New Arizona Law: The Long View

Maybe the real immigration problem is that the Native Americans, the indigenous people of America (North and South), did not have a strong enough immigration policy to protect their borders when Europeans like Christopher Columbus and Hernando Cortez "discovered America" 500 years ago. Did anyone ask Mr. Columbus or Sr. Cortez for their entry visas? Maybe the only "real" Americans are the Native Americans (as the name implies), and the rest of us Americans are just immigrants from other lands.

New Arizona Immigration Law: Some Uncomfortable Facts

WARNING: If you generally agree with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, you probably will not like what you are about to read. I have been listening to Fox Radio to hear what people are saying about the new immigration law in Arizona that allows police to ask for proof of citizenship when there is probable cause and the officer suspects that the person is not in the U.S. legally. Most of the talk show hosts and callers on Fox Radio defend this law vehemently and insist that the law violates no constitutional rights and is only enforcing federal immigration laws. Well, maybe, maybe not. The majority of the comments I heard can be summarized as follows: Those Mexicans are criminals in violation of U.S. law, should go back to Mexico where they belong, stop taking Americans' jobs away and generally bothering us Americans. Much of their rhetoric sounds pretty nasty, and they rely more on opinions and name-calling than facts.

I would like to offer a few current and historical facts, or at least objective statements for anyone who supports the new Arizona law to at least be aware of. It seems that some of these folks don't want to be confused by the facts.

1. Until 1848, the end of the US-Mexico War, the territory that is now Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, and California belonged to Mexico, and was taken over by the U.S. in the Treaty of Guadalupe. So most of the western U.S. was Mexican territory prior to 1848. Whether or not this was a legal action has been debated. Did the U.S. take this land from Mexico legally, or did they steal it "fair and square"? Mexicans tend to have a different perspective on this question than people from the U.S., as you might expect. Think about it. How would you react as an American if the U.S. lost a war with a foreign country, which then took control of a third of the U.S. states? Maybe you're thinking but that would never happen. Never is a long time.

2. About 30 percent of Arizonans are Mexican Americans. Many of them have relatives in Mexico who they travel to visit regularly, and their relatives travel to visit them in Arizona. There are currently about 500,000 Mexicans living in Arizona who entered the U.S. illegally or are here on expired visas. So roughly one in three drivers that Arizona police pull over to give a ticket may look like Mexicans.

3. Many Mexicans have been living in Arizona (and the U.S.) illegally for long periods of time, and their children born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens. Can U.S. citizens be deported? I don't think so. So do we deport the parents and leave the children behind to fend for themselves? Does that sound like a good idea?

Reaction to Arizona Immigation Law

The news for the last couple of days has been full of stories about the new Arizona immigration law--for and against. The law has created a firestorm of controversy within the U.S., in Mexico, and other countries around the world. It has created a division of Americans, who are in a heated debate about the law, and the larger issue of immigration in the U.S. In the end, I think this law is going to be a bad thing for Arizona and the U.S. Click on the following link to read one story about reactions to the new law and how it could affect U.S. political and economic relations with Mexico and other countries: MinnPost - Arizona immigration law: Will Mexico boycotts cripple trade?

What message is this new law sending to the world about the U.S.?

Arizona Law

The new law in Arizona which allows police to stop people and ask them for proof of citizenship makes me sad. This and the vigilantes (minutemen?) who patrol the border with guns looking for Mexicans crossing to use for target practice. I grew up in Arizona and New Mexico, so I have a love for that area and the people there. I hope that reason will prevail and they will repeal this new law. Can you imagine Mexican-American U.S. citizens being pulled over for a speeding ticket and asked to produce their proof of citizenship? You can be sure it will happen, even though they are saying there will be no racial profiling. Do you think they are going to be looking for Canadian and Irish illegal immigrants who are living and working in Arizona? It's interesting to observe that many Arizona Republicans want nothing to do with this new law. You can't blame them. In a state like Arizona, with the size of the Hispanic population, in many counties you probably can't win an election without the Hispanic vote. One of the reasons the U.S. is a great country is that the government protects our civil liberties and privacy. That's why I doubt that this law will stand up in court. Our constitution protects our civil liberties, and that has been and will always be a good thing.

More Crazy Indiana Weather

In Indiana they say that if you don't like the weather, just wait 15 minutes. We were starting to have warm sunny, summer weather, and now the sun is hiding, it's cold, and it has been raining for three days. I guess we can complain about the weather, but since we can't do anything about it, we just need to learn to enjoy the changes and wait for the sun to come out again. And it will. It always does.

High School Prom

Tonight my daughter Maria is going to the high school prom dance with her boyfriend, Bryce. All week, she has been so excited, buying the dress, the shoes, getting her hair done, manicure and pedicure. So tonight is the big night. This will be a very special memory for her and Bryce. I have enjoyed it too, watching how much fun they are having. It makes me remember my own high school prom with my high school sweetheart, Mary Ann. We had a great time. She looked beautiful, and it was the first time I had ever worn a tuxedo. We made a pretty nice looking couple, just like Maria and Bryce. These are special memories that you can have for a lifetime. My wife Elvira and I will be sure to take lots of photos of Maria and Bryce tonight so they can remember this special day for the rest of their lives.

Maybe Money Can Buy You Happiness

Yesterday, I wrote about how money can't buy you love. Real love isn't something that is bought or sold, in my opinion. Sex can be purchased, but not love. But maybe money can buy you happiness. That is, if you use your money in the right way. Let me tell you a story to illustrate my point. Earlier this week I was watching the program American Idol Gives Back on television with my family. I was impressed that this program has raised more than 15 million dollars to help hungry and sick children in Africa and the U.S. At one point in the program, there was a short interview with Bill and Melinda Gates about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and how the millions of dollars their foundation has given has helped decrease the number of deaths of African children from Malaria and improve their lives. As Bill Gates spoke about the good work his foundation has done, I saw a look of absolute joy and happiness on his face; a look that you can't fake. Here is one of the richest men in the world, who has so much money that it would be virtually impossible for him and his wife to spend it all in a lifetime. And how does his money make him happy? By using it to help people in need have better lives and make a difference with their lives.

Some of the stock traders and tycoons on Wall Street, who only seem to be driven by greed to have more and more money no matter the cost to others, could learn something from Bill Gates, and what he chooses to do with his money. Maybe if more of these people were more like Gates, our country's economy wouldn't be in the mess it is currently in. That's my two cents about money and how people use their money.

Can't Buy Me Love

You really can't buy love. The Beatles had it right in that song more than 40 years ago. If you could buy love, why then are there so many rich people who are constantly getting married, divorced, and "looking for love?" I loved The Beatles when I first heard them over 40 years ago as a teenager, and I still love them today, maybe even more. I love the music and the lyrics in their songs. Remember that the 60s were the decade of "peace and love." It's interesting to recall how many of The Beatles' song titles included the word "love." All my Loving. Love Me Do. P.S. I Love You. She Loves You. Words of Love. You've Got to Hide Your Love Away.

Do you remember all those great Beatle songs? And "love" was the main theme of so many of their songs, even when the word wasn't in the song titles. The Beatles knew about the importance of "love" and they sang about it. They started singing about romantic love in their early days, and ended up singing about the kind of love that can change the world in their later songs.

The Beatles had it right when they sang, "All you need is love, love is all there is." She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah...

Jeff's Top Ten Books/athors

My Top Ten books/authors, in no particular order. I have read each of these books more than once because I like them so much, and have read other books by these authors. If I find an author I like, I tend to read all of their books I can get my hands on. Some of these books have been made into movies, and some of the movies were good, but the movies are never as good as the books.

1. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
2. The Firm, John Grisham
3. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Sallinger
4. Hatchet, Gary Paulsen
5. Relato de un Naufrago, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Tale of a Castaway, a novella)
6. Little Big Man, Thomas Berger
7. Mountain Man, Vardis Fisher
8. Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis
9. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
10. The Lords of Discipline, Pat Conroy

Ten Favorite Movies

As promised, here is a list of my favorite movies. I heard somewhere that you can tell a lot about a person by the books s/he reads and the movies s/he watches. If this is true, I have no idea what my list says about me, other than that I like them. Some of my favorite movies started out as books. By the way, in my experience the book is always better than the movie. I have seen most of the movies on this list more than once. In no particular order:

1. Little Big Man (book and movie)
2. The Karate Kid (just the first one)
3. The Grapes of Wrath (book and movie)
4. The Edge
5. It's a Wonderful Life
6. Mountain Man (book and movie)
7. Avatar
8. The Rocky movies (especially the first :)
9. Forrest Gump (book and movie)
10. Rainman

There you have it. Many other movies I love didn't make the cut and perhaps on a different day I would choose ten different ones. Favorite books tomorrow.

More on Good and Bad Movies

The subject of my last blog was what I consider good and bad movies. Today I'll share more thoughts on what makes a movie good or bad, in my opinion. If you've been to the movies lately, or rented a DVD, I think you'll know what I mean by bad movies. There are so many new movies being released, but most of them are not worth watching. I would estimate that about one or two out of every ten new movies is worth watching. These bad movies I'm taking about either do not have an interesting story to tell, lack interesting characters, have mediocre to poor acting, or are based on tired and predictable formulas (Chick Flicks, most Action Movies, Horror Movies, you get the idea). Many of them are guilty on all counts, leaving me asking why they were even made in the first place.

My general rule of thumb about which movies I will take the time to watch or rent is based mostly on the starring actors: I will watch any movie with, in no particular order, Anthony Hopkins, Morgan Freeman, Al Pachino, Robert DeNiro, Clint Eastwood, Dustin Hoffman, Jackie Chan (yes, Jackie Chan), Denzell Washington, Diane Keeton, Will Smith, George Clooney, Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, or Mel Gibson, to name a few. But this are no guarantees. I have seen each of these actors star in bad movies. Now for the truly bad actors/movies. I refuse to watch any movie starring Will Ferrell, Jennifer Anniston, Tom Cruise, Ben Stiller, or Johnny Depp, and others whose names I can't even remember, or never knew. Sometimes previously unknown actors come out in interesting movies, such as Twilight and Across the Universe. An example of a good actor in a bad movie would be Robert Downey, Jr. in Sherlock Holmes, which, in my opinion, is a truly bad movie, despite some good reviews it received. The Sherlock Holmes character that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created is an interesting character, but Downey's version bears almost no resemblance to the fictional Sherlock Holmes, and is more like a Jackie Chan version of Sherlock Holmes. Surely Doyle would roll over in his grave if he saw this movie. My wife and I watched Sherlock Holmes with another couple on New Years Eve, and I swear we would have walked out and found a better way to spend the last hours of 2009 if we hadn't already paid $20. I didn't like the fact that whoever made this movie took the license to turn Sherlock Holmes into just another wise-cracking, Kung Fu action figure. If Jackie Chan had played the lead role, it at least might have been amusing. A Chinese Sherlock Holmes. Why not? There are some movies that are so bad that they are almost funny to watch, but I'd rather watch a movie that is intentionally funny.

Tomorrow, I'll share a list of some of my favorite movies, and why I like them.

Movies: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Have you seen a good movie lately? I have, but I've also seen a lot of bad ones. First the good ones. A couple of months ago, I went with my seventeen-year old daughter, Maria, to see Avatar. We both agreed it was one of the best movies we had ever seen. For me, it was the most entertaining and creative movie I had seen in a long time. And we didn't even see the 3-D version, so we want to go back sometime and see it again in 3-D. I thought Gran Torino was an excellent movie; so good that after watching it at the theatre when it was first released, I have since watched it a couple more times on DVD. I watched The Blind Side with my family on DVD and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Good story, good acting. What these three movies have in common is that they have an interesting story to tell and interesting characters portrayed by good, and sometimes great, actors.

Now for the bad movies. Where to begin? There are so many of them. By bad I mean movies that don't tell an interesting story, lack interesting characters, and have generally bad acting. The length of this blog doesn't permit me to go into detail about all the bad movies I've seen, or refused to see, so I'll just mention one movie genre as an example: Chick Flicks. Because I have three daughters (one teenager, and two now in their early twenties), I have endured watching so many Chick Flicks that they have all kind of blurred together. It has been an act of love on my part to have endured watching so many of these awful movies with my daughters and wife. You know the ones I'm talking about; anything starring Hannah Montana or the Olsen twins, for example. I won't go into detail about why Chick Flicks are so bad, because this blog would end up being too long. I'll just say that they are almost always bad because their plots and characters are so predictable. So bad that even great acting couldn't redeem them. Having said that, I have seen a couple of pretty good Chick Flicks; one that comes to mind is A Walk to Remember, one of my daughters' all-time favorites. Otherwise, these movies are kind of like Danielle Steele novels. If you're read one, you've read them all.

I'll continue tomorrow with more on good, and bad, movies. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Too Many Books, Too Few Readers?

I love books and have since I was a child. I read books on a wide range of subjects, fiction and non-fiction, and I have favorite authors whose books I have read and re-read over the years. I have worked for 20 years in book publishing, in sales and as an editor. Over the past ten or so years, I have noticed that there has been an explosion of the number of new books published, books on every imaginable topic. Many of these books are really not worth reading, in my opinion. At the same time, I have seen statistics that fewer and fewer people are reading books. This is not surprising, given research on how most American adults spend their time working 10-12 hour days, watching television 4-5 hours a day, spending at least an hour every day on the computer surfing the Web, checking their FaceBook accounts, sending e-mail messages, Twittering, and, of course, talking and texting on their cell phones. It's no wonder they have no time to sit back, relax, put their feet up and read a good book. See my post yesterday about "busyness."

I am currently teaching Spanish at a community college. I sometimes ask my students about reading books. Many can't remember a single book they have read, except those they were assigned to read in high school. Of course there are always exceptions, those students who are always reading a book, sometimes so engrossed in their books that they sneak reading them in class. Fine with me! I would estimate that maybe 10-20% of my students read books.

All of this leaves me with the question: Who is reading all those new books being published?

I'll take on movies tomorrow. Have you gone to the video rental store recently and looked for a DVD to watch? There are plenty of new releases, but not too many that look interesting enough to spend a couple of hours watching.

Are you busy?

In our modern, fast-paced world it seems that people are busier than they were in the past, answering "urgent" e-mail, phone and text messages, attending to family, school, and work responsibilities, and taking care of urgent matters that arise daily. Is this a good thing? Maybe it's a good idea to stop from time to time and ask ourselves what we are so busy doing. In his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey shares some important insights on managing our time more effectively, spending less time on urgent, but not-so-important tasks and more time on more important, less urgent tasks. Covey writes about the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. We can go to work and get so caught up responding to e-mail, phone and text messages, and "putting out fires," that we don't have time to get to the important items on that must-do list that we prioritized for the day. Has this ever happened to you? Covey says that we can be very efficient at taking care of pressing, urgent, small things, but not be effective at doing the things we have identified as important in our personal and professional lives. Sometimes "busyness" can even be a form of work avoidance; focusing on small, easy-to-accomplish tasks to avoid tackling those more difficult and important projects that we keep putting off.

Next time you feel too busy and completely overwhelmed by life, school, or work, stop and ask yourself what you are so busy doing, and if you are busy doing the things that are important to you. Depending on your answer, you might want to re-think and prioritize the way you spend your time. In my own life, it has been my experience that I "find" a lot of extra time to do things when I focus on what is important to me.

Can you learn a language online?

Can you learn a language online? A year ago I would have said no. Based on my background in linguistics, understanding of first and second language acquisition, experience teaching Spanish and English, and my own firsthand experience learning Spanish at the university and then while living and teaching in Mexico, I would have said that the best way to learn a language is by living in a place where that language is spoken, becoming immersed in the language and culture 24/7. I still believe that. A next best method would be to learn the language in a classroom, interacting with a good language teacher and other students actually speaking, listening to, reading and writing the language. All languages are first spoken and then written. So, in my opinion, learning to communicate verbally in a language should be the primary goal of language instruction. So how could you learn a language online?

I've changed my thinking on this question. At the community college where I teach Spanish, I recently took a course for faculty on how to teach online. I am now teaching first and second semester Spanish courses online with an excellent, highly interactive and dynamic program which includes a variety of activities on speaking, listening, reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary, and culture. There is a discussion board on which students can interact with me and the other students in Spanish. The students record themselves speaking in Spanish, and I listen to them and provide feedback. They can even arrange online chats in Spanish with their classmates.

Learning a language online might not be the ideal way to learn a language, and it might not be for everyone, but I now believe that it can be an effective way to learn a second language. Many of my students work full time, so having to attend a class on a specific day and time can be a challenge. Being able to study online on their own schedule, any time and any place, can be a major advantage.

New Habits

I read somewhere that it takes about three weeks to establish a new habit. I started writing this blog earlier this spring with every intention of writing a short entry every day, without missing a single day. After seventeen days of writing daily, I stopped. February 23 was my last blog posting. So maybe this is an example of the "three-week rule." Maybe if I had just posted something for four more days, I would have arrived at that "magic" number of 21 days, and writing the blog daily would have become a new habit, a part of my daily routine. I'll give it another try, see if I can write for 21 consecutive days, and create a new, good habit. It would seem to be a simple thing to learn a new habit, but sometimes simple things are not as simple as they seem, especially when it comes to human behavior. Stand by.