If you can, check out Adam Kinzinger's FB post of good news from Sunday
He wrote about how the people of Lawrence, Kansas made the effort to welcome the stranger. In this case, the Algerian Footballers who were calling the town home for the month of tournament. The high school band that learned the Algerian National Anthem to welcome players onto the practice pitch. The shops that tracked down and decorated windows with that nation's flag. The people who wore green to let the footballers know they cared and were happy to have them for a while.
Yeah, welcome the stranger. Invite them in and learn from them. Find common ground and celebrate what is different. There are people in several places here probably finding enrichment in playing host to the stranger with this tournament going on.
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Now, my words:
That is the US I believe in and remember fondly, thinking back to the multi-national neighborhood of my youth and the amazing parties Mom hosted where all were welcome, all shared food and music from their home countries. That glorious time and place where the French woman got my grandpa up doing a Can-Can to a record she brought.
By the way of full disclosure, Grandpa was from Lawrence, Kansas, and lived throughout the west as his father traveled to where homesteads were being opened, little towns were springing up and needed a newspaper. Lots of lessons learned in a young nation where immigrants came with dreams of building lives in a great nation. He spoke so fondly of the Chinese cook in a local hotel, the cook who would open the back door and let he and his brothers bring in frogs they caught in a nearby stream. Grandpa loved the frog legs that cook fixed for them. He loved the German butcher who always gave Great Grandma 'a little extra for those 5 growing boys' when he wrapped up her purchase for the supper table. And he loved to listen to all the different musics people brought with them 'from the old country'.
Grandpa learned his letters sitting in the high chair his dad made to keep him out of trouble as a toddler. His letters were in trays of typeset. As a result of the unorthodox method of learning ABCs, Grandpa could read upside down and backwards faster than most could read right-side up. When we went out of town, the rule was to bring back a local newspaper for him to read. That man would study/analyze the local publication and know more about a place than any entry in an encyclopedia would offer.
He was one helluva proofreader along with his other all round printer skills, and would likely spin in his grave seeing how badly I spell.
Pretty sure the old man would be proud of the town from which he sprang, and the America in which he believed. Pretty sure he'd have nodded to Kinzinger's words as being a very important take on how we must continue to strive to build a more perfect union, even when the wrong people get into power and try to poison the tree that is the USA.
Would he have approved of how things are going now? He'd have 'words' for sure. He did not suffer fools and crooks, but he would likely look for the good still evident, and know the candle was still in the window of America.
= new reply since forum marked as read
No way in hell would I be affiliated with the regieme.
Jmo