Friday, June 22, 2018

The New Yorker Cover of Immigrant Children and Lady Liberty




July 2, 2018 Cover of The New Yorker

Immigrant Children cowering beside Lady Liberty

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, 
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" 

~ Sonnet "The New Collosus" by Emma Lazarus mounted on The Statue of Liberty

Tags: immigration, immigrant children, politics, Trump's Family Separation Immigration Policy

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Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Flash Fiction: The Che Guevara Night by Cecilia Brainard



I'm sharing this short short or flash fiction of mine to honor a friend who recently passed away - Evelyn Ramirez Bosch.  Evelyn, or Ram, as friends called her, was my classmate in high school and college.  One night, she and I and another friend went to Cafe Havana in the Ermita district and had such rollicking fun that I wrote about it.  

Here is the story.   

(Ram, thanks for the laughter and good times. Rest in peace! Love, BabyM)


THE CHE GUEVARA NIGHT 

by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
Part of Brainard's collection Vigan and Other Stories (published by Anvil, Kindle by PALH)
Copyright 2011 by Cecilia M. Brainard, all rights reserved


It was the night I call the “Che Guevara Night”—my last night in Manila, so a couple of girl friends and I went out to Malate, now a hot spot in Manila, to the Café Havana de Manila to be exact, Friday night it was, when streets were blocked off and the rotunda teemed with people, not just the baklas of long ago, although I understand Remedios Street still has gay bars—I am always amazed at how crowded places can get in Manila: malls, streets, packed with people night and day— and so at 8:30 we were seated in a corner of the Café, the Remedios side, looking out at the very same street my mother and I used to walk on every Sunday on our way to Malate Church—and oh, the bitter sweet memories of that time of my life when I was sixteen and living in Malate with my mother—but that night the three of us sat in that café which is not really a café but a high-priced restaurant packed with Che- memorabilia: framed pictures of the charming delicious Che smiling, smoking a cigar, and staring down at us, and waiters and waitresses looking cool with their red Che-berets, as we had our paella and lengua and two pitchers of Margarita, and because I’d be leaving the next day, we didn’t have enough time to tell the stories, by women past their prime, two still looking for Mr. Right, and talking about the Mr. Wrongs of their lives, now told with humor, although 15 years ago the same stories were told with tears, three women huddled together, laughing, with Che listening to every word and smiling, smiling, smiling.


~end~



Monday, June 4, 2018

Natural Treatments for Hair Growth



Natural Treatments for Hair Growth

GUGO or GOGO:   I have always known about Gugo Bark for hair growth and wrote about this a while back - "Cecilia's Recipe: How to Make Gugo or Gogo Shampoo."  The liquid from the Gugo bark soaked in water has been used for centuries in the Philippines as hair shampoo or rinse and is famously known for hair growth.

 Even as a girl, we used this in Cebu where I grew up in.  Now, there are shampoos and conditioners made with Gugo, but nothing beats the unprocessed liquid from the Gugo bark -- if you can find the bark at all, as this is now difficult to find.

I am fairly certain that Gugo is good for hair growth because it's a DHT blocker.

DHT or dihydrotestosterone is a derivative of the male hormone testorone which causes hair follicles to shrink and eventually die. Since men and women have testosterone and estrogen (in varying levels), women can also have DHT that harms their hair follicles.