Carmela (Short Story) - 3/3/2016 5:51:27 PM
Thanks Ron, I appreciate the verykind words.
Carmela (Short Story) - 2/24/2016 6:11:52 AM
Wildly descriptive, your story points out the suffering and savagery of the poor and how religion and ignorance leads to fear and loathing. The lack of medical assistance at childbirth that leads to such tragedy and the mistreatment of women generally by their men through the misleading practice of machismo.
Worthy of literary awards.
Ron
Mere Simulation, Education in Mexico (Article) - 3/26/2016 7:43:37 AM
Thank you for the detailed description of public education in Mexico. Your journalistic capabilities are evident in the thoroughness of which you have described the situation.
As I read I couldn't help noticing that the educational system in the United States is placed with similar problems, although not as severe. I was quite surprised to see that Israel exceeds Mexico in the percentage of its young adults who are both "not in formal educational study or working."
Michio Kaku has pointed out that the United States retains its lead in science, technology and entrepreneurship primarily not through education, but by allowing students from all over the world to come to United States graduate schools through the "genius visa." It is not the United States educational system that keeps the United States ahead of the rest of the world, but the "brain drain" of the rest of the world's brightest who come to the country, stay, and continue to add to the country's considerable accomplishments.
I can see where Mexico's longtime colonial underpinnings and resulting caste system make it difficult for public education to thrive. Hopefully, in the 21st century. teaching will once again be valued over less noble professions and a well-rounded education will be more value than technical training.
Ron
Profits, Not Environmental Protection (Article) - 12/5/2015 8:37:31 PM
12-5-2015
Really Who Cares! Does Carlos Slims
Mexicanos Billionare$!
TRASK...
Profits, Not Environmental Protection (Article) - 12/5/2015 8:26:32 AM
From what I read, Mexico, like the United States is caught up in a dilemma. There is lip service given to saving the environment and then the rich and powerful, by greasing the palms of politicians, are able to push through projects that continue to increase profits while disregarding the environment.
Ron
How The Wife of the Jew Came About (Article) - 11/25/2015 6:04:43 PM
Thanks Eva. There are many such stories. It's the lives of ordinary people who give depth to history, their struggles, gains, migrations, pleasures but they tend to get buried under the glamor of princes and presidents.
How The Wife of the Jew Came About (Article) - 11/24/2015 8:08:28 AM
If personal experience isn't available, good research can be used to create plausible stories about the past.
Ron
How The Wife of the Jew Came About (Article) - 11/23/2015 3:14:44 PM
Your background and details about your journey shed much light on the authenticity of your writing.
The Vietnam Poems in Monkey Screams (Article) - 11/23/2015 8:27:22 AM
From what I gather, Monkey Screams is one of your books that contains not only your Vietnam poems, but those of veterans who experienced many things while serving there. I went to your website and only found Mexico in Danger. Perhaps I should've read your book before I finished my latest novel, American Mole: The Cartel. But then, it was meant to be fiction and your book may have steered me in another direction.
Thanks to my partner, whose Vietnamese father was a historian and poem translator, I was privileged to help him create better English versions of poems written by Vietnamese held in North Vietnamese prisons for resisting Ho Chi Minh. I found those poems, often scratched on scraps of paper with charcoal to be as stark and barren as the existence of the starving and sensory deprived prisoners who wrote them. These poems often focused on food, describing picking seeds out of excrement and chasing roaches for the meagerist of sustenance.
I also had the privilege of improving his translation of a famous erotic Vietnamese poem from the 18th century. Very cool.
Ron
