Rick Moran has some very good points about living in the real world. That's not something I'm very good at, being legitimately nuts and unable to medicate. But the issue won't go away by wishing, or by my going hypomanic, no matter what the chemicals say.
I want very much for my mother's neighbors
Mom & Dad's neighbors
to have the right to stay. They're nice people with cute kids, and they seem to be taking pretty good care of their property (so far. They've only been in the house a few months). Their house had been empty for the better part of a year before it was sold, so we were beginning to worry about its care, feeding and upkeep. Okay, so much for the ulterior motives for wanting the people to hang around. But as I'm the product of immigrants messing around and marrying natives, I can still see positive impact by newcomers... unless the genetic blend is why we're all crazy.
I don't know whether they (the neighbors) have gone through channels or not, to become citizens... the kids all speak an uncomfortable Spanglish, & the parents.... well, less English. This makes me uneasy. They haven't tried to engage any of their neighbors in conversation -- I don't know if that's because we're all big scary Anglos who look like we'd call the ICE, or because they're waiting for us to make the first move, or meybe they've got a meth lab started in the basement (nah. the windows are still just covered with sheers, not foil and/or plywood).
As it stands, our town's major industry has been friendly toward the handful of illegals -- working in the nearby meat packing plant (it seems none of our local boys is willing to do back-breaking, dangerous labor for $6.50 per hr. sans benefits. Fancy that!) -- but we don't have much in the way of rental properties for folks to live in town, forcing the workers to live an hour away & therefore not give them any reason to invest in their futures around here, and not affording us an opportunity to get to know (and tax) them, so our community has this vague sense of disconnect with reality, in much the same pattern as my own. We're depressed, but everything is really peachy-keen and God loves us all...
So all this is sort of a personal, emotional struggle, and, somehow, the words of the President, Monday night, didn't seem to give me much ease. But then, I sense that this issue is flat-out emotional for everybody else, too: How do we preserve our national identity?
Is this what we are? Is there more, is there less?
What do we discard as being no longer required to be a citizen of this country? Precisely what must we keep? How do we protect it? Can we protect anything of it? And, in the process of deciding all that, how might it change what and who we are as a nation?
Please, God! Anything but that!!!
dammit, the real world is easier to plan for when I'm not living in it.
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