Subtitled: Gee, thanks Polly.
My favorite nemesis, Polly Summar writes one of those “and now this in obvious news” articles today in the ABQjournal.
Thanks, Pol! Couldn’t have worked that out for myself! What with, the, you know, skin I have and all.
To be fair, how much must it suck when your editor hands you the task of writing about how hot it is? In New Mexico.
Ah well, the non-natives need something to complain about.
Good work, Pol!
Does anybody ever actually use this feature on Google?
Having nothing to blog about today, I was trolling about looking at odd news, top news, entertainment news, blah.
So then I started putting in random words and hitting “I’m feeling lucky,” which takes you right to the top hit for the search term.
You know what I found? Wikipedia is most often the top hit for whatever random general search term you can think up. This is, of course, unscientific.
When I did “feeling lucky” the search term “New Mexico” it took me to newmexico.org.
Search term of “Albuquerque” took me to www.cabq.gov.
Hmph. Boring.
Like this post.
Slow news day…………
I have been reading a book titled “Tastes like Cuba: An Exile’s Hunger for Home” by Eduardo Machado.
I picked up this little gem off the “new” rack at my local library. I liked the title. Plus I have a total fascination with Cuba. This passion in past years has been fueled by the movie “Buena Vista Socal Club” which I saw in the theater, and own and watch often. It’s an amazing movie.
What lay ahead of me in this book, Tastes Like Cuba, was not something I could expect. I was excited by the form the book took, discussing Cuba through the author’s memories of food. Each chapter ends with a couple recipes for the food just discussed (which is a really cool idea). It was like food porn, and since I’m a big fan of good eats myself, it immediately appealed to me.
As the book progressed, it went from mild interest to speaking directly to my heart. Eduardo goes through quite a transformation in his life. Born and raised in Cuba, at the age of 8, just as Castro took over Cuba, Eduardo was shipped out to Miami on the now infamous Operation Peter Pan flights. He went from a life of relative luxury and wealth, surrounded by his parents and grandparents, to being poor and parentless in a new country with the added responsibility of caring for his younger brother.
When his parents did finally arrive some months later, his father moved the family to Los Angeles, a wild and wacky place for a young, sensitive, creative Cuban kid in the 1960’s. He struggled to identify himself. He wasn’t a Chicano during the power and protest periods in LA. He was not a Caucasian American. He was something no one could identify, not even himself.
To add to this lost state of feelings, in America he couldn’t get the food from home, the tastes that made him feel whole. Through growing, becoming more of an American, and exploring his creativity, he found a dichotomy. A man without a country, without the touchstone of his family that turned out to be more dysfunctional than he’d ever imagined (his father boldly admits, to his face, that he never loved Eduardo. How’s that for a mind f*@k?), and without something to identify with, it sent him down a spiraling journey into low self-esteem and depression.
What finally rescued him was the theater. First as an actor, and then ever more successfully as a playwright.
He wrote plays about his life, his family, his darkest fears, the ugly parts, the pretty parts, all of it. And though it scared him senseless to put it all out there, he still did it.
I started thinking hard about why this book spoke to me so deeply. Now, certainly, I’m no exile from another country, but I, too, was raised in a very culturally deep place with food unlike anywhere else in the world. And yes, I miss the food from my home. Daily. Did you know you can’t find whole, fresh roasted Hatch green chiles in California? And forget it about Indian Fry Bread.
And I often feel misunderstood here in California. Culturally, artistically and all the rest. It was profound when I first moved and still is something of an issue, some ten years later.
But, much like Eduardo, it took me leaving my home to be able to plumb the depths of my own creativity. Living in California has become a means to help me learn who I am, why things matter to me, and to be able to write, paint, and photograph about them.
I am a woman of two places. Like Eduardo, I’ve learned to love them both, while being conflicted at the same time.
My transformation has been on a much smaller scale than Eduardo Machado. But I guess in reading his words, I wish I could just tell him, “I get it”.
Because I do.
…former mayor and current blogger Jim Baca can be heard wailing “nooooooooooooooo”.
Ok, I don’t know that for sure. It’s just the fiction writer coming out in me. :)
But Jim Baca is a pretty strong anti-Marty Chávez guy, so I wonder at his response to the ABQjournal article that Mayor Chávez won his court battle to run for a third term.
Developing.
I’ll be checking Only in New Mexico throughout the day.
Feliz Cumpleaños para my blog!
Yup, it was a year ago today that I kicked off my little New Mexico blog, unsure if I was going to make it past a few months.
Here I am one year and 233 posts later, going as strong as ever.
I’ve learned a lot on this road.
Blogging is harder than it looks.
Before I’d get pissy when my fave bloggers didn’t post something every day. Now, I’m a lot more understanding. It’s no small feat to have something to say every day.
Also, it’s made me a bit more microscopic in my view of the world (not like I needed any help in that department). Most everything I see in my life is a potential blog topic.
Even The Good Man will comment, “hey, you could blog about that”.
It’s also given me some writing discipline. I can crank out words, and that’s cool.
More confidence too, in my writing.
And best of all, I’ve met some new online friends who’ve been helpful to me with ideas, suggestions, and support.
Plus it has made my feline an internet celeb! :)
If my blog were a person, I’d give this little one year old a cake and let the face mashing good times begin.
Yay!
