#(I have coworkers who call out regularly for various and sometimes unknown reasons

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

area retail worker called in to tell her boss that she’s feeling terribly and probably won’t be able to come in to work today, 41 dead 113 injured

[berniesrevolution]

In Dilley, Texas, there is only one grocery store, and that grocery store is Lowes. (It is not a Lowes, like the home improvement center. It is a totally different and legally distinct store that also happens to be called Lowes.) Lowes is a place of many mysteries. I once went there to buy vegetable broth for a sick coworker, and combed the soup aisle for nearly 20 minutes before being forced to admit that no, Lowes does not carry vegetable broth. The closest thing they had was a can of something called “vegetable beef.” Lowes does, however, carry bacon-flavored pancake syrup, quite a lot of animal pheromones in spray cans (including such choice selections as “raccoon urine” and “sow in heat,” which I assume are for agricultural rather than cosmetic purposes), and a large selection of devotional candles in glass cylinders.

I had never paid much attention to the candles, but a friend of mine was in town, volunteering at the child internment camp where I work as an immigration lawyer, and he wanted to bring back a candle for some eclectic ofrenda-type situation he had set up in his D.C. apartment. He is a meticulous and thoughtful sort of person, and took a long time debating between various candidates. I had come to Lowes primarily to buy Cheez-Its, and was getting impatient. I picked up a candle at random. “How about this one?” I said.

The candle had a picture of a Little Lord Fauntleroy-type in a plumed hat and a white ruff, with a pink seashell pinned to his cloak. I glanced at the label on the back. Glorioso Santo Niño de Atocha, it said, patrón de las que están injustamente en prisión, protector de viajeros y que das la mano al que se encuentra en peligro…

I didn’t know anything about this saint at all, despite having grown up Catholic, so I looked him up on my phone. I soon discovered that he was not really a saint, per se, but a special Limited Edition version of baby Jesus. Wikpedia offered up the following backstory:

In the 13th century, Spain was under Muslim rule. The town of Atocha, now part of Madrid’s Arganzuela district, was lost to the Muslims, and many Christians there were taken prisoners as spoils of war. The Christian prisoners were not fed by the jailers, but by family members who brought them food. According to pious legend, the caliph ordered that only children under the age of 12 were permitted to bring food. Conditions became increasingly difficult for those men without small children. … Reports soon began among the people of Atocha that an unknown child under the age of twelve and dressed in pilgrim’s clothing, had begun to bring food to childless prisoners at night. The women of the town returned to Our Lady of Atocha to thank the Virgin for her intercession, and noticed that the shoes worn by the Infant Jesus were tattered and dusty. They replaced the shoes of the Infant Jesus, but these became worn again. The people of Atocha took this as a sign that it was the Infant Jesus who went out every night to help those in need.

This all got me rather excited, because I am very fond of medieval history, and regularly drive around rural Texas blasting 13th-century Spanish pilgrimage music. Who would’ve thought that a little vestige of the medieval world would turn up in my local grocery store? Secondly, what better patron for someone who works at a jail for child refugees than a child-saint who defends both travelers in peril and the unjustly imprisoned?

And that was how I first ended up buying a Holy Infant of Atocha candle for my kitchen table.

Later, when I researched the matter further, I found out that the Wikipedian history of the Holy Infant was—shockingly—likely incorrect. The medieval origin story was a post hoc invention, an attempt to give an older European pedigree to a wholly Mexican tradition. The Holy Infant’s mother, as it turns out, was an authentically medieval character: Holy Mary of Atocha appears in several of the 13th century Cantigas de Santa Maria (a.k.a. the sick beats currently blaring from my Kia Forte), mostly as a patroness of field workers. When her shrine at Atocha was selected for special favor by the Spanish monarchy in the 17th century, she was transformed from a saint of the people into an emblem of Spanish governance. It was in this capacity—as a defender of Spanish colonial might—that Mary of Atocha found her way to Mexico. Sanctuaries in her name were built in the state of Zacatecas, in Fresnillo and Plateros.

But through some obscure evolution of local devotion, it was the image of her child, the Holy Infant, that became the primary locus of worship. The Holy Infant of Atocha eventually came to be revered as a protector of ordinary people, especially of miners, travelers, and prisoners. An 1848 novena written by one Calixto Aguirre was instrumental in popularizing the cult of the Holy Infant, and the cover illustration of the printed pamphlet version was the first to show him as a pilgrim rather than a prince. Instead of a crown, a globe, and a scepter—the traditional iconography of power—he had a big hat, a food basket, and a traveler’s staff with a gourd hanging from it. The first episode of the novena tells of a legal miracle.  It begins with the tale of a poor woman by the name of Maximiana Esparza, who wanders to four different cities, seeking succor. In each city, she is imprisoned for her malas costumbres—some unspecified bad manners—and, having no family or other advocate to speak on her behalf, she languishes for years in prison in each place. At last, after being in prison a year in Durango, she prays to the Holy Infant of Atocha:

…who listened to her kindly and took her out of her captivity; for in all the time that she had lived there, there was nobody who would defend her, until the Holy Child of Atocha, dressed as a handsome youth, visited her in that prison and gave her some bread in the name of his mother, saying to her that same afternoon she would see the judge and he would take up her case, which caused no little amazement among the rector and the other inmates; and when the time arrived that the Child had named, she was set free.

Mary of Atocha, the former people’s saint, may regrettably have become more conservative in her waning years, but she nonetheless succeeded in giving the world an even more radical son. We should all be so lucky!

It’s actually pretty absurd that I knew nothing about the Holy Infant of Atocha until a few months ago. Once he was on my radar, I soon realized that he’s a pretty standard figure in Mexican and Chicanx Catholicism. But I stumbled into immigration advocacy three years ago knowing next to nothing about Latin American cultures, and even now there are huge gaps in my understanding. My Spanish, too, is still pretty atrocious. I have been working at it for three years, but it’s like speaking through a mouthful of broken glass. I muster my words with pain, and my meaning comes out all mangled. I now feel a strong affinity for all those immigrant grandparents who understand English perfectly and never learn to speak it; I am sure I would be just the same if I were ever to immigrate to a non-English-speaking country. I often feel that any bilingual person, with or without a law degree, could do most of my work a lot better than me. But I am here, so I do my best.

Sometimes I wake up in the mornings very anxious, usually when I have to draft a big court filing or an important request to the asylum office, to try and stop a detained family’s deportation. I come up with soothing little rituals to ease my transition from fretful sleep to focused work. I put on some music. I make a big pot of coffee. I light my Holy Infant of Atocha candle. It’s really because I like the way the candlelight makes me feel, not for superstitious reasons. I’m really not one for good luck charms, astrology, or premonitions. I remember that shortly after Trump first announced the family separation policy this summer—this was when I was still in Massachusetts, getting ready for my move to Texas—I was walking down a familiar street near my home, feeling very disturbed and heartsick. All of a sudden I saw a rabbit on the sidewalk a few feet ahead. It was standing quite still, and it let me walk up close. For a moment the encounter felt almost magical. Then the rabbit loped off, and where it had been, I saw two small baby bunnies lying dead on the pavement. When I bent to look, a little cloud of flies dispersed, then settled again. As omens go, that was some Roman-level bullshit. But I don’t think it was anything but coincidence.

The area of south Texas where I live now is teeming with strange sights, and sometimes everything I see feels pregnant with meaning. The drive from my apartment to the internment camp is only four minutes, but the road is always strewn with strange corpses. A dead dog or house cat is an everyday casualty; but I have also seen bodies of armadillos, bobcats, and javelinas, all mowed down by a speeding truck, or a passenger-bus of incoming detainees, or one of the heavy tankers that barrel continually to and from the nearby oilfields. No waste collection service ever disposes of the animals, so I watch their corpses bloat and distend and then disintegrate over a period of weeks. I have heard a rumor too that there are zebra on one of the ranches around here, flown in and kept in captivity so that deer-weary hunters can have something exotic to shoot. I’ve yet to see an escaped zebra lying dead by the side of the road, but give it time.

Also on the same road as the child internment camp, if you can believe it, there is a Texas state prison. It lies alongside a large ranch, and in front of the jail there’s a field of watermelons. Sometimes in the early morning, on my way into work, I see a group of prisoners in white jumpsuits and white caps, working the watermelon field. Ringed around them are three or four heavily-armed officers on horseback, in case anyone tries anything. The thing is so ludicrous it’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry. It’s as if this tiny town has been selected as a kind of roadside showcase of human cruelty.

(Continue Reading)

[apscufku]

Internships

I recently read an article by Matthew T Hora from Inside Higher Ed which goes into great detail of why campuses should not require students to take internships before graduation. In his article, “Internships as a High-Impact Practice” Hora states, “I’ve come to the conclusion that we need to proceed with caution when advocating for the widespread adoption of internships. Recommending or requiring that college students have them can be premature, inequitable and potentially dangerous.”

As someone who spent countless hours applying, interviewing and working at various internships, I do agree that this is a problem. Even as a business major, I went out in search of opportunities despite not needing an internship for graduation because that’s what everyone says to do. When I say everyone I mean everyone. My parents, teachers, advisors, family, and sometimes my coworkers at work had long conversations with me about internships. However, not all of those people realize how easy it is to find yourself in an internship that’s about as useful as a screendoor on a submarine. 

After mentioning that internships vary greatly from paid to unpaid, time lengths, or supervision levels, Hora goes on to say, “The second reason is that too many campuses are not prepared to offer and monitor safe, high-quality internships. Some institutions in our nationwide College Internship Study do not have adequate staff to perform the quality control needed to ensure that internships aren’t simply a requirement to check off -- or worse, a shady if not illegal arrangement with an unknown employer.” This is where Hora and I agree, but to make the reasoning why I’ll tell you a story of my first internship experience. 

One day I noticed a production company looking for a Marketing Intern on the Kutztown University Career Network (KUCN has now been replaced by Handshake) and I applied because I applied literally everywhere from KUCN listings to random internships on Google. I got a couple of bites and interviews, but nothing that turned into anything concrete. Then I heard back from the head of a production company, and his response was basically to come immediately, no interview necessary. 

Looking back, this was the first clear red flag (and I still felt that way then, but was urged by my parents to go anyway) that this ‘internship’ really wasn’t going to be educational at all. For the most part, he was really just looking for young students to give him and his son ideas for a new TV series, movie, or documentary.

The only two people who worked there were the owner and his son, so calling them a production company was a stretch. They had a gigantic office inside the converted church and most of it was filled with clutter. Other than the two of them, they had ‘hired’ six interns in total including myself. 

I say ‘hired’ because no interns got paid, but I guess when you’re not paying interns you just go with however many you want instead of a reasonably sane number. So every day I was there,  we sat around and researched various ideas from books that were coming out soon. Once everyone was ready we presented what we found to the owner and his son, but this only happened once a week at best. 

Usually, there would be someone missing, or I would come too late in the day so they would do it without me, and after we “presented” he would let us leave. So I would drive all the way there (about 45 minutes from Kutztown) to spend less than an hour doing anything and then leave. On the days we didn’t get to immediately leave after, the owner of the production company would lecture us on various random subjects dealing with producing media. Admittedly, this was the most interesting thing that he did, but since I was a business major he expected that I knew every legal term for anything you could possibly think of. He would regularly get annoyed when asking me questions about liability insurance, contracts, or abbreviations of legal terms that I had no idea what they were. 

Instead of just telling me like any sane person might have done, he would get increasingly more agitated until I found the answer on Google. To this day, I’ll never understand why he thought that my business degree included a law degree as well, but that’s what happened. 

Most days I spent talking to another one of the female interns, who spent more time there than I ever did, and occasionally he would buy everyone pizza. In a nutshell that was that entire internship. Can I say that I gained useful knowledge or experience from going there at least twice a week? Nope. Would I use this experience on a resume? Nope. 

So when Matthew Hora states, “unfortunately, too many institutions don’t have the infrastructure to ensure that all internships are, in fact, high-impact practices,” I get that. No one should have to listen to a slightly psychotic old man get agitated at them for not knowing every legal term in existence. 

That being said, I don’t agree that they shouldn’t be mandatory or that most don’t offer any real value to students. I have had internships since then that are valuable and not requiring students to gain real-world experience will just make getting a job after college more difficult. 

But there is no promise that every internship is a worthwhile experience. It’s up to students and advisors to work together to ensure that the time spent working an internship is valuable. Open communication with students is an important piece of the puzzle as well, but Hora explains other options as well, “to increase the prospects that an internship is truly a form of experiential learning, career services offices and departments need staff members and routinized procedures for recruiting and screening employers, ensuring that an educational component exists in students’ work, and for monitoring and evaluating students’ experiences and performance.” 

In my own experience as an intern, I’ve learned that internships that are paid usually have some sort of structure, or system involved to ensure that you are actually doing valuable work. If a student is applying to an internship that doesn’t have clearly defined goals, that may be a sign that it’s not going to be educational at all as well. I believe being aware of these potential problems could help ensure that students can find internships that help them in their future careers. 

~Samantha Tice, APSCUF-KU Intern Fall 2019

Works Consulted: https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/09/23/campuses-should-proceed-caution-when-it-comes-student-internships-opinion