Vuelta y Revuelta!

Three concussions, a few great decisions, a bundle of bad decisions, and one chef's knife later I'm returning to the blogosphere, a place I loathe because the word "blog" is A) unattractive B) revolting C) dumb and 4) something used to describe something I should be doing as a writer in the 21st century because The Media and The People Who I Tell I Write ask me if I have one. So yes, I care what you think. And no, I don't care what you think.

What will enter the public waves of The Internet? I'm really not sure. But in the meantime - that is, while I stall to write an actual post - why don't you let this little poem pluck the strings of your heart and introduce you to a lovely American poet that's not me, Dedicated to All My Absent Readers:

A Blessing
Written by James Wright sometime before I was born

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin of a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into Blossom. 

The Philologist Fights for her Words

A Glimpse into the Life of Yoani Sanchez, Computer Scientist, Dissident and Mother

Photo Credits: http://www.nacionred.com

Yoani Sanchez b. Havana 1975

"I left high school in the countryside feeling that nothing belonged to me, not even my body. Living in shelters creates the sensation that your whole life, your privacy, your personal possessions and even your nakedness has become public property. “Sharing” is the obligatory word and it comes to seem normal not to be able—ever—to be alone. After years of mobilizations, agricultural camps, and a sad school in Alquízar, I needed an overdose of privacy."

-Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y

1995 – While attending the Pedagogical Institute, she moved from studying Spanish Lit to a degree in Hispanic Philology* where she developed her thesis titled “Words Under Pressure: A Study of the Literature of the Dictatorship in Latin America”

*Traditionally: the study of language in written historical sources; more commonly known in the states as a variation of Literary Criticism with an emphasis on linguistics.

“On Finishing University I realized two things: first that the world of the intellectual and high culture is repugnant to me and, most painfully, that I no longer wanted to be a philologist.” ~

2005 – worked in “dark office” at Gente Nueva publishers and later quit to teach Spanish to German tourists because she couldn’t live off of the former’s pay.

“It was a time (which continues today) when engineers preferred to drive a taxi; teachers would do almost anything to get a job at the desk of a hotel, and at store counters you could find a neurosurgeon or nuclear physicist.” ~

2002 – emigrated to Switzerland and picked up computer science

“I discovered that binary code is more transparent than affected intellectualism, and that if I’d never really come to terms with Latin, at least I could work with the long chains of HTML language.” ~

2004 – returned to Cuba for “family reasons” and cofounded Consenso, a Cuban publication of “reflection and debate”.

2007 – worked as web-master, columnist and editor of Desde Cuba (“From Cuba”) where her blog Generation Y remains.

April 2007 – first participation in Generation Y, “an exercise of cowardice”, gaining her world-wide attention in a matter of months.

March 2008 – Cuban government blocks website on public domains and so Yoani has to resort to texting friends outside the Island to post for her.

October 2009 – awarded Columbia University’s Maria Moors Cabot Prize, but denied permission to attend the event by Cuban government.

November 2009 – receives response from US President Barack Obama for 7 questions she had previously mailed him, in which he says that her blog “provides the world a unique window into the realities of daily life in Cuba.” and even commended her for he ability to “empower fellow Cubans to express themselves through the use of technology.”

Yoani has won a slew of awards including a spot on Time Magazine’s 2008 list of 100 Most Influential People in the World as well as on the Spanish Newspaper El Pais’s 100 Most Notable Hispanic Americans of 2008; her blog has also been featured on Time Magazine/CNN’s list of 25 Best Blogs in the World

In 2010 Yoani was a part of Foreign Policy’s list of The World’s Top Dissidents, further securing her space in contemporary history of Cuban politics.

Yoani currently lives in Havana, Cuba with her husband Reinaldo Escobar and son Teo in a high-rise apartment overlooking Revolution Square.

“I live in Havana, I opted to stay and every day I am more computer scientist and less philologist.” ~

~ Yoani Sanchez, Translating Cuba

Yoani has her first book, Havana Real: One Woman Fights to Tell the Truth about Cuba Today, coming out on April 26^th of this year.

Sources and other links:

Generation Y, Yoani's blog

Yoani on Twitter

A Message from Yoani to the people of Cuba, 2010

Yoani from the Oslo Freedom Forum, 2010

Bertelsmann Transformation Index, Cuba

Translating Cuba, Yoani Sanchez Bio

Huff Post, Yoani Sanchez Bio

Wikipedia, Yoani Sanchez

I'm taking a blogging hiatus (again?). I don't have a large enough audience for this to make any sense. In fact, this statement is already eating itself alive. Hopefully I can revive this exact website and it can have some sort of purpose. But right now, not so much. I should probably be spending more time on an artist's website or something.

Any-who, this is ta-ta for now. Auf Wiedersehen!

I am struggling to put my nose to the grindstone on this blog. It's very hard to self-motivate when so much life is out there to be lived. That and I'd prefer not to make trivial comments. But today, a treat! While I struggle to get my brain synapsing, I'm going to leave an image of the coolest man as of my current movie-watching stage, badadadum:

Now, go dance in the hall and hum Concertino Alle Terme Sinfoni! Or whatever the fuck it's called. 'Ey!
Image Source: http://www.thetimetv.com/_upload/_actu/actu_2008.jpg

Back to the Blog

Despite my puny audience, my late new year's resolution is to keep to my blog. Here's to new and exciting ideas, and hopefully more profound ones than those that have already been posted! Or maybe just a wildly entertaining source straight from the keyboard of Jessica.

Happy New Year and I hope everyone in and out of the Chicago region is enjoying the monstrous blizzard that just wiped out our streets! It feels a little post-apocalyptic, but hey! that's global warming for you, yeah?

Happy blizzarding!

The Internet as a Medium

Here's something great that I'm re-blogging from Boing Boing



The description on BB puts it perfectly and I'm quite lazy to describe it myself (properly, that is.) so you can read it all here.

I think this is a great time to point out how, despite my absolute hatred for strictly internet based subjects, the internet is a great medium for the general people. I feel that if it is used properly and moderately, the internet could bring about great things. But I'll delve deeper into that on another date. I've deleted my facebook so I will have plenty of time to blog for the five of you that follow it and the none of you that read it.

"If one person didn't exist, Everyone's life would change." ~Katharine Kinkead, 19

Have you ever had one of those weeks where everything goes wrong to the point that logic points out that you should be overwhelmingly depressed, but somehow you find yourself in a decent mood? Well, as hard to believe as it is, I feel like I've been shit on enough this week to the point that I should be in an adolescent stage of grief (after all, I am nineteen), but somehow I've managed to keep pretty upbeat. Somehow I can still stare into the rain and not feel entirely alone because I can take note off the way the rain falls at a slant, making little quotation marks in the sidewalk's reflections of the city's lights. But it's not only the natural beauties that have kept my spirits up, it's my family and the way they've helped me grow.
Somewhere along the line I've learned to pick up on daily patterns, like a name that's been repeated multiple times over the course of weeks; like Thomas Friedman. I've heard the name in my core studio, my research studio, my politics class; I've seen the name on Wikipedia, on books covers, and in articles. But you see, there are two Tom Friedmans. One is Tom Friedman, the artist who graduated from the University of Chicago and was made famous for taking small items and making giant compositions from them. The other is Thomas L. Friedman, a journalist for the New York Times and author of Hot, Flat, and Crowded, a book on my list of readings for Politics. It's strange how both names relate to my life so strongly, even if it isn't a significant strength. But in seeing such a connection, I've managed to keep an eye out for the name, and tonight it proved to make more sense than ever.
While stumbling around the pages of nytimes.com I found a popular articles list with Thomas L. Friedman listed unexpectedly (I obviously never realized how popular he really was with the publication), and so I opened it. The post, entitled Where did 'We' Go, Tom (as I will call him when we are finally good friends) asserts the fact that at a time when our economy and our political system has developed an immense desire for our nation to be one, we are in fact the opposite. This is not only a worry for Tom, but also one of my worries. With the debate on healthcare reaching newer and greater levels, it has become evident to me that our nation really doesn't know how to come together and not only support our leader together, but also take care of one another. The right wing has been bashing Obama and many of his tactics unfairly, but the left has also ridiculed Bush to no end. As Tommy puts it, we cannot afford to destroy the legitimacy of another president. Regardless of whether we like him or not or believe in any of the plans tied to his name, we must support Obama in some way, and some of the "attacks" that Tommy talks of are exactly what we shouldn't be doing. Yes, there is a Facebook poll as to whether or not someone should kill Obama. But before you say "That's only a kid. That's not so bad." think about this: where do children get their ideas from? And this: do you really want children thinking violent thoughts about their president now?
As foolish as the article is, there are plenty of other incidents that allude to awful national sentiments, such as Joe Wilson's infamous "You lie!" at Obama's health care speech and a boundless amount of death threats. These instances are not American, they allow no we to be formed, and right now we need unity.
My mother can say that she remembers the day that President Kennedy was elected and you can see the emotion in her face when she says she will never forget the day he was assassinated. I remember the day President Obama was elected. I don't want to have to "never forget" his assassination. I look back on the day he was elected and, without fail, I always get goosebumps and foggy eyes. I was in Grant Park. From the moment I entered and saw the floods of people following to the moment I left and saw the "Yes we did" shirts being sold and people hanging out sunrooves whipping clothing above their heads I could feel the incredible sense of unity. Even though I didn't know everyone in that park that night, we all had something to relate to and we were all a part of history. That night there were no lies behind the "we". That night we were Americans united.

Thomas L. Friedman: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/opinion/30friedman.html?em