I love ethnic dance music. I first discovered conjunto music while attending the annual Folk Alliance International conference in Kansas City several years ago. The Texmaniacs were playing one night and there was not any room for any more people in the large main ballroom in Crown Center. People were going crazy over the music and a lot of people were dancing wherever they could find room.
I am not an expert on international affairs, but I remember the Cold War. The recent actions of the Russian despot in Ukraine scare me.
Ordinary life in the United States today is regularly shaped by all sorts of complicated corporate, governmental and bureaucratic systems. Few like this, but fewer still are willing or able to reject the goods which systems of specialization provide. For some, the way to hold onto the ideal of ordinary citizens truly governing themselves despite this complexity is transparency.
Fewer and fewer people are voting in Selma, Alabama. And to many, that is particularly heartbreaking.
Looking out my window and watching the finches, chick-a-dees, juncos, cardinals, assorted sparrows and a plethora of woodpeckers cramming around my feeders, I can generally tell how cold the temperatures are outside. If the feeders are overflowing with a waiting gallery in the nearby trees, I know that it is very cold and most likely below 30 degrees; if the feeders have constant traffic, but not overcrowding, then I know it is mildly cold. This always makes me think about the number of people who enjoy bird feeding and bird watching.
On my way to the barn, just to say a quick hello, I noticed a few patches of grass may have turned a light shade of green. I’m missing my weekly therapy on the faster-than-the-speed-of-light mower and, by the looks of the spider-webbed, dusty machine, I think it misses me too.
For people outside Ukraine, the conflict with Russia is experienced almost solely through the media. In that theater, it hasn’t been close.
Car factories idled, beer stopped flowing, cargo ships dropped port calls and energy companies cut their pipelines. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has thrown business plans into disarray and forced a growing number of the world’s best known brands – from Apple to Mercedes-Benz and BP – to pull out of a country that’s become a global outcast as companies seek to maintain their reputations and live up to corporate responsibility standards.
The greatest inconsistency that likely baffles kids in high school is the difference between what adults expect of them and what adults trust them to do. I have seen in the news recently that this paradox is alive and well. It appears that in Leavenworth, as well as school districts across the nation, there are concerned adults who believe that certain reading material is too explicit for high school students. In our town, the current controversy seems to surround the novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie and its incredibly brief discussion of self-sexual pleasure, as well as some less-than-feminist opinions expressed by the main character.
One of the political colonels opines how inflation affects the lives of the citizens of Leavenworth. True enough, inflation is here to stay at least for now. Of course, it is now a Republican talking point that inflation is all Biden’s fault.