The legacy of Latina activist Cecilia Burciaga
Making my way south on Highway 68, I tried to compose my nerves.
The twists and turns that connect the 68 to Highway 1 toward Carmel Highlands in Northern California made me uneasy. The winding road was dark and the vast ocean made me grip the steering wheel just a little tighter.
Driving this road for the first time remind me of two things. One, I would be starting my first job as a Spanish reporter for El Sol in Salinas and two, I was to meet Cecilia Burciaga.
Before leaving my yearlong internship at Hispanic Link, its publisher and founder Charlie Ericksen had arranged a brief stay at the Burciaga residence — a temporary fix while I looked for my own place.
Uncomfortable with the nature of requesting a stranger to host me for two weeks, I mustered the courage and knocked on the door. Burciaga greeted my father, uncle and I with a stern face but comforting warmth. Like seeing a tía after a prolonged absence, she took away my fears and let me feel right at home.
Little did I know that two-years later I would be in the company of hundreds of others who regard the Burciaga legacy with respect and affection — the kind of love offered to extended family.
Even when I left her home, she reminded me, “If things don’t pan out in your apartment search, you can always return. This home will always be open.”
Latina activist Cecilia Burciaga
Cecilia passed away March 25, after a seven-month battle with cancer. She was 67-years-old. Her death ushered in support from many who knew Cecilia and her late husband Jose Antonio “Tony” Burciaga as two pivotal figures that helped bring Hispanic issues to the forefront.
Conscious of her limited time, Cecilia welcomed me to her home in Menlo Park, Calif. last month. There, she spoke about her legacy and that of her husband.
“On Caringbridge.org people can write notes to me. And I understand there are more than 400 to 500 notes. If you do a very quick scan there will be themes that come up,” Cecilia said.
“People are writing about how grateful they were to Tony and me for being mentors and an inspiration… Their notes have been very heart-warming. It reinforces that whatever you do to help others comes back to you, many times over.”
The twists and turns that connect the 68 to Highway 1 toward Carmel Highlands in Northern California made me uneasy. The winding road was dark and the vast ocean made me grip the steering wheel just a little tighter.
Driving this road for the first time remind me of two things. One, I would be starting my first job as a Spanish reporter for El Sol in Salinas and two, I was to meet Cecilia Burciaga.
Before leaving my yearlong internship at Hispanic Link, its publisher and founder Charlie Ericksen had arranged a brief stay at the Burciaga residence — a temporary fix while I looked for my own place.
Uncomfortable with the nature of requesting a stranger to host me for two weeks, I mustered the courage and knocked on the door. Burciaga greeted my father, uncle and I with a stern face but comforting warmth. Like seeing a tía after a prolonged absence, she took away my fears and let me feel right at home.
Little did I know that two-years later I would be in the company of hundreds of others who regard the Burciaga legacy with respect and affection — the kind of love offered to extended family.
Even when I left her home, she reminded me, “If things don’t pan out in your apartment search, you can always return. This home will always be open.”
Latina activist Cecilia Burciaga
Cecilia passed away March 25, after a seven-month battle with cancer. She was 67-years-old. Her death ushered in support from many who knew Cecilia and her late husband Jose Antonio “Tony” Burciaga as two pivotal figures that helped bring Hispanic issues to the forefront.
Conscious of her limited time, Cecilia welcomed me to her home in Menlo Park, Calif. last month. There, she spoke about her legacy and that of her husband.
“On Caringbridge.org people can write notes to me. And I understand there are more than 400 to 500 notes. If you do a very quick scan there will be themes that come up,” Cecilia said.
“People are writing about how grateful they were to Tony and me for being mentors and an inspiration… Their notes have been very heart-warming. It reinforces that whatever you do to help others comes back to you, many times over.”
CO2 concentration hits historically high levels
In his book, “Screw Business as Usual”, Virgin Group business magnate Richard Branson breaks down the cost each laptop computer not in terms of monetary value, but in terms of natural resources.
“The average laptop weighs about ten pounds, distilled into those ten pounds, your laptop weighs not ten pounds, not a hundred pounds, but a staggering 40,000 pounds,” Branson writes.
“It contains minerals extracted from mines, using incredible quantities of fuel, itself the product of drilling and mining.”
If a single laptop bears that much environmental burden, much more alarming is the finding made by The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which showed on Friday that the daily mean concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time since scientists began taking measurements in that station 55 years ago.
More troubling, said Adrianna Quintero, advisory board chair for Voces Verdes, is that if nothing is done to reverse global warming—a phenomenon most scientists believe not to be the result of regular climate cycles but man made—we can expect the earth’s CO2 levels to reach 450 ppm in the next 25 years. This, Quintero said, would be unprecedented and yield significant economic and environmental consequences.
“To some people this is just a number,” said Quintero, referring to the 400 ppm.
The findings come at a time when strong Republican opposition in Capitol Hill has stalled the confirmation of Gina McCarthy to be the next administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
“Once again, some GOP Senators are paralyzing progress playing political games. By blocking Gina McCarthy’s nomination, they are again putting polluters’ interests before public health, jeopardizing the health and well-being of our children and families,” Quintero said.
As chair of Voces Verdes, she and her organization specialize in bringing Latino leaders together to advocate for safer environmental practices.
“We can choose to believe that this is just a number or we can recognize the connection global warming has to real life events such as some of the most serious droughts, hurricanes and rising sea levels that we’ve seen in years,” Quintero told VOXXI.
“The average laptop weighs about ten pounds, distilled into those ten pounds, your laptop weighs not ten pounds, not a hundred pounds, but a staggering 40,000 pounds,” Branson writes.
“It contains minerals extracted from mines, using incredible quantities of fuel, itself the product of drilling and mining.”
If a single laptop bears that much environmental burden, much more alarming is the finding made by The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which showed on Friday that the daily mean concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time since scientists began taking measurements in that station 55 years ago.
More troubling, said Adrianna Quintero, advisory board chair for Voces Verdes, is that if nothing is done to reverse global warming—a phenomenon most scientists believe not to be the result of regular climate cycles but man made—we can expect the earth’s CO2 levels to reach 450 ppm in the next 25 years. This, Quintero said, would be unprecedented and yield significant economic and environmental consequences.
“To some people this is just a number,” said Quintero, referring to the 400 ppm.
The findings come at a time when strong Republican opposition in Capitol Hill has stalled the confirmation of Gina McCarthy to be the next administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
“Once again, some GOP Senators are paralyzing progress playing political games. By blocking Gina McCarthy’s nomination, they are again putting polluters’ interests before public health, jeopardizing the health and well-being of our children and families,” Quintero said.
As chair of Voces Verdes, she and her organization specialize in bringing Latino leaders together to advocate for safer environmental practices.
“We can choose to believe that this is just a number or we can recognize the connection global warming has to real life events such as some of the most serious droughts, hurricanes and rising sea levels that we’ve seen in years,” Quintero told VOXXI.
Myth of doomsday and Mayan calendar explained
If you are prone to superstition, 2012 provides a wealth of apocalyptic fears and calamitous end-of-day scenarios, starting with the ever-popular end-of-the-world Mayan doomsday.
Some have argued that Mayans, whose civilization spanned across southern Mexico, Guatemala and Belize from 1000 B.C. to 1519 A.D., carved into their calendar the day the world would end—Dec. 21.
Many scholars have debunked the Mayan doomsday myth but it hasn’t stopped some from treating December as Armageddon month, turning to social media to share elaborate last-minute bucket-list ideas.
A Facebook user framed it eloquently: He urged his friends to get right with God or make love with a stranger. But Gerardo Aldana, an associate professor at the University of California (Santa Barbara) tells his students, also via Facebook, they still have to do Christmas shopping this year.
Aldana, who has studied the Mayans since 1995, says the theories of mayhem attributed to the calendar came largely “from a misunderstanding of the calendar and mythology.”
“Priests and historians used the Long Count to track mythology back to 3114 B.C. and even earlier,” Aldana said. “But they only really recorded their history for the time between A.D. 300 and 900. They then extended the calendar far into their and our own future, as far as A.D. 4772,” he added.
Some have argued that Mayans, whose civilization spanned across southern Mexico, Guatemala and Belize from 1000 B.C. to 1519 A.D., carved into their calendar the day the world would end—Dec. 21.
Many scholars have debunked the Mayan doomsday myth but it hasn’t stopped some from treating December as Armageddon month, turning to social media to share elaborate last-minute bucket-list ideas.
A Facebook user framed it eloquently: He urged his friends to get right with God or make love with a stranger. But Gerardo Aldana, an associate professor at the University of California (Santa Barbara) tells his students, also via Facebook, they still have to do Christmas shopping this year.
Aldana, who has studied the Mayans since 1995, says the theories of mayhem attributed to the calendar came largely “from a misunderstanding of the calendar and mythology.”
“Priests and historians used the Long Count to track mythology back to 3114 B.C. and even earlier,” Aldana said. “But they only really recorded their history for the time between A.D. 300 and 900. They then extended the calendar far into their and our own future, as far as A.D. 4772,” he added.