La Plaza Central

Photo from BBC News

In keeping with our new (one week old) theme of something fun on Fridays, I wanted to post about this, the yearly poetry festival in Granada, Nicaragua.  Poetry is akin to a religion in Nicaragua.  This is a country whose national hero and native son, Rubén Darío, is a poet who spent much of his life outside of Nicaragua.  The story of Darío is very interesting, if you have the time.  He was publishing poetry at age 12 and teaching in El Salvador at age 14.  He was extremely peripatetic, constantly moving around to Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Argentina, France and Spain.  Here are some sample poems of his in English.  Modern day Nicaraguan poets like Gioconda Belli and Ernesto Cardenal are also seen as national heroes by many Nicaraguans.

Almost every day I’m here I think I say at least once, “we could do more if…”  And today as El Centro’s website passes the 1,000th unique visitor mark in February for the first time ever also happens to be the day I came across the website of The Center for People in Need.  And so it is that I go from pride and elation straight to website envy.  Multiple menus, rotating images, dynamic content, legislation alert system and email notifications… the list goes on and on.  Differences in budget and staff size could account for some of the descrepancy, but that won’t cut it.  So it’s back to the drawing board and time to do more.

Cambio de Colores 2009

Great news!  Dr. Amy Boren, the former Executive Director of El Centro, and I have been selected to present at a conference on Latino immigrant integration into the community in St. Louis, Missouri.  The conference will be held May 18-20, and I have until then to write my paper, with Amy’s help, of course, and purchase a suit.

Taken from Cambio de Colores’ website…

“‘Cambio de Colores (Change of Colors)’ is an annual conference that focuses on issues related to the current Latino immigration to the Midwest.  The conference’s main goal is provide knowledge to contribute to a smooth and lasting integration of the new population, through the following specific tasks:

• To assess the changes brought about by the presence of new Latino urban and rural settlers in every state of the Heartland.
• To inform about the multiple contributions—economic, social, and cultural—that these newcomers are bringing to many communities and to the region as a whole.
• To understand the opportunities that this demographic change brings to the region, its people, communities, businesses, and educational institutions.
• To provide a forum to discuss the change and growth challenges posed to institutions and people—both new and old residents of the Heartland.
• To share relevant scholarship and best practices, and identify knowledge and service needs that require addressing.”

I am very excited about this opportunity to present some of the good work we are doing here at El Centro.  And if a little road trip is thrown into the mix, then that isn’t all bad either.  I’ll talk a little more in the coming days about what our presentations will entail.

Thanks to Orlando Jones of “Make 7Up Yours” fame for the title.

A Class Apart; The Story of Hernandez v. Texas

On today’s docket we have an article from the Omaha World-Herald about a speech tonight at UNO’s 100th anniversary gala by Roland Fryer, a Harvard economist who says we should look at paying students for good grades.  The idealist says this is a sad workaround for something that kids should be valued intrinsically, as well as any future monetary benefits.  The realist says that all that matters is what works in getting kids to study more and earn better grades.  And explanations about all the additional income one can earn over the course of their lifetime with more education are not as visceral as receiving $20 now for an A.  I have serious doubts about the ethical implications of such pay-to-study programs, but I would rather the final decision be based on available empirical evidence.

Before this, I didn’t know there was any use for the agave plant other than pulque, an alcoholic beverage made from the juice.  I also didn’t know there was a Museo Latino in Omaha.  I also didn’t know there was an exhibit there by Marcela Díaz called “En Trama” that runs until April 18.  You learn something every day.

Wednesdays are Everett days for me. Nick and I help coordinate a family literacy program and my assistant and I give a basic computing class to parents of Everett Elementary children. This week showed marked improvement in the course on my part; being the second go-around, I’m familiar with better starting points for adults that have rarely if ever used a keyboard. They are all eager and it can be frustrating trying to build a base from which they can climb up all the way to say, internet searches and email. But progress is made each class and we will introduce them to more interesting things than ‘home row’.

An article I sent my way proved informative and very positive. It profiles a non-profit in Pennsylvania that has an outreach to seniors to get online. It is appropriately named Generations Online and has a Spanish translation of the software. I’ll ask my class if they would be interested while you read up and pass along the information to anyone who might benefit from the service:

http://www.generationsonline.org/espanol/

Here is an L.A. Times article profiling a young woman in her trying first semester at UCLA…I’m rarely mushy, but it reminds me of how easy some of us have it and why we should help those who don’t:

read it

So in our continuous and unrelenting effort to promote El Centro to the comunidad at large, I created an organizational listing on Idealist.org.  In searching for organizations in Nebraska, I came up with 125 listings, which was very surprising and encouraging.  But then I noticed that only the first 9 (not including El Centro) had been updated in the last six months.  Some, such as the Meat Inspector’s Home Page (not making this up) from Grand Island are more than 10 years old, and their websites no longer exist.  The problem revolves around staying current online and putting forth the necessary time and resources to do so.  And the question becomes is it necessary or even prudent in organizations of limited resources to expend those resources on having an expanded online presence.  I graduated with a degree in computer science before taking the circuitous route that brought me to El Centro, so I’m clearly biased, but I’m still not certain beyond any doubt.  I would be interested to hear what other organizations in Nebraska think about this topic.  Unfortunately, I can’t find out by posting on their websites.

For many reasons, we can’t discuss our thoughts and opinions on topics such as immigration in this forum.  But as discussion on the topic has increased recently, I wanted to link to some of the articles out there for readers who want to know what’s going on in the news.  So..

Here is an article on the four bills on one resolution introduced in the Nebraska Legislature this session.  The article quotes Susan Smith of Nebraskans Advisory Group and Darcy Tromanhauser from Nebraska Appleseed.  Be sure to read the summaries of the five proposals on the left.  On the same day, the same newspaper also noted that the introduction at least two of the measures induced very little reaction when compared to years past.

Here is an article from the Omaha World-Herald on three Bishops in Nebraska who have taken a stand against what they feel are anti-immigrant policies and actions in the state.

And finally, here is an article from the Journal Star about community leaders who are preparing themselves to adequately handle raids of illegal immigrants in the future.

This is a minuscule sampling of the information out there.  Comments and links to other articles are more than welcome.