Pacaya!

This morning I saw in our local paper a little article about a Central American volcanic eruption--Pacaya, near Guatemala City. A dear family friend lives near there (!) so of course alarm bells went off in our heads...went on line to find out a bit more...sent e-mails and still waiting to hear back...

The ash and sand have covered the capital city; like an echo of Iceland's recent eruption, Pacaya's activity has closed the airport, one of Central America's busiest:

(above cartoon from today's Prensa Libre,

one of Guatemala City's major newspapers...

rough translation: the little Guatemalan volcano saying

to its Icelandic 'big brother' :

"did you see that?--I can do it too...)

As if the volcanic activity isn't enough, the first Pacific tropical storm of the season has slammed into Guatemala and El Salvador, adding to the damage...The government of Guatemala has declared a two-week national state of emergency...

A hard bargain, living in volcanically-abundant Central America--the mountains are home to some of the most fertile farmland in the Americas, and population pressures push people ever further up the slopes...

Pacaya was dormant for most of a century until the mid-1960's; since then it's been periodically active...

When my wife and I were last in Guatemala in 2006, we stayed with a dear family friend who lives not too far from Pacaya. Below, a view of the steaming volcano from the highway near her town:

...and this view, from her neighborhood; abundant evening steam from the summit:

Several years before, on our first trip to Guatemala in 2003, S. and I ended up hiking up Pacaya...in sandals--a long story, involving miscommunication and a last minute change-in-plans on the part of our local 'guides'.


We were miffed at first, thinking of our comfy protective hiking-boots, sitting lonely and unused back in town as we trudged up the pumice-strewn trail...But the views from the summit, (2552 m., 8373 ft), even on a cloudy day--the roof of the world! Totally worth the scraped toes...

(The volcano in the distant background is the Volcán de Agua, on the other side of which is the city of Antigua; that peak--3,760 m (12,336 ft)--has been blessedly inactive since the mid-16th century.)

S. jokes that in the photo below, her Pacific-NW-complexion glows like neon against the black sand below the crater's summit...

Below--the view from Pacaya down towards the farmland of the Departamento de Escuintla:

...such a beautiful country, blessed and cursed by its volcanoes...

...hoping to hear back from our friends soon...

(So far, in addition to the airport closure, about 1800 people have been evacuated from villages on the slopes of Pacaya, and three people (including a journalist) have been killed directly from the eruption...And then from the subsequent tropical storm, 13 confirmed deaths, but 74 thousand evacuees...)

Cha-yu--libertad, liberté: summer!

...another school-year has come to its end here in Tucson. Today was my last day 'with kids;' tomorrow there's the turning in of grades, classroom-tidying-up, etc...There will be some committee-work this summer, but without students. So: freedom!

One of my summer-goals is to dive back into my study of Korean, which got put on the backburner this past school-year, since I had other teacher-certification courses to work on while teaching full-time. My linguistic frustration in Korean is that for years now I've been on a 'plateau'--the ability to have 'real conversations' remains elusive, whereas random vocabulary words will pop into my head unbidden. Thus, 'cha-yu.'

Vive les vacances!
I've been teaching high-school for the better part of a decade, now, and I've never 'needed' summer more than this year. I'll like my job (kids) again, come August...

Earlier this month, my mother came for a visit--a 'business-trip,' this time, since she ended up buying a house. With it being a buyer's market right now, and since she plans to retire here in a couple of years, this plan seemed to make sense: Mother buys house, then son and daughter-in-law paint and 'take care' of it (aka rent) until Mom finally moves Out West. (Also, this means--gasp--we're putting down ROOTS here in Tucson...)

So--another summer of moving. June will be populated by paintbrushes, dropcloths, and cardboard boxes in a U-haul. Logistically logical, this moving-plan...but bittersweet: adios to having Sabino Canyon as 'our backyard.' Alas...

The new place does have many perks--more space, a neighborhood salt-water pool, and a walled backyard where we'll be able to grow vegetables! (Here, where we've spent the past year, squirrels and javelinas have eaten everything on our patio--except for geraniums and rosemary.) And for morning runs, there is a dry-riverbed nearby--really, it's prettier than it sounds...And Sabino Canyon will only be a ten-minute drive away... 

So, before we move, I'm trying to enjoy our mountain backyard daily. Yesterday afternoon, after work, I biked into the canyon with my camera...
Plenty of water, still, in the canyon--some evening reflections:

...evening light--fun to 'see in color' and 'in b&w.' 
 No more papers to grade tonight, so time to play in the digital darkroom...

...and while doing this,
I remembered a photo from when we were in Antigua, Guatemala, four (already!) years ago:

(Original color, sepia, b&w, negative: Hokusai's numerous views of Mt. Fuji inspire me...

The Volcán de Agua and the colorful architecture

of Antigua loom ever-present in my mind...)

...and now, as the 100-degree reality of Tucson's summer edges closer,

 a bit of Washington-dreaming,

with a volcano of the glaciated sort: 

 

...now: must be "accent-less" in AZ if you're going to teach...

As if AZ's public image in the rest of the country weren't bad enough already,
here's something else:

===================================================
Arizona Goes After Teachers With Accents: If not 'fluent,' they can't teach English learners 
    (from this article on newser.com)
 
       Arizona is already under fire for its controversial new immigration law, and now this: Schools in the state are being forced to fire or reassign some teachers who speak English with an accent. Teachers who aren’t deemed fluent can’t be in classrooms where students are still learning English, meaning many veteran teachers are taking classes to improve their English—and if that doesn’t work, facing a move to a higher grade where English learners are fewer; about 12.5% of the state's public-school students are considered "English Language Learners."

       Some of the pronunciation problems the Department of Education notes: violet is “biolet” and think is “tink.” While one principal agrees “teachers should speak grammatically correct English,” she doesn’t see why accents should be punished. “This is just one more indication of the incredible anti-immigrant sentiment in the state,” one professor tells the Wall Street Journal. Ironically, Arizona hired hundreds of Spanish-speaking teachers, many of them recruited from Latin America, in the 1990s to teach bilingual education.

===================================

Hmm.....
So, who gets to decide how much accent, and what type of accent, is 'too much'?

When I moved to GA during my elementary school years, it took me several months to finally be able to systematically and effortlessly decipher my teachers' southern accents.
So--would they not be able to teach in AZ today?

On my drive home from work today, this commentary on NPR about AZ's new accent-targeting policy caught my ear...Listen to it and see what you think.

Intuitively, as a language-teacher myself, I know that good pronunciation is imperative on the part of a teacher...but with such a wide variety of naturally occuring and comprehensible accents, it's a slippery slope, once an agency takes it upon itself to be a 'speech-judge'--a slippery slope leading to institutionalized approval of racism and prejudice...


For more information, here's a recent Wall Street Journal article about this topic.

Watch what you say and how you say it, evidently...

Is the AZ Dept. of Education going to have to start a state-wide "My Fair Lady"-style crackdown? Good-intentions, perhaps, but TERRIBLE p.r....(Mississippi, Alabama--relax a bit, while AZ takes over as 'national-butt-of-joke'-state.)

And again--the slippery slope...
We need to add 'accentism' to our vocabulary of possible ways to discriminate, no?


Ah, Arizona: I love the landscape, climate, food...
...but alas--the human, political element; ay, there's the rub....


The saguaros are blooming now.
Enjoy. Just be careful how you pronounce...