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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“The Ballad of Huck & Miguel”: Huck Finn revisited, in today’s L.A.
“The mighty Mississippi has spawned many a mighty tale, but few as famous as “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Although now it’s required reading in most schools, when Mark Twain first published it in 1884, some didn’t consider the book’s discussion of slavery and racism such a charming tale.
Now, Tim DeRoche, a writer in Los Angeles, wants Huck to weave us a tale again, but with some modern-day twists. “I wanted to do it in a way that honored the original but that still added something new and that would be fun,” DeRoche said.
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Redtail Press
In Twain’s version, Huck was fleeing his abusive alcoholic father, and along the way hooks up with a slave named Jim, also on the run.
In DeRoche’s re-telling, Huck remains the same troublesome teen from Missouri, but his companion has more modern-day woes to run from: immigration authorities. “What an escaped slave and an undocumented immigrant have in common…”
Link to ‘Sunday Morning’report
Adolfo Roberto Ramirez, Normandy Invasion
“by David Ramirez
On June 6, 1944, Staff Sergeant Adolfo Roberto “Rusty” Ramirez was a member of the largest invasion force in all of recorded history. He was assigned to the 29th Infantry Division, 116th Regimental Combat Team’s 121st Combat Engineering Battalion. The 29th and 1st Infantry Divisions had been given the mission to assault Omaha beach in Normandy, France. Of this 55,000-man combat force assigned to Omaha beach, the 116th Regimental Combat Team of the 29th Infantry Division was assigned to land at Zone “Dog Green.”
Ramirez had been training for the invasion for more than two years at Tidworth, England (specializing in demolition and getting specialized training in the “Bangalore torpedo,” a device designed to roll up barbed wire barriers), after having occupied Belfast, Ireland, to keep it from being seized by the Germans. Just prior to the invasion, Ramirez and his buddies in the 29th had been placing bets on the day of the invasion, and he recalled he came the closest, guessing June 5th…”
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More Mexican immigrants in the U.S. are highly skilled, study finds
“…The number of college-educated Mexican immigrants in the United States has risen more than 150 percent since 2000, according to a study released Thursday.
Mexican immigrants with a bachelor’s degree rose from 269,000 in 2000 to 678,000 in 2017, an increase of 409,000, according to the report by the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, and Southern Methodist University’s Mission Foods Texas-Mexico Center…”
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California’s new ‘free college’ law for community colleges covers more than tuition
“…A student speaks in support of free tuition during an event at Los Angeles Trade-Tech College that included L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, Asm. Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles), and the city’s community college leaders.
After California lawmakers passed a law in 2017 that some of its backers touted as making community college tuition-free, David Loverin heard from a lot of families eager to take advantage of it.
When legislators and the media began focusing on the law, “they started promoting it as free college,” said Loverin, director of financial aid at College of the Sequoias, a community college in Visalia, south of Fresno. “But when you went back to the actual bill, it wasn’t really written that way. So a lot of families are coming to us saying ‘free college, free college’ and we’re like, no, not really.”
That’s because the law, AB 19, known as the California College Promise program, allocated $46 million to the state’s 114 community colleges with the idea of helping students cover some of their costs, not necessarily tuition…”
Link to article
Eastside record label still spinning out the music
“Hector Gonzalez straps a five-string bass guitar over his belly inside a music studio on a dreary stretch of Monterey Park. He plays as a smooth, prerecorded tenor joins a funky accordion through his headphones.
Trying to bite a bullet, or sometimes count to 10,
For the sake of argument, let’s just pretend
We both agree to disagree.
Gonzalez is helping a silky-voiced old bandmate record a nostalgic-sounding soul album. But in a larger sense, the 59-year-old music producer is trying to keep alive a legacy he inherited 18 years ago.
Gonzalez is the head of Rampart Records, which earned a measure of fame in the 1960s as the originator of the “West Coast Eastside Sound” — and whose founder dreamed of its becoming a Mexican American Motown…”
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Alumna’s photo series reifies dangers of drugs using everyday household items
“Ingredients commonly used in crystal methamphetamine can be found in your everyday household products.
Readily available commodities like isopropyl alcohol, brake fluid and battery cleaner are sometimes used in the synthesis of the drug, said Aydinaneth Ortiz. The UCLA alumna photographed a number of these products for a series titled “Ingredients.” Three photos from the set of eight were on display at the University Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach from January 28 until April 14 as part of the exhibit titled “Call and Response, When We Say … You Say.” With “Ingredients,” Ortiz said she wants to show viewers the dangers of crystal meth, since it is an issue that has impacted her own life and continues to affect many people…”
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Noam Chomsky kicks off lecture series on linguistics at UCLA
“The father of modern linguistics delivered the first of several public lectures at UCLA on Monday as part of a weeklong lecture series.
Noam Chomsky, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is giving a series of open lectures on linguistic theory at UCLA from Monday through Thursday.
The event was hosted by UCLA’s Department of Linguistics. Roughly 250 people attended the first lecture Monday, said Claudia Salguero, linguistics department manager. Attendees included UCLA undergraduate and graduate students, USC students and visitors from overseas who flew in to attend the lecture, she said.
Chomsky spoke about the history of linguistics during Monday’s lecture, as well as several linguistic theories he developed. One of these theories was the theory of universal grammar. Chomsky proposed there are universal linguistic rules that are innately hard-wired in humans. These basic rule…”
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Pre-med students overwhelmingly want greater diversity, study shows
“…Pre-medical students support greater diversity in the medical profession, according to a recent national survey.
The survey, which was published April 15 by Kaplan Test Prep, found that 80% of pre-medical students said the medical profession needs to better reflect the demographics of the general patient population.
Representation of minority groups in medical schools has not mirrored that of the patient population, said Petros Minasi, director of pre-health programs at Kaplan.
About 4% of active physicians in the United States are black and another 4% are Hispanic, while black and Hispanic patients each make up 13% of the patient population, Minasi said…”
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Not what it seems
“…This is the editor’s letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.
In The Week’s office, the country’s major newspapers are laid out in a line each day along a counter. One day last week, the same spooky image stared out from every front page, like a cosmic eyeball — the first-ever “photo” of a black hole. It’s an achievement once thought impossible, given that black holes exert such monstrous gravity that they swallow light itself. To see the unseeable, it took 200 scientists on four continents using eight radio telescopes, synchronized so that they functioned like one giant radio dish the size of Earth. Even Einstein, whose theories predicted black holes, initially doubted something so outlandish could exist. Now astronomers have captured what one looks like: a radiant orange-red ring of superheated gas swirling…”
Link to article
Latinos’ Incomes Higher Than Before Great Recession, but U.S.-Born Latinos Yet to Recover
“…Overall gain is driven by rise in share of higher-income immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for more years… U.S.-born Latinos have yet to recover financially from the Great Recession.The Great Recession of 2007-09 triggered a lengthy period of decline in the incomes of American workers. Since hitting a trough stretching from 2012 to 2014, their financial fortunes appear to be on the mend – in 2017, a decade after the recession began, the median personal income of American workers stood 3% higher than in 2007…”
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EDI office lacks inclusivity necessary to promote diversity throughout UCLA
“In the wake of rich, white kids being able to buy their way into college and faculty growing increasingly concerned about the lack of diversity in their leadership, it’s easy to turn to UCLA’s designated solution-maker: the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.
But cut through the sleek website, carefully crafted copy- and buzzword- filled seminars, and it’s clear the office is mainly just that – and a couple of smart administrators.
It comes down to inclusion, something the EDI office ironically needs to work on.
The office is run by Jerry Kang, the vice chancellor for EDI, and a handful of other administrators. While these individuals have various advisory councils, an office tasked with matters of diversity and inclusion should certainly have a more reflectively diverse leadership team…”
Link to article
A Central American Marshall Plan Won’t Work
“Since late January, thousands of would-be asylum applicants have been held up just outside of the U.S. border with Mexico, where they have been forced to wait their turn to speak to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The growing humanitarian situation—camps for migrants are overcrowded, unhygienic, and dangerous—has renewed focus on Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s call for a Central American Marshall Plan, through which $30 billion would be channeled toward regional development in an effort to ease migration pressures. López Obrador, popularly known as AMLO, has set a goal of funding the plan by May, and U.S. President Donald Trump, eager to halt immigration to the United States, agreed to participate to the tune of $5.8 billion…”
Link to aricle
Asian Americans Are the Least Likely Group in the U.S. to Be Promoted to Management
“Asian Americans are the forgotten minority in the glass ceiling conversation.
This was painfully obvious to us while reading the newly released diversity and inclusion report from a large Silicon Valley company: Its 19 pages never specifically address Asian Americans. Asian men are lumped into a “non-underrepresented” category with white men (we’ll say more about that below); Asian women are assigned to a category that includes women of all races. In contrast, the report addresses Hispanics, African Americans, and Native Americans as distinct categories. Ironically, the chief diversity and inclusion officer of the company remarked about its efforts, “If you do not intentionally include, you will unintentionally exclude.”
But excluded from the report was the fact that Asian Americans are the least likely racial group to be promoted into Silicon Valley’s management and executive levels, even though they are the most likely to be hired into high-tech jobs. This was a key finding in a 2017 report we coauthored for the Ascend Foundation (“The Illusion of Asian Success”), analyzing EEOC data on Silicon Valley’s management pipeline…”
Link to article
Doctor on Video Screen Told a Man He Was Near Death, Leaving Relatives Aghast
“Julia Jacobs
A doctor on a video conference explained to Ernest Quintana that he did not have long to live. Mr. Quintana’s family members criticized the use of telemedicine in that circumstance.
Catherine Quintana’s father had been in and out of a hospital for weeks, and the family understood that his time was running out
Her 78-year-old father, Ernest Quintana, had lung disease and was struggling to breathe on his own. On March 3, he was admitted to a Kaiser Permanente hospital in Fremont, Calif., for the third time in 15 days, Ms. Quintana said. He had his wife of nearly six decades and other members of his family at his side…”
Link to article
Baker Tilly Appoints Mexico Market Leader
“CHICAGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Mar 5, 2019–Leading advisory, tax and assurance firm Baker Tilly Virchow Krause, LLP (Baker Tilly) welcomes Angel Ramirez to its international services practice as Mexico market leader. In his role, Ramirez will strengthen Baker Tilly’s market-leading expansion solutions for clients, specifically in the area of U.S.-Mexico business growth, operations and trade regulations.
Most recently, Ramirez was Midwest market director for ProMexico – the Mexican government’s trade and investment agency. Following recent news by the Mexican government that all of ProMexico’s foreign offices are expected to close, and operations to fully cease by early 2019, Ramirez’s addition to the Baker Tilly team is both welcome and timely.
Ramirez’s experience includes working in the automotive sector and supply chain and production planning for large consumer product companies in the U.S. and Mexico…”
Link to article
UCLA diversity report shows general trend toward increased representation in TV
“Women and people of color continue to be left out of Hollywood, but the 2019 Hollywood Diversity Report details the proportional representation that is slowly and steadily underway.
Released Feb. 21 by UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, the report is the sixth in an annual series and examines gender and racial diversity in the film and television industries. Zeroing in on 1,316 television shows from the 2016 to 2017 season and 2017’s top 200 theatrical films, the report shows an increase in gender and racial diversity in categories such as directors and digital scripted show leads.
“We think that information has begun to slowly sink in in Hollywood, and that’s one of the reasons we think we’re starting to see more diversity in Hollywood,” said Darnell Hunt, dean of social sciences and an author of the report. “Even though we have a long way to go, at least things seem to be moving in the right direction, particularly in television.”
[RELATED: Researchers study underrepresentation in film, TV]…”
Link to article
Designs on the Future
“It would be hard to find someone more prepared for a job than Silvia Perea. An architect by training — she earned a Ph.D. from the Polytechnic University of Madrid — she has spent the past 11 years as a curator of exhibitions around the world. Before that she was a university professor and edited architectural magazines. Today she is the new curator of UC Santa Barbara’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum, which holds the largest collection of architectural drawings in North America…”
Link to article
Latino homeless population found to be at disadvantage in outreach programs
“A UCLA researcher found Latino homeless individuals in Los Angeles are less likely to receive support due to cultural and language barriers.
Melissa Chinchilla, a Latino policy and politics initiative researcher, published a study on the Latino homeless population in LA on Feb. 12 using 2017 data provided by the LA Homeless Services Authority and interviews she conducted with researchers and providers of homeless services and resources. Latino people make up 35 percent of LA County’s homeless population, according to LAHSA data.
Chinchilla said she found Latinos are undercounted in the LAHSA homeless count because they are more likely to live in nontraditional homeless spaces, such as converted garages and households with multiple unrelated families, and less likely than other racial groups to use public services. She added that little research has been done on Latino homelessness…”
Link to article
‘The Future is Here’
“…In the late 1960s, so few other Latinos attended his college, Cástulo de la Rocha could find and personally call them all in a matter of days. And as a student activist in a growing Chicano Movement, he did just that.
“There was an ongoing debate at the time whether there were 20 or 40 or 50 Latinos here at that time,” recalled de la Rocha, then a student at UC Santa Barbara. “So I went to all the students one by one, by last name — Gómez, González, Martínez — all of them. Our number was small. Today the university is very different. Of more than 20,000 students on campus close to 30 percent are Latino, which is extraordinary.”
UC Santa Barbara now is one of two Hispanic-Serving Institutions in the prestigious Association of American Universities, a designation stipulating that Hispanic students comprise at least 25 percent of total enrollment.
And de la Rocha, alongside other passionate, vocal students, staff and faculty…”
Link to article
Border agents held 2 US citizens for speaking Spanish in public, suit says
“…When a Border Patrol agent asked two Spanish-speaking women — one of them former California resident — for identification in a Montana convenience store, and later held them for 40 minutes, they asked why he was doing it.
His answer, recorded on video: Speaking Spanish “is very unheard-of up here.”
The incident was humiliating, traumatic, and a violation of the constitutional guarantee of equality, the women, both native-born U.S. citizens, said in a lawsuit filed Thursday in a Montana federal court by the American Civil Liberties Union against the agent and his employer, U.S. Customs and Border Protection…”
Link to article
