priceless!

$125- additional phone charges for calls to swing states such as Nevada, Colorado, Virginia a week prior to 2008 presidential election; $500 per night hotel room in D.C. for the inauguration (which we passed on); 50+ hours spent researching online for photos and details on Obama’s half-sister and her family, Obama’s Hawaiian years and connection to the Asian-American community, including 3 cabinet and senior staff members. Today’s NY Times had an article on the first family’s diverse extended family. President Obama’s sister and brother-in-law campaigned with them in the summer. At the inaugural parade, the prez and first lady made the hawaiian hand symbol called shaka as his high school’s marching band passed. This next-to-last shot in the  set below is of Sasha with her Secret Service sitters when her parents spent their annual Christmas in his home state of Hawaii. The last one is of Obama and the Special Assistant to the President, Eugene Kang.

 

The other 3 women of Obama’s life—his girls and his sister.

 

But best of all is this priceless picture of Sasha during the inauguration… that cute smile, irresistible. many of us live vicariously through her and her sister as they wade through their white house life…see her standing on the mini-podium meant for the inaugural speakers. 

TODAY IS OUR TIME…rise up we born-again Americans!

Today is a day bled for and built on the back of many a stolen lives, sojourned by millions of native and immigrant dreams for accountability to our fragile and human pursuits of happiness. 

 Today is OUR generation as teens, twenty and thirty year old Americans wake up to an islander who would be king no longer of an Empire. 

Rise up this very morning, we born-again Americans.

-Ian F. Hinonangan (1.20.09)

 

we are praying for you uncle barry

as obama becomes the 44th president, we pray for his safety…and that he will continue to have the grace to keep his promises to those in the margins: end the war, revive the economy and repeal the don’t-ask-don’t-tell military policy. 

this is a photo of uncle barry with his niece, Suhaila, during the memorial service for his grandmother (her great grandmother) in hawaii on christmas eve 2008. they spread her ashes in the Pacific. she is the same little girl behind Barack, sleeping, during the “We Are One’ concert at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday. (Below is a photo of Barack’s sister, brother in law and niece waving to the crowd after the pre-inaugural concert. Suhaila must be freezing!) Thanks HBO for the free broadcast. We saw it in L/E/S at nanay and tatay’s—what a sweet way to savor our November victory. 

I love my Quakers…

Sasha and Malia will be attending Sidwell Friends School as their dad takes office as the 44th President of the U.S. My first exposure to the Quaker philosophy was during my first year law school internship at the American Friends Service Committee’s Immigrant Rights Program in Newark. I have always admired  how Quakers “draw strength from silence—and from the power of individual and collective reflection.” (See, the rest of Sidwell’s philosophy below.) I have been looking into attending a Friends Meeting in NYC or New Jersey with Julius (the Quakers’ version of a Sunday service).

Sidwell Friends School’s Philosophy

Sidwell Friends School is an educational community inspired by the values of the Religious Society of Friends and guided by the Quaker belief in “That of God” in each person.  We seek academically talented students of diverse cultural, racial, religious and economic backgrounds. We offer these students a rich and rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum designed to stimulate creative inquiry, intellectual achievement and independent thinking in a world increasingly without borders.  We encourage these students to test themselves in athletic competition and to give expression to their artistic abilities.  We draw strength from silence—and from the power of individual and collective reflection. We cultivate in all members of our community high personal expectations and integrity, respect for consensus, and an understanding of how diversity enriches us, why stewardship of the natural world matters and why service to others enhances life. Above all, we seek to be a school that nurtures a genuine love of learning and teaches students “to let their lives speak.”

Board of Trustees
Sidwell Friends School

**Our kid will go to a Friends School someday. Ug maka afford? It is free to dream…

an ode to the crowning of america’s first black and hawaii-born prez

A poem to commemorate Obama’s historic inauguration next week. I wish I could be there but duties at work calls. I have written this homage:

For the Islander (who would be King)

For the islander

who would be king

A crown—neither of thorns

nor Ivy laurels,

but of leis,

to signal t e c t o n i c

s   h   i   f  t  s

not only in images

but

paradigms

 

as stolen lives and lands

t e m p o r a r i l y

h  a  l   t

the Pacific’s Rim of Fire

and rebirths

all people

under no Empire 

but

one sun.

 

-Ian F. Hinonangan, Esq.

11.25.08

First 2009 art brunch at our gallery a blast!

For more info, visit our arts blog at: http://www.artepara.wordpress.com

Year of the Ox___2009 at Ox Restaurant

Opportune and auspicious location and occasion in the heart of Jersey City. Happy New Year to all—with its attendant gains and pains. We pray that peace reigns within and without, amidst doubts, and that providence remain so we can continue to be accountable and be there for each other. We remember our elders, may they rest in peace and continue to teach us all that we have still to learn and unlearn.

Thanks Senor Santo Nino for all your love, support and hard lessons. The Trinity, sans the kid (but we hope and pray soon!), before the 2009 Eve partay + humble festivities…

Round fruits and hanging grapes for prosperity, success, blessings…

At Ox restaurant to welcome the New Year with Ken E.!