Tras haber creado mi anterior blog cecilmundo varias personas, muchos de ellos mis alumnos, me sugirieron que creara una secciòn dentro de cecilmundo para publicar mis obras de docencia de idiomas. Dado que la cantidad de documentos de explicaciones, ejercicios y exàmenes de inglès son muy numerosos porque tengo màs de 30 años del ejercicio de la docencia, preferì estrenar blog con mis alumnos a como ellos realmente merecen. En este blog planetcecil no solo iràn mis documentos didàcticos de inglès, sino tambièn la producciòn literaria de varios alumnos que se destacan en las letras. Tambièn darè oportunidad a aquellos que tienen excelentes obras pero que no han logrado publicarlas ya que en mi paìs Nicaragua todo se mueve por la marrana polìtica, y si una no pertenece a determinado partido no verà jamàs publicado su opus. Tambièn tenemos la desgracia de contar con seudoeditores quienes al no conocer verdaderamente de literatura se convierten en mercenarios de la imprenta solo para llenarse ellos mismo de dinero y fama a costillas de los escritores. Todos aquellos que deseen participar en este blog, denlo de antemano por suyo. Aunque lleve mi nombre en un arranque de egolatrìa, yo soy sencillamente vuestra servidora.Cecilia

Las alas de la educación

Las alas de la educación
La educación es un viaje sin final.

La lección de física

La lección de física
Casi aprendida

viernes, 4 de julio de 2008

fourth of July



Tenth entry for the Colonel`s Scrapbook
July 4th
Were born today:
1804 Nathaniel Hawthorne Massachussetts, author (House of 7 Gables, Scarlet Letter) Too bad that Demi Moore appeared in its sugary version with the ugliest naked man I have ever seen on film(Gary who really looks like an Old Man).
1807 Giuseppe Garibaldi unified Italy, and among its followers and benefactors was the mistress of Napoleón III, Virginia Oldoini Countess of Castiglione.
1826 Stephen Foster Lawrencevil, Pennsylvania, composer (Oh! Susanna, Swanee River).How could USA be so ironically cruel as to have let this guy die in poverty with only 38 cents in his torn pocket? Well that is capitalism for you! Now he has no use for the Stephen Foster Memorial at the University of Pittsburg.
1776 Declaration of Independence-US gains independence from Britain, but nobody signed until some time later, because they were scared to death that old fart King George III the Cuckoo would accuse them of treason while running around in his pissed nightgown through his palace.
1826 John Adams & Thomas Jefferson 2nd & 3rd presidents, die . How patriotic maya politician be in an effort to do things properly?1831 James Monroe 5th president, dies, but not his shiver-inspiring doctrine

1884 the Statue of Liberty was presented to the US in Paris.The government later was so grateful that if Hungarian-born Joe Pulitzer hadn`t started a campaign to raise funds for the platform, the “French broad” with the spiky crown would still be lying in pieces in its different crates.


" The bigger the bankroll, the tighter the band around it. "

Fireworks, but not because it is particularly today. Fireworks because I have managed to be again with you, my reader not to forget also my muse, the reason but never the excuse. In love which is a minor god we trust, it even rhymed this time.
It is a Friday, a fourth of July and fireworks may be breaking out like hordes of fireflies over in USA. But I have been having fireflies in my fingertips and fireworks in my eyes for ten days, since I first became the lighting rod towards somewhere in the middle of not exactly a Bumblebee`s Flight, and may old Rimsky-Korsakov forgive me for mentioning it so.
Today`s uniform already stacked into the laundry basket, the boots ready to lodge question marks, my nose still itching and sneezing, here I am again in front of the keyboard. My wish was only to say Happy Birthday USA. So I will celebrate, tip my glass of iced tea and toast you,gringos. Somehow there are some Yankees who have slipped under my skin. I remember blonde Andrea, crying when I left Strasbourg in 1981 to move to Paris. Kelly, who grew up with me in school, became a marine and died in Lebanon. Charles Ripley III, with his crazy blond Mozart-wig ponytail and screechy voice like Tedddy Roosevelt`s, fellow teacher and respected by many as a journalist. I would lie if I said I hate all Americans, because I love the everyday, common people of the United States. It is their government that I loathe. How would anyone in his right mind ever detest Mataoka(better known as Princess Pocahontas, who fell so hard and completely for her John Smith and then in order not to learn any other English name, simply married John Rolfe?)or stop admiring that Renaissance Man who was ugly Benjamin Franklin (I thank him for the bifocals that I am too vain to wear, I kiss him for his Poor Richard`s Almanac because I am not a real journalist either, and I forgive the fact that while flying the kite, he asked his unruly son to make time for him while he sat under a tree in the best moment of the storm), or stop laughing because General Georgie Washington was a founding father of the country but not of a real family because he was skimpy and he wore wig,silk stockings and dentures and wanted a reimbursement for all the money he spent while fighting for independence, but he did it once he was President? I can even forgive him his sterility, but not that he turned down an offering from the founder of the Green Berets and Rangers, Robert Rogers, when this expert warrior volunteered troops and advice.
There is so much to fall in love with in American history. I had subsequent crushes on Native American leaders, like the Flying Cross Tecumseh of the Shawnees, for whom I wrote my short story I`ll be back soon, more a tearjerker than a masterpiece of terror. Tecumseh, who was shot to death on October 5th 1813 by future president William Henry Harrison, who bragged about this murder when he went on campign. Tecumseh`s Curse, which worked on a good amount of American presidents who took office in years ending in 0, starting by the selfsame pompous ass-face Harrison who died of a pneumonia after his inaugural speech at the White House, being, fortunately. the briefest president who ever sullied the White House with his presence. The beautiful Osceola,of the Seminoles, whose wife was killed by the whites and who fought arduously to keep his tribe`s self-determination. Sacajawea, guide to the Lewis and Clark expedition(besides being the cook because back then women were fit only for the needle as Anne Bradstreet of colonial times said,or for the pot) is more valuable to me than any Hollywood sex goddess (although I still remember with so much tenderness the pictures Andre de Dienes took of Norma jean Baker, the peerless Marylin Monroe). How to forget the sensation of well- being I derived from reading the philosophical essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was introduced to me by my adored American teacher James Martin-to whom I owe my writing and perfect grammar…earlier I had all the intention of emptying my liver of bile,and I told you so. You told me, no madam, don’t you say that. Because you knew, dearest reader, that Henri David Thoreau`s Walden would stand in the way, not to mention Henry Wadsworth Longfellow`s Song of Hiawatha or even the shadow of Pluto and Catarina whom Edgar Allan Poe with his smell of moonshine inmortalized in The Black Cat. Nevermore, also chimed in Poe`s Raven, reminding me that love can turn anyone into a three-stars-on-the-epaulets version of Annabel Lee in her kingdom by the sea. How then would I have been able to remove that luscious, almost cloying feeling that reading Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman leaves behind on my feverish skin when I also imagine him,bearded,beautiful and in jeans-he was one of the first to wear the Jewish inmigrant Levi Strauss`attires for the workingman, even before anyone would dream of Bill Clinton wearing them.
As my own national bard Rubèn Darìo said in his Ode To Roosevelt, the United States is great as a nation, but only through its geniuses and poets and scientists. We as a whole world in unison hail the birth and works of Tomas Alva Edison(who was a real workaholic but killed more than 3500 dogs and cats and horses and rabbits trying to prove his direct current was better than the alternate one by George Westinghouse and forgot it was his wedding night with his first wife until he found her, neglected, crying in bed)) or Henry Ford( yes,I know, he didn`t like Jews nor unions, and he was awarded a medal by Hitler, you don`t have to remind me that) or William Sydney Porter(better known as the famous O Henry)with the surprise ending of his marvellous short stories and from who I learned so much.
When it is the fourth of July, I have to remind our neighbors up there that we are also Americans because from Alaska to the Strait of Magellan, this whole place is called America. I wish I could prove that the Greek dancer, philosopher and actor Agathon was wrong when he said that not even the gods can change the past, because that way I would ask you for permission to become a god and flush away in the toilet of oblivion the bloody stain of slavery, the burniong opf Washington in 1812, the killing of Stonewall Jackson by his own men during the Civil War even before the term friendly fire existed, the magnicide of Honest Abe Lincoln and his death on Good Friday, the eviction of the Seminoles and others in the Trail of Tears, the poking around of the surgeons into president James Garfield`s fat bearlike body when the bullet could have stayed there without harm, the carnage after the Battle of Little Bighorn just because George Armstrong Custer never knew when to stop(whether it was following his wife`s skirt or massacring Indians), not to mention when everyone accused porr Warren Gamaliel Harding of having been done away by his own wife who knew that Laddie Boy howled noisily every time Warrrrrrr`un was in the closet with Nan Britton breathing like a scared rabbit and rolling his eyes around in ecstasy) or the moment that Franklin Delano Roosevelt caught polio(although his handicap didn`t prevent him from being reelected or being adored by his little dog Fala or girls like Missy Le Hand).
I would erase Pearl Harbor even if I had to block out World War II, as I wouldn`t have a reason to kill Isoroku Yamamoto by chasing him with 16 planes as is he were some kind of Samurai X combined with Superman and the two bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not even be there because Einstein wouldn`t have come to America to collaborate on the Manhattan project, so nobody would accuse USA of terrorism propelled by a state.
But I cannot change history, and that makes me emit a wan little smile that I save for the moments when my broken spine remembers how it became that way. I want to forget the Korean War and MacArthur offering ugly Chian Kai Scheck to go and kick Mao out of China(the reason why Truman had him brought back home in disgrace so he wouldn`t continue dreaming about creating World War III), I would have let George Patton live and not simulate an accident to get rid of him, I would have let poor Dwight Eisenhower marry his driver Kay Summersby even if Mamie had kittens and Marshall would howl that he was going to make I Like Ike`s life a living hell, maybe thus he wouldn`t have arrived at the White House with such a frown and gotten all the poor squirrels removed from his golf course.I would drive the shadow on 9-11 out of existence and never have allowed troops to kill children or allow young soldiers to die in Irak. But even though I would love playing god, I am not even acquainted with what a deity would do.
This fourth of July is one hour away from ending. Fireworks, fireflies for a celebration. The birth of a nation is always bloody,but at the end there is the newborn baby. As Indira Gandhi said once, let`s not remember the labor pains with a sad expression, smile to show how you survived and how proud you are.
As a historian, I won`t emit any judgement. I just went hopscotching through the album of moments of this nation. One shining bit here, another one there, taking you with me, you who lives in my mind all the time, wherever I go.You were right, comrade. I found no bile in me. Blood, sweat, tears, smiles and sighs. Even laughter, like when Lincoln had to turn down King Mongkut of Siam`s elephants so he could help the war effort of the Union during the Civil War. It is only when the United States finally follows the words of Lincoln when he spoke of a government for the people by the people, true greatness in all senses will have been achieved.

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