries. His rela­tion­ship with the U.S. was multi-faceted, as he spent time in New Orleans as an exile under Santa Anna’s rule.

Over­all, he was a man of intel­li­gence and fore­sight, with staunch beliefs by which he stood and acted. It is impos­si­ble to unravel him from the mod­ern incar­na­tion of Mex­ico, which owes him many advance­ments and land­mark turns for the bet­ter. An exam­ple of the deter­mined human spirit, he per­se­vered and returned to his bat­tles, even where oth­ers might have called it quits. A legacy deserv­ing of the honor to have streets and cities named after him. Some which might do well to look to his life for inspi­ra­tion and direc­tion.

Ref­er­ences and fur­ther read­ing:
http://www.elbalero.gob.mx/kids/history/html/sxix/biojuarez.html
http://www.mexonline.com/benitojuarez.htm
http://www.notablebiographies.com/Jo-Ki/Ju-rez-Benito.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Juarez

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Señorita Ruth on: English Only Pt. 2

13 Apr 2008 by SenoritaRuth

Are They Talk­ing About Me?
What are the ide­o­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions of choos­ing an offi­cial lan­guage? What kind of under­ly­ing belief sys­tem does it betray? A major marker of cul­ture and iden­tity, lan­guage sep­a­rates worlds of expe­ri­ence. And when it’s not your own, it’s often uncom­fort­able to have to deal with. Basic ques­tions that seem both ludi­crous and star­tlingly wor­ri­some express thoughts and assump­tions that begin to sur­face along the lines of “Are they talk­ing about me?” This may appear para­noid and self-centered, but is also a reflec­tion of the lin­guis­tic iso­la­tion mono­lin­gual Amer­i­can Eng­lish speak­ers expe­ri­ence on a daily basis. The unique geo­graph­i­cal posi­tion, along with the desires of the founders of the coun­try, have com­bined to cre­ate an insu­lar envi­ron­ment for Eng­lish, much more so than in other parts of the world. In addi­tion, Amer­i­can cit­i­zens speak one of the world’s most influ­en­tial lan­guages, afford­ing them lit­tle moti­va­tion to learn a sec­ond lan­guage beyond the cur­sory high school or col­lege cur­ricu­lum expe­ri­ence. As any bilin­gual speaker will tell you, that’s not really speak­ing two lan­guages at all.

So we have a nat­u­rally pro­tected envi­ron­ment for “one nation, one lan­guage” to func­tion as the ide­o­log­i­cal as well as the policy-based modus operandi. Our fore­fa­thers did not feel it was the role of gov­ern­ment to dic­tate to the peo­ple what lan­guages they should speak. Fur­ther­more, it was not uncom­mon in the early days of this coun­try, as it is now, for legal doc­u­ments, pam­phlets, and other offi­cial or quasi-official com­mu­ni­ca­tions to be pub­lished in the myr­iad of lan­guages that rep­re­sent our multi-cultural roots. Span­ish, Ger­man, French, and Dutch are a few of the first lan­guages immi­grants brought with them to add to the cul­tural and lin­guis­tic land­scape of a coun­try made up of trans­plants. From a healthy lin­guis­tic com­pe­ti­tion, Eng­lish emerged as the early win­ner, the lan­guage to bind speak­ers of many lan­guages together. To that effect, it is the de facto, con­ven­tional and fully accepted pri­mary lan­guage.

Nested within our overtly anglo­phonic cul­ture we have a long-standing tra­di­tion of multi-lingualism. Ves­tiges of true bilin­gual­ism exist in our efforts to expose chil­dren at every level of edu­ca­tion to other West­ern Euro­pean lan­guages. Even in the face of this tra­di­tion and ide­o­log­i­cal moti­va­tions behind cre­at­ing a coun­try with­out an offi­cial lan­guage, how­ever, there is a voice that in the form of leg­is­la­tion has asked both fed­eral and state-level gov­ern­ments to adopt Eng­lish as the offi­cial lan­guage of the United States. The cur­rent efforts by orga­ni­za­tions such as U.S. Eng­lish would see Eng­lish adopted as the offi­cial lan­guage, and in such a capac­ity dis­place lan­guages spo­ken in fam­i­lies and minor­ity com­mu­ni­ties more than ever before.

What has Eng­lish done for you?
Regard­less of its (lack of) offi­cial sta­tus, Eng­lish is the lan­guage of the peo­ple. Over­whelm­ingly used as the pri­mary lan­guage in all walks of life, Eng­lish is trans­mit­ted suc­cess­fully to the kids of every gen­er­a­tion, and of every cul­tural back­ground. The Amer­i­can pub­lic school sys­tems guar­an­tee trans­mis­sion by using Eng­lish both in the class­room and in the play­ground. It’s the lan­guage of for­mal edu­ca­tion as well as of infor­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It’s present in every form of media, and is highly sought as a sec­ond lan­guage around the world and by non-native speak­ers in the U.S. Stud­ies show that even those with no for­mal sec­ond lan­guage edu­ca­tion, sim­ply by being immersed in the cul­ture, acquire a func­tional grasp of the lan­guage. Its far-reaching global sta­tus is rec­og­nized in Africa as well as Europe and Asia. It’s very appar­ent to the world that speak­ing Eng­lish is asso­ci­ated with socioe­co­nomic oppor­tu­ni­ties not avail­able in many people’s first lan­guage, there­fore it is desired. Most impor­tant to real­ize is that, even if not every per­son speaks Eng­lish in the U.S., those person’s chil­dren will. Remov­ing the abil­ity of non-fluent cit­i­zens and vis­i­tors the abil­ity to inter­act with the gov­ern­ment and within their own com­mu­ni­ties by enforc­ing Eng­lish Only doesn’t change the actu­al­i­ties of lan­guage use: Peo­ple have dif­fer­ent capac­i­ties to learn and retain a sec­ond lan­guage, but as long as that lan­guage is being taught as a first lan­guage, the sta­tus quo is nat­u­rally main­tained by the major­ity lan­guage.

English Only pol­icy seeks to reaf­firm a sta­tus that it has no right to either cre­ate or uphold. A lan­guage becomes widely used and influ­en­tial through use. Award­ing it a legal sta­tus changes lit­tle in the way it prop­a­gates through the greater cul­ture and soci­ety. Edu­ca­tion, the media, and the vari­ety of social exchanges that occur in Eng­lish are respon­si­ble for Eng­lish being the major­ity lan­guage. When under­stood in this light, the Eng­lish Only move­ment is hol­low and mean­ing­less, a mis­placed effort that could and should be used to attend to other, more press­ing mat­ters regard­ing the sta­tus of lan­guage and lan­guages in this coun­try.

Further­more, there are the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of legal­iz­ing a human cog­ni­tive facil­ity. Like many other efforts in the past to reg­u­late human behav­ior and cat­e­go­rize peo­ple accord­ing to eth­nic or genetic mark­ers, this effort will only work to strengthen the bound­aries of an arti­fice upon our cul­ture that we would do bet­ter with­out. Giv­ing Eng­lish legal sta­tus directly works against the social mech­a­nisms we have in place by which to iden­tify our­selves and each other. Gov­ern­ing people’s spo­ken lives will incur costs both finan­cial and cul­tural that we should not be pre­pared to shoul­der, and will doom yet another gen­er­a­tion to a pur­ga­tory of self-identity as the same words echo as have in the past: “I don’t know my mother tongue.” We as a soci­ety are still deal­ing with the after-effects of the Native Amer­i­cans who for­sook Navajo and other lan­guages after suf­fer­ing through board­ing schools and the rural ele­men­tary school chil­dren who suf­fered phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment for speak­ing Span­ish in the class­rooms of old Texas and the South­west. These peo­ple kept their own chil­dren from learn­ing their mother tongue to the detri­ment of their fam­ily and cul­tural iden­tity, and encour­aged them to only speak Eng­lish. The fal­lacy in these efforts is that the chil­dren of immi­grants become so quickly accul­tur­ated that any overt effort to do so by pre­vent­ing the learn­ing of another lan­guage is redun­dant and effec­tively irrel­e­vant. It should be the ideal of a pro­gres­sive, diverse soci­ety to encour­age a healthy lin­guis­tic home envi­ron­ment. Bilin­gual­ism should not have a neg­a­tive value when it comes to cit­i­zen­ship, par­tic­i­pa­tion and inte­gra­tion within the greater soci­ety.

English Only poli­cies will cast a reign of shad­ows over minor­ity lan­guage speak­ers. Legal immi­grants and Native Amer­i­cans alike who use the same ser­vices and inter­act with the same gov­ern­ment as native Eng­lish speak­ers stand to lose oppor­tu­ni­ties in offi­cial capac­i­ties. The time, effort, and money it takes to trans­late offi­cial U.S. doc­u­ments into other lan­guages has always been devoted to the same task since the 1700s, and in no way eclipses other gov­ern­ment spend­ing fig­ures which may or may not be as sig­nif­i­cant. Beyond the bureau­cratic con­se­quences, by accept­ing this pol­icy the coun­try runs the threat of expe­dit­ing the rate at which some lan­guages become extinct.

Ethics and Progress
Beyond the ques­tions of legal­ity, which on their own are sub­stan­tial, we also deal with the more abstract but just as cru­cial con­cepts that influ­enced the orig­i­nal deci­sion to do with­out an offi­cial lan­guage. It’s been pointed out that the fore­fa­thers couldn’t have pre­dicted how many lan­guages we have to deal with. Yet I won­der how sym­pa­thetic they would be to our plight if they com­pared their tech­nol­ogy to ours. We ben­e­fit from dig­i­tal media that have brought the world closer together, stan­dard­iz­ing and mak­ing avail­able more lan­guages to more peo­ple. It would stand to rea­son that we uti­lize these advan­tages to ben­e­fit all. How­ever, even these flimsy argu­ments side­step the under­ly­ing sen­ti­ment that dri­ves pol­icy efforts such a Eng­lish Only. Claim­ing patri­o­tism, these efforts eclipse more fun­da­men­tal mem­ber­ships that we should also feel a strong respon­si­bil­ity toward: Amer­i­can multi-cultural and multi-lingual cul­ture, and the human race, wherein every­one has an equal right to speak the lan­guage they were taught to express them­selves in.

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