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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Sports

How this grassroots environmental justice hero is leading his hometown resistance

The activist mark! Lopez didn’t attend his first march for environmental justice on foot. He was pushed in a stroller. A winner of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize for grassroots “heroes”, Lopez has agitated alongside his family since childhood.In the late 1980s, when he was growing up in East Los Angeles, Lopez’s grandparents and others took down a proposed state prison, a toxic waste incinerator, and a pipeline planned to run near a school. The 32-year-old Lopez stepped up to help lead the battle against the Exide battery smelter — a factory just outside East L.A.’s borders that for decades spewed noxious chemicals, like lead and arsenic, into neighboring communities that are mostly inhabited by people of color. Activists in the area fought the company for years — citing public health concerns related to lead contamination, such as impaired neurological development in children and increased violence in exposed communities — and the plant officially closed in 2015. Cleanup, however, for which the state set aside $176.6 million, has barely gotten underway and has already hit roadblocks…

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Mexican American Baseball in East Los Angeles

RA Santillán, R Peña, TM Santillán, A Padilla… – 2016 – books.google.com
Mexican American Baseball in East Los Angeles highlights the unforgettable teams, players,
and coaches who graced the hallowed fields of East Los Angeles between 1917 and 2016
and brought immense joy and honor to their neighborhoods. Off the field, these players and…
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Sarah Robles Wins The First U.S. Weightlifting Medal since 2000

RIO DE JANEIRO – Less than 10 seconds separated Sarah Robles from a personal goal and a historic performance. That was her coach’s message to her heading into her final lift on Sunday at Riocentro – Pavilion 2.
“I said to her, ‘Do you want to be on the medal stand? This is your opportunity,’” said Tim Swords, Robles’ coach. “’This is five seconds against the rest of your life.’ I said, ‘What do you want to do?’ You gotta bring it now, and you gotta go for it. Just five seconds of your life. This is going to change your life. Five seconds.’”
A lift of 160 kg. after five grueling lifts, each one heavier than the last, gave Robles her first Olympic medal, a bronze in the +75 kg. weight class. It was Team’s USA first medal in women’s weightlifting in 16 years.
Robles lifted a combined 286 kg., including 126 kg. in the snatch and 160 kg. in the clean and jerk. She finished 21 kg. behind China’s Suping Meng, who took home the gold medal…
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How Hispanic culture is changing America

This article is part of an ongoing Media Life series entitled “Catching the next big wave: Hispanic media.” You can read previous stories by clicking here.
Last month, Univision Deportes Network beat every other cable sports network in primetime among the key demos of adults 18-49 and 18-34.
It finished ahead of Fox Sports 1 and NBC Sports Network, which is an accomplishment of itself.
But it also beat cable sports’ big dogs, ESPN and ESPN2.
UDN carried the Copa America Centenario in June, which explains the big ratings, while the other networks were in a rare summertime lull between major events like NASCAR and the Tour de France.
But still, a Spanish-language network beating a bunch of English-language ones in the major sports demos?
A few years ago, that would have been unthinkable. In fact, five years ago, UDN didn’t even exist…
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Internet Flips Over College Gymnast’s Almost Perfect Routine

UCLA gymnast Sophina DeJesus not only helped her team squeak out a victory against Utah on Saturday, but her floor performance has managed to win the Internet.
Judges gave the 21-year-old senior a near-perfect 9.925 for her magnificent flips, tumbles and splits, according to Popsugar.
But it’s the hip-hop moves she made in between those physical feats that have made her a viral sensation…
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After Various Close Calls, Lizette Salas Earns First LPGA Win At Kingsmill Championship

Lizette Salas didn’t have to wait long to be tested in her latest attempt at a breakthrough victory on the LPGA Tour.

The challenge came on the first hole Sunday in the Kingsmill Championship, after the Mexican-American was overly cautious with her first putt, leaving it nearly 10 feet short of the cup with a sliding, downhill test to save par.

She made it, the start of a day when she did little wrong on her way to a four-shot victory…
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MEXICAN AMERICAN BASEBALL IN THE CENTRAL COAST

RA Santillán, C Docter, A Bermúdez, E Navarro…
… He is the 2012–2014 poet laureate of California. FRONT COVER: Ernie Cervantes, shown here
in 1940, was known as “Mr. Baseball” within the Sacramento Mexican American community. He
was good enough to be offered a professional contract with the St. Louis Browns. …
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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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