Wednesday, July 3, 2019

Done With Junior Year

THEY SAY JUNIOR YEAR is Stuyvesant High School's toughest, and Sara's third grading period attendance shows it. There were days when she had to bang out to do grueling homework, study for a test or just crash to catch up on sleep. But I guess attendance can't spoil overall performance. Here's to senior year and college applications!


Friday, June 7, 2019

The Kansas Connection

THE WICHITA DAILY EAGLE kept close tabs on the Philippine front this month in 1898 to monitor the situation for arriving sons in the 20th Kansas Volunteer Infantry Regiment, set to sail for Manila later that year. The 964 enlisted men and 46 officers that included General Frederick Funston, sly captor of General Emilio Aguinaldo, were officially mustered into service on May 13, 1898, but didn't arrive in Manila until December 6. Funston captured Aguinaldo in Palanan on March 23, 1901 and was lampooned by Mark Twain in his sarcastic satire A Defence of General Funston because of the tactics he employed in the operation: “begging for food then capturing his benefactor.”

The Wichita Daily Eagle, June 18, 1898
The proclamation muted below the headline
Where the buffalo roam: the 20th Kansas, home on the firing range
Frederick Funston with officers that captured Aguinaldo

Thursday, June 6, 2019

Gabo 101

JUST GOT MY HANDS on the first edition of Márquez's Cien Años (Barcelona, Círculo de Lectores, 1967) and Eréndira (México City, Editorial Hermes, 1972), both for less than $40. In Spanish, of course. Buen provecho!

Saturday, April 27, 2019

Spring Reading

ARGENTINE WRITER CÉSAR AIRA a fascinating read, and this spring break, I got my hands on his fictional memoir The Linden Tree which is about the small town he grew up in and how Perón's presidency roiled his parents' marriage. Classified as a realist, surrealist, absurdist, cubist, philosophical, master of the supernatural, he has published more than one hundred books of stories, novels and essays, all of which he claims as "a footnote to Borges". Read an excerpt from the memoir here.

Tuesday, February 19, 2019

An Unlocked Door

BUT RATHER HEAVY. Can she open it? Sara's first college invitation from the Ivy League after her SAT scores.

Saturday, February 2, 2019

The Thing With History

SARA'S (BELLY DANCE) GROUP in this year's SING! and her fall semester report card. Kinda low in history and computer science, but Spanish and American Lit rock. So does the diversity of these Stuyvesant girls.


Thursday, January 17, 2019

Open Hands

AND THIS IS OPEN. There is nothing legal here, just humor and a clean slate (like a Mangyan clearing) for everyone to mark on and tweak into whatever they like.


Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper
Martín Espada

At sixteen, I worked after high school hours
at a printing plant
that manufactured legal pads:
Yellow paper
stacked seven feet high
and leaning
as I slipped cardboard
between the pages,
then brushed red glue
up and down the stack.
No gloves: fingertips required
for the perfection of paper,
smoothing the exact rectangle.
Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands
would slide along suddenly sharp paper,
and gather slits thinner than the crevices
of the skin, hidden.
Then the glue would sting,
hands oozing
till both palms burned
at the punchclock.

Ten years later, in law school,
I knew that every legal pad
was glued with the sting of hidden cuts,
that every open lawbook
was a pair of hands
upturned and burning.

Saturday, January 12, 2019

Shutdown!

I LIKE AMBROSE BIERCE for his sardonic humor and macabre stories, written before he vanished in Mexico in 1913 after joining Pancho Villa's revolution. Here is one from my $1 copy of The Moonlit Road and Other Ghost and Horror Stories from Dover Thrift, narrated by homeless Canadian Otis Jiry, to pass this ear-gnawing winter, pay freeze and unknown end to the government agency shutdown. Nonetheless, let's give no money for the wall, only the board for the window of the Congress House!


Sunday, December 16, 2018

From The Skylands

HUMOR FOR THE HOLIDAYS as I mark my tenth year of service in the agency. And Sara's SAT score, out of a perfect 1600, on her first attempt a couple of weeks ago. Happy holidays to all!


Maspeth couch

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Through The Years

I USED TO WORRY sick about Sara tackling the subway by herself some years ago, but I guess changes just happen, like the rapid growth of the oak and plane trees I planted in front of the house in Maspeth when we first moved in, and those sure to come (good or bad) when big resident Amazon  moves into the Queens neighborhood beginning early next year.


THE LOCATION OF AMAZON’S NEW HEADQUARTERS IN NYC. COURTESY OF AMAZON