Ellen Ochoa has earned a special presidential honor…
The 65-year-old Mexican American engineer, former NASA astronaut and former director of the Johnson Space Center is among the recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the nation’s highest civilian honor. The White House last held a ceremony in July 2022.
In 1993, Ochoa became the first Hispanicwoman to go to space when she served on a nine-day mission aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Ochoa became director of the center upon the retirement of the previous director, Michael Coats, on December 31, 2012. She was the first Hispanic director and the second female director of Johnson Space Center.
But Ochoa isn’t the only Hispanic person recognized this year.
Teresa Romero is also being honored.
The Mexican immigrant and activist is the president of the United Farm Workers and the first Latina to become president of a national union in the United States.
She has secured key victories to improve the lives of the workers who feed and fuel our nation.
Other honorees include Phil Donahue, Michelle Yeoh, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), former Vice President Al Gore, former Secretary of State John Kerry and former senator Elizabeth Dole. Jesuit priest Gregory Boyle, the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, also will be honored.
Others on the list include Clarence B. Jones, the civil rights activist and lawyer who helped draft Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech; swimmer Kathleen Genevieve Ledecky; educator and activist Opal Lee; astronomer Jane Rigby; and LGBT activist Judy Shepard.
Being honored posthumously will be Medgar Evers, former senator Frank Lautenberg and multi-sports legend Jim Thorpe.
Warner Bros. TelevisionGroup, DC Entertainmentand Warner Bros. Home Entertainment are joining forces for DC in D.C., a pop culture Martin Luther King weekend event that merges the worlds of entertainment and public service in Washington, D.C.
DC in D.C. brings together stars, including the Puerto Rican Marine-combat-veteran-turned-actor and Gotham star, as well as producers from WBTV’s DC TV series, including Arrow, The Flash, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Gotham, SupergirlandFreedom Fighters: The Ray, with DC comic book writers and artists, along with invited guests from politics, government service, business academia and more.
The event, which takes place Friday, January 12 and Saturday, January 13, will explore the intersection of comic books, culture, entertainment and enlightenment through a series of panel discussions open to the public.
Events will take place both days at the Newseum, and will culminate with the world premiere screening of the upcoming DC seriesBlack Lightning in the Warner Bros. Theater at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
A party will follow at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
In addition to Cortes, participants include Black Lightning stars Cress Williams, China Anne McClain, Nafessa Williams, Christine Adams, Marvin “Krondon” Jones III, Damon Gupton and James Remar — along with executive producers Salim Akil & Mara Brock Akil; along with executive producers Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter, plus TV series stars Caity Lotz (DC’s Legends of Tomorrow), Candice Patton (The Flash), Danielle Panabaker (The Flash), Russell Tovey (Freedom Fighters: The Ray) and others to be announced.
Hayley Orrantia’s career’s not dead… It’s booming.
A new trailer has been released for the sequel to God’s Not Dead, the faith-based film starring the 21-year-old Mexican-American actress/singer.
The original film, released last year, earned more than $60 million on a budget of $2 million.
God’s Not Dead 2 stars Melissa Joan Hart as a school teacher who ends up in a lawsuit for answering a student’s question about the similarities between Jesus’ teachings to those of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi.
In addition to Orrantia and Hart, the film also stars Ernie Hudson, Jesse Metcalfe, PureFlix CEO David A.R. White, Sadie Robertson, Robin Givens, Maria Canals-Barreraand the late Fred Thompson in one of his final film appearances star alongside cameos by Pat BooneandRay Wise.
Richard Blanco has officially entered the history books in the most poetic of ways…
The 44-year-old Cuban-American poet became the first Latino and first openly gay poet to read during Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration on Monday.
Blanco, the fifth poet to read at a presidential inauguration wrote a new poem for the occasion. Entitled “One Today,” the poem garnered warm words from Obama and Beyonce, who sang the National Anthem, at the event.
The poem, in keeping with Blanco’s work, features loose, open lines of mostly conversational verse, a flexible iambic pentameter stanza form.
The poem follows America over the course of one day, from sunrise to sunset. It mentions Blanco’s working-class origins in mentioning his father “cutting sugarcane” and his mother toiling in a grocery store “for twenty years, so I could write this poem.”
The poem features a mention of real-world events elements like the reference to the Newtown, CT, shootings in “the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain/the empty desks of twenty children marked absent/today, and forever”; the mention of “the Freedom Tower” and to Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.
In the poem, Blanco spans as much of the nation as he can, filling the poem with the sights and sounds of urban, suburban and rural landscapes and cities. He consistently returns to the notion of oneness — that on this one day in time like we do on all days, we all gaze up at “one sky, our sky” to write our hopes, dreams, frustrations and elations.
Here’s the text:
One Today
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.
My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.
Poet Richard Blanco is the author of City of a Hundred Fires, Directions to the Beach of the Dead and Looking for the Gulf Motel.
Nico Tucci/Courtesy Richard Blanco
All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches 2
as mothers watch children slide into the day.
One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.
Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling, or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open for each other all day, saying: hello
shalom, buon giorno
howdy
namaste or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me—in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.
One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound 3
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together
He ranks as one of the greatest guitarists of all time… And Santana could soon find his name on the New York Times bestseller list.
The 65-year-old Mexican-born rock guitarist has signed an agreement with Little, Brown and Co. to write a tell-all memoir, according to The Associated Press.
Santana, who has won 10 Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards,learned to play the violin at age five and the guitar at age eight while living Mexico. Following his family’s move to San Francisco, he was also introduced to a variety of new musical influences, including jazz and folk music, and he witnessed the growing hippie movement centered in San Francisco in the 1960s.
“The ’60s were a leap in human consciousness. Mahatma Gandhi, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Che Guevara, Mother Teresa, they led a revolution of conscience,” once said Santana. “The Beatles, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix created revolution and evolution themes. The music was like Dalí, with many colors and revolutionary ways. The youth of today must go there to find themselves.”