A Week of Welfare

I've been working at the welfare office for a few days now, conducting pre-eligibility screens for a new program available to homeless families in Massachusetts. The welfare office, as it is commonly known, or the Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA) administers food stamps, TAFDC (the official acronym that describes the benefit people are referring to when they say "you're on welfare") and is responsible for placing families in shelter when they are homeless. It is the haven for many of the benefits we know as "entitlements" and that is exactly where most of the controversy lies, in the thought that these people feel "entitled."

"They come knocking at your door with all of their problems and just lay it on you, expecting someone else to just pick it up for them," says one of the workers.
She goes on to say, "What were you thinking when you had that child? That things would be easy?"

And I hear my colleague's concern: One of the women who came into my office today looking for shelter because she can no longer pay her rent was being very specific about what kind of shelter placement she would like and what part of the state she would like to go.  She does not work and sees her way towards progress as securing a Section 8 voucher, a program that allows low income people to pay 30% of their income towards rent.  Whereas some of us see our way out in terms of employment, she sees it in terms of a benefit the State or the Federal government provides. Upon hearing this, many a "Worker" would at least think, if not say, "You are not in the position of being picky about where you are placed, honey, if you can't pay your rent." Does this woman feel entitled to benefits she does not deserve?

Last week Tea Party senate-candidate compared welfare-recipients to raccoons looking for the easy way to get food "if we let them." Although in-articulately, like many Americans, Jon Bruning takes issue with the fact that welfare programs "do not incentivize people to work."

Here are some thoughts: 1.  Since when do people--poor or rich--intentionally look for the difficult way out? And why should we make it difficult for people to access the most basic of goods? Are Bruning's comments suggesting a sort of masochism--to make getting food stamps hard for the sake of making it hard? Is it the State's job to teach these people a lesson?
In the same week, Warren Buffet accused the United States government of coddling the rich as though they were some sort of endangered species. He reminds us that many wealthy people are also taking the easy way out. Because they can!

If you ask me, I think that the poor are not the only ones who try to get their needs met the easy way. 

2. It's a myth that everyone on welfare is just coasting along easily without a care in the world. The amount people get is hardly enough to live on and there is a time frame in which they are allowed to receive it. Folks cannot be on TAFDC forever. It's simply not allowed. Specifically, you get 24 months.

3. Throughout the hundreds of cases I have seen these last two years, seldom have I come across a person who is just ducky about being a welfare recipient. In fact, people feel a lot of shame around it. So much so, that the first thing many of these families will say to me when they walk into my office has to do with why they are unlike the other people in the waiting room at the DTA.

4. While I agree that we need to incentivize people to work, we talk about it as though welfare-recipients don't want to work. Many of them don't work--not because they are happy sitting around their respective houses all day--but because they are part of a generational cycle of poverty in which opportunities for higher education were not just handed to them. And the mention of "higher education" here is not to be taken lightly. For example, in a study released by Metro Boston Housing Partnership they found that in order for families to be successful in some of these programs that provide rental subsidies education is a huge factor.  . 

Barriers to HPRP Participation

•  The median income of families participating in MBHP’s HPRP 

program is $762 a month, or $9,144 annually. This is only 18 

percent of the income needed to support the average $1,238 

monthly rental and utility payment ($49,520 annually) and  

17 percent of the income needed to support a two-bedroom  

Fair Market Rent of $1,357 ($54,280 annually). 

•  Even if every HPRP participant is able to secure employment, 

only those with at least a bachelor’s degree can expect to afford 

the $54,280 in annual income necessary to support a $1,357 

fair market rent, as median annual earnings in the Boston- 

Cambridge-Quincy MSA for someone who has completed a 

bachelor’s degree was $53,495 in 2009, compared to $30,518 

for someone who had only completed high school.14 Only  

9 percent of HPRP participants had completed a bachelor’s 

degree, while 29 percent had completed some college,  

50 percent have completed high school only or have earned  

a GED, and 12 percent had not completed high school. 

Now, don't get me wrong, I agree that we are doing people a disservice when we give them fish instead of teaching them how to fish. I have witnessed how disempowering it can be and how it weakens their abilities over time. And I do think we need programs that help low income people access educational and career opportunities (something we're not really investing all of that much money, time or energy into). But the issue I'm taking up in this particular post is that welfare-recipients don't seem to me like a different class of people. They seem to be acting logically to illogical circumstances.

Furthermore, this week has made me think about other ways in which all of us feel entitled. Is it far fetch to diagnose our bitter rants in which we covet what others have as entitlement?   Welfare-recipients might feel entitled to food and to a few hundred dollars a month provided by the state, but what do we, folks with college degrees, job security and parents who gave us resources feel entitled to? What do we complain about not having that we think we should have?  

Research

"When I was a child, all the kids in my elementary-school class had been part of an ongoing psychological study. We got used to being subjects in a room with a one-way mirror, although unknown to our observers we could sometimes see their shadows through the glass. Once that awareness took hold, there was nothing for us to do but play to the audience." 


I remember working with DYS-involved youth a few years ago, asking many questions about social services, after-care, re-entry, recidivism and research--mostly research. I followed my time at this organization by interning for a small think-tank in Roxbury that was taking on youth in Boston as its primary subject. Simultaneously, I was taking a course in Research Methods at BU and had a deep suspicion that our subjects were often tempted "to play to the audience." Whether sub-consciously or consciously, it would only make sense that if people were always studying you--sometimes for years on end--you were going to develop an identity around this. 


I remembered the kids I worked with, the questionnaires they filled out and how familiar they were with the questions. Once I asked one of the kids, "Are you going to the Part of the Solution meeting tonight?" He responded, "I'm not part of the solution, I'm part of the problem." I chuckled because I knew he had been prepped to answer that way. 


What would happen if we turned the tables around and selected those who are always the subjects of research and made them the researchers? What if we took these DYS-involved kids and gave them the tools to research suburban non-DYS involved kids? Or urban non-DYS involved kids? What if we helped them to answer questions about what suburban non-DYS involved kids fear, how they use their time? Do they get in trouble with the authorities? What does drug use and possession look like in these areas? Is the illegal activity matched by court involvement or is the illegal activity disproportionate to the amount of court involvement and imprisonment? 


What would happen if instead of being the (loyal) subjects of research, the became the ones with the power? 

TOHU WA-BOHU AND TEHOM

While Caputo is dissecting Genesis 1:1, providing an interpretation of the events, I start to feel stirred and see the reality of what he is saying present in another human phenomenon aside from Scripture.

I'm going to quote him at length here, because it's simply beautifully written and powerfully conveyed. Here is an excerpt from Dr. John Caputo's book, The Weakness of God, a Theology of the Event.



"Elohim begins where he finds himself, with co-everlasting but mute companions: a barren earth, lifeless waters, and a sweeping wind.  Elohim has to play the cards he is given, to work with the materials at hand, after which it will turn out he will even need a rest.  He must work with these elements, with wind and water and wilderness, first to differentiate and then to populate them...The beginning had already begun, before the first verse of Genesis began....
Let us try to imagine the mythopoetic scene.  In the beginning, they are there, wind and waters and land, barren and lifeless, the wind sweeping over the deep, everywhere darkness, like the dark side of some distant desolate planet.  There they are, just there, without a word, the only noise being the heaving of the seas, the blowing of the wind. It is almost as if they are sleeping, as if they are laid out like some great giant, some massive body whose only sounds and movements are the heaving and sighing of a sleeper, and Elohim seems to be just watching them sleep.  Then Elohim was moved to speak to them, and by addressing them to bring them to life, to awaken life in them, to make life stir through their massive limbs the way one calls a sleeper to awake.  He calls them into life; he does not bring them into being, for the whole point is that they were there all along, from time out of mind, in a somnolence deeper and more dreamless than any sleep we can imagine..." 

In the beginning, they are there, as little children at 3 years old. Maybe waking to the sensual touch of someone they were supposed to trust. In the beginning, their small bellies were met by hunger and a mother who was too high to see the multi-colored crayon-based drawings they made for mommy in school earlier that day. In the beginning, this little wide eyed child, maybe two feet tall, had every inch of innocence shattered before her small face in that dark room at night. Every night. Maybe. Fearing these drunk fingers that could show up at any time and do the unexpected to her, as he pleased.  In the beginning, a shell begins to form around her little heart; a dark gaze over his little body.

 In the beginning this child starts a fire in the lawn and gets their first criminal offense on record. This little girl gets pregnant at 16, opening her legs to love and touch and inviting the chance to be held. This little boy fights another, in the beginning, and sits in a juvenile correctional facility with other boys inside their shells, comparing notes and learning about how to start a revolution against the world that so betrayed them; creating a world for themselves in which they take back the power that was usurped from them as little boys in their respective bedrooms or kitchens.

 In the beginning this child becomes a shelter-client and tells the worker to "fuck off." In the beginning, she dodges the case manager's phone calls. In the beginning, "she's lazy." "Can't get it together." In the beginning, everyone knows the consequences of trauma but take it fairly lightly; still standing with their stones in hand ready to accuse these sinners before them.

"I've tried to help you," they charge, "but you need to do something for yourself!"

He's heard this prescription before. She's heard it. Nothing works. Heroine numbs it all. And now a new little boy is in the household, watching officers come in and out of the house. Investigations. Social workers. DCF. DYS. Fights around the corner. This neighbor accuses that neighbor of neglect. Files a 51-A in retaliation for taking her man. Condoms taken off in the middle of sex. Birth control intentionally discarded down the toilet. Mixed desires. For sex and love and lust and children and family. And maybe if she gets pregnant they can do the family thing right this time.

In the beginning.

It is almost as if they are sleeping, as if they are laid out like some great giant, some massive body whose only sounds and movements are the heaving and sighing of a sleeper, and Elohim seems to be just watching them sleep. 


Then Elohim was moved to speak to them, and by addressing them to bring them to life, to awaken life in them, to make life stir through their massive limbs the way one calls a sleeper to awake.  He calls them into life; he does not bring them into being, for the whole point is that they were there all along, from time out of mind, in a somnolence deeper and more dreamless than any sleep we can imagine...


This little boy doesn't need your saving, he was there all along. This little girl doesn't need to be anyone she is not, she is there all along. Halt your prescriptions, diagnoses. Bipolar at 5 years old. Schizophrenic with ADHD. Prescriptions of acronyms--SSI, TAFDC--send the message: "You can't work." "You can't contribute." "You are needy." "You are poor." "You are a victim." "You need me."


The astonishing thing is that God bring being to life.  That is the wonder, and that life that God breathes in them, is what God calls "good,"  which goes a step beyond being.

 What does it take to make life stir through your massive limbs? What does it take for God to breathe in you, to bring being to life, to be called "good," which goes a step beyond merely being? Merely subsisting, succumbing to every new iphone and ipad at the behest of large corporations and in return for slavery to utility arrears and back-rents, and always at the brink of getting evicted, shut off, reported to creditors, taken to court. What does it look like to breathe life into you?

Sochany Seng (not his real name), former gang banger. Life was stirred through his massive limbs when an attorney, an ethnographer and a Reverend asked him to join them on a trip to Cambodia. Nothing was asked of him. No one asked him to be different than he is. An invitation was extended. Someone with prophetic eyes saw a leader in him and a kid with mind-blowing insight and skill. They called it out of him and took him a step beyond being. He never looked back.

Maria DelValle (not her real name). Crossed the border into to the United States with her family's life savings and only a 3rd grade education. No English. No status. No papers. Just needing to feed her children. Someone asked her to be an usher at a church; to lead the prayer group because she prays powerfully; to arrange the flowers because she has an eye for it. No one asked her to get a degree. No one asked her to attend a class. No one asked her to change. They saw her beauty and invited her to practice it. Life was stirred into her, as evidenced by her glowing face. Former slave to a system now a contributor to society.

Elohim begins where he finds himself, with co-everlasting but mute companions: a barren earth, lifeless waters, and a sweeping wind.  Elohim has to play the cards he is given, to work with the materials at hand, after which it will turn out he will even need a rest.  He must work with these elements, with wind and water and wilderness, first to differentiate and then to populate them...The beginning had already begun, before the first verse of Genesis began....

SEX!

Ok this post isn't really about sex, but I couldn't think of a title that would compel folks to read this.
I've wrestled pretty fiercely with the topic I'm about to write about today. I've been on various sides of the issue; I've had days worth of conversations about the issue; I've mistakenly blogged about the issue while my anger or sadness or frustration was still fresh; I've backed down and fired back. I've cried without knowing why over this issue, have been extremely sure of myself at times and extremely confused at others. And even during other moments, I considered myself to be very Zen-like in my "third way" approach.  Here's another perspective.

I entered college with a chip on my shoulder, fueled by the voices of my elementary school teachers who prepared me for this moment:

You will face many obstacles and people will try to hold you back, but you need to look "them" in the face and overcome. 

The problem with this statement is that they never specified who exactly "they" were. We all conjured up images of other white men and women uttering racist things to us. And oh, we knew about systems and how we got the short end of the stick.

However, as appreciative as I was of the warning and as beautiful as it is that these teachers--sometimes white, sometimes not--were empathic and cared about our struggle and success, many of them were uttering an old doctrine of race, class and gender theory without making room for the fact that they too could fall prey to standing in our way, as more than a handful of professors and teachers of color stood in mine.

Sometimes more was expected of me because of my cultural/ethnic identification, sometimes not enough was expected of me. Sometimes what they expected was exactly right, sadly, and it was still not enough. Often my voice was given too much credence and spoiled me rotten. Other times my voice was not given enough space or acknowledged. There were times when only the racial part of me was allowed to speak, but not the gendered part, not the depressed part, not the adolescent part, not the Christian part and not the agnostic part.  Sometimes it was the reverse.

I entered college with a chip on my shoulder, exhibiting every symptom of a kid who feels isolated. I burst in Gordon's doors with a fitted cap, baggy sweats and airforces, practically wearing a fruit-basket on my head to let you know that I am Dominican. I blasted my Hip Hop and salsa music through Gordon's silence and pumped it up extra loud if we were ever driving through the campus. I hid in the cafeteria behind the hysterical laughs of every student of color who sat on the Sunny Side of Lane. And oh yes, I played the race card once or twice--accusing fellow students of making assumptions about Black people when they were merely making fun of the stereotype; accusing a Black kid with a suburban upbringing of portraying "us" poorly.

Oh we played the race police at that table in Lane and added fuel to the fire by talking and laughing and "Ooooh  Noo-"ing and "No he didn't"-ing.  Was I being genuine? Kind of. I believed what I was saying at the time. But I had little time for reflection or perspective because I was immersed in the side of the cafeteria that both gave me a home and a whole lot of bitterness.

And then I decided that this environment was making me miserable and that it didn't feel true, and that I was actually lonelier than ever. I turned to organizations on campus and tried making friends with regular Gordon. In retrospect, this was not as easy as I made it out to be during my Mandela phase. It was not until I moved to Gordon in Lynn that I found my friends.

At the end of the year, we enter Annery's White-sympathy phase. I decided that the conversation around race was unfair and one sided; that white kids could not speak their minds and engage in true discussion because they were constantly haunted by offended participants and peers who would "OH NO" any thought or experience they might express.  I also decided that we ignored the race card and condemned the race card, but did not talk about its reality. Even more so, we did not talk about the complexity of the race card, why folks (particularly first year college students from urban areas who feel isolated) feel compelled to play in the first place and why it's allowed at all. Let's talk about the origins of the race card, people!

I even mentioned this to Dr. Cornell West himself during a panel discussion on "Democracy Matters."

"Dr. West, we talk a lot about the oppression folks of color undergo but do you feel that there is room to legitimize and deal with the pain of White guilt?" In short, his answer was that White guilt was an excuse. I don't know that I agree with him. I still maintain that this is a real phenomenon and tend to side with Tutu and Mandela on this question.

Anywayz....

Towards the end of college I was a champion of what I called "the reconciliation" perspective. But there was still a small part of me that was concerned when folks of color also became sympathetic towards their White peers, but no longer thought that the particularities of their experience as people of color in the United States was relevant or important. We got so used to students who refused to go to "race chapels" to be lectured that we didn't want to be seen as the lecturers. So we stopped talking about what was important to us.

After college I moved to a house with the loveliest people in the world. I had so much fun, felt so much love and I hope that we will continue to be friends for a long-ass time. I can't say the isolation wasn't felt, though. I tried to engage it, find out its significance and meaning through conversation and I talked about it often, but I started to hush my feelings around the issue even further than I already had previously. My feelings were offensive to people. Plain and simple. And there was no foreseeable way around it. When I expressed my feelings about the minority achievement gap and how I was its product, I was met with skepticism and was asked to stop "playing the card"--indirectly, of course. Mostly, through the grapevine.
During this time I thought long and hard about "the stories we tell ourselves" and how some of these might not even be real. I thought about the stories of race I had been told all of my life. The way I was told I was a victim of a scary system of oppression that maybe, in the end, wasn't actually all that scary. Hang on, Cantabridgians...there's more to come. I heard one of my yoga instructors say something very wise, "The mind internalizes and creates stories. Yoga is about reconnecting with the heart." And if late night college conversations taught me anything, it's that when people start using "I" statements and saying "I feel" or "In my experience" I better shut the hell up and listen to this person's story (even in light of the overuse of the phrase "I just feel" in college).

[P.S.When people tell their stories they are typically speaking from the heart and being the most real with you. It's a sacred moment that no argument can trump. You can quote theologians, politicians, theorists and philosophers all day, but when someone says that they experienced x,y and z you better make room for the possibility of their truth, even if it contradicts the version you've heard and/or studied].

And here it was. I was so busy trying to see the issue from the other side (which was immeasurably important and still is), that I ignored my voice in the process. So that when people would accuse me of "playing the card" or "overusing my experience" I would find where I had been wrong. So much so that I didn't feel like I could stand up for myself when my story felt right.

But in order to do this I needed to know the difference between the stories I was told and the story i lived and felt and still feel and breathe.

Yes, I have played the card. But I've also been watching experts and teachers address me all of my life instead of my mother, the real parent and authority in the situation. Although some might disagree, this actually creates a dent in your development. Watching her feel ashamed that she cannot speak the language of her child stirs something in you. Not talking about the New York Times at the dinner table makes a difference.
And the subtle stuff causes huge ripple effects--the expectations authorities may or may not have of you, the projections they put onto you, the images you see as the only ones you can identify with in the media. And the subtle idea that your story is not the predominant one, and therefore invalid. All of the conversations in which the theorist was more right than you were, even though he or she failed to include you in the history books. There were no studies on you and the ones that exist are about incarceration and poverty and language acquisition. When we read about Latinos in college it was in the context of disenfranchisement--so that even the liberals were a part of this system.

The part of me that cries at the scene in "In the Heights" when the grandma sings, "Paciencia y Fe" as all the suited men point and yell, "Learn English!" The way the Indian dad, the Nicaraguan mom, the Dominican famiy look at their children during college graduation, with flashbacks in their eyes to wars and dictators and homes they fled and families they left behind, that cause my eyes to become pools and stirs the pit of my heart, filling it to the brim with feeling. This is that part of me that feels.

And let's not even talk about the Black experience in America.....
Ok. let's talk about it. But we might need a heck of a lot more web space and three or four more voices--since I myself am not Black.

WORKING CONCLUSION
The working draft of my 7/7/2011 conclusion on race (to be continued) is all of the above. It's all true. All the stages. But tonight, I'm correcting slightly. What I've experienced is true. I've felt bad that certain people were put off by it in the past, but today I am compelled to say, "I want to discuss it with you and I can be wrong and you can be right. But if in the end you are compelled to tell me that my version of this story is wrong, I am going to have to say I'm sorry I'm holding on to what's true to me."

And why is this relevant on a larger scale?
It seems that this conversation is all the more appropriate in 2011, three years into Obama's presidency. He has tried to make concessions to those outside of his party, but is still being accused of being inflexible. He has made immigration laws more stringent than ever at the behest of the Republican side. He has offered to make significant cuts on social costs despite the protests of members of his own party in the name of bipartisanship. And boy, am I a believer in bipartisanship.

 I believe in the wisdom that everyone possesses no matter what affiliation, social status, ethnicity, etc. But I'm starting to see that sometimes people will be attached to their personal ideas that are local and indigenous to them without openness to compromise. Both this national and personal phenomenon has me thinking that it is important to concede to those whose experiences are different from your own, but sometimes they won't be willing to give in or see things from your side. And in that case, you might have to say, "I know you think that my story is in-valid and that's ok. But I'm going to take your recommendations, apply the ones that work and walk right on." So Mr. Obama, even though I love your bipartisanship efforts, if you don't believe that deportations should be at record levels under your presidency and that we need more nuance in immigration policy, I support you."

Note: I say all of the above from the bottom of my heart in a sort of Rortian way of coming to the table with your truth in order to encounter someone else with their truth to then have genuine discussion about it.  If you've read this, please comment; especially, if you disagree.

Un Homenaje a Juan Luis Guerra: If you're wanting to learn about Latin music here's a start

Juan Luis Guerra, if you haven't heard of him, is a musical giant in Latin America.  He might even possibly be equal to what Michael Jackson meant to pop. His concerts are replete with adoring fans--from the smallest of dancing three year olds to the oldest of grandparents.  At Jet Set, a club I went to on my last trip to Dominican Republic, at the mere sound of one of his hits the dance floor overflowed with excited people, loosing themselves in collective memories while singing the lyrics.

Whenever his name comes up I'm ashamed to admit that I always include the story about the time an old friend Uziel Colon played with him at Berklee College of Music. Hey. Don't judge, it's my distant claim to fame. That someone I knew played with this man who represents so much to so many of us.

His  music brings me close to the heart of Dominican Republic, even when I'm an ocean, an entire adolescence and an upbringing away.  Even when I'm tempted to think I am not all that Dominican, he reports what is going on at the other side of my mother's journey. His music covers everything from immigration to love to the desire to come to the United States to poverty to lack of democracy to Dominican patriotism. When I hear, "Ojala que llueva cafe en el campo,"I imagine that its safe to assume that thousands of other Dominicans/Dominican-Americans are singing it with me; conjuring up images of the poor Dominican Republic's outskirts and their desire for the most basic of Dominican goods--or not--maybe just enjoying the sound and remembering the early 1990's.

  I image that he might elicit the same feeling for me as Johnny Cash might for some or Nas or Nirvana might for others. Just as the mention of truly American themes or urban-American themes elicit a sort of catharsis and nostalgia for one's country, one's experience, identity and brings us back to the core of our childhood.

I, for instance, remember the checkered drape that covered the table our TV sat on in the living room. And myself, dancing around the living room in my underwear at five or so, listening to Juan Luis Guerra on Univision*. 

 In similar ways to when Johnny Cash mentions "trains" or boxcars" or "railroads" and cigarettes or as The Arcade Fire might help others recall memories of a suburban adolescence through mention of milestones such as learning to drive ("In the suburbs I learned to drive/ And you told me we'd never survive/Grab your mother's keys we're leavin' ). In ways similar to when Nas utters the words "freedom" or talks about the streets and ponders, "If I ruled the world, I'd free all my sons." At the mention of food stamps and watching parents struggle, some of us remember our parents together with Eminem in "Loose Yourself." 

When Juan Luis Guerra prays that "cafe" and "yucca" and "te" would rain, and especially when he prays that all the children in the "campos" could sing that coffee, yucca and tea would grow from the ground, I am stirred. 

 His songs are political in nature and he has written some of the most beautiful romantic ballads I've ever heard. In Burbujas de Amor Juan Luis Guerra uses aquatic themes, as he expresses desire to decorate her waist with shells and make silhouettes of love under the moon. In Visa Para un Suen~o he describes the desperation of wanting a "visa" to make our dreams come true, telling of the perspective of the United States that exists in DR. In El Niagara en Bicicleta, Guerra tells of the kind of treatment he received in the hospital and, in doing so, criticizes the Dominican medical system:

They sent me to a hospital for people, supposedly

Don't tell me that the doctors left, don't tell me that you don't have an anesthesia, that the alcohol was consumed and that the thread for surgery was used for a mantel. Don't tell me that the stethoscopes are having a party and that the x-rays rotted away.

A few years ago, with the release of Para Ti, Juan Luis shows a more spiritual side as he sings Cancion de Sanidad,

And most recently, he tells of world travels to Paris and to Africa where he brings this "Bachata" just to dance with you. 

A man after my own heart, studied philosophy and literature at the Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo, has performed and composed songs with dozens of artists, has won dozens of awards from five Latin Grammy's in one night in 2007 to Grammy's to Billboard Music Awards. A guitarist, singer, composer; a man of wisdom and insight, who represents our country well. Juan Luis Guerra, te queremos. 

By the way, for those of us States-side who have been wondering all of our lives but singing along anyway, What exactly is la bilirrubina que le sube a Juan Luis Guerra when he sees her*? La Bilirrubina de Juan Luis Guerra.  It's kind of scary....

*Univision: The main Spanish TV station that every Latin person in America relied upon for news, soap opera's, music and counsel. Univision, as in, "Annery, on Univision I heard that you have to wash the lettuce thoroughly, maybe even with soap because there's bacteria in it that can make you sick."

*Juan Luis Guerra sings a song about how his bilirubin goes up everytime he sees her. I think most of us sang along to the catchy and beautiful song, but never really knew what it was. Apparently it's a heavy medical term. 

For the pluri-etnicos out there

They say that to be successful you must choose one thing.
I've heard this phrase or something like it at least three times this week. I heard it through blogs and through TED and through Zen Habits and through the podcast my housemate was listening to this afternoon.
I've been searching for that one thing for a while now, and every time I try to boil down my many interests--in philosophy, in psychology, in empowering the disenfranchised, in art, in dance, in yoga, in writing---to one thing, I conclude that for Annery Miranda this task is impossible.
But then tonight I had a thought: Maybe my spastic personality, my many thoughts and my looong list of interests is actually rooted, not in a learning disability (maybe), but in something very essential to my development. And this variable is, as the couchsurfer I met in DR called it, "es que tu eres multi-etnica."
After reading through many blogs written by Americans; after thinking about achievement and personal growth, I stumbled upon "Hispanic New York Project" and immediately remembered another interest of mine.
Herein lies the problem! I am extremely multi-faceted. I learned to navigate various communities and people groups and cultures from a young age, causing me to almost always lean towards the bird's eye-view and missing the trees for the forest. But maybe I'm wired to see the forest and it's many colors and how it lies next to rivers and mountains. Maybe I don't have to choose to focus on the mountain or to focus on the forest or to focus on the river alone. Maybe I can keep learning about what it means to see them all at the same time, and maybe that means I'll never understand the mountain's ridges or the makeup of a tree or how to extract maple or how the current in the river works, but maybe there is a gift in seeing the juxtaposition of the different wonders of the world. Maybe that's the gift of being pluri-etnica. 

An experiment in spinning

As I was blog-browsing today, I stumbled on the following words, 

"We'll spend months thinking about and arguing about a product supposedly doing nothing (even for just a speed bump of a Mac.) and then start spinning." 

How many times do I find myself paralyzed by perfectionism? How often to I give myself the space to "think and argue about ______, supposedly doing nothing?" And it seems as though I'm missing out! Because in my search for results I end up doing a heck of a lot of nothing anyway. So what would happen if I took an idea, wrote "shitty first drafts"--as Anne Lammott likes to say-- and second and third shitty drafts on it? What if I let myself spend hours listing questions I have about how this idea might turn into something? 

To come to think of it, a lot in my life that has worked for me has involved a similar process; of just knocking on doors until one opens and avoiding paralyzing discouragement when two or three or five close. I kept knocking and breathing and reaching until I got into that yoga pose; until I get the community I longed for; until I get the job. 

Maybe judging our "non results" is where we make our first mistake. Maybe if we dwell in the "non results" phases enough we too will start spinning.