La Vida Yaya

Las fundadoras, Laura Rebolloso and Martha Gonzalez. When the lead singer of my favorite band comes a-calling for a special request to write about her new project, there is no way a super-fan can say no! As much as we are hounded to death to financially support everyone else's jogathon, spring break trip to Nepal, or buy magazines from guitar-playing Xanax junkies, once in a while comes a project that you wish you could fully fund on the spot. Alas, being $9,980 short, I'm doing my part and blasting this far and wide. Aside from being a Chicana singer/songwriter extraordinaire for the band Quetzal , Martha Gonzalez is also one educated chica. In 2007, Martha was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to head to Veracruz and write songs from a feminine perspective along with collaborator Laura Rebolloso, founder of Son de Madera , a son jarocho group in Veracruz. There Martha and other local women musicians gathered around kitchen tables and living rooms, multitasking songwri...

Mom is always right. Whenever you are at a crossroads or run out of ideas, just remember that Mom is always right. I say this as I sit here with my mom's home remedy for the cold, a warm tea made from lemon juice and honey. After a week of taking the dreaded "Western medicine" made of 1000 chemicals that may increase the chances of growing a monkey tail out my butt, I decided to return to Mom's advice and make the lime juice, honey tea. I added apple cider vinegar for good measure. That's a tip from the Mother of healthy living Patricia Bragg . (Check her stuff out at bragg.com ) While Patricia knows all there is to know about healthy living, I'm not quite ready to go on the raw food diet just yet. So I'll settle for the quick fixes, or little gems of wisdom my Mom has passed down to me now that I'm a mom. I suffer from sore throats quite a bit so when Mom's in town, she makes a horrendous concoction of garlic, red onion, lemon juice, and honey. ...

I don't know if I was just born this way or if it was the way I was raised, but I have a secret fascination with talking to old people. I'm not talking mere card-carrying senior citizens. I love talking to people 70 and above.  I've yet to have the pleasure of chatting it up with a centenarian but I'd love to one day. The closest I got was in high school when I had to put in some volunteer hours in order to meet the requirements of a school club. While other kids were tutoring kids and helping at homeless shelters, I was wheeling sedated seniors around a local nursing home. There were no fun stories there. Just funny yet sad incidents of saggy old men walking around with their pants around their ankles or the little old lady that tried to make a run for it but instead got scared and started yelling from outside the emergency door. Fun times. Maybe it's the ache in my heart for my long gone grandfather whose memory brings me to tears on occasion. That doesn't q...

By the time you get to my age, you start losing people in your life that are near and dear to you. It's surreal to think that people you've shared wonderful times with are no longer with you. I don't know if I even comprehend it all or if I just refuse to think of their absence as permanent. Maybe my belief in life after death helps me to remember that I will see them again someday. I expect my older relatives and friends of  the family to pass on without much of a tear drop but when it happens to someone young or under 65 even, it hits hard. You feel  time stop, your skin tingle, and your pulse race when you get the news. I often think about what happens after you die or what will my family do with my body. Will I be buried or burned. Will my daughter carry around my ashes in a locket or will I be put up on a mantle for the cat the tip over. Maybe someone might find my bones 1,000 years from now to study and they'll name me Lucy. Or worse, I'll be flooded out of m...