Hello Austin Heat...

now pass the beer!

no, better make that a G&T, I've got some reading to do:

Roald Dahl
Donald Sobol
Poets Galore
and La Migra!, which is one of the most fascinating books I've read in a long time. Like, what I read last night:

Did you know that after America's Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred entry for Chinese immigrants into the U.S., Mexico decided that it would welcome Asian immigrants, in part in hopes to set up a more thriving agriculture business and use the Asian immigrants much the way we use the Mexican migrant workers... cheap labor. So, in 1893 the then Mexican president Porfirio Dias signed the "Treaty of Amity and Commerce with China" and another such treaty with Japan (70-1).

However, by the 1920's the Great Depression had hit Mexico as hard as it had hit here, and huge anti-Asian sentiments swept the area, particularly Sonora, which is the county that borders on Arizona... much of the same language as we use today: stealing jobs, using our benefits, etc. So, between 1930-32, Mexicans began forcibly ejecting Chinese-Mexicans, and by this, I mean the Mexicans were "deporting" them across the Mexican-American border, literally pushing Asian immigrants into America... where they would then be apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol and "deported" back across the border to Mexico (78-9).

I.e. we basically waged a Chinese immigrant ping-pong battle with Mexico, and in the end, deported hundreds of Chinese immigrants who had grown up in Mexico to China. What a bloody bizarre world this is! It makes "The Wall" as immigration policy look positively sane.

Also, I should put my current favorite poem here. I'm sure you can see its potential for 3rd and 4th graders, which one might not say for the above information:

"Dragons are Too Seldom"

To actually see an actual marine monster
Is one of the things that do before I die I wonster.
Should you ask me if I desire to meet the bashful inhabitant of Loch Ness,
I could only say yes.
Often my eye with moisture dims
When I think that it has never been my good fortune to gaze on one of Nature’s whims.
Far from ever having seen a Gorgon
I haven’t even seen the midget that sat in the lap of Mr. Morgan.
Indeed it is my further ill fortune or mishap
That far from having seen the midget that sat in it I have never even seen Mr. Morgan's lap.
Indeed I never much thought about Mr. Morgan’s having a lap because just the way you go into churches and notice the stained glass more than the apses
When you think about multi-millionaires you don’t think about their laps as much as their lapses;
But it seems that they do have laps which is one human touch that brings them a little closer to me and you,
And maybe they even go so far as to sometimes have hiccups too.
But regular monsters like sea serpents don’t have laps or hiccups or any other characteristic that is human,
And I would rather see a second-rate monster such as a mermaid than a first-rate genius such as John Bunyan or Schiaparelli or Schubert or Schumann;
Yes, I would rather see one of the sirens
Than two Lord Byrons,
And if I knew that when I got there I could see Cyclops or Scylla and Charybdis or Pegasus
I would willingly walk on my hands from here to Dallas, Tegasus,
Because I don’t mean to be satirical,
But where there’s a monster there’s a miracle,
And after a thorough study of current affairs, I have concluded with regret
That the world can profitably use all the miracles it can get,
And I think life would be a lot less demoralizing
If instead of sitting around in front of the radio listening to torture singers sing torture songs we sat around listening to the Lorelei loreleising.

– Ogden Nash

P.S. Granny and Gramps say hello!