Maybe you saw the episode of Fox TV’s “House” in which the curmudgeonly lead character realizes just before a patient’s death that she’s suffering from a tapeworm in her brain. Or a scene from the new Fox show “Touch,” in which a group of African women stand up to a man who is abusing his girlfriend.

Upon reflecting on the challenging times in Arizona that we currently face in the Mexican American community, I recall my conversations with my late maternal grandmother, long time Tucsonan Josefina Encinas Padilla - a daughter of the Mexican Revolution.

Sales of iPhones, iPads, and iPods have made Apple the world’s most profitable technology company — its stock price is hovering around $600 a share, and it is now larger than the rest of the American retail market by itself.

Direct forms of political control are easy to figure out. For a time, laws and police agencies can keep things together. However, most institutions and societies depend on social control to deceive people into thinking that they live in a democracy.

For the last couple of weeks, I have been revisiting pieces that I’d written in the past. They express concerns that formed my own consciousness and they are the bulk of the over 200 articles that will compose my new book: “My Journey Out of Purgatory.”

"Your ideology was not right, was not working?" asked Congressional Representative Waxman during a Congressional hearing on the economic meltdown of 2008. "Precisely," answers Alan Greenspan, admitting his policies of allowing markets to regulate themselves were clearly flawed.

My dream was to live in Tucson. In the early 1970s I even applied for a job at the University of Arizona, but the interview invitation was withdrawn after I participated in a protest there the weekend before my interview. I woke up.

One of the most difficult things about writing is when believe they can read your mind without reading what you have written. For that I reason I have chosen to revisit a piece that I wrote in 2001 during Antonio Villaraigosa’s first mayor campaign. Recently in the struggle against censorship in Tucson and the fight to preserve effective education, a right-wing blogger for the Arizona Daily Independent has chosen to malign me and claim that I compared Mandela to Adolf Hitler – apparently she did not read the article or maybe she can’t read.

As the Supreme Court shows every sign of throwing out “Obamacare” and leaving 30 million Americans without health insurance, another drama is being played out in the quiet corridors of the Federal Reserve system that may affect even more of us.

As I mentioned in previous correspondence, CSUN MEChA and students from the Asian American Studies Department visited Tucson-Nogales on February 24-26, 2012. It was draining because of the distance, size of the group, and the intensity. As always, the Tucsonenses were gracious and made you feel like family.

I was going to let Black History Month pass without contributing an article this year. Nothing worth writing came to mind, but then I got a call from Sandra Moura, the LGBT Liaison for the Los Angeles Police Department.

Chicana/o Studies at Cal State Northridge will be taking close to sixty Latinos and Asians students to Tucson later this month. It will be our third trip as a group within a year. Friends keep saying, “That is a big responsibility; you have paid your dues; why don’t you slow down and enjoy life?”  In other words, take it easy, and let the young people clean up our mess.

The most significant aspect of January’s jobs report is political. The fact that America’s labor market continues to improve is good news for the White House. But as a practical matter the improvement is less significant for the American work force.

For the past six years or so I have heard constant threats from Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne (Canada) and Superintendent of Schools John Huppenthal (Indiana) that they were going to ban, destroy and wipe out Mexican American Studies, as well as Occupied America.

When the great Muhammad Ali was asked how many sit ups he did, he responded,  “I don’t count my sit-ups, I only start counting when it starts hurting, that is when I start counting, because then it really counts, that’s what makes you a champion.”

Recently, Vice-President Biden came to Ohio in support of President Obama’s efforts to make college tuition more affordable. Mr. Biden’s visit was reported in the January 13, 2012 issue of The Columbus Dispatch, in an article written by Joe Vardon, and headlined “Biden hits hot-button subject: college costs”.

Currently, I am putting together a book that includes my non-scholarly pieces that I have written since the mid-1980s, which I call “My Journey Out of Purgatory.” My basic method is synthesizing history based on a timeline. I line up my documents, showing cause and effect.  The study takes on meaning in the context of Tucson.  

My political prediction for 2012 (based on absolutely no inside information): Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden swap places. Biden becomes Secretary of State.

Bucks County’s Pennsbury School District has hit rough fiscal times, and is facing revenue shortfalls as a result of the recession. The district cut its budget by $3 million this year and dipped into savings for a additional $3.1 million.

Today Ben Bernanke added his voice to those who are worried about Europe’s debt crisis.

But why exactly should America be so concerned?