Book of the Week

I have long enjoyed the writing of Stephanie Elizondo Griest but I would like to think that her latest book -- All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands -- is her best book yet -- perhaps because it was so ambitious but more likely because it was so angry. I found it hard to read the book without finding at least one item to be angry about -- and no, I'm not talking about bad grammar or misspelled words, I'm talking about the events Ms. Griest described in the book when writing during her various visits to the Mexican and Canadian border country. She wrote about a lot of things worth getting angry about -- ethnic discrimination, environmental racism, illegal drugs, unsolved murders, and so forth. As you might guess, she also wrote quite a bit about illegal immigration but even there she had a different take on the issue than most Hispanic apologists. As you might guess, she was not overly fond of our current president but she also didn't pretend that all the problems on our southern border began on January 20, 2017.

My biggest problem with the book is that it made me want to hulk out and hit somebody -- preferably one of the many people responsible for the problems she described in her book. And as you might guess, that's not exactly a very productive strategy.

However, the book did teach me a lot I didn't know about the Mexican and Canadian borders. And the parallels Ms. Griest drew between the two borders I found most fascinating. In any event, knowing about a problem is all too often the first step in solving it.

Hey, I Remember This Show: Due South

The closest thing we'll probably get to Sergeant Preston of the Yukon in my lifetime -- and -- surprise! -- it was created by Paul Haggis of Crash fame. It may not be everyone's cup of tea but at least it is more respectable than Dudley Doright. And whatever happened to David Marciano anyway?

Random Thoughts

Der Untergang des Abendlandes will not be televised.

Paris is worth a màs.

Without you, I am nothing. With you, I am less than nothing.

That's funny, you don't look prolish.

I'm in love with myself, but, alas, my affection is unrequited.

Is the heterosexual female scholar's equivalent of a Scholar's Mistress called a Scholar's Gigolo?

My love is like a red, red nose -- I hope I don't blow it.

Her dress was as red as her politics.

Help me, I think I'm fallen.

I've done my share of looking for love -- and lust -- in all the wrong places. In all the right places, too.

Scribo ergo sum. (I write; therefore, I am.)

Pobre Canada, so far from God and so close to the United States.

Demons thrive on silence.

The heart has its reasons of which political correctness knows nothing.

Mestizaje -- the choice of a new generation.

Almost everyone's life is like a soap opera. Some of us just have better storylines than others.

We may not choose with whom we fall in love but we do choose what we do about that love.

Almost everyone's life looks happy from the outside. It's how it looks from the inside that counts.

Normality is a state of mind.

Poverty, like war, is most easily glamourized by those who have never experienced it.

It's easy to love people you rarely see. It's when you see them all the time that the real test of love begins.

It's easy to love people you see as being perfect. It's loving people you see as being imperfect that's the real challenge.

There is no such thing as a golden age or a master race. All ages have their bad sides and no race is perfect.

If you cannot forgive imperfections in other people, then you will find yourself doomed the day you discover imperfections in yourself.