Category Archives: Uncategorized

(These remarks were delivered at the Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos, Tx, March 1, 2015, at a reception for an exhibit of César Chávez photographs.) I DON’T KNOW if it is possible to adequately express how honored I feel … Continue reading →

THE DEATH OF MARIA Fernandes still haunts me. You might remember her; she is the 32-year-old New Jersey woman who died in late August in her car while she was taking a nap between two of her three jobs. The … Continue reading →

I’M SITTING AT a tire shop waiting for my car to be outfitted with a new set of tires. Expensive stuff, but it was time, after four years and nearly 41,000 miles. If my plans involved driving around Houston for … Continue reading →

I HAD NOT planned to visit the 9/11 Memorial during my recent visit to New York. However, the sight of gleaming single tower of the new World Trade Center was inescapable; just about anywhere I went in the city I … Continue reading →

JUST WONDERING: What would happen if in every town or every neighborhood, for an entire year, everyone — communists, liberals, moderates, conservatives, tea partiers, neo-Nazis — would get together for one hour a week to just talk. To talk about … Continue reading →

I LOVE SOCCER. That is something I would have been unable to say last week, before I started watching World Cup play. Does that mean that I will now turn my back on baseball and football – my two favorite … Continue reading →

THERE’S REALLY NO other way to put it: African American voters in Mississippi were duped into voting for Sen. Thad Cochran in his tight race for re-election. Without their vote, Cochran would have lost to his Tea Party opponent, Chris McDaniel. … Continue reading →

AND SO IT turns out that I’m a descendant of slaves. Of one slave, anyway. I just saw the latest genealogical research by my niece, Sandy Palomo González, and it shows that my maternal grandfather, Dionicio López, is a descendent … Continue reading →