Sunday, December 27, 2009

From Every End of the Earth - Just Like Us


I don't much read the Washington Post web site anymore but there do continue to be bits of reporting and writing worth the time. Nancy Trejos has a book review of From Every End of This Earth by Steven Roberts that has caused me to add the book to my "want to buy" list.

But the true sacrifice is made for the children. I've learned this from my own experience as the U.S.-born child of a Colombian father and Ecuadorian mother. My parents arrived in New York City with no college degrees and unable to speak English. But they found jobs -- my father served food to patients at a Manhattan hospital, my mother cleaned Park Avenue apartments by day and midtown offices by night -- and managed to save enough money to buy a house in Queens and send me to Georgetown University.

Roberts focuses much of the book on children like me -- Generation Next. "Being a child of immigrants can be a complicated way to grow up," he writes. "Generation Next is often pulled between the past and the future, between celebrating their own tradition and creating their own identity."
Postscript:

I may be on a roll - here's another book to add to my list of "must read" books: Just Like Us.

There are few books that can juggle both the human emotion and struggle against the controversial political backdrop that is America as well as Helen Thorpe’s “Just Like Us.” An accomplished journalist, Thorpe not only engaged in relationships with the stars of the book for 5 years, but uncovered the true face behind the issue of immigration. As the wife of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, she treaded carefully and reported on the issue and its players throughout the years with skill.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

. . . and a Happy New Year!


I don't much mind Garrison Keillor's rant on the UU propensity to change things (holy or not). I'll let it mostly pass but would like to share a quote with Garrison from Earl W. Count, 4,000 Years of Christmas:

Shall we liken Christmas to the web in a loom? There are many weavers, who work into the pattern the experience of their lives. When one generation goes, another comes to take up the weft where it has been dropped. The pattern changes as the mind changes, yet never begins quite anew. At first, we are not sure that we discern the pattern, but at last we see that, unknown to the weavers themselves, something has taken shape before our eyes, and that they have made something very beautiful, something which compels our understanding.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Remembering old snowfalls

Yeh, we had a little snow in Houston yesterday reminding me of a snowstorm on February 4, 1956 in Plainview, Texas. Not because of any resemblance between the storms, but because of the rarity of the event. We seldom get snow in Houston, at least on the ground for longer than a nanosecond. The February 1956 snowstorm in Plainview set a record for for most snowfall in Texas for a 24-hour period. We had 24 inches over the course of a full day and night - for you finger-counters, that is an inch of snow an hour. We lived in a two-story house just to the north of Plainview in Seth Ward and on the back (north) side of the house we had a snowdrift that completely blocked view of the house.

Well, checking on the Internet I find that the record has been broken by a March 2009 snowfall in Follett, Texas (in the Panhandle).

Heavy snow accompanied by strong winds and blizzard conditions, occurred between the mornings of March 27 and March 28, 2009 across the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles. The most snowfall recorded in the Texas Panhandle occurred in Follett, Texas where a record-setting 25.0 inches of snow fell between 8 a.m. March 27 and 8 a.m. March 28. This surpasses the previous record 24-hour snowfall for the state of Texas which was 24.0 inches and occurred in Plainview, Texas on February 4, 1956.

I've no idea what the 24-hour record in Houston might be.

Monday, November 30, 2009

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Happy Independence Day


You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.
Erma Bombeck