Why I haven't written

I don't know. My laptop was stolen this summer. Then I had to move, find homes for the cats and Perez my dog. Can't take them where I live now. The Willie Velasquez project is wearing me down. I know that it will help million of students but I can't seem to get my community, especially the activist women, to understand what I'm doing and how much help my team needs. It's such a beautiful story of a boy's calling, and how he changes the world. Yet I can't get my fellow activists to see what I've embarked on -- for all of us. If we'd had some funding the interactive would be out by now and I could start working on the Lydia Mendoza book like I want. Instead I'm so tired, want a vacation, haven't been to a doctor in 15 years and I guess I'm gonna go all crippled with a pauper's funeral. Why doesn't my community value our work more? We deserve so many stories, this is the freedom we are searching for. So much I want to say. About the power to tell our story. I don't back down. But it is so hard.

The boy made of lightningJust finished reading Nurrudin Farah novel, Secrets. He uses Italian, his Somalian, French, Spanish. Why is this ok and I couldn't and get respect for Willie Velasquez's Tex-mex language? Last night I heard the beautiful poetry of a great poet who lives here -- she wrote about Costa Rica, Peru, the Dominican Republic. But the Westside doesn't count. So we don't count in her poems.

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