Month: April 2017

Jimmy Santiago Baca to Read at Leonardo Release Party

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By Hilary Broman

Senior Staff Reporter

As part of the CNM library authors event and the Leonardo release party, award winning poet, Jimmy Santiago Baca is scheduled to share his work.

The event will be held on April 19th from 6-8pm at the main campus library.

Many of our students read his work in their English, composition, and poetry courses, said Rebecca Aronson, English instructor.

“He is a local and national celebrity,” she said.

Aronson said that Baca is a role model and even a hero to many CNM students, faculty and staff.

“He is just such an amazing writer and he is such a force of a person,” she said, “His life experience is so compelling and I think a lot of people connect to his struggles and his triumphs.”

After Baca shares his work there will be time for questions and answers from the audience as well as a book signing.

Baca will bring books to sell, Aronson said.

Leonardo, CNM’s literary magazine, will be releasing their 2017 issue.

Four students who were published in the magazine are scheduled to share their work prior to Jimmy Santiago Baca.

The CNM library authors event is an annual event where authors come and share their work with the CNM community.

Last year was the first year that the CNM library and Leonardo teamed up to host two events in one, Aronson said.

The event was a success so they wanted to combine the events again this year.

“We loved that,” Aronson said, “It was so nice to have student readers involved.”

Previous authors that attended the authors event were Arthur Sze and Jamal May.

Food Justice throughout our community

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Story by Layli Brown, Staff Reporter.

Photos by Wade Faast, Staff Photographer.

Sociology major Joseph Cante and biology and Chicano studies major Stefanie Olivas shared their experience growing food as part of Food Justice and as members of the South West Organizing Project (SWOP).

They are working on different gardens throughout the city of Albuquerque and each garden is located at a different elementary school, Cante said.

“We started with 4 pilot schools in Albuquerque and the idea is to build a bigger coalition with all the schools in the state thanks to resources and tools donated through SWOP and working closely with Agricultura Network, ” he said.

Stefanie Olivas made an open invitation to anyone interested in starting a food sustenance program and anyone that is interested can reach out to SWOP to petition for tools and seeds to start a huerta, she said.

Most people around here grew their own food so this project is about reintroducing farming into our lives and food justice is sovereignty over land and water, she said.

Food oppression, food apartheid, and poverty can all be addressed if people would become more proactive about farming, she said.

“More people need to be going back to their roots, going back to the life of the elders who worked in harmony with the land,” she said.

Joe  Cantes makes a sincere call to bring back those aspects of New Mexican culture developed by the wise elders such as the concept of “resolano” which, he claims, is “a community exchange when people gather, and the problem solvers emerge, it’s when magic happens,” he said.

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Everyday Lorenzo Candelaria works the farm that has been in his family since the 1600’s. Candelaria starts each day with the same breakfast, a cup of Atole made from blue corn flower grown on his farm. (Wade Faast/CNM Chronicle)

Like many other land owners in the South Valley, Mr. Lorenzo Candelaria has been farming the same plot of land his family has owned and operated near the mineral rich Rio Grande for the past 300 years, this piece of land was providing food for the area at least a thousand years before, he said.

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Manuel Baldonado pulls weeds from a row of radishes. Because Cornelio Candelaria Organics is an organic farm they do not use herbicides or pesticides and require more physical work including having to weed each patch by hand. (Wade Faast/CNM Chronicle)

Candelaria describes the Acequia system he uses to irrigate his land, as an intelligent way of watering the plants because it restores the underground water tables.

He pointed out that many experts agree that a variety of produce and rotating crops is healthier for the land than farming only one crop which he claims has proven destructive to top soil fertility.

“Sacred reverence for the earth is important for the land like a women is scared, the more we learn to tend to her needs and treat her with love and respect the better we will be and longer we will live,” he said.

Candelaria said, “I am very excited about the food justice movement because it teaches children the profession of tending to the needs of mother earth for our collective survival.”

The food benefits extend to local restaurants that prefer fresh and local such as Los Poblanos, Artichoke Cafe, Farina Pizza, and Il Plato in Santa Fe all purchase from small farmers, said Candelaria.

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The food donated by Cornelio Candelaria Organics provides a source of healthy, organic and nutritious produce to local programs such as Feed The Hood. Candelaria also sells his produce at local farmer’s markets and at his farm in southwest Albuquerque. (Wade Faast/CNM Chronicle)

LGBTQ Support Group Looking for New Members

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Story by Hilary Broman,

Senior Staff Reporter

Efforts to reestablish the LGBTQ support group at CNM are currently underway, said group adviser, Mark Danley.

The group is intended to be a place where people who were lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered or questioning can safely meet, and provide emotional support for each other and educate each other in a friendly, peer-centered environment.

“I’d like to see those roles continued and possibly expanded with outreach, community service and coordination with other organizations in the Albuquerque area,” Danley said.

Interested students can contact Danley directly through his email address, mdanley@cnm.edu.

The group needs to meet the minimum number of eight members in order re-form the organization, he said.

So far, only five students have expressed interest in becoming a part of the group.

Danley thinks that it is important to have an active LGBTQ support group at CNM because right now is a scary time for LGBTQ people, he said.

“The current political environment of the country is pretty adversarial to people who don’t fit into a preconceived notion of “normal.” Trans people have been singled out recently as “boogie-men” of sorts because their gender identification does not match the gender of their birth certificate.”

Danley believes that there has been an upswing in domestic acts of terrorism and violence committed by people who support the authoritarian tone being expressed by the current presidential administration, he said.

“I think that many people are concerned about their personal safety and well-being as well as those of others.”

The group was active about a year ago under the advisement of Philip Lister, but the group fell into inactivity.

This year Lister’s schedule doesn’t allow him the time to facilitate the group so he asked Danley to take over.

“It would be great to see the group become active again,” Lister said.

Danley said that he wants to help the students in the group accomplish what they’d like to do.

“As an advisor, I don’t see my role as being the leader who makes the plans for the group. I’d prefer that the students organize and plan their activities and the direction of the group themselves,” he said.

CNM does provide designated safe space areas around the campuses for LGBTQ students such as: The Office of the Dean of Students, the Disabilities Resource Center and the Connect Centers, Danley said.

Although a specific counselor for LGBTQ students is not an official position, there are people at the Connect centers who will provide support resources.

“The goal of re-forming is not to supplant the work of these offices, but rather to act as a synergist to expand ways in which LGBTQ students may engage with the CNM Community as well as other organizations in Albuquerque and New Mexico,” he said.

 

 

Featured content graphic at the top of the post is by by Heather Hay.

Students Connect Through Poetry and Literature

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April 4, 2017. Story and Photos by Hilary Broman

Senior Staff Reporter

To wrap up the Around the World in 30 Days event Montoya Campus held an international poetry and literature reading event where students volunteered to read poems in different languages or a piece that they had written themselves.

The event took place on Thursday, March 30th and it was hosted by Jean Silesky, Spanish instructor, and Maria Deblassie, English instructor and Montoya Campus writing group facilitator.

Poetry Reading 1
Emily Bjustrom is no stranger to reading her poems in front of a crowd. Her response to those who were performing for the first time was, “I think it’s beautiful and exciting. It’s obvious that this was the beginning of something special for them.”

CNM tutor and former slam poet, Emily Bjustrom, opened by performing three of her original pieces.

Greg Cappetto, Montoya tutoring center manager, said that he enjoyed watching Bjustrom perform at a previous event so he invited her to read at this one.

“I hope she continues to write and affect the community like she affected me,” he said.

 

Poetry Reading 2
Madeleine Allerheiligen takes a breath before reading Eiel Brouillé. She has been has been studying French for five years.

Madeleine Allerheiligen, Psychology major and Montoya writing group member, read a poem by Charles Baudelaire titled Eiel Brouillé in French.

She chose to read this poem because she liked the imagery of the spring weather and how it can be cruel, soft and sweet, she said.

She also loved the rhythm of the poem, she said, a lot of poems tend to lose the rhythm when they are translated and this one didn’t.

 

 

 

Many students who read were reading their work out loud for the first time including Rachel LaPore.

Poetry Reading 3
Rachel LaPore reads from one of her many journals that she has kept over the years. She is currently enrolled in a creative writing class, surrounded by other writers.

LaPore had been writing since she was seven years old but never felt encouraged to cultivate her creative talents, she said.

“I was a real estate developer and I never knew other writers or literary people,” she said. “Writing was like a secret life.”

The piece she decided to share was about identity and the struggle to find the true essence of self, she said.
“I was nervous about sharing this piece because it has a personal meaning and I was concerned that no one would like it,” she said.

Following LaPore, many students took to the podium to share pieces of writing that they had been working on or pieces of literature that stood out to them.

 

To close the event instructor, Maria Deblassie, shared an essay from her personal blog about finding the everyday joys in life.