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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Astronaut José M. Hernández
“NASA engineer José M. Hernández wanted to fly in space ever since he heard that the first Hispanic-American had been chosen to travel into space. “I was hoeing a row of sugar beets in a field near Stockton, Calif., and I heard on my transistor radio that Franklin Chang-Diaz had been selected for the Astronaut Corps,” says Hernandez, who was a senior in high school at the time. “I was already interested in science and engineering,” Hernandez remembers, “but that was the moment I said, ‘I want to fly in space.’ And that’s something I’ve been striving for each day since then.” That hard work paid off when was selected to begin training as a mission specialist as part of the 2004 astronaut candidate class…”
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House Praised For Passing Bill Giving Undocumented Farm Workers Pathway To Citizenship: ‘Bipartisanship Lives’
“House representatives are receiving praise for passing a bipartisan bill that would provide a pathway to citizenship for thousands of undocumented farm workers in the U.S.
The Farm Workforce Modernization Act passed in a 260-165 vote, gaining support from 34 Republicans and succeeding where other efforts to see a significant number of undocumented immigrants have failed.
While the bill could be shot down in the Republican-controlled Senate, immigration advocates have hailed its success among House Republicans as a positive sign…”
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Updated U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade agreement maintains NAFTA’s labour mobility rules
“The rules for professional work visas will remain unchanged under Canada’s new free trade deal with the United States and Mexico.
The three countries approved updates to the agreement’s original text on Tuesday, December 10, paving the way for its ratification.
Under the new agreement, the chapter that deals with temporary entry for business persons and professionals, Chapter 16, remains essentially unchanged from the original North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.
Chapter 16 allows employers in Canada, the United States and Mexico to access professional labour from all three countries…”
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Graduate enrollment, as a share of UC’s total undergraduate and graduate enrollment, has remained relatively steady since 2000.
“…With 21 percent graduate enrollment in 2018, including health science students, UC was lower than the average for non-UC AAU1 public institutions, at 27 percent, and the average for AAU private institutions, at 55 percent.
In fall 2018, the proportion of academic doctoral students varied across UC’s general campuses, from seven percent at Merced and Santa Cruz to 13 percent at Berkeley. At San Francisco, an exclusively graduate health-sciences campus, academic doctoral students made up 27 percent of fall 2018 enrollments. Since 2008, the share of academic doctoral students has declined at most campuses due to more rapid growth in the undergraduate, master’s, and professional populations.
UC awards 20 percent of California’s graduate academic master’s degrees, 62 percent of its academic doctoral degrees, and 21 percent of its graduate professional practice degrees…”
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UC admits all-time record number of freshmen, transfer students
“…The composition of the freshman class is similar to that of last year. Chicano/Latino students increased slightly as a proportion of admitted students from 33 percent to 34 percent, while Asian American students remained the largest ethnic group of admitted students at 35 percent. The proportion of white students stayed flat at 22 percent. The proportion of African American students also stayed flat at 5 percent, while American Indian students remained at 0.5 percent…”
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Mexico’s bid to detain El Chapo son ‘a failure of everything’
“…It was a huge embarrassment for the government. They had captured one of the most wanted men in Mexico and, outgunned and overwhelmed by the cartel, they simply turned him back over to his men.
By the following morning, both state and federal government were on damage control.
“This was a failed operation,” Mr Durazo admitted, “a rushed operation.” The police had acted without orders from above and the decision to release Guzmán was only taken to prevent further violence to the civilian population, he argued.
“We are not going to convert Mexico into a greater cemetery than it already is.”…”
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Six myths about Latino Republicans are challenged in University of Houston study
“…Latinos tend to be Democrats? Latinos who are Republican must be moderates and not feel welcome within the party?
A new University of Houston study seeks to debunk these common misconceptions about Latino voters.
The growing community in Texas will play a key role in the 2020 election, said Brandon Rottinghaus, lead author of the study and a political science professor at the university.
The latinx vote will be the decisive part of the 2020 election,” Rottinghaus said, using a gender-neutral term for the demographic group. “Republicans have long counted on a base of support from the Latinx community. If they don’t hold that support in 2020, Texas will turn blue.”
Here are some of the myths Rottinghaus and co-author Rudy Fonseca, field director for the Harris County Republican Party, examined…”
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Trump’s policies, as well as anti-immigrant violence, disturbed these Latinos. Now they’re taking action
“…Adrian Rios was closing in on his dream job as a U.S. diplomat when the unexpected happened: Donald Trump entered the White House.
Throughout his campaign, Trump had labeled migrants from Mexico as rapists, criminals and drug traffickers. That rhetoric set the stage for Trump’s first months in office, as he took measures to crack down on both legal and illegal immigration, much of it flowing from Mexico and Central America.
“I couldn’t represent the country under his administration,” Rios said.
Instead, the 26-year-old Mexican American readjusted his plans: attend law school at UCLA, practice corporate law to pull his family out of poverty and provide free legal services to disadvantaged Latinos…”
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USA Hall of Famer to work as a scout for Mexico national team
“…The Mexican federation (FMF) is winning the script to the United States Soccer Federation, this time by hiring former US youth coach, Hugo Perez as a USA based scout. The former USMNT player and US National Hall of Famer will seek to give Mexican-American youth more possibilities to grow as professionals.
In an interview with SoccerAmerica held after the FMF youth visor camp in Southern California, Perez talked about his new job with the Mexican federation. “I’m doing this because I want the kids to have opportunities. I just want them to have more than one choice. If one national team doesn’t want them, maybe the other one does. For me, the most important thing is providing opportunities.”
The courting of the Mexican-American talent comes after a Mexican law modification in 1998 that allows US-born Mexican-American to obtain Mexican citizenship, increasing the scouting on the American side of the border…”
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Editorial: Diversity and support for minorities deserve more attention from university
“…Outreach efforts made in attempts to diversify campuses have clearly worked to an extent – the percentage of underrepresented minorities enrolled at the UC has increased by 11% in the past two decades.
However, a systemwide increase in underrepresented minority enrollment overlooks specific population statistics at every campus. Since Proposition 209’s passage, African American enrollment at UCLA has plummeted despite increased enrollment across the UC as a whole.
It seems as though the UC’s top schools are building even higher walls for admissions of some underrepresented communities. According to a 2016 report, a student said she feels standards for UC admissions have increased exponentially, thereby alienating most of the student population…”
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Athletics Director Dan Guerrero to retire after contract extended to June 30, 2020
“…Dan Guerrero’s time in Westwood is officially ticking toward its end.
The UC Regents voted unanimously Thursday morning to extend the UCLA Athletics director’s contract from Dec. 31 to June 30, 2020, the Los Angeles Times reported. Guerrero agreed at Wednesday’s UC Regents meeting that he will end his tenure with the Bruins at the end of the 2019-2020 academic year.
UCLA Athletics released a statement Thursday claiming it would utilize a professional firm to conduct a nationwide search for Guerrero’s replacement this fall. UCLA Chancellor Gene Block requested Guerrero’s contract be extended from December to June in order to maintain continuity and ample time to conduct the search for his replacement.
Guerrero said his two reasons for retiring were to spend more time with his wife and newborn granddaughter and to take time to recover after an ultimately successful battle with cancer over the last 18 months…”
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Why Do So Many Californians Choose NOT to Vote?
“…Likely voters do not represent the diversity of the state’s population. They are disproportionately white and tend to have incomes and levels of education that are notably higher than the state’s average. A recent Public Policy Institute of California study found that:
Non-Hispanic whites constitute only 44 percent of California’s adult population but make up 65 percent of the state’s likely voters.
Hispanics make up a third of the state’s population but represent only 17 percent of likely voters…”
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Hispanic Unemployment Rate Ties All-Time Low
”
The number of Hispanics and Latinos employed set a record high in August as their national, seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate matched its record low of 4.2%, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data released Friday show.
In August, the unemployment rate for Hispanics and Latinos, aged 16 and up, was 4.2%, down from 4.5% in July, returning to the record low of 4.2% in April and May – which broke the record low of 4.3% set two months earlier in February. BLS began tracking Hispanic-Latino employment data in 1973.
285,000 more Hispanics had jobs in August, as the 27,866,000 employed broke the record for Hispanic employment of 27,701,000 set in December 2018. The number of Hispanics participating in the workplace rose in August, as did Hispanics’ labor force participation rate, which increased from 66.4% to 66.7%.
The number of unemployed Hispanics fell by 98,000 to 1,216,000, down from 1,314,000 in July…”
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Persistence: The Success of Students Who Transfer from Community Colleges to Selective Four-Year Institutions
One of several key findings;
“…Community college students who transfer to selective institutions have equal to higher graduation rates as students who enrolled directly from high school or those who transferred from other four-year institutions. They graduate in a reasonable amount of time, earning their degrees within two and a half years, on average…”
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Their U.S. roots date back centuries, but these Latinos still wonder if it’s enough to belong
By Esmeralda Bermudez, Paloma Esquivel
Aug. 16, 2019
“It’s a tricky thing, what makes up an American.
There are Latinos whose families have been on this land since long before the Statue of Liberty greeted newcomers from New York Harbor, before the Civil War and the Declaration of Independence.
In the days since the El Paso massacre, many have found themselves reflecting, wrestling with their place in society and asking questions about how their heritage, their language and their skin color has shaped them and the way other Americans perceive them…”
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On the US-Mexico Border, Craft Beer Diplomacy Is Bringing Brewers Together
‘Sick of battling it out on southern California’s legendarily congested freeways, Ryan Brooks packed his bags and headed south. “I was living about an hour north of San Diego, commuting an hour each way, and I thought, ‘This is stupid, I hate it,’” he said. “So I went to TJ and spent 100 bucks a month to stay at my buddy’s house.”
That’s “TJ” as in Tijuana, Mexico, a breezy 15- to 20-minute drive from Coronado Brewing Co., where Brooks was working as a brewer in 2011. “The same border guy waved me through every day because I was like the one white guy crossing [from Mexico into the US] at 5 in the morning,” he remembered…”
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UC admits all-time record number of freshmen, transfer students for Fall 2019
“…The composition of the freshman class is similar to that of last year. Chicano/Latino students increased slightly as a proportion of admitted students from 33 percent to 34 percent, while Asian American students remained the largest ethnic group of admitted students at 35 percent. The proportion of white students stayed flat at 22 percent. The proportion of African American students also stayed flat at 5 percent, while American Indian students remained at 0.5 percent…”
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New Jobs Report Shows Record Unemployment Lows for Hispanics, Women May 3rd, 2019
“…At 4.2% the Hispanic unemployment rate is the lowest it has ever been, and at 3.1% the adult women unemployment rate reached its lowest since 1953…”
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Paying for college: What you need to know
‘If you have a college-bound senior, now is the time to start the search for financial aid. This week, applications are accepted for FAFSA, the federal form most schools and states use to determine who gets loans, grants and work study awards. Senior Personal Finance Correspondent Sharon Epperson explains what they need to know about your financials, and what you need to know to cut that tuition bill…”
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The Washington Post’s Carlos Lozada wins the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism
“…Washington Post Nonfiction Book Critic Carlos Lozada has won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his ambitious and innovative essays that range across politics, presidential history, immigrant memories, national security reporting and feminist analysis to probe national dilemmas.
“The frenzied presidency of Donald Trump has upended countless norms of political and national life. Understanding it requires a critic who can sift through the clashing ideas and agendas, pushing through the noise to find the signal underneath. Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post’s nonfiction book critic, is the interpreter we need. Rather than remain hostage to the publishing industry with weekly reviews of one-off books, Lozada gathers armfuls of new or related volumes and grasps the themes, arguments and urgency pulsing through them,” wrote Martin Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post, in his letter of support.
Lozada’s writing has explored the role of identity in political and cultural life, how anti-Trump conservatives contributed to the destruction of the…”
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