Read, Think, Inform, ACT: the Transformation of the Written Word!

Though this began as an Ayotzinapa compilation of news, because my friend and colleague Vanessa Vaile knows I am infinitely interested in everything Ayotzinapa ⎼⎼ and she was gathering articles for me doing what she always does (she is an information activist, or better said, an informationist and thinktivist too) ⎼⎼ it turned out to be a lot more than Ayotzinapa articles by the end of this set, one of the endless many, she says. 

I don't know where she finds the time. 

Sonnet LXIX by Pablo Neruda

Today is Pablo Neruda's birthday, and since he is one of my favorite poets, I dedicate this post to him, my translation of Sonnet LXIX  from 100 Love Sonnets: Cien sonetos de amor

Life, love, longevity, forgetting and remembering... these apply to so many things, not just poetry, not just love songs, not just pain. Life is about living, about picking up books and flowers and cobblestones, about the wind in our hair but the sweat in our brow and the tears in our hearts. 

And we go on, whether in the field, or the classroom, or the road. 

Happy birthday, Pablo Neruda: you have enriched my life! 

"Love is so short, forgetting is so long." Pablo Neruda 

Budding Rose: Red or Golden?
© Ana M. Fores Tamayo

Perhaps not being is being without your being,
without your cutting the noon day
like a blue flower, without your walking
later, through the fog and cobblestone,

The Curse of the X Sound

I had the privilege to work with Julio César Guerrero during the National US tour of the Caravana 43 of the Ayotzinapa students and parents, who divided their caravana into three segments: the west, the central — where I met him — and the east branch. All then met again in Washington DC and New York City. Julio César took months to brilliantly orchestrate their entire trip, and he did so with passion and gusto. 
         Today, he offers some recollections of a different topic, but nevertheless these are fascinating to language lovers and history buffs. Soon too, he will fill us in with the back story of the months of planning for the Caravana43, since many of you have already read varied newstories of Ayotzinapa, though they keep on happening. 



I joined Michigan State University In the fall of 2003 as an advisor with the "Office of Cultural and Academic Transitions" under the student services division. OCAT was essentially one of the many benefits produced during the Civil Rights movement in the area of higher education, established for the purpose of not only increasing the number of minority students into universities but also, most importantly, of developing and nurturing a culturally sensitive environment on campus, since it fostered a drop-out prevention component.

My first week at work my supervisor told me, as a welcoming gesture, that he was glad I had joined the staff because Chicanos on campus, although not the largest minority, were the student group responsible for most of the political activism and organizing or — in his own words — the ones who “made the most noise.” By coincidence, that same week I was visited by a student member of MEChA who asked me for money to pay for an overnight delivery to the National MEChA Association board. As I understood, he needed to make the deadline for an appeal because the original membership application had been rejected.

MEChA: Student Movement of Chicanos from Aztlán
Union Is Strength!