Feliz!

Some of you know about my monthly mission at work. On the first Wednesday, I am in charge of finding an appropriate (read: shortish, positive, lovely, timely) poem to read at our birthday celebration. Luckily, being a creative writer, I have creative friends, and though I'm not much of a poetry reader, I have friends who read poetry regularly. I enlisted their help to come up with twelve relevant poems to read throughout the year.


January - Wallace Stevens "The Snowman"
February - e.e. cummings "i carry your heart with me"
March - Lucy Larcom "March"
April - JT "Underwhelmed"


And we come to May. May. Beautiful May. What an opportunity for a poem about flowers or lovely weather and spring, or new life or family or something wonderful. I had planned to go with "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" - an easy reach. 


Until we found out that our monthly birthday celebration fell on Cinco de Mayo. Urrrrrrrrnh (that's the sound of a car hitting its breaks too hard and skidding a little).


Luckily, after much scrambling, I decided upon the poem "Bird" by Pablo Neruda. Pablo Neruda was a poet and activist, and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in literature, and he is considered one of the most influential spanish writers in the world. I also learned, at least according to Wikipedia, that he always wrote his poetry in green - the color of esperanza, which means hope.


Part one, down.


A resident also stopped by and asked me to maybe talk a little bit about Cinco de Mayo and the history of the holiday. For those of you who don't know, the holiday celebrates an important battle, the Batalla de Puebla, which is took place about a hundred miles outside of Mexico City. This was an instrumental battle which lead to Mexican independence from Spain in 1821. Mexican Independence day, celebrated in September, is a wildly celebrated national holiday. We're talking dancing in the streets.


But, if Mexicans celebrate Independence Day in September, why do we celebrate Mexican Independence day in May (or at all?).


WELL. Apparently, in the 1960's, some California State University students decided that, inconjuntion with their newest program of study, which was about hispanic heritage.They wanted something to recapture their history and identity and decided that the Battle of Puebla was symbolic and they could connect it to their struggle for the formation of a Chicano Studies program at the university. Thus, Cinco de Mayo, a celebration of mexican heritage, food and drink was born - and it's celebrated almost exclusively in the United States.


Good to know.


Salud!