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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“Hundreds of thousands of people cross back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico every day for a number of reasons: maybe they have a job on one side and live on the other, maybe they have family that needs attention. You don’t think of a border crossing as a mass gathering, but it essentially is….”
https://www.marketplace.org/2020/03/12/covid-19-us-mexico-border/
“Maria Palacio had made it.
She grew up on a coffee farm in Colombia. She knew how little money coffee farms and their workers made. When she came to the U.S. in 2010, she wanted to change that, so she founded Progeny Coffee in Palo Alto to help bring growers out of poverty.
Soon, she began supplying Google, Facebook, Microsoft and LinkedIn, providing coffee for the tech companies’ huge campuses, which allowed her to bring awareness to the coffee farmers she started all of this for.
Then tech companies began sending workers home, closing their campuses in Silicon Valley and their towers in San Francisco in the weeks before the coronavirus was officially declared a pandemic. Sales at the company, now based in Berkeley, dropped by 97% after shelter-in-place hit, Palacio said…”
“…While U.S. citizens barred from most of Europe in what would be prime travel season as COVID-19 cases here continue to grow by the tens of thousands, Mexico has flung open its doors, making it one of the few foreign destinations to which cooped up American tourists can fly for some R&R.
To be clear, Mexico hasn’t conquered the pandemic within its own borders. The country added more than 12,000 confirmed cases and 829 deaths Wednesday to bring its totals to nearly 450,000 and almost 50,000, respectively. Some experts fear the numbers could be much higher, as the country has only conducted about 1 million tests…”
“Gil has served as managing partner of Vasquez & Company since its founding in 1981 and oversees the firm’s direction, strategic planning, administration, marketing and major account management. He has led successful practices in public accounting, auditing, taxation and financial consulting for nearly five decades. Gil guided the firm’s growth from a one-person consultancy into the largest Latino-owned CPA firm in California. In 2017, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) ranked Vasquez & Company among the top 1 percent of the 400 largest firms in the country..”
https://www.vasquezcpa.com/gilbert-r-vasquez.html
“As the United States grapples with civil unrest, many people are questioning how we arrived in this situation and how the nation can change for the better. In his new book, “American Poison: How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise,” New York times economics reporter Eduardo Porter presents a comprehensive examination of how discrimination based on race has hurt not just members of marginalized groups, but the nation as a whole. While the U.S. has gutted education systems, healthcare programs, and assistance for the poor, he writes, the nation instead diverted resources to incarcerating people. Porter, who has previously served as economics columnist and editorial writer for the New York Times, joins us to discuss his new book and how it relates to current debate over dismantling systemic racism…”
“After months of negotiations following US President Donald Trump’s pledge to scrap NAFTA, the 24 year old trade agreement between Canada, the USA and Mexico, a new deal was reached minutes before a midnight deadline on September 30, 2018. Despite a number of changes, the new agreement – rechristened the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) – leaves NAFTA provisions for work visas untouched. The retention of the visa program is significant for workers in over 60 professional categories, and for employers across the continent, who will continue to have access to labor from all three countries..”
“…..”The rebound in jobs has not been shared equally across groups. The unemployment rate for white workers has fallen more than four percentage points over the past two months, to 10.1 percent. For Black workers, the rate has fallen just over one point, to 15.4 percent, and the rate for Black men actually rose in June. Asian workers, too, have seen only small gains. Latinos, hit particularly hard when the pandemic shut down much of the service sector, have had a larger drop in unemployment, but their jobless rate remains elevated at 14.5 percent…”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/business/economy/jobs-unemployment-coronavirus.html
“Mexico and the United States are striving to reopen their integrated supply chains while grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic. Mexico is the United States’s biggest trading partner and the U.S. buys about 80 percent of Mexico’s imports.
The two countries, along with Canada, also plan to launch the new North American trade agreement — USMCA — on July 1. That could help the continent’s economies rebound from the pandemic. To maximize the impact on jobs and prosperity, however, USMCA’s launch and reopening supply chains need to be managed well. ..”
“…“Whether his administration realizes it or not, they creating a significant handicap for US innovation. Our most innovative and impactful portfolio companies and many of their employees started as H-1b holders,” wrote Stonly Baptiste, the co-founder of technology investment fund, Urban.us. “We literally couldn’t have built our portfolio in an environment without H-1B. And we’re not even an immigrant focused fund.”
Also on the chopping block are H-2B visas, which are used to let short-term seasonal workers in landscaping and non-farm jobs into the country, J-1 jobs for short-term workers like camp counselors and au pairs and L-1 visas for corporate company transfers…”
“…Meanwhile white Americans saw the largest decrease in unemployment of any racial group, going from 14.2% in April to 12.4% in May. Historically, the white unemployment rate is lower than the national unemployment rate, while black unemployment can be nearly twice as high.Hispanic Americans are still seeing the highest unemployment rate of any racial group, with a 17.6% unemployment rate in May, down from 18.9% in April…”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/05/us-unemployment-may-jobs-report-five-key-points
“…Essential cross-border workers like healthcare professionals, airline crews and truck drivers are still permitted to cross. Truck drivers are critical as they move food and medical goods in both directions. Much of Canada’s food supply comes from or via the U.S.”
“…Minorities and women are underrepresented on Fortune 500 boards. Almost 70% of directors Fortune 500 companies are held by white men, according to a study from the Alliance for Board Diversity.They’re also underrepresented in the greater tech community. Facebook’s latest diversity report from August barely moved the needle: It increased its Hispanic and Black workforce by 1% each to 5% and 3%, respectively…”
https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/31/technology/facebook-board-diversity/index.html
“Miami native Cesar Conde has been named chief of the newly-formed NBCUniversal News Group, part of a corporate reorganization at NBCUniversal announced Monday.Conde had been chairman of Telemundo and the company’s international business.
Conde will now lead an expanded news division that combines all TV and streaming operations, according to reports published by the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article242496056.html
“..Latino and Asian majority neighborhoods in Los Angeles County are especially economically vulnerable to disruptions caused by COVID-19, a UCLA study found.The study, which was published April 1 by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative and the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, sought to locate neighborhoods in LA County that are particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus because of their large number of at-risk workers.The researchers identified two sectors of the service workforce – hospitality and retail – that are especially at risk for coronavirus-induced layoffs…”
‘MBA Programs With Diverse ClassroomsAt more than 100 MBA programs, the percentage of African-American, Latino, American Indian and Pacific Islanders is less than 10 percent. A few schools, however, have a much stronger representation for these and other groups. Here are the 10 schools with the highest percentage of full-time students who are underrepresented minorities…”
“As the Latino community grapples with the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic, including a higher rate of fatalities compared to other populations, the nation’s first in-depth poll of the Latino population in America for 2020 has found that 35% of Latino households have already experienced a job loss, while more than 65% of respondents reported having difficulty buying or finding necessities such as food, household supplies or medicine.
[Poll results here | Slide deck here]
The poll was conducted by Latino Decisions in partnership with SOMOS, the country’s largest physician-led health delivery network. Of SOMOS’s nearly 3,000 physicians and 800,000 patients, nearly all are immigrants or first-generation Americans, and over two-thirds are Latino…”
“The Mexican oil hedge, or the Hacienda Hedge, is considered the biggest hedging bet on Wall Street as well as perhaps the most secretive. It has earned Mexico—and a few large investment banks—billions of U.S. dollars. Mexico buys put options from investment banks and typically hedges a whopping 200-300 million barrels of oil a year. With the put options, it has the right, but not the obligation, to sell oil at a previously set price and timing. But will this tradition continue under the newly elected administration?Throughout his campaign, Mexico’s now president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador kept the oil industry on edge with comments and promises that he would review the landmark 2013 energy reform of outgoing President Enrique Peña Nieto that ended seven decades of oil monopoly in the country…”
“Hispanics are more likely than Americans overall to say they or someone in their household has experienced a pay cut or lost their job because of the coronavirus outbreak, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted March 19-24…”
“People at an economic disadvantage are “already not doing so great in a good day, let alone in a rainy day,’’ he said.Jose Ricardo is already bracing to dip into his savings to pay next month’s bills for his mobile home in Chula Vista, California. Ricardo, a waiter at a Japanese restaurant in San Diego, is working only 16 hours a week, down from the usual 32 hours two weeks ago.“I’m really nervous,’’ said Ricardo, 61. “We are used to working hard.”With new restrictions on restaurants to serve takeout only, Richardo no longer has the extra income from tips. He makes $12 an hour.“People pay tips because they get a service. We’re taking care of them,’’ he said. “Now, with takeout, they pick it up and bye-bye.”
Ricardo, who lives with his wife, mother-in-law and two children, said he’s anxiously waiting to see how lawmakers will help him and other workers.
He’s holding out hope. “We will recover for sure,” he said…”
