This is a classic clip. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s about time

The last we heard from KMBH, the local public radio outlet, Mario Muñoz told us that the station would be back on the air in eight to ten days. That was towards the last of July, and, a month later, 88.9 is still a static-filled blank spot on the radio dial. And no one is answering the phones at the station during the lunch hour. Apparently the station runs on auto-pilot then.

While we’re at it, what happened to Betsy Price and Voices from the Valley which last year organized to begin a new public radio organization unaffiliated with a religious organization? [Read more →]

Intellectual theft by Stan

By Julieta Corpus

Among the dormant orange trees
Along the frontage road
A graceful mockingbird, perched low,
Begins his strident song.

Below, on the ground, a faded tent
Is flapping in the breeze
While tattered clothes dry on a branch
Beneath the Valley heat. [Read more →]

Click on chart to read the story

Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky

(After a Miami visit in these United States of immigration debate)

The Haitian private-school guard sits in his golf cart
Under a dry-leafed tree and
Prevents wealthy white kids from being snatched
In the money making business of kidnapping.

He’s comfortable in French, Creole, Spanish and English.
He’s alert; no kids taken under his eyes. [Read more →]

by Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky

All but the most cold-hearted among Cameron County residents would say that a prisoner released from the Cameron County Jail in Olmito should be freed in daylight, after breakfast and then given a ride to one of the county’s centers, for instance, Brownsville and Harlingen.

We citizens of Cameron County should demand better of the sheriff and his jailers. [Read more →]

by Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky

Sixty years ago
The junior high school
Principal told us
to say The Lord’s Prayer,
Think of Christ and
Support the troops in
Korea.

We did.
We knew nothing
Of millions of dead
Koreans, thousands
Of dead Americans.

The principal controlled
The morning announcements.
The generals controlled
The blood in heat and cold.

We went to class.
We went home.
We heard the same principal
The next day.

by Kathy Trenfield-Raines

Each one of the full-fledged adults in my family goes to the gym, once a week, a few times a week, or even twice a day. My sister-in-law regularly attends a 5:30 aerobics session at the gym, comes home, showers and starts her day, a pure amazement to me, my ritual being to arise, jot down a thought or dream in my journal, check email, peruse the newspaper and smartly jot little answers into the squares of the crossword puzzle. I’m the only abstainer. [Read more →]

by Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky

I love turning pages in twilight.
Easy to see, if the slanted orange light enters.

More turned pages, and some squinting,
Turning the book to catch light.

But the orange goes, the words blur,
And it is time to squint to the end of the chapter.

Longer days, more pages,
And the season shifts,
And the pages decrease …. [Read more →]

by Stan Raines

The cooler breeze of this overcast afternoon
which subdues the colors that blazed under the noonday sun
and wafts the trees into dancing rhythms
hails from the South and is the the dying breath
of the storm that fifteen hundred miles away
sheared mountain faces with murderous mudslides
and floods, smothering and drowning one-hundred seventy-nine
of our brothers and sisters swept down streams and under bridges. [Read more →]

The Writers Forum meets next Tuesday, June 1, 7 pm, at the Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center, 225 E. Stenger Street, San Benito.

The Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center Writers Forum meets every first Tuesday and are open to anyone interested in writing. Participants have ten minutes each to read whatever they choose. Some regularly bring guitars and perform original music and once or twice flamenco dancers have taken a turn.

For further information, call Co-Facilitators Beto Conde at (956) 350-3905 or Mel Hinojosa (956) at 244-3713.

by Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky

So easy to kick feet up,
The air working, so easy ….

But four roses in thorns
Under high sun;
They’ll keep their red
Until dusk, but some petals will drop.

I settle deeper in the chair,
My legs relax, but the roses,
So close, even if in sun, heat …

She is near. [Read more →]

from Cinesol

On May 1st – May 2nd, 14 RGV teams raced to complete a 3-10 minute short with 24 hours. They had to incorporate 5 elements… Prop: Christmas lights, Action: Kissing, Character: Mime, Dialogue: “Your money is no good here” with the theme of irresistible.
On May 16th, we screened all the films and here are the results: [Read more →]

from The Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center

The Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center is pleased to present an art exhibition, Variedades y Personajes, by Chris Escobar, Visual artist from Del Rio, Texas, Saturday, May 22, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. Admission: $5.00

The Narciso is located at 225 E. Stenger, San Benito, Texas [Read more →]

by Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky

Up and up, from the heated Mississippi River valley,
Up and up into shade atop a hill ….

Six in a yard welcome me.
Three Southern women, legs apart,
Skirts hiked, they seek a breeze,
And an outdoor electric fan helps.

Two men stand near.
They work on a chainsaw.

A boy is between the groups.
He eats an apple.

One woman brings me water. [Read more →]

This weekend will be a lightning trip to Lubbock where son Justin is graduating from the Texas Tech Law School on Saturday. Up and back, it’s four days of driving for one day and two evenings of ceremony and visiting and then rush off again.

But worth it, yes! Justin’s school career has been a model of aim and efficiency that neither I or his mother achieved. I was ten years finishing a bachelor and never did finish a masters although I accumulated nearly enough graduate hours to have qualified for a doctorate had all those hours had a focus. [Read more →]

by Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky

Above the Rio Bravo, the Mexican side,
The levee path, dry and cracked, early Summer heat.
Chipped concrete steps, dropping a level,

So much brush, thin, waving, weedy ….
The steps end at the level,
End in trash, next to Mexican-placed
Warnings that caution crossers of
Swirling pools, currents, unseen depths ….
[Read more →]

by Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky

Paperless, undocumented, illegal …and hardly limited to the United States, and in particular, Arizona.

There are millions and millions more human beings waiting to leave poor lands for wealthier ones.

Take all the corners of the World. [Read more →]

The music starts at 5 and runs till we wear Joel out. And Ricardo is barbecuing. I don’t know what meat, but it’ll be nicely done. In weeks past its been chicken thighs and legs and occasionally sausage. If you want potato salad to go with that, well, bring some potato salad. John Harley’s been running a deal like this at Harley’s Country Store and Beer Garden on Sundays for about five years now and it’s turned into a big weekly picnic with many kinds of side dishes most weeks. We’d like Saturdays at Dirty Red’s Kantina in Arroyo City to follow that little path. But it won’t happen if you don’t show up. So see you there!

by Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky

Border city Matamoros.

Hundreds in a wet line on the sidewalk outside the American Consulate.
Papers in hand, interview soon, and just maybe, permission to cross the bridge.
I avert my eyes.
Fortune of birth has kept me from the line. [Read more →]

This evening from the back porch of the South Padre Island Convention Center. Click the image to enlarge. [Read more →]

by Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky

…and I’d told her friend that I always liked her, since I met her in class.

Maybe she told her, maybe she didn’t.

But I saw her the other day, after she’d parked her van outside a church.

I walked up to her and asked her if her friend had told her that I liked her.

She didn’t say, one way or the other. [Read more →]

By Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky

…and in the Brownsville Public Library Main Branch on Central Boulevard, babies scream, more videos are being checked out than books and crumbs from muffins; yes, eating in now fine in the library as long as you buy its food, fall to the dirty carpet ….

…and in a restaurant, Winter Texans, well into their cups by late afternoon, laud the Super Bowl, ever the Super Bowl ….

…and in the bank line, a man with University of Texas football figures plastered over a loose-fitting shirt, gets several hundreds from the teller, and the footballers jiggle as he moves …. [Read more →]