Pancho and pancho photos

Pictures of an eventful June.

Panchito tries to count to three in spanish but gets stuck on the "y" tres.

Agustin Valdez June 6th 2010

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let the aeroplanes circle, moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. My abuelito is gone.

Virgen del Guadalupe Pillibloging

Society lost in Irony

Now that we have a black president who just won the Nobel peace prize, he uses the occasion to speak of war and why its necessary. Good god this decade ended with the irony of ironies. Starting with a president elected by a Supreme Court with Justices his dad had picked, to a Terrorist attack on 9/11 masterminded by former CIA operatives and now this slap to the mind. Have we evolved completely from 1990's cynics to full blown Ironists? Everything I see is filtered through this prism and we're so overwhelmed by it that we just let it go. Comedy news shows tell more new now, The Ratings leader of News is anything but a news channel. I hope the next decade returns us to some sense of honesty but I know how alluring the power of denial and laughing off the yucky parts of life are. Even when the true is upon us, like the WMD's in IRAQ we couldn't confront it like rational people. We've passed the buck on and allowed our lives to be more filled with the failings of another people (black men in particular are scrumptious to America, (Kanye West, Tyson, OJ, Micheal, Tiger) plus our celebrity women) than with rationally taking step to make people/things better. Why should I its all fucked up anyways or I didn't make it that way/not my fault.
For years I've been wondering if it was me who was becoming more cynical with age or if everyone was doing their damnest to get more snarky. The real irony is that our pop culture makes allusions to the reality but is swallowed up by the Irony filter that makes death the actual true behind its significance (ie the Dixie Chicks, Kanye's Katrina outburst). We all chuckle because we're all in on the joke but the joke is on us not just politically but also morally. I don't mean this in a religous sense because even though the Right Winged/Conservative Irony sphere continues it contantly needs to create its own space to not be swallowed up by the main stream Irony. In someway I blame the internet for being the breading ground to transform our cynisim into complete and uter ironic contempt. Because it appeals to our lower standards and not our higher points of humanity we are letting the zeligest of our new cyberlife (what's your status say now) blind us to the irony of being completely disconserned and disconnected in the new overly connected world. We take picture not for the picture and memory's sake but to post it up. On one level I think its good it makes people think of what they present of themselve and maybe where they want to go for "that profile picture", but our short sightedness of this cultural movement is going to be the defining point of my generation. What new spaces of personal relationship and global ones will either further endanger the world or help save it. Now isn't that Ironic.

a reflection

with the rise and fall of the great bi-racial class of famous people like Tiger woods and my recent discovery of Stuff Educated Chicano a pattern that I still haven't put my head around is surely happening. From the Super Racial/ reaction of the new Post-Racial political world by the Tea Party folks the landscape of race in the United States is completely in flux. Granted that any landscape of race is evolving and de-evolving with and in contradition to the times but in this time of the watershed moment of Obama comes the simmering and full blown reaction to the change and new found resentment of the unknown future for all cultural groups. The neutering of the left poltical culture has a void that has been capitalized on by a viciam hood obessed society and political movement that values the Loudest winnier over the morally or jusifibly correct without much limits to they're tantrums. Yes republican/ tea baggers I mean you.

New and only features

I've been remunerating that I want to write more then sporacticly on my blog but had no real focus outside of just documenting my family's travels and or pictures. The Friday Pilliblogging will be started again but the newest and most exciting for me is that I've decided to add a thematic focus to some of my writing. Apparently I'm something of a Pop Culture critic, I'd like to say I'm good at it but its really more of trying to intellectualize the rapidly and yet ever present moods and currents in our American culture through the vast regions and types. And in a way trying to capture a small sliver of what I believe is a emerging world culture, not the UN/ Legalistic/ Government/ Olympic world culture but the uneven social connections that is being sped up by technology and global events. The unique position of the United States in being at once a foundation for and antianthem to the world culture is of particular interest to me even though I don't think my writing can every give it the justice it deserves.

I had a great name for the new Popular culture piece and I can't remember it. If people would comment and leave suggestions I'd love to hear them. And now back to remunerating about the culture wars and how it effects the world we all live in.

Guillermo M. Silva

Guillermo M. Silva

Share

E-mail Visit Guest Book

Silva, Guillermo M.
Guillermo was born November 19, 1920 in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, Mexico. Guillermo is survived by sons, Jesse & Linda, Walter & Teresa, Armando & Mona, Alfonso & Beatrice, and Roger & Estella, and a brother Roberto, sisters Guadalupe and Guillermina, twelve grandchildren, two great grandchildren and nieces and nephews. Guillermo was predeceased by his wife Maria Dolores Silva, parents and brothers. Guillermo, prior to retirement, was a tradesman and completed several years of college. He was also a member of the Free and Active Masons in various Lodges in Phoenix, AZ for several decades. Guillermo was a two-time Past Master of the MONTEZUMA LODGE No. 35. F.8 A.M. in Phoenix, and a founding member and first Senior Warden of the HISPANOS UNIDOS MASONIC LODGE 83, and other lodges. Visitation will be held at Whitney & Murphy Funeral Home, 4800 E. Indian School Rd. on Sunday, November 8, from 5:00 to 9:00 PM. An honorary Masonic Ceremony will commence at 5:30 PM, followed by a Rosary at 7:00 PM. The Funeral Mass will be on Monday, November 9, at 10:00 AM at St. Francis
Xavier Catholic Church, 4715 North Central Avenue. Interment will follow immediately at Greenwood Memory Lawn Cemetery, 2300 W. Van Buren.

Published in The Arizona Republic on November 7, 2009