As far as I can tell she doesn’t speak a word of English, though she understands some, and her Spanish is way too fast for me to follow, but somehow we communicate. In fact, the language barrier didn’t stop her from talking me into buying a bag of cactus one time. I’m sure cactus is lovely in meals, but as I haven’t a clue how to cook it my one foray into adventurous cooking was not all that successful. Still, I’ll probably buy another bag if she brings it again, but my favorites are the fruits and, of course, the tamales.

She’s probably in her 50s or 60s and, come to think of it, she may not actually be Mexican. I say this because, for one thing I really don’t know, and for another … well, when she first started bringing around the tamales they were pretty awful – bland and the masa falling apart and all kinds of stuff. Not, of course, that all Mexicans or all Latin@s are born knowing how to make tamales, or anything – she may have been an office worker or a doctor or something in her home country and is just selling tamales here as a way to make a little extra income - but if one is going to sell them, I think they should at least taste good, no?

Anyway, she kept bringing them and I kept buying them and over time they got better and better, until now they are very tasty, the masa is firm and they are well-wrapped. Yum. I look forward to her ringing the doorbell even if she does keep her finger on the button so that it goes ding!ding!ding!ding! – I can live with that.

Except when she showed up at my door yesterday, I wasn’t so happy to see her because I didn’t have any money for tamales or anything else. Feeding six people is a lot different from feeding two, and we tend to run out of money and food long before we run out of month, as they say. So when she rang – ding!ding!ding!ding! -and said somethingsomething tamales! I opened the door and said, “No, sorry. I don’t have any money!”

She didn’t quite understand at first and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the word “dinero”, so I rubbed my fingers together (I think that is the international sign language for money?) and shook my head, saying I don’t have any money, no cash. She nods as if she understands and then reaches into her basket and starts picking up tamales and putting them in the foil wrapper anyway!

So here I am out there saying, no no, and here she is saying who knows what (she really is the fastest talker I have met in any language) and calmly counting out a bunch of tamales and putting them into the foil – and then all of a sudden I catch the word “Sabado”.

Sabado? I say. I can pay you on Saturday? She smiles, nods decisively, puts the package of tamales in my hands, says a bunch of stuff and repeats Sabado and starts to walk off again with her basket almost before I can thank her.

Tamales are a treat anyway but that night they tasted especially good – not only because they made a change from the simple, spare meals we’d been having, but because they were flavored with… what? The milk of human kindness? The graciousness of one woman who saw more than just a customer, and more than what her customer told her?

I don’t know, but sometimes someone shows up at just the perfect time to remind me that although all may not be right with the world, some people make the world worth living in.

[tamale photo is from here]

what am i?

 via

STOP WHAT YOU”RE DOING AND APPLY FOR —>PBS Diversity & Innovation Fund

Didn’t I tell you to stop what you are doing? I meant it. Stop what you’re doing and sit down and get to writing. In fact, we might just shut down this blog from August 15th through September so that each and every one of my readers or group of readers will have time to submit their proposals to the PBS Diversity & Innovation Fund. They are handing out $375,000 an episode to develop a new prime time series for PBS and I want Black women all up under and THROUGH these proposals. Every time they open a new proposal I want a Black woman’s name attached.

So quit yer yapping about how crappy Debra Lee’s content is over there at Black Exploitation Television and get ta drafting you application. I’ll be submitting at least a half dozen ideas. Did I mention they are going to hand out over a QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS PER EPISODE? So no more bootstrapping. No more being camera operator, lighting crew audio crew, editor, craft services et al. I could actually HIRE PEOPLE! HALLELUJAH!!!!!!!!!!!

Sounds exciting! There is more there, including offers to help find partners to work with and such. Are you going to try for it? Am I?

Tumblr! I’ve discovered that a lot of people I know but who haven’t been updating their sites have apparently moved over to Tumblr. I have a page there, too… but since the service is not intuitive for me there is nothing on it. Plus, I am shy. Anyway, though… some stuff friends have found.

When I first started reading/chatting with feminists online, I noticed that some would often use book titles and authors as shorthand for a set of beliefs or theory or whatever – mention Suzie Bright and right away those in-the-know have an idea of where you stand on this or that; a mention of Gloria Anzuldua leaves a completely different impression. Anyway, all of that, of course, leaves non Women’s Studies people (like me) scrambling to figure out what folks are talking about.

Well, no excuses now not to become familiar with this famous text, at least, as it is available for download, woo hoo! Via Donna, from The Silence of Our Friends :
Book: This Bridge Called My Back

First published in 1981, This Bridge Called My Back has been out of print since the expiration of its contract with Third Woman Press in 2008. Hopefully the digital copy will find its way to those who will circulate it and possibly build up pressure to have it printed again.

URL Set:

Introduction: http://www.mediafire.com/?e2taou2lzzl

Children Passing In the Streets: http://www.mediafire.com/?metyjnzwmji

Entering the Lives of Others: http://www.mediafire.com/?immkmkzzyzz

And When You Leave, Take Your Pictures With You: http://www.mediafire.com/?hn4fuom1q1b

Between The Lines: http://www.mediafire.com/?wn3x3zl4zau

Speaking In Tongues: http://www.mediafire.com/?zgtlrycmjyn

El Mundo Zurdo: http://www.mediafire.com/?mwdd2wz2oyh

Biographies: http://www.mediafire.com/?j5mymwunezy

Front/Back Cover: http://www.mediafire.com/?zumnmytgkgt

enjoy,

chris

I have more cool stuff but they’ll have to wait for another post. I need time to write thoughts about them and I have none now. No time, that is, not no thoughts – got too many of those.

–I. F. Stone

Some people in Haiti (among other places) are in a bad way though, and the people of Daily Kos are doing something about it.

Inside a Shelter Box

I know, I usually think of DK as being good at producing a groundswell of mass hysteria and little else, but I admit that when they do get their heads and their hearts together, they can produce really good things. Strength in numbers and all that, with people being able to give as little as $5.00 to as much as they want to and, so far, they have been able to purchase 118 Shelter Boxes for the people of Haiti.

Shelter Boxes in action

Here is the information for anyone wanting to add their bit to the effort:

SUPPORT SHELTER to 20222 and you will donate $5

Send the word SHELTERBOX to 56512 to send more money (you will get a

phone call back asking for amount and credit card info).

If you’d like to make a $10 donation to support our Haiti earthquake relief work via your mobile phone, text the message Support Shelter to the number 20222. Answer Yes when asked to confirm your donation. You will then receive a text message confirming your donation.

Here  is the
Secure donation page
https://app.etapestry.com/…

United States Shelterbox page

http://www.shelterboxusa.org/

Canada Shelterbox
http://www.shelterbox.ca/
Shelter Box home page
http://shelterbox.org/

Or click over to the Daily Kos Shelter Box tag and see what they are up to.

A blip in the crowd waiting to be arrested, processed and sent back, she filled my TV screen with her exuberance, her love of life, of the moment she was in. I smiled at her joy, marveled that she was so bright and fresh after getting off that rickety boat, wondered if she was doomed.

This is my day to write about Haiti.

I did have an article all planned. Been gathering material for it, blocking out the points I wanted to make and all that was left was the writing.

But the writing of that wouldn’t come. Only the echoes of a little girl dancing at the edges of my memory, flashing her huge smile and her shiny shoes and her fluffy white dress with the big, pink bow.

Care

[ETA, from this article, "The Dangerous Desire to Adopt Haitian Children"]

The answer is not to stop loving, or to stop trying to understand, but to realize that our love is always endangered by selfishness. If we ever think our love is pure, we need to stop thinking along that track, take a step back and think again. Don’t stop loving, just stop thinking that your love is infallible and all-knowing.

I’ll close with a few reality-based ways to help Haitian children in Haitian families in the short term:

- Donate to SOS Children’s Villages, Save the Children or UNICEF.

- Sign this AIUSA petition to request an end to interdiction-at-sea policy

- Contact your representative. Ask them to support an increase in refugee visas for Haitians and expedited family reunification visas for Haitian-Americans. Ask them to support the airlift of Haitian children unaccompanied by family ONLY for the purposes of temporary medical hosting and NOT for the purposes of adoption.

- If you live close to a Haitian-American community, contact their organizations and ask if there is anything you can do to support community efforts.

(photo from here)

Lately I’ve been remembering a short story I read a few years ago in one of those little Ellery Queen or Alfred Hitchcock magazines. I think it was by Bill Pronzoni. It went something like this:

A series of letters between a woman and her husband, who was in prison for stealing a large amount of money or something – which had never been found. The prison authorities read every incoming and outgoing letter.

In one exchange the woman mentions how she is having trouble getting someone to plow the fields so that she could plant whatever for the next harvest, because she has no money. Husband writes back, telling her to look on the south field, where she will find something to help her out.

Well, of course in the next letter she says that she was unable to do that as the authorities had been out there since dawn, digging up the entire field and if anything was there to be found they would have found it, because they’d turned over every inch of ground. And he writes back two words: Now plant.

I thought that was just a great, funny end to the story. By hook or by crook someone’s plowed the field and prepared the ground, even if they didn’t know they were doing it. Now plant.

Those words run through my mind lately whenever I see/hear someone crying out “Where’s my hope? Where’s my change? Where are my rainbows and ponies I was promised? I’m going home!”. Thus removing their shallow roots from the field.

Or when, as I’ve seen in a couple of places recently, someone says “Where did the Movement go? I’ve been sitting here waiting for it to continue, I was on such a high after the election but now I am tired of waiting. I’m disappointed and giving up”. Some cannot grab hold of the trellis to grow upward.

Or “I haven’t gotten everything I wanted when I wanted it or in the form I wanted it, so I hate you and I’m done!”. Bindweed is a killer, I understand.

I don’t begrudge anyone their feelings or their disappointments – but movements are not formed on the mountaintops, or in continuous sunshine, or on pathways strewn with roses.

They grow up out of the sometimes very dark valleys, the paths strewn with sharp rocks and slippery pebbles. Like pearls they come from an irritant, and in all shapes, colors and sizes – sometimes smooth and round and perfect; other times lumpy and haphazard but still containing its own beauty.

That’s because Movement, change, hope, progress… is never about a single person and never a result of a single person’s efforts, nor should it be based on a single person’s personality or abilities.

Effective, long-term, continuous, sustainable change comes when many make one, when batons are picked up by one person (or a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand) then passed to the next to take it as far as they can go.

Hope is not a panacea, a destination, a resting place. It’s a journey – often through the dark with no torch or GPS, through the smelly alleys and bug infested dwellings; through the swelled bellies and dead eyes; through the lost homes and vanished jobs; through the injustices and descriminations; through the trials and tribulations, hope is the belief you’ll make out the other side.

Hope is what keeps you working to make that happen.

So, no, I don’t begrudge anyone their feelings or disappointment. I do, however, gaze at those packing up and going home with something less than sorrow.

I’ve never been interested in politicians and political shenanigans, but when I look at the cleared plot marked “hope and change”, at those still standing holding their seeds, at those who look around at a field that may not be pretty and perfect, may be full of rocks and hazards and that needs a lot of work still – and see those who have figured out “Hey! WE are the ones we’ve been waiting for”, I smile and think -

NOW plant.