Left Coast Cowboys

There, I’m just going to say it: I got an F in Spanish 1B this Fall Term. Now I’m going to explain. With more enthusiasm than foresight, I signed up for both HTML Programming and Spanish 1B last fall, completely ignoring the fact that Fall Term runs right through grape harvest and winemaking season. By midterm, it was clear I wasn’t going to make it through the courses. I’d had missed too many classes when called away by “winemaking emergencies”.

No problem. City College of San Francisco is nothing if not wired. You can manage the whole administrative side of your enrollment on-line. So I fired up the website after harvest one day and withdrew from HTML Programming. No such luck with Spanish. The little “withdraw” option button that was supposed to be there wasn’t. I tried on and off for a week or so to withdraw, but the button never appeared. Not at any time. Not in any browser.

Finally, I emailed the professor, told him of my issue and asked if he could withdraw me from the course. “Sorry” was the answer. “You’ve missed by one day the window to take a Withdraw. Now I’ll have to give you an F. Unless you come in and take the Final.”

Well, let’s see. A ton or so of grapes potentially rotting on the vine? Or an F in Community College? The decision was made easier when I was told I could see the Dean of Students and petition for a retroactive Withdraw. Little did I know that our Governator’s severe budget cuts to California colleges have ensured that the Dean seems to have no regular office hours any more. Maybe we don’t even have a Dean. Maybe he’s been replaced with an iPhone App. In any case, he’s uninterested in my plight. He’s not answering my phone calls and emails.

So, I let it drop. Really, it’s not as if that F will keep me from graduate school. As for learning Spanish, I signed up to retake the course this Spring Term. No harm, no foul.

Lucy promises to make me really hit the books hard this semester.

Until Andy made a joke in front of my mother about my big failing grade. Mom, who proudly watched me make my way through years of school with mostly As, is ready to bring the whole California system of higher education crashing down over this. Her daughter with an F? Unacceptable! Worse yet, she’s worrying herself sick about it.

“You need to be concerned about this F. What if they find out about it? You know they can find out anything on the Internets. I bet I could just look up your name and that F would be there.”

“Well, Mom. Who are “they”? My friends? They’re already laughing about it. Future employers? I’m self employed and I won’t fire myself. My seasonal vineyard workers? They already know my Spanish is crap.”

“Well, it’s on your permanent record now. Someone could find out about it and publish it.”

“Okay, when Barack calls me to defend the next endangered Democratic Senate seat, I’ll practice full disclosure. I’ll tell him all about the F. And about the sex tape I didn’t make. There will be no surprises at the Oval office. We’ll take a page out of George Bush’s playbook. I’ll chalk it up to youthful hijinks. And I’ll say I’ve found Jesus now.”

But still Mom’s got me worried. I mean, this has screwed up my grade point average, which I should tell you — modestly [blushes] — was 4.0 before this unfortunate incident. In fact, it should be noted that I had As in both courses at Midterm before I dropped out. I swear on a stack of Bibles, I’m not smoking or taking drugs. Just in case you thought I’d suddenly become a juvenile delinquent a few decades too late.

In fact, I’m headed to my first class tonight in do-over Spanish 1B. I promise to study hard. Don’t judge me harshly InterWebs.

Even Oscar's pitching in to keep the family from any more shame.

Just finished my intensive summer course in Beginning Spanish 1A the week before last, and next week Spanish 1B is already looming. Thank Jobs for iTunes and iPods, because I wouldn’t have even squeeked out the B+ I got without access to iTunes Latino. Specifically, downloads of the wonderful Pop and Cumbia star Selena Quintanilla. Yes, she was tragically assassinated in 1995, only 23 and on the verge of her big Pop mainstream breakthrough, but go into the Mission here in San Francisco. If airplay is any indication, Selena lives!

Perhaps you know a little about Selena from Jennifer Lopez’s breakthrough role in the movie of the same name. Or you can refresh yourself on her story here. But you probably haven’t heard a lot of her music. As they used to say on the old American Bandstand “It’s got a great beat and you can dance to it.” That is if the Cumbia is your dance of choice.

But the best thing about Selena, from a beginning Spanish student’s perspective: she sings clearly, pronounces every syllable and you can understand the lyrics which are mostly in the present tense. Honestly, her greatest hits album should be issued along with Spanish textbooks.

In the interest of full disclosure, studying with Selena wasn’t my idea. It came from Dube our Guatemalan (or Guatamalteca, I should say) cleaning lady. She was very excited that I was learning Spanish. Less so when I tried to practice it on her. I explained that, while I found the course determination to expose us to all the different “Spanishes” of the New World laudatory, in practice it was a nightmare. Part of the course included hours and hours of audio study where we listened to native speakers and had to write (in Spanish) answers to questions about what we’d heard. Fine if the speaker is Mexican. That dialect I can get. Colombian, not so easy. Cuban and Puerto Rican, absolutely beyond me. As a Berkeleyite of a certain age, our professor had also assigned us to learn the words to some of Joan Baez’s Spanish folk songs. I like Joan, all right, but I wasn’t really feeling the Spanish stuff.

Selena's costumes, which she designed, often paid tongue-in-cheek homage to her Latina heritage. Here, she rocks the Vaquero look.

That’s when Dube stepped in with the Selena suggestion. “You should listen to Selena records. She was a Tejano and she didn’t even speak Spanish. She learned it to sing in Spanish. So she sings just like you would, with an American accent.” Hmmmm. Gringo Pop. Intriguing. So off to iTunes Latino I go to download her greatest hits. Fantastic. Easy words. Lots of repeated choruses. And it has a great beat and you can dance to it.

I was hooked. Some called Selena “The Mexican Madonna”, which I think is wildly inaccurate. Sure she was sexy and she was in constant dancing motion during her concerts. But she was American born and bred. Her Mexican father convinced her to learn Spanish and sing to that constituency. But even less Madonna-like, she always projected what she was, a very nice, sweet Tejano girl. Not rebelling against anything, just singing great music that you could dance to. Instead of rebelling against her heritage, as Madonna did against Catholicism, Selena embraced her background, although sometimes with a twist. The costumes of her bandmates and herself, all her own designs, often took playful license with her Hispanic heritage. There were bolero jackets, matador pants, ponyskin chaps and vests, Senorita ruffles. I wonder how many invitations she got to be the headliner at various Hispanic or Latino Heritage Festivals. She would have been perfect.

Selena became my refuge after too many hours trying to unravel long audio discussions of Puerto Rican history in rapid, incomprehensible dialect. When all seemed lost, I could fire up a Selena song and feel as if I was learning something.

Then came the final exam, part of which required a 500 word essay on the topic of something we enjoyed doing. First panic. I didn’t think I’d learned 500 words of Spanish in the intensive six week course. Then the inspiration: I’ll write about listening to Selena. Do you know how many Spanish words you can get out of the way just by listing the names of four of your favorite Selena songs?

So thanks, Selena. I’ve got you uppermost on my iPod in a Playlist called “Learning Spanish”. You and Los Lobos and Santana, some Tish Hinojosa, a bit of Joan Baez. But mostly you. Thanks again for the study help. It all has a good beat and I can dance to it.

For the rest of you, the available video of Selena doesn’t have the best audio, but this should give you an idea of her talent. Watch it, then download Selena’s greatest hits.

Ready for more? La Carcacha or “The Jalopy” is one of my favorites and on a subject some of my old car aficionado friends can get behind. It’s about a girl whose boyfriend drives an old beat up car, her friends laugh at him, but she doesn’t care, she loves him still because he “treats her like a Queen”.  As Selena says, “Saborcito…manos arriba!” Give it a little flavor, put your hands up!

Today the mother of The World’s Most Beautiful Baby had a full day scheduled, so Amelia May came to our house for the day. Which was good. I’ve got a big Spanish test on Thursday and could use a study partner. So the plan was to listen to the conjugation of regular Spanish verbs. Clearly, that would be as entertaining as Winnie the Pooh. Things started fine with the audio portion of my class material. Then I put on a little Mariachi music to get us both in the mood.

Interesting note: did you know it’s possible to send a baby into sensory overload in less than ten minutes? Apparently Mariachi music, Spanish verbs, ceiling fans, new surroundings, being bounced up and down in the Baby Bjorn and the addition of two yapping terriers is enough to send a baby into meltdown. But there were smiles soon through the tears and we got through Chapter Three of my Spanish text book with a few breaks for poems from Now We are Six.

Well, that’s Baby taken care of. Then Mom returned, tripped over the sidewalk outside and sprained her ankle. More tears. In retrospect, we should have applied Mariachi music and Winnie the Pooh poems.

Spanish irregular verbs are hard!

But the workbook is tasty.

Sometimes the audio exercises can bring you to tears.

But Mariachi music can always bring back the smiles.