There are many reasons why folks from Central America are trying to migrate to the U.S. Some are fleeing violence and/or persecution in their home country. But an overarching reason that thousands make the arduous and perilous trek from their homes is poverty.
“I want a better future for my kids. Like our parents wanted a better future for us. That’s why we’re forced to take steps and leave our own country and risk our lives here, because necessity forces us.”
To give an example: owing in part to climate change, there was a record hurricane season last year, with the last two storms, Eta and Iota, striking Central America. As Nicole Narea explained in a recent article in Vox, the Northern Triangle countries—Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador—have been afflicted by climate-induced drought for a decade, leaving 3.5 million people facing food insecurity, but the floods from those two storms produced even more savage damage. Twelve hundred schools were damaged or destroyed; forty per cent of corn crops and sixty-five per cent of the bean harvest were lost. As a percentage of G.D.P., the damage is greater than that done by the worst storms ever to hit the United States, yet the people of these countries did comparatively little to cause the climate crisis—whereas the four per cent of us who live in this country have produced more greenhouse gases than the population of almost any other nation. So there’s really no way to pretend that migrants arriving at our southern border have no claim on America. Honduras could have built the biggest, most beautiful wall on its northern border, and our CO2 would still have sailed right across it.
Interesting, ain’t it? So if we want to help alleviate the border crisis, we should worry less about building walls, and focus more on reducing our oversized carbon footprint. The rising tide of border crossers is caused by the rising tide of the oceans. Illegal immigration is a symptom, not the disease. And the disease is spreading rapidly.
And it’s not as if this is an isolated case. As early as 2017, according to the organizers at climate-refugees.org, sixty per cent of displaced people around the world were on the move because of “natural” disasters, not civil conflict. In the past six months, according to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, about eighty per cent of displacements have been the result of disasters, “most of which are triggered by climate and weather extremes.” As Axios reported last week, using a projection model created by the Times, ProPublica, and the Pulitzer Center, “migration from Central America will rise every year regardless of climate change,” but, “in the most extreme warming scenarios, more than 30 million migrants would head toward the U.S. border over the next 30 years.”
VP Kamala Harris can say “do not come, do not come” all she wants. But let’s pretend the shoe is on the other foot for a second (ignoring the fact that shoes might be considered a luxury in the tiny villages of Central America). If your schools were destroyed, your food sources were wiped out and your livelihood was lost, you’d still come. No matter the cost, no matter the odds.
“I want to emphasize that the goal of our work is to help Guatemalans find hope at home.”
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, at a joint press conference with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei
If we want to help our friends to the south find hope at home, we also have to change how we treat the planet. And that starts in our home.
Hey, hey, come on, I need you more than ever Hey hey, come on, we’re running for our lives Hey, hey, come on, there’s refuge in your heartbeat They’re closing in They’re closing in
from the song “Footsteps in the Shadows” by Alejandro Escovedo, from his brilliant album The Crossing.
[HT to my friend Phil for leading me to The Climate Crisis email newsletter from The New Yorker. It’s written by Bill McKibben, and you can sign up here. ]
“The 2021 Presidential Scholars represent extraordinary achievements for our extraordinary times,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a news release. “I am delighted to join President Biden in saluting these outstanding young people for their achievements, service, character and continued pursuit of excellence. Their examples make me proud and hopeful about the future. Honoring them can remind us all of the great potential in each new generation and renew our commitment to helping them achieve their dreams.”
Like the Secretary of Education, I’m proud and hopeful about the future too. I’m also proud that half of the Presidential Scholars semifinalists in the entire state of Ohio — 11 kids — hail from the Cincinnati area. Two of these scholars (Aidan Finn and Anna Rahner) started their scholarly journey in the same Montessori classrooms as my kids. Three of the semifinalists attended Walnut Hills High School, where all four of our kids attended junior high, and three attended (or are still attending) high school. Another semifinalist went to McNicholas High School, also the alma mater of our oldest child and my lovely bride.
I’m not claiming any sort of transitive property that makes my kids super-scholars by association. But I do think grade schools like Sands Montessori lay a strong foundation for all the kids going to school there, and high schools like Walnut Hills and McNicholas help them blossom. The kids get the awards, but the teachers deserve a ton of credit for bringing out the best in their students.
“Our chief want in life is someone who shall make us do what we can.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You can read more about the semifinalists in this story from Cincinnati.com. And you can read about the two area Presidential Scholars in this article. Aidan Finn, who started at Sands Montessori, is one of them. We know his family well, and couldn’t be happier for them. The qualities cited by the Secretary of Education include “service” and “character” and Aidan and his younger sister have that in spades.
Aidan founded Tutor Teens with his sister, Erin, at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. The volunteer tutoring program matches Cincinnati area high school tutors to students across the region. There are tutors from more than a dozen local high schools in the program tutoring students from more than 70 local schools. The program is virtual and free.
A few years from now, no one will care what these Presidential Scholars got on their ACT or SAT… but “service” and “character” will matter for the rest of their lives.
Not that I need any more notoriety — this blog has thousandshundredstens a few loyal readers — but I managed to get a byline in the April edition of Cincinnati Magazine by writing the text to accompany some really cool photos (by Aaron M. Conway) of a local farm that grows hops.
The editor of Cincinnati Magazine, John Fox, is an old friend of mine. When I was working at an alternative music station, he was the editor of an alt-weekly, and the station and the paper would collaborate, cross-pollinate, and co-promote events often due to the large overlap in audiences. John will throw me a magazine assignment every now and then – usually something fairly straightforward and not too time-consuming. I enjoy the challenge, and I always wind up learning something new while doing research and interviews. For the hops farm piece, I got to interview one of the growers and connect with brewers at several local breweries… it’s a really tight-knit community and it was cool to witness the spirit of collaboration among them. I also learned quite a bit about the process of growing hops, and I found it quite fascinating.
“The more you know…”
If you’re keeping score at home, I’ve now done four pieces for Cincinnati Magazine over the past couple of years, and two of them have been beer-centric. I think I’m being typecast. Then again, if the shoe beer mug fits…
Jim Steinman passed away this week. This lede from American Songwriter sums up his oeuvre pretty well:
Jim Steinman, the songwriter famous for the super-charged operatic rock epics he created for Meat Loaf and other artists is dead at 73. He was a songwriter proud of his lack of restraint in his songs. Subtlety was not the aim. It’s how he proudly earned and owned his distinction as “The Richard Wagner of Rock. ” Like Wagner, his songs were epic, operatic and always with a dark grandiosity.
“If you don’t go over the top,” he said, “you can’t see what’s on the other side.”
Wagner, however, never wrote any hit songs. Steinman wrote many: The grand statement was the entire song cycle of Meat Loaf’s Bat out of Hell. He also wrote Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” Air Supply’s “Making Love Out of Nothing At All” and Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now.”
Jim was over the top, but it took him to the top. He accomplished a real rock and roll rarity that I don’t think anyone else has matched: for a while in 1983, two songs written and produced by him, but recorded by different artists, held the top two positions on the Billboard singles chart, with “Total Eclipse of the Heart” at number one, and “Making Love Out of Nothing at All” in the number two slot.
Not many songwriters get credited on an album cover. But Jim’s contribution to Meatloaf’s Bat out of Hell album was so crucial that he got cover props.
That album is one of the best-selling releases of all time.
And it almost didn’t see the light of day. Here’s the album’s producer, Todd Rundgren, on the Sound Opinions podcast, talking about how many music biz “experts” passed on the album, and how it finally caught on.
Jim Steinman also worked in musical theater – his bombastic style was tailor-made for the stage. And he released a solo album back in 1981, called Bad for Good. One of the songs on that album was “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” (later sung by Meatloaf and released on Bat Out of Hell II):
We’d be listening to the radio so loud and so strong Every golden nugget coming like a gift of the gods Someone must have blessed us when he gave us those songs…
Keep on believing And you’ll discover baby: There’s always something magic There’s always something new And when you really Really need it the most That’s when rock and roll dreams come through The beat is yours forever The beat is always new And when you really Really need it the most That’s when rock and roll dreams come through For you
“Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” by Jim Steinman
Jim Steinman wasn’t a Dylan, he wasn’t a Springsteen, but that wasn’t his goal. And he deserves a lot of credit for having a unique vision and sticking to it, and making his rock and roll dreams come through.
Hey Bubba, I have a question for you: Who exactly is the “they” that gun nuts enthusiasts like you always refer to right after yet another senseless act of violence, one exacerbated by the presence of assault weapons and/or mentally unstable shooters? As in “every time one of these incidents happens, the first thing they want to do is take all our guns away.” It’s usually the second sentence out of your mouth. (The first one being “Now is not the time to politicize this.”)
For the record, I don’t want to take your guns away. Heck, I couldn’t even if I tried. There are more than 393 million guns in circulation in the United States — approximately 120.5 guns for every 100 people. I don’t think they’d all fit in the Rubbermaid storage bins in my basement. And it’s not like I could melt them all down and use the metal to repair the crumbling bridges in the U.S. (Or could I? It seems like a win-win….)
Sorry, I’ll stay on message. I don’t want to take your guns away. Got it? Good. Now let’s get in to the nitty gritty of this problem. You know, the issue that reared its ugly head in Indianapolis. Or was it Boulder? Or Atlanta? (It was all three, and dozens more, but you already knew that.)
If you think a handgun will help you protect yourself, sure, have one. Wait, what’s that you say? You need more than one? Oh, OK, but unless you’re some sort of Hindu goddess… or you’re especially dexterous with your feet… two should be sufficient, right? One for each hand?
And of course it goes without saying that you’ll be a responsible gun owner, right? So you’ll have no problem demonstrating that responsibility by taking a safety course, and purchasing your guns legally, right? And because you’re a sensible gun owner, you’ll want to make sure that gun owners don’t get a bad rep from a few “bad apples” who are mentally ill or have a history of violence, so you’d obviously be in favor of universal background checks and waiting periods. You’d also want to shut down gun shows, because buying a gun shouldn’t be easier than casting a vote in a democratic election. Right?
“It’s not a slippery slope if we don’t let it become one. Remember when they instituted the 55 mph speed limit? Yeah, we’re not all standing still on the freeway now, are we?”
By the way, people who report “firearm access” are at twice the risk of homicide and more than three times the risk of suicide compared to those who do not own or have access to firearms. (Source) So tell me, how are your handguns helping you “protect yourself”?
OK, let’s move on to hunting rifles. Sure, if you’re a “sportsman” then by all means have a hunting rifle too. Same deal, right? Safety course, legally purchased after background checks, ideally stored in a locked safe when you’re not out in the field going eye-to-eye and toe-to-toe with all manner of fierce animals.
So now we’re up to assault weapons. They were made for the battlefield, so I think they should be relegated to the battlefield. Want to shoot one? Join the National Guard. (After all, the Second Amendment that you hold so dear is really about arming folks who are willing to perform soldier-like duties , not everyday civilians. Look it up… I’ll wait.)
You know what, in the spirit of compromise (look that one up too, I’ll wait), how about this: if you get your jollies firing off six bullets per second and shooting 154 rounds in less than five minutes, then you can own an assault rifle. But you have to store it at a licensed indoor shooting range that’s locked up tighter than Fort Knox. You can swing by anytime and shoot “The Tick Licker”* but you can’t take it home. Or to the FedEx facility. Or to the grocery store. Or to the spa.
*That’s what ol’ Daniel Boone called his rifle… it was not a semi-automatic but somehow he managed.
By the way, if you think my reference to 154 rounds in less than five minutes was eerily specific, that’s because those numbers match the stats when a 20-year-old with significant mental health issues gunned down 20 first-graders and 6 school staffers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut back in 2012. Lest we forget.
What’s that? You find indoor shooting ranges to be too sterile? OK, taking a page from Jonathan Swift, I have A Modest Proposal of my own. Because gun violence is estimated to cost the U.S. $280 billion a year in hospital bills, physical therapy, trauma counseling, legal fees, prison costs and the loss of productivity, perhaps the vast majority of Americans (roughly 2 out of every 3 people) who favor greater restrictions on gun ownership can all chip in and purchase a plot of land in an isolated area in every state in the union. And you and your assault weapon pals can grab your guns (from the biometric gun safes on premises) and shoot them there — and only there — to your hearts’ content. Speaking of hearts and other vital organs, there will be a lot of lead flying through the air at these sylvan shooting sanctuaries. But hey, if you happen to get hit by a stray bullet or three, that’s just the price you pay for living in a free society… right?
(Please spend some time here. And then consider backing up your thoughts and prayers with some common sense action.)
Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, had to psyche himself up about writing .
“Writing isn’t so bad really when you get through the worry. Forget about the worry, just press on. Don’t be embarrassed about the bad bits. Don’t strain at them… Writing can be good. You attack it, don’t let it attack you. You can get pleasure out of it. You can certainly do very well for yourself with it!”
Douglas Adams
It’s great advice for any writer. This blog may be 99% “bad bits” but still we press on.
The note above and other Douglas Adams archival content will be published in a forthcoming book called 42. Read more in this article from The Guardian.
Kevin Sullivan on Life advice from a man who lived it: “A good one Damian. Bring our lens into focus after the long weekend or our long life journey.” Jul 7, 09:38
Thomas Kuhl on We’re alive, because nothing happened.: “That is why we should celebrate every day when our feet hit the floor. Another to enjoy and share with…” Jun 25, 04:33
Thomas Kuhl on We’re alive, because nothing happened.: “This simply explains why we should celebrate every day our feet hit the floor. Another day to enjoy and share…” Jun 25, 04:31
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