PAVEing a Blog

Thanks John Powell, Mark Webber, Cynthia Webber, Jeff Loomis, Rennie Martin, Megan Ver Duin, Janet Castelpietra, Gabby Garcia, Clau Robles Gill, Julien, Jason Schell, all for hanging with me the night before my actual birthday!

Friday was just, well, awesome to be FRIDAY  😉  While at ASF, Janet and Gabriela through a surprise birthday party  for Moct and I,  upstairs with so many pizza, such delicious cake, and balloons and decorations galore, it was AWESOME – and what a nice day!  🙂 I loved seeing Clau, one of our awesome students, come up and join in the festivities – it was awesome!  🙂

AND I bought tickets for this play thanks to Mark Webber!

Alan Ayckbourn’s A WOMAN IN MIND,  a British comedy   🙂

Going out in the evening, and jumping around several places with friends, ending up at Pata Negra with everyone among some very, VERY attractive ladies, and great friends, I have to say, the birthday was a good one – just to be out and among good friends.

Thank you everyone for taking time out to make it something special…;)

Yeah!  Sounds boring, but I am going to take time to settle in today, clean, prepare for New York Monday, take care of some puppies, and then a fun-fulled, relaxing night at El Ocho tonight…;)

Yes, as we prepare to attend Columbia Press Association’s Conference, we want to remind you of an upcoming gem!  See below!:

It’s no secret that I love March.  And St. Patrick’s.  And maybe even more the Repentino. staff after tonights 55 member Open Mic.  So much as I see 41 nearing, they inspired this in me:

FORTY –ONE

Great things are in the wind, yet,

And I feel that my accomplishments,

Piled upon the backs of others,

Are now the icing on the cake.

Yet, if this, my life, right now,

Is the icing on the cake,

The filling is so rich

Look at what we have –

Yeast – it makes things rise, and I am surrounded by those that make me

Yes, rise – rise higher than any leaven bread has the right to be,

Sugar – “You can do whatever you want with your life, but one day you’ll know what love truly is. It’s the sour and the sweet. And I know sour, which allows me to appreciate the sweet.” The sugar has been the icing and what is inside each of us.

The sugar in my cake, my Forty-One years of recipe…

Is just that, a recipe – if I could take each of you, on this crazy journey,

Referred to as a recipe, you’d find…

Everything you’d need to succeed  –

Thanks to the countless –countless, imagine that word…

COUNTLESS – meaning more memories than a human can contain –

This has been my life for Forty-one years – thanks to Dad, that could fill a room…

…on fact – a family that could fill a room, a Mom that kept pushing and believing,

students, that faded into the lines between family and students, usually not the case

but the exact case in mine… Two lives that slipped away that pushed me the rest of the way, when did I decide that would overcome the heartache, disappointment, and hurdles in the way?  No idea, no timeframe, no way, yet, here I am…

My forty-one years have been the best gift that override a gift, a cake, and even my first surprise birthday party at forty –

Life – is a living poem, and I am richer for having a living poem around me…

…at forty –one…

My blog is dedicated to the students of Repentino. making me realize, over and over again, oh how sweet 41 can be and how much more, the years to come will be…:)

“What he has demonstrated very clearly is that you have a choice. He took all that torment, all that agony, all that confusion and pain, and he transformed it, into something beautiful. He’s like the silkworm, you know, you know, you take this raw material, and you transform it, and you come out with something that wasn’t there before, something beautiful, something perhaps Transcendent, something perhaps eternal.  Insofar as he does that, I think he is representative of human spirit, of what is possible, that you have a choice, and this has been my choice, to give you sugarman.  No, have you done that? Ask yourself…” excerpt from Oscar-winning documentary – Searching for Sugar Man.

I just received the most amazing birthday gift, weeks ahead of my actual birthday.  Yes, I love birthdays.  No I do not like to make big deals of mine, but others.  It’s that whole, “Look, I am no here trying to be vain, but celebrate what others bring to my table.”

I watched this documentary, Searching for Sugar Man, given to me by Tulio Lugo to watch, and am struck by this being the most amazing documentary I have seen in – well, I can’t recall ever seeing something some REAL.  Yet, it serves as a lesson on how easy going and open you need to be to appreciate just that, the real things in life, avoiding what others feel it is to be successful and rich, and finding the aspects that are what real success is about – friends, family, events that can’t be measured by today’s standards.  This documentary has it all wrapped into one, a gift I have not seen or watched until today, am I the better to seeing it, my gosh yes.

Now, I need to get my hands on the record, the cd, and any albums I can by Sixto Rodriguez, without a doubt.  It is amazing to see how this man, so humble, represents so much of what people fail to see, great success in being humble and quietly going about fulfilling he need to see others succeed as well.  The last quote in the article above, “At the end of Bendjelloul’s film, we learn that Rodriguez is touring the world and playing to sold-out crowds, and is giving most of his money away to family and friends. Oscar or no Oscar, Sixto Rodriguez acts and sounds like a man who is very much at peace with the world.” says all you need to know.

In the past few days I have been lucky enough to experience so many new adventures, from learning who Yolanda Vargas Dulche was, after hearing about her, as Contadora De Historias and grandmother of my amazingly admired Editor in Chief for Repentino., Camila de la Parra, and attended a 100% Espanol roundtable discussion about her life at the Mueso De Arte Popular.  As if that wasn’t enough, I attended, in the same night!, the opening and premiere of colleague Jason Schell’s art at the hostel on Juan Escutia, (I loved seeing he actually studied at Grove City, I KNOW THAT PLACE!!),

and with the advent of Kinah having puppies, seeing the movie Oz, El Poderso Friday, eating an amazing meal Friday Night, and preparing for an amazing venture intro New York with an amazing Repentino. staff, yeah, life is complicated at times, yet, the good things, if you look close enough, will overwhelm the supposedly bad thing we think are there the whole time, an really are not.  Life is good and I even came up with a piece to read at Open Mic – not a bad weekend…:)

Oh yes, and you thought you heard it all….

Sunday – 6:00 PM – I am exhausted but relieved that I am making progress on my Mansfield University studies, as well as other work for Repentino.  All of a sudden, a high-pitched whining, scratching, from the living room area.  I go out, and Kinah, yes, Kinah is scratching the heck out of the furniture, oddly enough,after 10-15 minutes of this, my usually calm and restive Afghan, Kinah, was going BONKERS.  “Climbing the walls” was a great description that fit this to a “t”, and I even went to the liberty of recording this on video, to take to the vet, because at this point, that was where we were going, I had no idea what was making her crazy, but crazy she was acting, and then some.

I put her leash on Kinah, and she would not budge, not even an inch, which normally, she was the first one out the door.  I pick her up….carry her, make it to the second floor, and PLOP! – look down and there is a baby puppy lying on the stairs – in the placenta still not moving.  YEAH.  and you think Mondays are a surprise, this Sunday was a carnival.  I was in shock.

A puppy?  Seriously?  I immediately put Kinah down, and she did what I hoped, licked the placenta and sack off the puppy, and BREATHING, the puppy was alive, minus the mess of blood and mucusy substance that was  ow on the stairwell, I picked the puppy and Kinah up and rushed to my truck, and amazingly, I could get the truck out with everyone else usually blocking me in, not today…I rushed to the Vet, he came running out and informed me what I kind of knew on the way over to Condesa Pet Center,  I should not have moved her as this was her comfortable zone for giving birth – (As we now looked at two puppies instead of one in Kinah’s care, in the back of my truck) – I sighed but was realized as the vet told me she will take care of everything she needed to go back home, and unconsciously, KNEW – that I had not known she was pregnant at all – yet, all the things she had done in the last 30 minutes lead to her being just that, major pregnant….

I went back home, asked my neighbors in the bookstore for a box, and newspaper, shredded a homemade bed for them, as Kinah went on to have her third puppy (the vet warned me to expect 6-7 – oh my GOSH) – and I waited it out – yes, as she gave birth in the back of my truck…

However, a neighbor in my building chanced on coming out, and is a VET too, and oddly enough, HAS an Afghan, and told me we needed to get her inside as it is getting cold too cold for puppies who cannot regulate their body temp – now you reading this, cold here is 60 degrees, not the rain/snow/storm all are having with bitter cold like 30 and 20 F – but still to cold for puppies without an internal heater…

…SO before what we assumed would be the 4th puppy, we rushed Kinah, and puppies in tow, into my living room and waited it out.  Looking down, I realized how much blood I had on my shirt, jeans, and shoes, and always wished for a chance to have alot of blood on me to make me look like a mass murderer, check one off the bucket list for me.

After realizing people were looking at me as I made my up and down my building, with well, lots of blood, I redressed – (I could have used this for Halloween, timing….sheesh) …and waited, yet, no more puppies?  Seriously, THREE?  NO WAY, if I had to have puppies galore, I will settle for three, and three is all Kinah had – amazing!

Today is Thursday, four days later, and the puppies are alive and feeding, Kinah is gaining weight and a perfect, I mean, PERFECT mother, – she is awesome.  We have her on a routine that she does go out to bathroom breaks, and feeds her pups, and I have her shored up in my room to be away from the cats for privacy and security, and all are doing amazing.  Yes, pictures, right?  So here are two below, and now, who wants a puppy?  Of course, how did she get pregnant?

Sigh, not on my watch as she shies away from dogs, so my only conclusion is while I was at December she had some play time at Happy Dogs (ironic name) which, I have to say, I should have tried to get her fixed earlier, yet, I was hoping she would be separated and yet, obviously, pregnancy tells all right, so, Happy Dogs is kind of ironic, eh?

🙂

Not sure what the other half breed is though we know half Afghan and half?…   What would you prefer?  I would be happy with a Labrador and Afghan mix yet I am thinking the puppies look like, well, PUPPIES right now not a particular breed yet, but they are brown, so, not a white Afghan trait coming through…

And all this time, this post is just about puppies, and not the amazing other things that are occurring, so I will need to save that for next time, we’ll try back today or tomorrow…in the meantime, starting thinking of how you would handle puppies unexpectedly, and if you would like one, I am definitely in the market for finding good, honest homes for these awesome looking puppies, for a deal you can’t refuse….FREE….:)  More thoughts on parenthood later…I am learning to weather this storm of unexpectedness quite well….:)

2 hours old…

…by the way, I went back and mopped the stairs, just saying.

I have to say, my favorite month, March.  Favorite holiday, St. Patrick’s Day.  Girl Scout Cookies.  And not just because my birthday, my brother’s birthday, or alot of cool other people’s birthday, Camila, Alice, Ana, and more occur in this month…but just so many awesome things occur!  We travel to New York to represent Repentino. at Columbia, there’s Green Shamrock shakes, (Can I still have one on the 18th or 19th in New York?) – I love green almost, ALMOST as much as blue…just something about St. Patrick’s Day, love it more than anything else, so here’s to March, St. Patrick’s Day, and the approaching of Spring!  🙂

Life – can anyone try to explain it? Sure – I see every day 9th graders that think they have it all figured out, adult feeling they have enough experience to tell others exactly how and what life is – and amidst these extremes – I find myself at a crossroads.

In listening to Alan Watts, I am not ready to go to sleep and never wake up, I want to look at landscapes and have tears continue to be brought to my eyes, because of the things that I thought I knew would happen, and was caught off guard but the moments I did not see coming.

It’s hard to explain, lately, I find myself walking somewhere, anywhere, and my memories of my friends are so strong, so intense, I have tears in my eyes for no apparent reason at all, I mean none.  Just out of the blue.  Let me back up a minute,

…for some unexplained reason, which I can’t say I am minding, I have been having these walks where memories, snapshots, moments of my father keep coming back to me as if he is standing right beside me every day.  This is so comforting, as I always worry I am going to forget his face, but I know, I will NEVER forget his life.  I am still in awe of the sacrifices he made not only for his children, but for everyone he came into contact with that he made feel like his children, people he did not even know, this amazes me.  His touch and ability to reach into this void of someone he never met, and make them feel like family, is well, a gift I could only HOPE to ever reach…and amid this wanderings and musings, tears well up without warning, catching me off guard.  So people that might see me in those awkward moments, might think I am deeply sad. Actually the opposite.

In an ironic twist of fate, I find myself surrounded by students, adults, family, friends that have become family, students that have become family, and I realize, on my very worst days, days I rant and rave about the immaturity of 9th graders (my rant this week), ranting about people who cannot appreciate the simple things they have to be thankful for, I find myself truly unbelievably lucky, and yes, tears have been welling up lately more often than not because….well, because my experiences in looking back have been AMAZING because of the people in my life I have come across, I can’t possibly put it into works, not even.  It causes the only emotion my body can try to keep up with, tears.  I am surrounded by my Dad so much with the amazing people that represent so many parts of him – that I did not see before, because I was so busy.

If I ever get to busy to acknowledge these people truly I feel I won’t be justified to stay alive anymore, because I will cease living.  So no, I am not ready to sleep and not wake up, I haven’t been able to thank and enjoy these people these experiences, these moments that override the bad every day, although the bad manage to peak their head through.

Life…sometimes too much for words, but oh how grateful I am for the people who I have been lucky enough to cross paths with, despite my rambling, ravings, and anger at times, I am so incredibly lucky to have this life, with the people that have made up what is known as my life…:)

I wanted to post this as I am fascinated with the predictions, and new tales woven this year, and though I pledge not to watch the Oscars each year, I do find myself curious about the results, so here is the predictions set by my friend, Steve Givens:

Category: Best Supporting Actress

Nominees: 

Amy Adams   The Master

Sally Field   Lincoln

Anne Hathaway Les Misérables

Helen Hunt  The Sessions

Jacki Weaver  Silver Linings Playbook

Who I think will win: It will be the biggest shock of the evening if Anne Hathaway doesn’t win an Oscar for her performance in Les Miserables.  In fact, I will go so far as to say that her win is the most assured of any category, even Best Actor.  There’s been some last minute rallying for Sally Field, but I seriously doubt it will be enough to derail the train of awards Hathaway has been collecting the last few months.

Who I want to win: Although I found Les Miserables to be a very flawed movie, Hathaway just owned the screen for the short time she was on it.  Unlike the other actors in the cast, she was the perfect marriage between stage-quality vocals and screen-caliber acting.  In her big film moment, she made the most of singing live and created five minutes of raw and blistering emotion.  And. she did this while singing a song that has become such a Broadway cliché it often elicits groans when the opening chords start to play.  She is the only actress I’ve heard sing “I Dreamed a Dream” in such a way as to invoke the reality of the lyrics.  And, she deserves the Oscar because not only did she sidestep boring the audience, but she moved us with unfettered emotion.

*****

Category: Best Supporting Actor

Nominees: 

Alan Arkin   Argo

Robert De Niro  Silver Linings Playbook

Philip Seymour Hoffman   The Master

Tommy Lee Jones    Lincoln

Christoph Waltz   Django Unchained 

Who I think will win: For the first time in recent memory, the Best Supporting Actor category is the tough one to predict.  There is no clear frontrunner here, but I think it is safe to say the race comes down to Robert DeNiro and Tommy Lee Jones.  Right now, my money is on Robert DeNiro because he is a well-respected actor who hasn’t been nominated in a long time and hasn’t won in over thirty years.  I think the Academy will want to see him win again.

Who I want to win: I respect the performance Tommy Lee Jones gave in Lincoln because he managed to stand out and be memorable in a movie with a powerful performance from Daniel Day-Lewis.  Jones doesn’t really tread new ground in this role, but he does show that he is at the height of his acting prowess by doing what he does best.

*****

Category: Best Leading Actress

Nominees: 

Jessica Chastain    Zero Dark Thirty

Jennifer Lawrence   Silver Linings Playbook

Emmanuelle Riva   Amour

Quvenzhané Wallis   Beasts of the Southern Wild

Naomi Watts   The Impossible 

Who I think will win: For a while there, Jessica Chastain was the frontrunner, but the buzz about her performance has died down in the weeks following the release of Zero Dark Thirty.  Now it seems like it will be a photo-finish between Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence.  I admire both actresses very much and see them as being Oscar worthy.  However, I have to give the edge to Lawrence here.  In many ways, she had the thankless role in Silver Linings Playbook since it could have been the usual understanding-woman-to-a-troubled-man role, but she flew with it by all accounts.  Plus, her movie hasn’t been tainted by recent controversy.

Who I want to win: I was positively blown away by Quvenshane Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild.  Despite some detractors who say her performance was created more by editing and the director, the movie is filled with moments in which Wallis has to handle some very tense and difficult scenes.  The fact that she was around six years old when she filmed the role makes it all the more amazing.  She won’t win because she is too young, but hers was the most emotionally powerful of the female performances I saw.

*****

Category: Best Leading Actor

Nominees: 

Bradley Cooper   Silver Linings Playbook

Daniel Day-Lewis   Lincoln

Hugh Jackman   Les Misérables

Joaquin Phoenix   The Master

Denzel Washington  Flight 

Who I think will win: Even money is on Daniel Day-Lewis taking home his third Best Leading Actor Oscar, and it would be well-deserved.  As always, Day-Lewis completely disappeared inside the character and created a believable and human portrait of one of the most famous presidents in U.S. history.  He has been racking up one award after another for this performance, and there is reason to believe he won’t take home the Oscar as well.  I will be very surprised if Day-Lewis doesn’t win.

Who I want to win: I don’t have a strong preference in this category except to say that I don’t want Hugh Jackman to win.  His performance in Les Miserables was okay and his singing only okay.  In order to declare him as Best Actor, he needed to have hit this role out of the ballpark, and that just didn’t happen.

*****

Category: Best Director

Nominees: 

Amour   Michael Haneke

Beasts of the Southern Wild   Benh Zeitlin

Life of Pi    Ang Lee

Lincoln   Steven Spielberg

Silver Linings Playbook   David O. Russell

Who I think will win: This will be the most anticipated category of the night because of who isn’t on the list: Ben Affleck.  Had he been nominated, most critics would be saying his win was a foregone conclusion.  But, without Affleck in the mix, it becomes anybody’s game.  I think it comes down to the old veterans: Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg, with a slight advantage to Spielberg because his film, Lincoln, has been more widely embraced by the Academy.

Who I want to win: This is another category in which I don’t have a strong preference.  If pushed, I would go with Ang Lee because I feel he had the more challenging story to film, and he did it magnificently.

*****

Category: Best Picture

Nominees: 

Amour   Margaret Menegoz, Stefan Arndt, Veit Heiduschka and Michael Katz, Producers

Argo   Grant Heslov, Ben Affleck and George Clooney, Producers

Beasts of the Southern Wild   Dan Janvey, Josh Penn and Michael Gottwald, Producers

Django Unchained  Stacey Sher, Reginald Hudlin and Pilar Savone, Producers

Les Misérables  Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Debra Hayward and Cameron Mackintosh, Producers

Life of Pi   Gil Netter, Ang Lee and David Womark, Producers

Lincoln  Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, Producers

Silver Linings Playbook  Donna Gigliotti, Bruce Cohen and Jonathan Gordon, Producers

Zero Dark Thirty   Mark Boal, Kathryn Bigelow and Megan Ellison, Producers

Who I think will win: Conventional wisdom says that the film with the most nominations will most likely win Best Picture.  If that trend continues, then Lincoln will take home the big prize. However, that particular trend has been unreliable in recent years.  On top of that, many reports indicate that there is a huge swelling of support for Argo, driven mostly by sympathy for Ben Affleck because he didn’t receive a Best Director nomination.  With the influx in recent years of younger Academy voters, Best Picture wins have often been driven by emotion and the desire for dramatic moments.  I predict a win for Argo as a way of those younger voters thumbing their collective noses at the directing branch responsible for Affleck’s snub.  However, not to hedge my bets, I wouldn’t completely discount a Lincoln upset.

Who I want to win: Out of the nominated films I saw, the one I enjoyed the most was Life of Pi. It’s a highly imaginative and visually beautiful film that had every opportunity to fall flat and didn’t.  Plus, with the pervading political themes of many of the other nominees, Life of Pi stands out for tackling spiritual and philosophical issues, topics not usually dealt with in mainstream movies.  In such a strong year for movies, I won’t be upset if Life of Pi doesn’t win as most of the other nominees are worthy contenders, but it is the only one that consistently sparked some very deep thinking and conversations out of movie goers, myself included.  That alone makes it the choice for me.