Category: My World (Page 14 of 15)

Do you have a friend whose judgement you trust implicitely? Lately I’ve been dealing with a situation that posed both a strategic and ethical dilema. I was having some problems deciding how to approach the situation, how to frame it, and how tackle it. I talked about it with several of my friends, but more in a thinking outloud sort of mode. I often use people as soundboards, to help me clarify my thinking. But this time it wasn’t enough. And I realized that, sad as it is, I don’t really have many friends whose judgement I trust implicitely. I have many friends who are smart, who are ethical, who are committed, whom I love… but it’s hard for me to trust, in part because I don’t necessarily trust myself to communicate what I mean correctly, and in part because I’m not always good about explaining where I come from and thus finding a common ground from where to look at the situation.
But then there is my friend Charlotte. She is great, one of my favourite people in the world. She is without doubts one of the smartest people I know, one of the few people I’m readily willing to admit is smarter than I. But she’s also one of the most thoughtful ones, someone for whom ethics are so intrinsic that they’re really discussed as such, I cannot imagine her doing anything unethical. She has the amazing gift of being able to disagree with you completely, and neither put you in the defensive or make you feel like an idiot. And she is completely non-judgemental.
So, faced with this problem, I talked to her. And she put it all on perspective for me, she helped me phrase what I was saying and thinking and finds its moral/strategic framework and now I know what to do.
If just everyone was so lucky to have someone like her around 🙂

A few months ago, Tim Holmes, the owner of Zocalo Coffee House in San Leandro convened a number of community-minded individuals together with the idea of forming a group that would work to make San Leandro a better city for all. And so, the San Leandro Community Action Network (SLCAN) was born. The mission of the group is to improve the quality of life in San Leandro by ensuring quality education, smart growth, and an inclusive and equitable community. We are trying to improve the schools, encourage good development and keep bad development away and try to create a community where every culture and subculture feels not only welcomed but embraced.
So far our most visible activity has been a Mayoral candidates forum, which apparently was very useful. We plan to hold more before the next elections.
If you live in San Leandro, check us out. We will soon open the group for membership, for the time being you can sign up for our announcement list.

Today is my birthday, which I have to admit is a matter of less important now at the doorstep of middle-age than it was when I was younger. Still, I love birthdays and I love being treated to them.
Today started pretty well. I slept in (though truth be told, I’ve been doing a lot of that lately). Then Mike took the girls to daycare and Paz, our worshipped daycare provider, took Camila for the morning – even though she usually doesn’t go Wednesday mornings. So I have the whole morning to myself! (of course, this means that I’ve already accumulated quite a bit of work, but c’est la vie).
Later today I’m going to have a small birthday party for myself: pizza from Zacchary’s, cake & ice cream. I had a larger “murder mystery” party last Saturday and I’ll be having a tea for myself on Saturday. Hey, if I have to throw myself my own birthday festivities (and I do), I’ll do everything I want 🙂
To be fair to Mike, he gets to plan Mother’s Day.

Last Monday I wore a white shirt. Camila wore a white onesie. Mika, for once, allowed me to chose her clothing and put on a white shirt as well. Mike’s shirt – white but with a large logo – set him apart from us, which was just as well as he was just there to provide support.
We didn’t get to the rally until the end, when it had basically wound down, but in the way to the rally, before we’d even left San Leandro, we saw many people wearing identical white shirts. We didn’t say anything to them as we passed, but my eyes filled with tears. Here, in silence and passing, we were a community.
I have lived in the US for 22 years now, almost a decade longer that I’ve lived in my home country, but here I have always been the “other”. This is a category in which I’ve put myself as much as anyone. I have a thick accent, of course, which makes it clear that I’m not from here. But the truth is that I’m not from here and I don’t want to be. I love this country, the land where my husband and children were born, and the ideals of political and religious freedom on which it was founded – but I love my own pago just as much. I am proud of being an Argentinian (which Argentinian isn’t?). I am, if anything, a hyphened American.
But “otherness” can be lonely. I often find myself searching for bonds with people from other countries, whose accents are as thick as mine, whose culture somewhat foreign to the mainstream. Though here in San Leandro, where the foreign born population approaches 30%, I am in the mainstream.
And yet, there was something so special about seeing all those people wearing those white shirts. Something special about wearing one myself and silently saying “we are one”, we are the other, but we are together as the other.
It saddens me that the immigration protests have not yet transcended their “hispanicness”. Immigrant activists and groups of other ethnicities have joined, but most non-hispanic immigrants have remained silent. Middle class immigrants are also mostly staying away. Which is sad because la uni