What I read

A little blog love from time to time is part of the virtual world of which I and Latino Like Me are a part; and in this case it is long overdue.  Here are some of the places I regularly visit online–and by “regularly” I mean I read EVERYTHING they publish, however often that might be.

Harvesting Justice
This is the official blog of an organizing called Farmworker Justice.  Based out of Washington D.C., Farmworker Justice is a 28 year-old organization working for all that is suggested by their name.  They are a great organization, very often the only online source for some of the latest news related to the politics of labor in the US.

Steven Rubio’s Online Life
I knew Steven briefly in graduate school at Cal Berkeley, where he was in the English Department while I was in History.  In our few sustained encounters he always struck me as a kindred spirit.  While he is an avid SF Giants fan (nobody’s perfect) he is also a rabid Elvis fan.  He is also smart and funny, and angry and analytical, and sweet and endearing.  His blog is true to the classic form–it is a journal about everything that interests him.  In this variety one will find a lot of writing about music, movies, sports, and culture, all of it from his unique perspective of being a baby boomer with genX sensibilities.  I have never read anything here I didn’t feel better for reading.  He’s one of my daily stops on the web–one of the things I look forward to visiting when I get online.

Immigration Prof Blog
What do you get when you create a blog where the editors are a bunch of progressive lawyer-professor-types with a deep interest in all issues immigration?  You get this, the online home of noted Chicano legal scholar Kevin R. Johnson and his team.

WWdN: In Exile
Wil Wheaton was the main protagonist in the movie Stand By Me. Today he is more often a writer than an actor, although he does his fair share of the latter , too.  As a writer (and a speaker, and a Twitter-uberstar) he is, quite simply, the King of all Geeks.  I must admit, that while I am a loyal subject of his kingdom, I am a fringe resident, toiling away in the hinterlands.  Wheaton is speaking to his more loyal subjects when he writes about RPG and more technologically-related matters.  I am only geek enough to know to use the acronym “RPG” for “Role-Playing Game.”  But in all other ways he is a stellar representative of my own loves in my (our) generation.  His more nostalgic writing is wonderful, and he speaks about all the interests of his daily life with a sense of humility, critical sensibility, and love.  I’m sure his blog gets somewhere in the vicinity of 1 million hits a month or so, so the last thing he needs is blog love from me, but this is one of my favorite things online.

The Hispanic Fanatic
This is the alias-blog of writer Daniel Cubias, whose work is often featured on the Huffington Post.  Here he writes about his life and issues relating to Latinos, all from a witty and truly critical perspective.  As a college professor in my line of work, one of the dangers can be a kind of intellectual elitism where you can listen to what people are saying because they aren’t saying it with the same rigorous analysis embedded in your discipline.  One of the things I love most about the HF is his accessible and straight-forward way of discussing topics which are often complex and serpentine.  This is a thoughtful blog for the masses, on topics the masses need to better understand.

Frank Lloyd Wrong
If I were to try and sum this blog content up, I would say it’s part “Cathy” (the comic strip), part Lewis Black, and part heroin.  Maybe it’s what’s left over after Lewis Black beats Cathy with a stick after snorting heroin.  I dunno.  This is a blog that is seemingly always personal and often angrily or depressingly or humorously so.  Some of the funniest things I have ever read online have been on “Frank’s” blog.  These little gems have been funny because they have such a core element of truth.  I read this whenever he posts, and each time I find little pieces of my generation surviving in the chaos of right now.

There are also a bunch of news sources I read every morning, but most of those are about me picking and choosing what I read.  I check out Racewire, the blog for the magazine Colorlines; I subscribe to the feed of NPR stories on race; Racialicious often has things worth reading; and, of course, I try and check out the LA Times and NY Times websites.  Most of the rest come to me as a set of Google news feeds: I have one set-up for all stories using the words “latino OR latina OR hispanic AND immigration” and a bunch others like that.  It’s a cool way to get the stories that mostly interest you.

Oh, and I also subscribe to the feed of the LA Times Obituary listings.  My fascination with death–in particular of the famous–knows no bounds.

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