We’ve come so far these past few months on the road to health care reform.  We’ve had to cross the ugly racist backroads of a nation, mobs in false masks claiming fascism, Nazis, and Nativism, but meaning “we don’t need an uppity President telling us what to do with OUR country.”

But we didn’t engage.  We stayed focus on the mission, where the clock is ticking on so many lives.

We’ve also traversed fictitious maverick Facebook streams and have done what we can to educate people on the difference between facts and blatant manipulative misinformation.

But there was the mission, and so many lives are on the line.  We stayed the course.

Most recently, we’ve scaled the mountains of DC to get votes out of the House and garner enough votes in the Senate for it to move on with debates.

But even though we can see the prize in our mind and a blur of it up ahead, we must stay focused. There is more work to do and we can’t be distracted by weapons of mass distractions that are sure to lay ahead, like land mines in our path.

We can’t get distracted.  We must call our Senators. We must put forth the truth and separate misinformation.  We must take the energy that goes into disbelief that there is opposition to saving lives and turn that into positive action.

We can do this.

 

Photo Credit: jasmic

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasmic/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Beautiful views from Serra Cross Park in Ventura, CA. The park is up on a hill and from there you can see several views of Ventura County.

more about “Serra Cross Park, Ventura, CA“, posted with vodpod

 

Imagine being in debt up to your eyeballs then imagine losing your vision over it.

That’s just what’s happening to Monique Zimmerman-Stein’s family.

Monique and her two children have a rare genetic disease called Sticker Syndrome.  Stickler Syndrome affects connective tissue in the eyes and face.  In Monique’s case she is almost completely blind.

With mounting health care bills and a barrage of calls from creditors, Monique can no longer afford her own treatment so that they can help pay out of pocket expenses for her daughters. Even though the family has Blue Cross/Blue Shield through Monique’s husband, the insurance company has started denying payment on treatments claiming the girls already “had enough services”, according to Zimmerman.

“You’ve got this innocent child that you want to save her eyesight
But you know that the insurance is going to stick you with enormous bills…” -Monique Zimmerman-Stein

Tampabay.com put this video together for their story on the Zimmerman family.

more about “mom video“, posted with vodpod

Senator Charles Schumer

Tuesday is likely to be a huge day.

Senators Charles Schumer and Jay Rockefeller will be taking on the conservative Senate Finance Committee when they present the public option amendment to the Baucus health care bill.

The vote will be close and they need our help.

We need to turn up the heat and contact our senators and tell them we want the public option. Even if they are not on the Finance committee, they need to know where we stand.

Call Your Senator and be heard, via Health Care for America Now

Picture Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/_lovenothing/ / CC BY 2.0

Testing Flickr slideshows on WordPress.com

more about "Flickr: Your Photostream", posted with vodpod

This recipe is for a Spanish meat paella, without the paella cost. There were a couple of restrictions. One, our stove is on the fritz so we were not going to be able to do any major baking. And two, we had a tight budget. The budget restraint helped simplify the recipe since that meant no seafood and no saffron.

I worked off a recipe from “The Cuisines of Spain: Exploring Regional Home Cooking” by Teresa Barrenechea. I modified the recipe by substituting curry powder for the saffron. The curry powder gave it a unique taste, especially when blended with the paprika and it gave the dish the saffron coloring, without the heavy saffron price tag.

• 1 clove garlic, unpeeled
• 3 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 1 1/2 teaspoons paprika
• 1 tablespoon curry powder
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/2 green bell pepper, seeded and cut lengthwise into narrow strips
• 1/2 red bell pepper, seeded and cut lengthwise into narrow strips
• 1/4 pound beef shoulder cut, cut into small pieces
• 1/4 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into small pieces
• Salt
• 3 ounces of chorizo
• 1 1/2 cups white rice
• 1 lemon, cut into 4 wedges

First, I broke apart a clove of garlic and placed it into a 500 degree F toaster oven until the skin started to brown, around ten minutes.

Meanwhile, I set to boil the chicken stock, mixed in the paprika and half the curry powder then set it to simmer.

When the garlic was browned, I peeled it then added the parts to a blender and added 1/2 a cup of the simmering stock plus the rest of the curry powder and blended it. Then I set it aside.

In a large (about 15-inch) pan, I heated the olive oil then added the green and red bell peppers til tender then added the chicken, beef and chorizo, stirring for a couple of minutes, just to brown them (not fully cook).

I then added in the rice and the salt, mixing the ingredients so that the rice picked up some of the oil.  I then spread the mixture across the pan and poured in the hot stock mixture, increased the heat to high so that it could boil.  I then added the garlic mixture that we blended and lightly mixed it in, just to incorporate it. Allow it to boil for 7-10 minutes without stirring then turn the heat down to medium. Do not stir or the rice will break apart and the dish will become starchy. If you actually have a functioning stove, you can then put the pan in the oven for 7 minutes at 500 degrees F, or you can continue to cook on the stove top for an additional 7-10 minutes. Just like cooking rice, the liquid will be absorbed and the rice will be tender. Remove it from the oven or stove top burner and let rest for 5 minutes before serving.

Serve with the lemon wedges on the side.

My Cinco is sunshine and huge feathered serpents tickling the morning sky

Kiddie parades and the Mexican Hat Dance!
“Watcha! You did that wrong!”
“It’s OK, it’s just a BIG FLOPPY HAT”

The School Assembly
“JESSE, WE NEED YOU TO READ THIS TO THE SCHOOL BECAUSE, UM, YOU’RE BROWN.”

but i was born in el sereno and my spanish isn’t that good

“IT DOESN’T MATTER, JUST PRACTICE AND YOU’LL DO FINE!”

Flashforward to college ———- It wasn’t all a flash

More dancing!
(Scene: Internal : Stanford University, Ballet Folklorico)
“Gotta wear that bull headdress and hit my mark on the stage”
“Oye, the mariachis are all drunk!”

“Here I gooooooooo!”

[repeat]

(Scene: External: Streets of Downtown Denver)

BounceBounceBounce Following a mayoral candidate down Cinco de Mayo parade route. OMG, this is crazy! Gotta keep the camera steady so I can get at least some footage…….Why the hell is he running so fast? Thank God for adrenaline!!

Darkness falls fast like the last Corona in the bucket.
I hope the Mayas are wrong. I want more than 3 more Cincos…………….

In case you haven’t run into the term “staycation” yet it refers to a vacation spent near one’s home. With the tough economy this term has been popping up more and more (see the “staycation” Twitter stream on the right side of this page).

If you’re one of the people who dislike the term for whatever reason, then you’ll really hate this one. I’m on staycation and am working on Job 2.0. Job 2.0 is the collection of activities related to trying to make money via Web 2.0 – including blogging, Twittering, and throwing things at people on Facebook.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to have the time off and appreciate every moment. But that Greek cruise we were talking about sure would have been nice.

Senator Barack Obama has been elected President of the USA.  This is an historic moment because he his the first African-American.  But I have never seen him as an African-American candidate.  And this campaign was never about Obama.  It was always about us.

To me, Obama is the embodiment of the Zen aesthetic.  He is calm, focused, and present.  That means that he can see beyond the fray.  And that is what we need in a President and it is what we need to see in ourselves.

The problems of our country do not define us.  They are something that we can acknowledge, plan for, and execute ways to remedy, them but they are not us.

I am greatful that Obama has led the campaign to the promised land.  We got there one step at a time.  And I am so proud.

There is long-standing homophobia in the Latino community.  Latinos have grown up believing that Macho is the only way to be.   In a country where we have often been relegated to second class status, we cling to those things that we can control, our sense of who we are, our personal space, and our religion.

But homophobia is wrong and just as discriminatory as racism and sexism.

In the fourth grade, my teacher Mrs. Flood, called me out in front of the whole class and proclaimed that I was “macho.”  Then she had me stand up and tell the class what it meant, so I did.  I certainly didn’t like being put on the spot like that and didn’t understand what made her select me as her case point.  As a child I never walked around thinking I had to do X or Y because it was the macho or manly thing to do, for the most part.  I just did what I had learned and what I was comfortable with – a lot of which was homophobic.  Much of that came from using the language of hatred.

In junior high, a friend of my started picking on another student who he thought was gay and I felt sorry for the other student.  I felt sorry for him because I could see it in his eyes that my friend was making it miserable for him.  I didn’t feed into that stupidity.  This is when I started to think about my language and attitudes.

Then I went to college in the Bay Area and I got a crash course in understanding what it meant to be gay and how homophobia was the same kind of hatred and ignorance as racism and sexism.  Many of my new dorm mates and closest friends were gay.  I learned through conversations at 2 in the morning, I learned from dorm meetings and workshops, and by supporting my friends and causes.

And now I’m back to living in a homophobic environment.  In Santa Paula, the main measure of self-worth is how macho one is (this pretty much applies to women also, no joke).  You see it everywhere.  If you question someone’s manliness, you can end up dead.  I hate that about my city.

Then we have religion.  Latinos are largely Catholic and the Church is anti-gay.  This is the main reason the Church and I have split ways.  This is taught supposedly from the bible and it’s taught from the pulpit.

So we have homophobia in the streets, we have it at home, and we have it in church.  But it’s wrong.

Proposition 8 in California is all about homophobia, and it is wrong.  I am voting NO on Proposition 8.