Javier's soccer team tied for third place

MAYSA 2006 Fall Schedules
League: M14 Rec B East F06

Team Games Wins Losses Ties Points Goals Allowed
Reedsburg Hawks 4 2 1 1 7 5 3

GDU Lightning 2 2 0 0 5 5 2

Watertown
Wolverines 3 1 2 0 3 4 3

RSC Panthers 2 1 1 0 3 3 4

Cottage Grove
Sharks M14 3 1 2 0 3 3 6

Cap City
Columbus
Explorers 2 0 1 1 1 0 2

Three Mireles Brothers on the same street in Milwaukee (but they live in Kansasville, Waukesha and Madison) at the same time without knowing it..

My brother Jesse and his wife Pat went to Milwaukee to see the Milwaukee Bucks play their home opener.





While at the games, Jesse saw someone who looked like his brother Carlos, but the guy did not have a baseball cap on, so it could not be his brother. Pat said it was and sure enough, Carlos Mireles was at the same game and they sat and ate together...





Younger brother, Oscar Mireles was enrolled in a week long seminar titled Mini-MBA Program for Non-Profit Organizations which was held in downtown Milwaukee. He drove by the Bradley Center at around the same time they walked in the building...

What do Mexicans celebrate on the "Day of the Dead?"

Ricardo J. Salvador
To cite this article in print please use the following: Salvador, R. J. (2003). What Do Mexicans Celebrate On The Day Of The Dead? Pp. 75-76, IN Death And Bereavement In The Americas. Death, Value And Meaning Series, Vol. II. Morgan, J. D. And P. Laungani (Eds.) Baywood Publishing Co., Amityville, New York. Available online at: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~rjsalvad/scmfaq/muertos.html.
Daybreak in the graveyard of Mazatlán de Flores, Oaxaca. Photography: Lourdes Grobet.
This is an ancient festivity that has been much transformed through the years, but which was intended in prehispanic Mexico to celebrate children and the dead. Hence, the best way to describe this Mexican holiday is to say that it is a time when Mexican families remember their dead, and the continuity of life.

Two important things to know about the Mexican Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) are:

1. It is a holiday with a complex history, and therefore its observance varies quite a bit by region and by degree of urbanization.
2. It is not a morbid occasion, but rather a festive time.

The original celebration can be traced to many Mesoamerican native traditions, such as the festivities held during the Aztec month of Miccailhuitontli, ritually presided by the "Lady of the Dead" (Mictecacihuatl), and dedicated to children and the dead. In the Aztec calendar, this ritual fell roughly at the end of the Gregorian month of July and the beginning of August, but in the postconquest era it was moved by Spanish priests so that it coincided with the Christian holiday of All Hallows Eve (in Spanish: "Día de Todos Santos.") This was a vain effort to transform the observance from a profane to a Christian celebration. The result is that Mexicans now celebrate the day of the dead during the first two days of November, rather than at the beginning of summer. But remember the dead they still do, and the modern festivity is characterized by the traditional Mexican blend of ancient aboriginal and introduced Christian features.



Generalizing broadly, the holiday's activities consist of families (1) welcoming their dead back into their homes, and (2) visiting the graves of their close kin. At the cemetery, family members engage in sprucing up the gravesite, decorating it with flowers, setting out and enjoying a picnic, and interacting socially with other family and community members who gather there. In both cases, celebrants believe that the souls of the dead return and are all around them. Families remember the departed by telling stories about them. The meals prepared for these picnics are sumptuous, usually featuring meat dishes in spicy sauces, chocolate beverages, cookies, sugary confections in a variety of animal or skull shapes, and a special egg-batter bread ("pan de muerto," or bread of the dead). Gravesites and family altars are profusely decorated with flowers (primarily large, bright flowers such as marigolds and chrysanthemums), and adorned with religious amulets and with offerings of food, cigarettes and alcoholic beverages. Because of this warm social environment, the colorful setting, and the abundance of food, drink and good company, this commemoration of the dead has pleasant overtones for the observers, in spite of the open fatalism exhibited by all participants, whose festive interaction with both the living and the dead in an important social ritual is a way of recognizing the cycle of life and death that is human existence.
Altar in a home of the Nahuatl village of Milpa Alta. Photography: Lourdes Grobet.
In homes observant families create an altar and decorate it with items that they believe are beautiful and attractive to the souls of their departed ones. Such items include offerings of flowers and food, but also things that will remind the living of the departed (such as their photographs, a diploma, or an article of clothing), and the things that the dead prized and enjoyed while they lived. This is done to entice the dead and assure that their souls actually return to take part in the remembrance. In very traditional settings, typically found only in native communities, the path from the street to the altar is actually strewn with petals to guide the returning soul to its altar and the bosom of the family.The traditional observance calls for departed children to be remembered during the first day of the festivity (the Day of the Little Angels, "Día de los Angelitos"), and for adults to be remembered on the second day. Traditionally, this is accompanied by a feast during the early morning hours of November the 2nd, the Day of the Dead proper, though modern urban Mexican families usually observe the Day of the Dead with only a special family supper featuring the bread of the dead. In southern Mexico, for example in the city of Puebla, it is good luck to be the one who bites into the plastic toy skeleton hidden by the baker in each rounded loaf. Friends and family members give one another gifts consisting of sugar skeletons or other items with a death motif, and the gift is more prized if the skull or skeleton is embossed with one's own name. Another variation found in the state of Oaxaca is for bread to be molded into the shape of a body or burial wrap, and for a face to be embedded on one end of the loaf. During the days leading up to and following the festivity, some bakeries in heavily aboriginal communities cease producing the wide range of breads that they typically sell so that they can focus on satisfying the demand for bread of the dead.
Preparing offerings on the eve of the first of November in Ihuatzio, Michoacán. Photography: Lourdes Grobet.

The Day of the Dead can range from being a very important cultural event, with defined social and economic responsibilities for participants (exhibiting the socially equalizing behavior that social anthropologists would call redistributive feasting, e.g. on the island of Janitzio in Michoacan state), to being a religious observance featuring actual worship of the dead (e.g., as in Cuilapan, Oaxaca, an ancient capital of the Zapotec people, who venerated their ancestors and whose descendants do so to this day, an example of many traditional practices that Spanish priests pretend not to notice), to simply being a uniquely Mexican holiday characterized by special foods and confections (the case in all large Mexican cities.)


In general, the more urban the setting within Mexico the less religious and cultural importance is retained by observants, while the more rural and Indian the locality the greater the religious and economic import of the holiday. Because of this, this observance is usually of greater social importance in southern Mexico than in the northern part of the country.

Extended Mireles family enrolled in college

Julian Mireles, Gateway Technical Institute
Gary Vargas, Carthage College
Christian Albouras, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
email: AlbourasCA05@uww.edu
Crystal Vargas, Marquette University
email: crystal.vargas@marquette.edu
Diego Mireles, Madison Area Technical College
Sergio Barbosa-Mireles, Cornell University
email: sab224@cornell.edu
Jesse Ayala Jr. University of Wisconsin
email: jayala@wisc.edu

Carlos and Mary Mireles take a road trip

They stayed in Cleveland, Ohio...




They went to Niagra Falls...




They went to Ithaca, New York and took Sergio out to eat after visiting the Cornell University campus...



They visited Paul and Raquel Seydewitz and saw Ben Seydewitz too....

Old picture from Colombia from 1997 or 1998

 

















(L-R) Abuelita Bertha Lozano Barbosa, Javier Barbosa-Mireles, Clara Barbosa holding Lorena Barbosa-Mireles, Diego Mireles, Sergio Barbosa-Mireles, and cousin Jorge Ivan Salcedo 

Praise and scorn for rule at Madison East High School

It's working well," Chiengkham Thao, a Madison East High School freshman, says of a new anti-truancy policy that bars freshmen from leaving campus for lunch. On Thursday, he showed how he's mastering the freshman-only lunch shift. He downed this pizza and milk within five minutes, but threw away the orange and hustled to biology class, arriving just 10 seconds late.















Chiengkham Thao says it's working.

Anna Toman and Moises Diaz think it's got problems.

They and the 420 or so members of their Madison East High School freshman class find themselves part of a grand experiment - the first Madison high school in at least a dozen years to close its campus.

The school's 1,400 older students still are allowed to lounge outside during their 30-minute lunch break.

Better yet, they're able to jump into cars for a dash from 2222 E. Washington Ave. to Burger King, McDonald's or Taco Bell.

But for East's freshmen, there's one choice for lunch - the cafeteria - as school officials attempt to reduce the school's truancy rate.

Although they made up only about a fourth of the student body, freshmen last year accounted for more than 40 percent of East's truancy, defined as unexcused absences from three or more periods on five days.

And many of those truant freshmen cited influences from older students as a factor in skipping class.

East Principal Alan Harris said the issue is urgent because national research shows success in ninth grade sets students up for a smooth path through high school.

Three weeks into the school year, East's new policy is generating hefty helpings of scorn and praise from students, while school officials are monitoring its impact upon freshmen and older students. Data will be analyzed after the first semester.

"I don't have a problem with it," Chiengkham said Thursday at lunch.

Now freshmen are alone in the cafeteria for a lunch period, while members of the other three classes share the second lunch period. About 250 of those older students are in off- campus programs during lunch, reducing the crunch in the cafeteria, but it's still a frenetic scene during both lunch periods.

Chiengkham sat at a table and joked, often speaking Hmong, with nine friends and helped one with math as he patiently waited for the longest line - the one serving pizza - to shrink.

He knew only one of these boys before school began - an indication that the freshman-only lunch is helping forge connections among classmates who last year attended three middle schools.

At 11:38 a.m., 12 minutes before he was due in biology class, Thao joined the line. He got his meal at 11:42.

Within five minutes, he'd consumed a slice of sausage pizza and a carton of milk, thrown away an orange, grabbed his backpack and begun chugging up two floors of stairs.

Out of breath, Thao paused at a water fountain before arriving - 10 seconds late - in Room 346.

Other students view the closed campus differently.

Freshman Anna Toman said the new policy forces older students to wait too long for lunch.

Freshman Moises Diaz argued that older students have scant time to exert negative influence on freshmen. "Lunch is only half an hour and most of it is standing in line," he said.

LaBasha McKinley, a sophomore, said the lines are so long that she usually just goes hungry until after school. Still, she favors the change for freshmen because last year she was intimidated by older students who walked up to her while she was standing in line and asked pointedly, "Are you done?"


Lorena Barbosa-Mireles, a junior, said freshmen could handle themselves.

"I don't think we should be babying them and giving them their own lunch," she said.

Lorena acknowledged, however, that she had an advantage of older brothers who watched out for her.

Travis Wlodarczyk, a senior, said the change seems to be in conflict with the school district's new wellness policy because it could prompt increasing numbers of older students to gulp fast food to avoid the crowded cafeteria.

Or, he said, they might simply wait until after school to head to a fast-food place, leaving them listless in afternoon classes.

"If you're going hungry, you don't have that energy," Travis said.

Caleb Crossley, a senior, said the freshman-only lunches make sense but the lunch lines must be shortened.

Caleb, Travis and Lorena all admitted they rely upon a secret weapon to avoid those sluggish lines: Homemade peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Dan Wiltrout, a state Department of Public Instruction expert in truancy and attendance, said districts around the state need to rely upon local data when forging strategies. It's important, he said, to determine who's skipping school, and why. Truants "believe that no one cares," Wiltrout said.

Statewide, he noted, truancy problems rise in the ninth grade but peak in the 11th grade.

School districts in Wisconsin sometimes close high school campuses for all grades or freshmen, while many others remain open campuses, according to spot checks by the Green Bay School District. The state doesn't gather such data.

After an intensive study, Green Bay officials this year decided to take the opposite approach, and kept the campuses open while providing social workers to aid class- skipping students.

It made no sense to bar freshmen from leaving school: They had the best attendance record, said Barbara Dorff, Green Bay's director of student services.

Still, she said, given the high truancy rate among Madison East's freshmen, closing the campus "may be the solution for them."

Obituary Notice: Mateo Marjil Mireles-Rangel

Mateo Marjil Mireles-Rangel
RACINE - Our little miracle, Mateo Marjil Mireles-Rangel, 13 days old, left us on Sunday, September 10, 2006, to rest with his great-grandmothers and his great-grandfather. Mateo was born on August 28, 2006, on his Grandpa Mireles' birthday. Our little Mateo put up a brave fight and was an inspiration to all of us. His inspiration was felt by all who went to see him in the NICU at Children's Hospital in Milwaukee. Mateo's love was felt by all who came into contact with him and we thank God for giving us our little miracle even for this short amount of time. Mateo leaves to cherish, his mother, Amanda Mireles; his father, Mario Rangel; and a big brother, Mario Rangel Jr. He was loved greatly by his grandparents, Dawn (Michael Minor) Gehrig, Felix (Alyse) Mireles Jr., and Mary Carmen Rangel; great-grandparents, Joyce and Robert King, Theodore A. Gehrig Jr., and Genieve Rangel; maternal uncle and aunt, Felix 'Trey' and Samantha Mireles III; maternal aunt, Savanna Siepler; paternal aunts, Sonia (Edgar) Barron and Roberta (Will) Machado; uncle, Marco (Tia) Machado; and by many great-aunts, great-uncles, and cousins. Mateo is also survived by his wonderful friends and great doctors and nurses at Children's Hospital that loved Mateo in his short time with us and showed us how much Mateo mattered to them. Mateo was preceded in death by his great-grandparents, Bonie May Gehrig, Antonio Rangel, and Felix 'Lito' and Micaela 'Lita' Mireles Sr. A Mass of the Angels will be celebrated in St. Lucy Catholic Church, 3101 Drexel Avenue, on Friday, September 15, 2006, at 11 a.m. with Rev. Mark R. Jones officiating. Interment will follow at Holy Cross Cemetery, Highway 32. Visitation will be in the funeral home, 4600 County Line Road, on Thursday from 6 until 8 p.m. Visitation will continue on Friday at the church from 10 until 11 a.m. Memorials to Mateo's family have been suggested. The family would especially like to thank Mateo's aunts, Linda, Sonia, and Roberta; and his cousins, Lisa, Rolando, and Daisy, for being a loving support for all of us at this very difficult time. DRAEGER-LANGENDORF FUNERAL HOME AND CREMATORY 4600 County Line Road (corner of KR & Meachem Road) 552-9000 www.draeger-langendorf.com
Published in the Racine Journal Times on 9/13/2006.

Funeral arrangements for Mateo Marjil Mireles-Rangel

The viewing for
Mateo Marjil Mireles-Rangel
(Born 8/28/06, Died 9/10/06)
will be held Thursday night September 14, 2006
at Draeger-Langendorf Funeral Home
4600 County Line Road
Racine, Wisconsin 53403
Phone: 262-552-9000
on the corner of Ohio and Highway KR in Racine.

Directions From Milwaukee
I-94 East to Hwy KR (exit 337). Travel east on Hwy KR to the third traffic light (about 6 miles). We are located on the NE corner of the intersection.

Friday September 15, 2006, there will be a viewing at
St. Lucy Church from 10-11 am and the service will begin at 11 am.

The burial will be at Holy Cross Cemetery, 5600 Holy Cross Rd
Racine, WI 53402(262) 639-1071.



















There will be a gathering at the home of Felix Mireles at 4423 Maryland Ave, Racine, Wisconsin (262-456-0856)

Lorena plays first game with ZIA U-18 Soccer Team

  

Lorena's team loses 4-0 to Stevens Point at Stonehaven Field

  

Update on Benito Patena from Fela Salinas

Benito is progressing slowly but positively. He is starting to show
emotions. He smiles and he understands everything he is told or asked.
I talk to him on the phone, (although he doesn't respond because he
can't talk yet) he knows when to hang up.

My daughter Vanessa and her baby are in Texas right now with Marisol. The baby, Alex (AJ) who will be a year old next week has proven to be good therapy for him. When the baby crawls around the floor, Benito turns and looks for him. The baby is
placed on his lap and he (Benito) wheels the wheelchair around the room
with the baby on his lap. They take him for walks and at times he just
pushes his own wheelchair around in the driveway.

Please keep him in your prayers. He has a long way to go yet.

Javier ended up with the same Advanced Alegbra book that Lorena had in 8th grade

 






Lorena Barbosa's name is written in red. 

Vote for Best Coach in history...at ESPN .

Vote for Dan Gable former Coach of University of Iowa (and came out of retirement to serve as Assistant Coach at Iowa under Tom Brands) as one of the top Coaches of all sports... Here is a short biography

Dan Gable -- 355-21-5 record with 15 NCAA wrestling titles in 21 years at Iowa, 9 straight NCAA titles from 1978-1986, 7 undefeated seasons

Right now he's in 2nd behind John Wooden I believe...

Update on Amanda Mireles and her son Mateo...from Grandma Dawn Gehrig

After his birth almost two weeks ago, there have been some complications and Amanda has been released from the hospital and Mateo was in PreNatal Intensive Care.

Mateo is still on the oscillator, but they were able take him off of it and put him on a ventilator for 8 hours. We got concerned because they saw a big spot
on his brain when they did a scan, but it turned out to be a very minute bleed.
They don't seem to be too concerned with it. They said it will close
up on its own.

Amanda and her mom Dawn are staying at the Ronald McDonald house across the street
so they are not too far from him.

Anyways, keep Mateo and Amanda in your prayers, he is a little fighter, just like his mother is.

We (Oscar and Barb...) had planned to go by the hospital last week during the Labor Day weekend, but with the rain we ended up not going to Racine and did not make it to the hospital. But we hope to stop by soon...Amanda would welcome family stopping by...during these challenging times...

Javier's Team the Cottage Grove Sharks beat Watertown U-14 team by the score of 1-0

  

Former teammates Xavier McDonald and Javier

  

Javier mimicing the coaches walk

  

Javier Barbosa Mireles (#43)

  

Shaking hands after the game

  

Shaking hands

  

Portable Viet Nam Memorial visits Madison

 

More information on Wisconsin veterans can be found here 

Javier Barbosa-Mireles at the portable Viet Nam Memorial "Wall"

  

Javier walking down the row of Flags

  

The "wall " is set to be lit at night

  

The Wall had a nice afterwork crowd...

  

Javier found the Barbosa names on the wall....

  

Javier and I went to the movable Viet Nam Memorial

  

We found Roberto Sanchez name in section 51 E Row 16

 

Roberto Sanchez was from Racine and died in Viet Nam. He is the brother of Ricardo Sanchez and Roy Moralez.