Just Kids Wins National Book Award—Woolly Mammoth Reflects On Life And Loss

As I noted a few days ago, Extinct, a Woolly Mammoth, is the newest contributor to Texas Liberal.

Extinct has been reading of late  Just Kids by the performer and artist Patti Smith.

This book tells the story of Ms. Smith’s youthful friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe.

Mr. Mapplethorpe, a well-known photographer, died of AIDS at age 43 in 1989.

As a Woolly Mammoth, Extinct knows all about the passing of time and about the value of longtime relationships.

Longtime friendships offer a measure of reply to death.

There is at least an illusion of permanence when someone knows us as we change with the years.

There is also memory.

The depth of memory when we know a person very well after many years allows us to transcend the passing time.

Just Kids was recently selected as the winner of the National Book Award.

I suggest that you read Just Kids. Just Kids is an instructive book about life, relationships, and death.

Extinct feels the same way about this book. Extinct has seen a lot of life and death.

In The End, We All Go Back To Where We Came From

Above is a picture I took today here in Houston of the grave of Vidal Ramirez Garcia.

The grave says that Mr. Garcia was a private first class in the army during World War II.

I don’t know anything about Mr. Garcia. But it seems that he was a man of Hispanic origin who served the United States in a time of war.

Today we hear stories about people who have been in the United States for many generations being told to go back where they came from.

In the end, we all back to where we came from.

We have a choice as individuals.

We can go on about if the President is from Kenya and blame immigrants for our own problems, or we can be welcoming to our fellow human beings as they seek a better life in a tough world.

This is the choice we have.

This does not mean we can’t have laws regarding immigration or that those laws should not be enforced.

What it does mean though, is that we allow anger to guide our public policy we lose any chance of being a decent people.