Our America: US History from an Hispanic Point of View

Overlooking the significance of America’s Hispanic past, the United States is typically perceived as an offshoot of Britain, with its history unfolding east to west, beginning with the first settlers in Jamestown. In an absorbing narrative, Felipe Fernández-Armesto begins with the explorers and conquistadors who planted Spain’s first colonies in Puerto Rico, Florida and the Southwest in the sixteenth century. Missionaries and rancheros carry Spain’s expansive impulse into the late eighteenth century, settling in California, mapping the American interior to the Rockies and charting the Pacific coast. The nineteenth-century triumph of Anglo-America in the West is followed by the twentieth-century Hispanic resurgence, spreading from the West to cities including Chicago, Miami and Boston. Today’s plural America is the product of its past.

Like an Alternator

      Like an alternator

Like an alternator in a car

A pace-maker was installed

Under my left clavicle. So far

A-fib, as it’s informally called,

Has been regulated, but rehab

Is in order so I’m in this nice

Facility where I, like Ahab,

Pace the place and walk twice

Around the one-twentieth of a mile

Track every day, lift leg-weights,

And make earnest attempts to smile

Hoping the young therapists’ estimates

Of my physical tune-up will help them

To decide at my staffing that I’m well

Enough to go home in the next AM,

Only the PT distributors and time will tell.

Old and Worn#2

Twenty-two people wear 44 shoes.

Some are worn down at the heel

And some at a toe.  We can excuse

The aged spots. They’re the annealed

Crosses and scourges they had to bear.

That’s the same cause for the cracks where

They bent so many times to run, to walk,

To follow, to lead. And when the people talk

The words come effortlessly. There’s comfort

In knowing about and sharing others’efforts.

We were there and did the same as you

When you had children and when they grew,

Getting sick, puking on the couch, peeing

In bed, going to school to fill their heads

Not with knowledge but with attitudes, seeing

People and events the same way. Move ahead.

Larry and Ruthie at table.

Larry and Ruthie celebrating Ruthie's birthday anniversary at Granite City in Lincoln, NE.  In front of us is a huge chocolate chip cookie ala mode with caramel drizzle.