Here is the link to my 4-minute excerpted reading of "Eat All You Can" during the Soulmaking Keats Literary Awards, on March 24:

I love being a living, breathing part of the CSM Community.  I discovered this photo on the College's website.  It was taken in October, 2012 during the President's Lecture Series when President Michael Claire featured creative writers from his own faculty.  It was a really wonderful event on so many levels.  Here from left to right: President Michael Claire, me, Joyce Luck, Autumn Newman, Jay Lehmann, Roberta Reynolds.   I LIKE this.

Flying Fish Thrill

February and March - months which, respectively, carry Aquarian Air and Piscean Water, have blown in some really wonderful writing honors for this Piscean.

*  February 6,  PositivelyFilipino.com published "Vangie Looks Back",  my interview with Evangeline Canonizado Buell during which this beautiful woman shares a retrospective of her eventful life and numerous accomplishments. 
positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/2013/2/vangie-looks-back

*  WOW! Voices Now (Women on Writing)  put me on their Open Readings list (12 writers selected)
Saturday, March 2,  9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Skyline College, San Bruno, CA

* "Eat All You Can" won Honorable Mention for in the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition's Intercultural Essay category.

Awards Reading and Reception
Sunday, March 24, 1:00- 4:00 p.m.
Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Public Library
www.soulmakingcontest.us


Hope to see you there, and here.
Smile Your Face - LSM

The Alvarado Project Closing Event of "Through My Father's Eyes", History San Jose Museum, January 6, 2013

Within this photo, multiple layers, facets, and dimensions reveal themselves the more I gaze at it.  First of all, that's Janet Alvarado on the left.  She is the Executive Director of The Alvarado Project and the Curator of "Through My Father's Eyes", a collection of 52 photos from her father Ricardo Ocreto Alvarado's work.  She and I are pictured here during the exhibit's closing event at the History San Jose Museum on January 6, 2013.  Sandwiched between us is her father's photo "Box Social"(circa 1950).  Way back in 1998, when "Through My Father's Eyes" debuted at the San Francisco Public Library, I brought my son, then seven-years-old, to the exhibit.  I gasped in wonder when I came to this photo because I discovered that my mother, Anita Alfafara Suguitan, was the woman on the left!  My mother passed away in December, 1965 and I know she would have been thrilled and honored to know that this photograph was among the other gems of Filipino-American history in this exhibit.

I decided to approach Janet Alvarado, the curator, in order to share this connection.  But there was a previous connection between me and her.  She had been a student of mine.  I'm going to leave the time stamp at "back in the day" lest readers begin taking out their calculators and dating us. The point is, when I look at this photo of a photo, it reveals all the the many layers leading up to a richly faceted promise of more to come.

I think the The Alvarado Project's board of directors had it spot on when they titled the History San Jose's Closing Event, "We Shall Return".

The arrival of PositivelyFilipino.com is a welcome and fresh e-publication.  I'm excited, honored, joyful, that my piece Eat All You Can is chosen among their many entertaining offerings in their soft launch edition.  Check it out:

http://positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/2012/10/29/eat-all-you-can

Would you LIKE to see more?   Thank you!

This is the first time, and perhaps last time (due to loss of funding) that the CSM President's Lecture Series has featured writers within its own community.  Let me consolidate all the implication, frustration, and jubilation around that statement and just say, Wow. It's about fuckin' time.

                                                      Pio de Cano, Jr., me, Albert Acena