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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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Weekend Plans

06 May 2009 by admin

Well, it’s been over a year since I blogged last. I have to say, what a year it’s been! I’ve left grad school for the excite­ment of the real world, and have found a job that keeps me on my toes from day to day. How­ever, it’s time to once again pick up the joys of writ­ing about the sights and sounds of Albu­querque and its sur­round­ing area dur­ing the sum­mer. This is my favorite sea­son. The smell of fresh cut grass dur­ing the day, bar­be­cue at dusk and the crick­ets after dark infuse me with a sense of unbounded enthu­si­asm as I remem­ber per­fect, lazy days spent under trees at the park, hid­ing out in the dark shade of home dur­ing the noon­time, and the excite­ment of after-dark adven­tures with my friends.

Per­haps those times are truly past for yours truly, but their echoes always inspire me to branch out dur­ing the sum­mer, try new things and check out new places to hang out, learn, eat or shop. So, I will be focus­ing on my out­ings over the sum­mer, those both mun­dane and excit­ing, local and out of town. Do you have any sug­ges­tions? What’s your favorite place to be dur­ing the summer?

To kick things off, I’m going to bone up on my early rock his­tory by check­ing out the show­ing of 200 Motels, co-directed by Frank Zappa, at The Guild this week­end. The mid­night show­ings will occur May 8 & 9, Fri­day and Sat­ur­day (or Sat­ur­day and Sun­day, if you choose to be pedan­tic about it). I’m going to hook my arm through that of my best rock ‘n roll buddy and we’re going to go expand our minds. I’ve never seen any Zappa movies, so this should be an insight­ful look into the estab­lish­ment of rock into main­stream pop­u­lar Amer­i­can culture.

I’m also look­ing for­ward to a dif­fer­ent event this week­end. At Book­works, located at 4022 Rio Grande, on Sun­day, May 10th at 11:00, there will be a dis­cus­sion by Jan MacK­ell, who will be pre­sent­ing her research on “Red Light Women of the Rocky Moun­tains.” While this may not be fare for all moth­ers, con­sider invit­ing yours if she’s a free spirit. If she’s not, don’t worry. I’ll be post­ing some mom-friendly ideas for this upcom­ing Moth­ers’ Day.

What do you like to do dur­ing the sum­mer? Do you already have vaca­tion plans? What about the lit­tle ones– do they go to sum­mer camp, or the Parks and Recre­ation pro­grams avail­able around the city? Tell me all about it!

Oh! I almost for­got to mention…these ideas for week­end plans came to me via the Alibi weekly newslet­ter email. I’ve found lots of inter­est­ing stuff in those, includ­ing the chances to win some free tick­ets and other types of prizes. You should def­i­nitely sign up!

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