A comment from Stan
We note a powerful letter from our friend José Pérez in this morning’s Brownsville Herald on the irregularity of building permits in recent (recent meaning the last five years or so) construction and the consequent problems. We heartily recommend Mr. Pérez’s letter to your attention.
Mr. Pérez provides us with as concise [...]

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A comment from Stan
This morning’s Brownsville Herald brings the news that Betsy Price, former KMBH board member and a person deeply experienced in public radio, has stepped forward to begin to organize a new entity to sponsor public radio in the Valley, including new local productions.
We welcome Ms. Price’s enterprise and offer whatever support an [...]

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A notice
Dancing on the head of a pin,
As passé as drinking gin,
Who you nailin’ down again?
The elite, they’s not like me,
the elite, why we let them be?
Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, has a thing or two to say about the denigration and the most common misuse in political discourse of the [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg
from Ancient Letters (1987)
 
After the last trick had been turned in the game,
The bumpers drunk, the galley fallen apart;
The lying maid having drunk to a different name
A cup for the journey, so to speak, at the start;
One wonders whether that harried dame ever thought
In terms of that fat man she and [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg
 
 
One wonders whom the next elected
Criminal for these troubled times
Will the feckless public, suspect,
Lever in the long direction
(Between the last war and the next)
We take in our quotidian crimes;
How long our matrons skirt the leering
Lawless on main ways to market;
How long our aged folk in fear
Imprisoned at their portals peering
On them [...]

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A suggestion from Stan
Add your clerihews as comments! Raucus up the town! We’ll front page ‘em at the end of the week.
As of 8:45 pm, THURSDAY, May 29, THIRTY-SIX carefully counted new clerihew plus SIX other quatrains of high merit have appeared! Keep ‘em coming!
Thomas Thornburg introduced himself here with “Ten Clerihew and Something Else.” [...]

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A nostalgic comment by Stan Raines
Hillary Clinton’s recent comment that her husband’s clinching his first nomination in June of 1992 and of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination in June, 1968 was peculiar not only because it was in poor taste in the second part, but because no one has noted that, in former times, it was usual for the [...]

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A poem by John Goggin
Ms. Hillary Clinton
seems hell bent on
staying the course
but it looks like she’s beating a dead horse.

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From Gene’s Notebook

Vehicle lovers and developers, who long have had plans to turn the railroad tracks from the B&M Bridge out to Wal-Mart on Alton Gloor into a toll or regular road, are still active.
Texas State Transportation officials will hold a explanatory meeting next Thursday (May 29th) from 6-8 p.m. at ITECC.
I have wanted the [...]

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A piano blues by Stan Raines

You call me up at nine
Ask me about a bottle of wine
You’re gonna serve to your guests
But I’m not invited.
So I crashed the party anyway
Then I find I don’t have much to say
‘Bout many things beyond whether
You and me are ever gonna be together.
And you know that I love you.
And [...]

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An advertisement

Come and support your rights. You only have the rights you exercise.
Your first right is the right to think and then to express your thoughts.

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A comment from Stan

It appears that Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions have come to their end, her protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. She still has a loyal base that will quite probably make a show of it for her in West Virginia, the Washington Post says this morning, but Obama is likely to win a larger [...]

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by John Goggin
Pat Buchanan
thinks that he can
still pontificate.
He should stay home and masturbate.
The Right Reverend Wright, when
he was told to sit tight, then
incurred public pillory;
although he has a life-long friend in our Lady Hillary.
Chris Matthews
discussing issues
always shouts.
I never know what the fuck he’s talking about.
Monsieur Colbert
finds himself quite “cher”.
As a master of smarm
I [...]

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A comment from Stan
Following up on a recent column on the Pennsylvania primary by Frank Rich of the New York Times in which he pointed out that the media generally are ignoring the Republican primaries, we note this morning that in the North Carolina primary yesterday, McCain is a loser in at least two ways. [...]

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A comment from Stan
The lead editorial in this morning’s Brownsville Herald, concerning an alleged rebound in the Valley’s real estate market, acknowledges that the current banking system (if you can call it that given that the the development of subprime lending means that the so-called bankers had given up due diligence) boldly asserts that one [...]

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A fragment by Stan
Oh, the widening gyre and slouching beast–
       Who was it called them out?
Never more than twinkling eyes and ribald laugh
       With old Jane’s jokes passing over many a head,
Not heard by many outside that golden circle
       Thought seriously to be in search of a center.
Other days had their bitter tears: the odd [...]

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We were pleased to see a letter in The Brownsville Herald today from Tony Lehmann, Jr. decrying the condition of Pablo Kisel Boulevard and the expense of maintaining it. We’ll fire off a missive letting folks at the Herald know what we’ve found on the topic. Perhaps the Herald will take up the topic with [...]

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An opinion by Stan Raines
The politicians seem to have noticed, perhaps three or four years late as usual, that there’s a problem with fuel prices: They are going up and there seems to be no end in sight. People have been grappling with it for a while, though, not only at the gas station, but [...]

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A note for writers
The UTPA Summer Creative Writing Institute is in its fifth year. It is a one week intensive program offered with two weeks of independent study offering courses in poetry writing, fiction and non-fiction writing by UTPA accomplished authors and professors. Starting Monday June 2, and ending Friday June 6, 2008, students [...]

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The Valley International Poetry Festival Continues for Saturday
Events scheduled for today include:
Registration
9 - 6 pm
Narciso Martínez Cultural Arts Center
Potluck Brunch
9 - 10:30 am
Narciso Martínez Cultural Arts Center (Private - Registered Poets Only)
Workshop: Tribute to the late raúlsalinas
10:30 - 11 am
Narciso Martínez Cultural Arts Center; Presenters: Joe and Rosa Pérez, Rumbo al’ Anacua
Readings: Narciso Martínez Cultural [...]

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I had a pleasant conversation a little while ago with Ms. Estela Von Hatton, Brownsville City Secretary, on my pending requests for information on the construction and costs of Pablo Kisel Boulevard. She listed the dates that she had e-mailed Public Works on the matter, and they corresponded nicely with records of my own [...]

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An opinion
I’m sorry to come back to Brownsville’s streets as a topic. The poetry and literary discussions on the site are much more to my liking and the readership seems to have broadened out and deepened quite a bit since the shift.
I started this series—not knowing it would be a series or at least thinking [...]

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The Sunday Times Magazine ran an incredible piece on the ethics of going green–with a couple of pointed suggestions that go beyond Al Gore’s, “Well, you could change your light bulbs.” Click above to check it out.

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When five retired generals publicly criticized the war in Iraq in 2005, the administration put together a team of their own retired officers with ties as to the businesses benefiting from the war to make an answer. New York Times writer David Barstow describes the psy-ops directed at your head here. If you missed it, [...]

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In Brownsville
In Brownsville did the Chertoff a mighty wall decree
Its ramparts tall and gleaming with turrets jeweled blue and green
Built of sturdy stone quarried from la Cerro de la Silla
And set in place by los manos de muchos albiñiles;
Many hands, many days and nights stretched to weeks and months,
Oh, how they labored and the wall [...]

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