Last week after lunch, I went outside to throw the trash and there they were. Two muchachas from nearby Jefferson High school, making a picnic with a bottle of wine and some bottles of beer, besides my trash can in the alley. I live two doors from the high school, so the students are always trampling through my backyard, scaring the cats, searching for dope from my next-door neighbor, but I had never seen this. The two girls, dressed in their regulation khaki and white, immediately stuffed their liquor in their brown bags and stood up, embarrassed that I saw them, expecting a reganada. I wanted to preach to them, but looking at their pretty faces, a morena with ribbons in her hair, and the noodle-slim guerita with giant hoops, I wanted to reach through the years dividing us. How many years has it been since I was their age, thirty, thirty-five, and how could I possibly tell them all I've seen, the broken hearts that women have suffered, how could I tell them the drinking won...

From Elaine Wolff: Your website lists Michael Cary as a columnist with the Current. He is a former staff writer; his last day was May 17. I would appreciate it if you would add a note indicating that. FYI, the Current pays .13/word for reviews, and .15/word for stories for freelancers.

MEDIA WATCHATE! Look and See why the Alternative Newspaper, the San Antonio Current, isn't. Watch the video The San Antonio Current's Michael Cary. I think he has trouble with a bigmouth latina like me.

I have tried not to write anything critical about our alternative newspaper, the San Antonio Current. There was a time, when alternative newspapers really were, before they were bought out by publishers and alternative media moguls who live in Alamo Heights. There was a time when alternatives really were ass-kicking, raise-helling periodismo. Those days are gone. Most readers, I think, read the Current for its entertainment guide, and the occasional puff-piece, I know I do. There's no money, you see, after profits are made with the sex ads and restaurant reviews by the owners and publishers to invest in serious journalism. I'm sure the writers try, sometimes one of them succeeds, but it's hard out there for a girl to make a living for a dime a word - which is what the free-lance writers make, and that's most of the writers at the Current. Still, I don't know why the San Antonio Current wants to be the San Antonio Corriente with the likes of Michael Cary, thei...

Rod Davis, Senior Editor of D Magazine , that smart-sassy publication in Dallas, is following the Guadalupe story. Because R. Bret Ruiz, the Guadalupe's "Presidente," led the Anita R. Martinez Ballet Folklorico for several years, the story has resonance there. Mauricio Navarro, a key source of mine, was the Chairman of the Anita Martinez Center when Ruiz was hired, and he's the one who called Juan Aguilera, the Guadalupe's Chairman last summer, to tell him that Ruiz was "the worst director we've ever had." I looked at Ruiz's employment references for the Guadalupe Center, and he didn't list any Anita Martinez boardmembers as a reference - a curious thing when it comes to executive director positions. Elda Silva of the San Antonio Express-News asked me if I thought that all these stories were pushing Chairman Juan Aguilera and the Guadalupe Board into a corner. You know what, I told her, sometimes we make mistakes. The Guadalupe Board h...

I've heard all sorts of reactions to Elda Silva's front-page article on the GCAC, ranging from fury to apathy. Here's my "cry of Cassandra": One of the article's many possible effects is that those who think San Antonio can only support one "major" Latino arts organization will now see the Alameda displacing the GCAC in that positioning 'sweepstakes.

My friend, journalist Elda Silva interviewed me some weeks ago about the Guadalupe Center, and today the story ran on the front page of the San Antonio Express-News. In private, she expressed much she couldn't say in the story, because she has to be "balanced." She's not the only journalist who's concerned about the Guadalupe, dismayed at what they've witnessed, but who can't "say anything." But I can. Look, there's no Guadalupe Bookfair in San Antonio anymore. The Cinefestival was a washout this year, and the Conjunto Festival was three days when it's been five days long in the past. How do you think I feel? The Guadalupe Cultural Center Board must resign. A key member of the Westside Coalition , the coalition of non-profit art and cultural organizations representing San Antonio's oldest barrio, has told me off-the-record - that they have not "invited" the Guadalupe Center to participate. They are also dismayed...

The Rule of Law. You hear about it alot these days. It's funny to me - how we Latinos want the President Bush to follow it, and yet we can't seem to follow it in our own country of the Guadalupe. It begins at home, and we're not perfect, but we have to try. And that's what this examination below is about - following the rule of law. Bear in mind that the Guadalupe's Board Chairman is an attorney, and he knows the law. I believe that if we can make the Guadalupe a democratic institution, then we are qualifed to lead this country. I say this as a brown woman who has seen plenty of inequality in my life. And I've learned that siempre, always, it begins at home. If it's not bad enough for the Guadalupe Center's new Presidente to call staff and the community rasquache , here are the particular board violations that are of great concern - and I've sat on six different boards - never have I seen a board violate so many and so flagrantly: From the By...