Every Day is Magic: Ada Limón

In her 2015 collection, Bright Dead Things, a National Book Award finalist for poetry, Ada Limón writes of moving to Kentucky: “Confession: I did not want to live here.” It’s perhaps not a surprising sentiment coming from a coastally oriented person who was raised in Northern California, attended college in Seattle, and then spent over a decade in New York City.

 

But Limón and her husband, Lucas, have been in Lexington for seven years now and the effects of settling into this place are noticeable in her new book, The Carrying (Milkweed, Aug.). It’s a phenomenally lively and attentive collection replete with the trappings of living a little closer to nature. While Bright Dead Things is marked by a preponderance of light, such as images of fireflies and neon signs, The Carrying features numerous appearances by various trees, birds, and beetles. Limón also demonstrates a greater willingness to be explicit in naming colors, particularly green. “It’s crazy green, the whole book,” she says. “Lexington is the greenest place I’ve ever lived.” Similarly, where in Bright Dead Things, Limón tells a lot of stories and anecdotes, in The Carrying she is very present in her thoughts and experiences.

As it turns out, these shifts in focus have another, altogether unexpected source. While putting Bright Dead Things together, Limón was diagnosed with chronic vestibular neuronitis, which can cause bouts of vertigo. “If I’m really having vertigo, it’s pretty intense and I really have to focus,”
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Young Latino Mayor Pete Aguilar Could Turn a Red House Seat Blue

Long before he aspired to be in Congress, Democrat Pete Aguilar’s dream was to be like his father who worked for the local utility.
“My mother tells the story that she made me a little uniform just like his and I think she has baby books that she shows …He worked for the local gas company for 37 years,” Aguilar said.
But he didn’t fill his father’s shoes. Instead, at age 26 he set his own path and became the youngest city council member in the California city of Redlands’ 126-year history when five council members, Democrat and Republican, picked him out of 11 candidates to fill an open seat. He was elected to the seat a year later, his first election. Then his colleagues appointed him mayor in 2010 and again in 2012.
Today Aguilar’s going after another vacancy, the U.S. House seat for California’s 31st Congressional District. The incumbent, Republican Rep. Gary Miller was in for a bruising race as the Democrats’ No. 1 target. He chose to retire. Aguilar, a Democrat, and his opponent Republican Paul Chabot will face off in November…
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Poem
“…And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while…”

T.S. Eliot
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Mexican American Proarchive Annual Report for 2022

The American Community Survey is an annual survey administered by the federal government to help local officials and community leaders and businesses understand the changes that take place in their communities. It includes percentages of our population’s graduate school attainment and the employment of Mexican Americans in various occupations.  These important factors influence the allocation of federal resources. Mexican American Proarchives uses the data provided by the American Community Survey to better understand how Mexican Americans compare to the general population.

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