Breathing in the Spanish -- come learn with us

It has been three days since the Mamamade sale and I am only just now feeling a little more able to write smart sentences.

The gypsy-like life of putting show booths together, meeting people, getting feedback, meeting one more Cuban in Middle Tennessee, is an exhausting thrill. In many ways, I wish we could do these fairs and festivals every weekend. They energize at the same time that they kick one in the behind.

Fortunately, there has been help on the home front. The Abuelitos, rock stars of the grandparenting world, are here to hold the fort, not to mention to videotape and cheer every move La Nena makes.

Two nights ago, she entertained us by dancing "ballet'' after dinner, though I don't think she's ever seen ballet beyond the Angelina Ballerina cartoon. Her grandfather taped it all. She also got her grandmother to hula hoop and share her chocolate ice cream bars.

And, as is the trend when they are here, the "espanish" is on fire. Full on sentences in correct tenses. Makes me realize, yet again, just how simple language learning is when it's just part of the air you breathe.

And, that brings me to this.

There's an intensive language learning camp in Nashville this summer. They're teaching five languages, including Spanish, Chinese and Arabic. They welcome folks from out of town and they welcome multi-generational family units to come and learn together. Visitors can stay at the awesome and beautiful and inexpensive Scarritt-Bennett Center. A few people I know are teaching and/or volunteering, so I am passing the word. The technique looks fun and brilliant.

Maria and I will be there. Breathing in deeply.

I said "Los Pollitos Dicen" on Nashville television, y'all

Meryll Rose, lovely hostess and reporter, Talk of the Town, Channel 5

Want to hear my Miami/Jersey/Nashville accent?

Click over to the Talk of the Town site to see the segment on Mamamade, the amazing show we are participating in on Saturday and the event for which I have done the PR.

Look for the icon with the Pollitos and the headline: "Artistically Juggling the Demands of Motherhood and Jobs."

Candela: Get your Latin on in Miami and Austin

Meet Z! The darling Nena personifies Candela, or so I am told. Pero no lo creo!
You can meet her lovely and talented mother, Marirosa, here.

In Pollito news, we've added two new stores:

In Miami: Sentir Cubano, 3100 S.W. 8th Street. 305-644-8829. It was at Sentir Cubano where my mom bought an infant Maria "Mis abuelitos son cubano'' and "Mi abuelita es oriental'' t-shirts. So, it means an extra lot to me that one can now buy Los Pollitos Dicen tees, hats and bibs there. The lovely Maria and Miguel own the place.

In Austin: Mexic-Arte Museum, a beautiful fine art museum with an inspiring gift shop. The museum is located at 419 Congress Ave. The number, 512-480-9373. If you go, say hey to the charming gift shop manager, Angela.

We've been a busy little hen.

Terremoto means earthquake in Spanish

April is just full of memory makers around here.

Two days ago we remembered the 10th anniversary of a tornado that devastated Nashville, including our former house and neighborhood of East Nashville. And yesterday was our 15th wedding anniversary. (Cheers to us!)

This morning we woke up in the darkness before dawn wondering why the cat was jumping on the bed, why the 4-year-old was upstairs jumping on her bed, and whether some espiritu had swooshed through our house rattling doors and windows.

But, the cat was asleep in the mudroom, the kid was asleep in her bed and there was no espiritu -- at least that I saw.

Earthquake. Terremoto. In Tennessee!

From The Tennessean

5:20 a.m. Friday

A 5.4-magnitude earthquake was reported 41 miles northwest of Evansville, Ind., at 4:36 a.m. TEMA spokesman Jeremy Heidt said that the Middle Tennessee area felt it but no damage is expected here in the Midstate.
Heidt said residents need to look for damage and make sure nothing has fallen.
Several people who have contacted The Tennessean, from Nashville, Franklin, Cheatham County and Clarksville, have said that they were awakened by their houses shaking, glass rattling or a sudden jarring.

This really isn't the kind of trembleque I like.
You know what I mean?

Daily love songs

I am not sure I realized just how often a little child would profess love and how uniquely special it is.

Some recent ways the 4-year-old nena has taken to telling me she loves me:

"Mami, I love jewelry, but I love you more.''

"Mami, I love you as far away as space because space never ends.''

And at bedtime, when I hand her her stuffed animals: "Mami, I don't need my animals. I only need you.''

Delicious.

La Vaca Lechera video for the nenes

La Vaca Lechera on YouTube.
(I'm the woman eating out of the condensed milk can.)

Mud Puddles and Personal Growth

Because the voices who crowd my head wear chancletas and believe "peen-aroma'' (Pinesol) is an aphrodisiac, watching this puddle jumping scene unfold last Friday nearly gave me a patatu.

"Pinworms! New tennis shoes! Pin-WORMS!'' is all I could say to my friends, the joyful mothers of these two other joyful and glorious girls.

They laughed at my distress and encouraged me to walk toward the light and lightness of Being Boonie. (I'm so lucky to have them) And, despite a muttered expletive or two by me, off the girls went, fully into the drink -- the most giant mud puddle I've ever seen. One of the moms had her camera, so the event was beautifully captured.

See the glee?


Of course, my child was the ring leader. Her clean freak Cuban great-grandmother rolled in the grave a few times, I am sure.


The lesson for Mami: OxiClean gets it all out, but the memory lasts forever.


(No sign of pinworms yet)

Fueling Latin stereotypes and busting them

Given how expertly I can sob like a true telenovela star -- ask my family, they'll tell you. I truly transform! -- I have missed my chance at super stardom and a boob job by not auditioning for Viva Hollywood!, the new VH1 "reality" series. It stars bobitas, malitas y Rico suaves cat-fighting and sheet jerking their way to estardumb.

It launched last night, but I just watched it online while I put together an order. It was delicious to see Maria Conchita Alonso at 9 a.m. on this Monday. She's glorious and likely will continue to be so if she stops injecting stuff into her face. Carlos Ponce. Meow! Walter Mercado. All I can say is Ay, Dios Mio, he's still alive?

Despite the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I have to say I felt right at home watching these people. Telenovelas have semi-melted the brains of every woman in my family (Hi, Mami! Hi, Tia!) and they provided the background noise to much of my youth. So I guess they induce a little nostalgia. But, nostalgia like how an addict might remember old binges.

Now, before I lost an hour or so to VH1, I heard a story on NPR this very morning on how the hugely famous Latina Dora the Explorer was created, mostly sans stereotype.




Excerpts:

And when it came to sketching the way Dora looked, the creative team made sure she wasn't stereotypically Latina.

"Short hair," (Producer Chris) Gifford says. "Not long, flowing hair. A little more tomboyish; a girl who was more interested in adventure and exploring than someone who thought a lot about what she looked like."

When Dora was presented to Nickelodeon's consumer-products group, Gifford says, the marketers were skeptical at first.
"There was a big concern about [the character] not being a good consumer-product property," he says.

And another about Tico, whom I have dissed in this blog:

"Tico was always sleepy," says (Brown) Johnson (of Nickelodeon). "Asleep under a tree. Our cultural consultant said, 'Not such a good idea.' A Latino character, who only speaks Spanish, the littlest character, always asleep. Just not a good idea."

The goal, according to Johnson:

“One of our goals with Dora was to position the whole idea of being multicultural as being super special.”

Gifford tells NPR that Dora is "courageous," "kind'' and "She's got unbelievable interpersonal skills."

If the entertainment industry wants to continue to attract, sell to, and market to Latinos, it really has to remember that we're not all Dora with the short hair and we're not all Charo with the coochi coochi. Most of us are kinda somewhere in the middle. More like Penelope Cruz on a bad hair day or J.Lo with baby weight.

For now, I just vote that Dora make a guest appearance on Viva Hollywood to teach nice nice.

And, it'll totally freak out guest star Cheech Marin.

If you give the Tax Man a beignet...

new orleans street music

We were in New Orleans this weekend. The daughter of our dear friends -- with whom we have traveled to Greece and Spain -- was married to a wonderful young man. The couple -- gorgeous, smart and perfect for each other -- are 25. I got all nostalgic in my joy for them, as on an April evening in Miami nearly 15 years ago I was the 25-year-old bride.

Stating the obvious: Time flies and chin hair sprouts.

During our stay, Maria danced for street musicians, had her first taste of sugary beignet (ben-YAY!) and she held the reins on a mule-driven carriage. She also gave the gentle beast a carrot and saw her hand disappear into its slobbery mouth. It was the hit of her trip to NOLA.

I, unfortunately, did not partake in my favorite New Orleans activity: Picking my meal based on the wine reduction sauce offered. We stuck to places with kiddie menus. Ah well. Next go.

Since we've been back, I have been chained to my chair. Fidgeting and freaking over taxes. (Of course, when I'm not trying to do as Eckhart tells me and just chill. Chill? Como?)

When I quit working as a rumpled reporter and launched Los Pollitos I truly believed I would somehow magically transform into someone who keeps up to date with paperwork. (If you listen quietly, you will hear the mad cackling of other disorganized, multi-tasking work-at-home moms who once were under the same delusion.) It is the part of owning a business I like least. Actually, the only thing I don't like. But, necessary evil and The Man and all of that.

I've been working on the paperwork on and off since January. Little surprise, really, since I have been working on Maria's baby album on and off since 2004.

The good news is, it will be done within 24 hours and I can move on to planning a 15th anniversary celebration, and getting organized for 2009. Or 2010.

Any organization tips, links, laughs, and beignet recipes are truly appreciated.

This one is for the small business owner. Tips.

As a small business with limited marketing and advertising dollars, I look regularly for ways to partner with people tarketing similar markets -- Latinos, new mothers, grandmothers, lovers of all things Spanish.

For the holidays of 2006, Los Pollitos partnered with two other businesses and pitched stories on bilingualism and bilingual goods to the media. A few bit. We've also joined hands with a couple of companies who sell Latin-themed goods and uploaded a press release to PR Web --hits, exposure, sales. It was through a Google search that led to a PR Web release that got one of the companies invited to insert goods into Latin Grammy gift bags. We at Los Pollitos got sales and public relations companies looking to represent us. (I do all my own PR. Thank goodness, for it isn't cheap.)

If you google around PR Web, you'll see what else we've done recently and with whom. I don't want to write too much about it right now, but I will. It's exciting stuff.

The cost is minimal. It costs as little as $80 to upload a press release to PR Web. (Now, you have to write a release, or pay someone to do it, which is around $300 to start.)

The benefit is unlimited though, as those releases stay up there forever and you can post them on your own web site and blog. Reporters and people in industries you target receive e-mailed copies. RSS feeds pick them up. My releases have gotten thousands of reads.

For three years, I've been part of a group called Mamamade. It started in my mom's group when several of us were making things and starting businesses and decided to group together to sell to each other and our friends and family. We set up in a private home two years and had amazing sales. We did it all through word of mouth. This past November, we rented a church basement and got some write-ups in the paper. This month we are having our first Spring Market.

I've been doing the public relations for it and today one of our members was on a popular morning TV program. Our group will be on another morning show the week of the sale and in a couple of local newspapers, not to mention community calendar listings.

This translates to thousands of dollars in free advertising. Thousands. If you're on camera, you can stream that video on your site for the next hundred years. It's the kind of advertising most small businesses cannot afford. All free.

The point: Sometimes, you sell better as part of a group. A good group. The media likes trends (any three things is a trend, they say) and they want some ready-made stories. Mamamade is a great story. It sells itself. I found good partners and will get great press. Good press often means excellent sales.

Who can you partner with?

Happy Weekend.

Boonie Breathing Space

The moon or the sun or some planet that messes with our mojo is most certainly in the wrong place. I read that in the newspaper the other day and therefore, I know it to be true. My mojo is a little off and I'm overwhelmed a bit -- paperwork, wholesale, sewing care tags into t-shirts -- and cleaning toilets and wiping noses. Plah.

So, here's a little "breathing space'' for today. Maria and I spent a rainy Sunday down by the river with friends. It was a delicious mental health break and I have watched this quiet little video more times than I should today -- because remember, I am supposed to be cleaning toilets.

A Spanish lesson as you watch:
rain boots -- botas impermeables.
yellow -- amarillo (and not like Texas)
mud -- fango
splash -- salpicar
spin -- vuelta