Okay, so today I met with Juan Lopez, who, like me, rides the VIA bus. If you live in the city, the bus is pretty good if you're going north/south.  It's the crosstown buses and the 551 Looper that drives me crazy.  I wish they were more colorful, like in Mexico, and that the drivers were allowed to play their music!  This Calvinist heritage!  But I love the bus.  Babies, tattoos, the elderly, ride the bus. Humanity.   For reals. Today, Juan said something really profound. "If the city is so concerned about DWIs (Los borrachos, he means), then why doesn't VIA offer 24-hour service during Fiesta?" Are you listening, VIA? I know you offer special service for the basketball games, the Rodeo, And God knows what else... Or is the City wanting the fines from the DWIs or maybe just wants to put more borrachos in jail? http://www.viasmartmove.com

I saw her four days ago on San Jacinto and Martin, here on the westside.  She was crossing a tiendita filled with men drinking outside.  I followed La Perra as she crossed the street to the creek below where a couple of homeless men have their mattresses.  She let me touch her, and ate just a little wet food, wagged her tail, and left. If I take her to the Dog Pound she will be put down because there are 100,000 stray dogs already in San Antonio. Today, Sunday, she ate a little barbacoa.  She could barely walk.  Neither the Alamo nor the Riverwalk is the true symbol of San Antonio, it's dogs like this that roam the city.  So many of the people in my neighborhood are working-class, and they don't believe in taking care of animals when they are hurting to take care of themselves.  Son criaturas de Dios , my father told me.  Animals are divine, my father taught me.  They are angels, and they carry messages from God to us.  San Anto...

Because women are here to heal the world. Men are here to destroy it. We are the ones who must guide men to use their power constructively. Have you ever seen a man cry? Believe me, they want to. The love of women for the world is a divine gift, and too often we have let men take it away. It is more powerful to love than it is to hate. The Alamo is a monument to war. Join me for a Reading/Platica and Q&A about the Yellow Rose of Texas and Reclaiming the Alma, the Soul of Texas. Saturday, March 14, 2009 3-5 pm Luminaria Reading Bihl Haus Arts 2803 Fredericksburg San Antonio, TX 78201 210.383.9723 photo credits: Joan Frederick @2008

It happened a year ago. My neighbor Rachel knocked on my door during the holidays. She was scared because her husband, (I will call him Big Panza) twice as big as she is with a voice that booms instead of talks, wanted a divorce. They have three boys and she had no place to go. Panza has been beating her up, why hadn't I see it? Rachel could barely walk, Panza had beaten her in her pelvic area. And she had bruises on her neck and chest too. Rachel was sexually abused as a child. She drinks, and she's bipolar, and with all the medication she takes, she moves slowly, like she's drunk, but she's not. She weighs maybe a hundred pounds and she says she fights back sometimes when Panza hits her. Rachel's not a great housekeeper. She feeds my cats, and she's very tender with her boys. They love my cats too, especially Snowball and Floofie, and aren't the type of boys who break windows. Panza broke her jaw ten years ago, and that's why Rachel is always...

Herman Taylor, the recently-hired Assistant Procurement & Facilities Director at SAHA, has resigned after only two months reporting to Patrick Bourcier, Director of Procurement & Facilities - in shock at the contracting miasma at SAHA. Taylor, who is a professionally-certified public buyer, (know as CPPB), was the only procurement-certified manager at SAHA, says that he was appalled at SAHA's antiquated commodity code system that should have been updated "at least five years ago. " Because SAHA has neglected using the government's national and efficient coding system for contracting, Taylor explained, the Housing Authority has little room for the many variations and categories of contracts that need to be established, reviewed, and re-configured according to governmental regulations. SAHA has been under fire for the Mirasol Homes Public Housing Project, a westside community beset with poor construction and health problems linked to SAHA's contractual ...

I've taken the liberty of editing the complete statement because of length, but I'm impressed with Dee's courage and coraje. May you too fight back, it's the only way. This lawsuit represents more than the damages/injuries inflicted upon me . What I want people to remember is that there are 12 women and 2 men who were also displaced. The Chairman of the Board, Vice Chairman, and the rest of the Board failed to act responsibly; choosing instead to justify the illegal behavior of the President of the organization. The Board of Directors deliberately retaliated against me instead of protecting me and my civil rights. In fact my complaints were ignored because I am brown and I am a woman. The tax payers and citizens who have provided support to the GCAC for over 25 years have also been robbed of classes, performances and events that enrich our community and preserve our Chicano/a culture. The loss during this period is immeasurable. The gr...

Esteban Jordan, 67 , "El Parche," who many call the Jimi Hendrix of the accordion , who plays what is simply impossible on the accordion, esta muy enfermo. The last time I heard him play, he played a shorter set, and without the electric thunder of the past. If you've ever heard him play, you will never forget it. The grammy-nominated master accordionist is our Paco D'Lucia, Hendrix, and Astor Piazzolla: Fire, cantina, and the grace of hell reside in his hands, and in those blinded eyes that have seen too much. Esteban, born in the South Texas Valley and a son of a migrant family who didn't get an education, is notoriously difficult and protective of his music and image. It's the reason you may not know who he is, but now you do. The only place to hear him in San Antonio is at Salute on Friday nights, accompanied by two of his accomplished sons and the prodigy Juanito on the drums. Lately, he's been playing less sets with longer intermissions. ...

This is the kind of woman you're not going to see this in the Huipiles: A Celebration, at the Museo Alameda Smithsonian. So I'm showing it to you. Comandanta Ramona, 1959-2006 The world has lost one of those women it requires. Mexico has lost one of the combative women it needs and we, we have lost a piece of our heart,” said sub-comandante Marcos at the time of her death. An advocate for women’s rights and artisanship, Ramona was the first member of the Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee (CGRI), the leadership body of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), to have died since their uprising in 1994. In 1993, Comandanta Ramona, together with Major Ana María, extensively consulted indigenous Zapatista communities (back then, still underground and not public) about the exploitation of women and subsequently penned the Revolutionary Laws of Women. On March 8 of that year, the Revolutionary Laws were passed. Ramona was a petite, soft-spoken woman charged wit...

La Vicki Grise is 30 years old, a hometown girl and performance artist who's in her second year of graduate school in the Performing Arts en Los Angeles. You may know her for The Panza Monologues , produced by Irma Mayorga. Vicki is the future of theatre. When you turn off the television after a long hoping of some truth, confused because it leaves you feeling not pretty enough, not rich enough, remember, remember, that people used to gather around and tell each other stories. And there was always that one woman who could make you laugh - and cry. She told your story, and made you see how yes, you were necessary to the world. Postcard from Vicki Grise I am in Amsterdam now at my new office - the open bare biblioteek. The city is laid out in a series of cocentric circles with canals and bridges cutting across them on every block. The old buildings, lined right up against the other, lean forward and they look as if they are supporting each other. Everyone rides a bike and I a...

Well, its official. Back in the day, alternative newspapers were really that. Now of course it's sex ads and restaurant reviews and the publisher is livin large. Ok, I'll swallow that if you give me the news I can't find in the mainstream. Here in San Antonio, we got the Editor of the San Antonio Current , Elaine Wolff, using her position to promote (D) Mikal Watts and his Senatorial campaign, whose claim to fame is that he's a very rich trial lawyer and anti-U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R). Have I mentioned that Rick Noriega (D), a Texas legislator who served in Iraq is also considering entering the race? Have I mentioned that he's not rich ? http://halfempth.blogspot.com/2007/07/watts-v-noriega-in-blogosphere.html (My disclosure: I'm no fan of war heroes, they tend to be conflicted about taking on the status quo, fearful of being called Mexicans instead of Hispanic and sent back to la madre patria. ) Back in the day, the alternatives would be all...

I read the local paper, the San Antonio Express-News, searching for a nugget about political officials, corruption, the Edwards Aquifer and the golf resort that's threatening it, why the streets are flooding with all the rains, etc. But we get stories about Eva Longoria and Tony Parker, football, and praise for our military heroes. (Remember, we have four bases here). Nobody under thirty years old I know reads the paper. If they're halfway educated, they scan it online, otherwise, they buy it on Fridays for the Weekend Guide and on Sundays for the coupons and the Sports Section. That's it. I heard last night from a good source that twenty people were laid off in the latest round, I say that because about half-a-dozen people got their pink slips a month ago or so. In reading the paper today, there was no mention of the layoffs. Who cares? I do. Before you read who got the shove, let me remind you who's been kicked out already one way or the other: (These are n...

In San Antonio, it's been raining cats. Forget the biblical lluvia that's turned our city into an Eden in August. Los gatos , calicos, Cary Grant-tuxedoes, marigold tabbys, long-hair, short-hair, and witchy black ones with motor-purrs. They are raining down to tell us something. And Maria has seen them in the alleys and streets of el Westside of San Antonio as charcoal bits - burned beyond recognition. She's seen gangmembers run over them in joyrides, so their little tripitas make them laugh. She's seen them poisoned with anti-freeze, and she's found them mewing from trashcans on Zarzamora Street. Maria, a housekeeper, has rescued more than sixty of them. With her money, and sometimes threatened with rape - or death - for her compassion. San Antonio has a problem. There are too many of them, the animal shelter is full, and too many waiting for adoption. We are a very poor city. But in this city, the cats are lost, abandoned, as if we don...

T he writer James Hillman, in Our Terrible Love of War , says that peace isn't the absence of war, it's the abscence of remembering. B ut if we don't want war we have to remember. We have to know what war does to soldiers, to the familes, to the women, to the children. With that in mind, here's a postcard from Pablo Martinez, poeta, university professor and activista, who's been in Stockholm doing quien-sabe-que. Stockholm , 24 July 2007 It's been wonderfully cool here the past two days. But I'm not writing to issue a weather report -- that's the job of the Weather Channel. Today I visited the Medelhavs Museet, the Museum of Middle Eastern art and culture. Unlike the other museums I've visited, this one was quiet -- eerily quiet. I was there to see an exhibition of photographs; the show is titled Children of Baghdad in 1999. A fairly pedestrian title, until you consider that in 1999 , Iraq was not anywhere in our collective consciou...

Bueno, so I haven't been writing because I've just finished two manuscripts, and cross-your-fingers, parece que I have a good chance of getting them published with UT Press. There were agents interested in my Golondrina (a love story about a woman who falls in love with the man who helps her cross the border), pero a dream I had told me to let the money-thing go. I want a beautiful book, a forever-book, and UT Press understands me. That doesn't mean I'll get it, it just means our stories deserve the editors, artists and publishing houses that turn our books into the jewels they were when our grandmothers left them to us. So. It's time, maybe by this time next year I 'll have two books to tell you about. Speaking of books, my favorite subject, even before politics, I've just finished a novela by Almudena Grandes, a Spanish writer I discovered at the Intl PEN Festival of World Literature in NYC in April (when I lost my panties in the subway, see previous ...

I"m in New York City this week for the PEN World Voices Festival, an annual gathering of writers from around the world, no Chicana/o writers hanging out here, just me and la colombiana Raquel... Anyway, been staying with the journalist Roberto Lovato in Brooklyn, and as I left the N Train on 14th Street yesterday, a man rushed to reach me, saying "Excuse me, I think these are yours." Raquel and I turned around. Nobody hardly talks to anyone on the subway. He was a big, white, professional-looking man. In a pin-stripe suit, pa' acabar. With my black Victoria's Secret panties in his hands. If you know me, I always have something to say. This time, I was frozen, stunned with verguenza , what would my mother say? Why does this always happen to me? Raquel turned to me as he came forward clutching my french-cut calzones with the pretty pink rosettes. She was accusing. "Did you forget to wear your calzones?" "No." "Well, then how come he has the...

I got a pretty nasty email from Nikki (?) about my Chingazos postings, relating to FightNight outside the Museo Alameda Smithsonian during the VIP Gala (see previous posts). Don't have time to interview the other side, but here's what I do know. Artista Franco Mondini , dicen different sources, saw the fight. According to Rina Moreno, who was assaulted by Henry Munoz' family members, Juan Ramos, another well-known artista, talked to Cruz after the chingazos and repeated her depiction of events, telling Cruz that Franco had told him what happened just as Rina alleges. You know what happens next, doncha? The right thing to do is for Henry Munoz to apologize, he's buena gente, que no? But it won't happen. Political people, trust me, Munoz is one, don't think in terms of what's right. They think in terms of advantage, appearance, deals, money. They don't listen to their soul, they listen to their ego, which is richly rewarded in this material and a...

Ok, so I got a call from a relative of Rina's, the woman who was beat up outside the Museo Alameda on Thursday, April 12th, during the VIP Gala in downtown San Antonio. Los chingazos were apparently given by relatives of Henry Munoz , the Museo Alameda Smithsonian's empresario, the Alameda Museum's founder, and resident star-maker. Rina Moreno, the social worker wife of Cruz Ortiz, artista, has filed a police report and intends to press assault charges against Peter Falcon, an actor. Falcon is married to Meredith, Henry Munoz's niece, and they brought their two young daughters to the Alameda VIP pachanga. Here's what happened according to Rina's familia: It was about 12:30 am on Thursday night, and Cruz was helping put an easel away a few feet outside the museum. While he worked on this, Rina decided to return to the dancing which was still rockeando the museum. On the way there, she wished outloud to no one "Goddammit, I want a fucking giftbag!...

I can't believe the media hasn't even tried to tell the truth about the Duke University stripper so I will. I'm a writer, who's also worked as a social worker. Contrary to popular myth, las strippers don't w ant sex. They become strippers or prostitutes because they've been raped, sometimes by all the men in their family, and they have been socialized to believe this is what a woman does. They want to please men, and yet they hate them. Many times the stripper/prostitute will take drugs to escape the pain. Or she becomes an addict because that's how Daddy wanted it. I believe the stripper in the Duke University case was raped. Horribly. Likely with a broom. But she was too drugged-up and too unstable to tell her story. The rich white guys have so much power, and who's going to listen to this poor black stripped-down woman? Some of these guys will be judges someday.... I have seen prostitutes, strippers, abused women. It...

Henry Munoz, a vice-chairman of the Board of Trustees at the Smithsonian and San Antonio native, is the driving force behind the Smithsonian-affiliated Museo Alameda, opening with fireworks on April 13th, and a free concert by Linda Ronstadt. The Alameda itself is a historic theatre in downtown San Antonio, a resplendant building that once hosted a milieu of Mexican stars and the films from the golden age of Mexican cinema. Now, it's a national museum. Here in San Antonio, where the Guadalupe Cultural Center is imploding from its corporate ambitions and wannabe-boardmembers, there is debate about the influence of corporate interests on the depiction of latino culture that the Museo Alameda represents. It is our story, yours and mine, after all, that has the power to change hearts. With this musuem, will we tell it, or will we ask permission from our corporate sponsor? You tell me. Below is a comment from Pablo Miguel Martinez, noted poet and cultural activist. He's from...

From one of the founders of the Guadalupe: I remember when we first moved into the Guadalupe...it was being used as a flea market.....on the southside (Guadalupe Street) there was a door and a long room all painted red...it was used as an arcade........ One guy from the neighborhood came to see me... said he was a commercial painter.......said he had no money for diapers for his child......... from his back pocket he pulled out some house paint brushes (4 inch) and said look hold on to these.... give me $15 and I'll come buy them back ......I looked at the brushes and I looked at him....the brushes were used but they were well taken cared of......at the time there was some graffitti on the walls...not awhole bunch...and I told him.......I got a gallon of paint......go cover that graffiti and I'll give you fifty....... Another time a guitar player came and we went throught the same thing.......at this time we were already in the Progresso building also....so it had to be the s...