Back Again to West Va., Firearms, Latin America

Have been away from the internet and DC for a couple of weeks, visiting my son in W Va. I had not seen him for 4 ½ months after Jiffy Lube ruined his car motor by leaving the cap off the oil pan after an oil change. A friend took me to W Va. but by the time I was ready to leave, my son had acquired a vintage Chevy van to transport me home. While we were together, we traveled in his “new” old van to visit a former fellow Peace Corps volunteer with me in Honduras, now a retired Spanish teacher. [A lot trouble posting again this time, so please excuse oddities.]

Here below is the new "old" van in which we traveled.

My son is an animal lover. Here are some more of his pals, including a black cat which he feeds tuna, but which has been trained to never enter his apartment, even when he leaves the door open. However, dogs are his main animal buddies.

 

 

 

I consider myself bilingual, as I’m comfortable speaking either Spanish or English. The retired Spanish teacher friend we visited in W Va. is likewise comfortable in either language.

Another bilingual friend is dedicated to retaining the purity and grammatical integrity of Spanish in the US despite the onslaught of English all around. As a member of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language, he submits periodic humorous, sometimes ridiculous, examples of anglicized pronouncements in the US Spanish press and advertising. While he may have embarked on a noble effort, still, maintaining the purity of Spanish in a country where English predominates seems like a lost cause. Interestingly enough the USA (including Puerto Rico) is the nation with the highest number of Spanish speakers after Mexico, more even than in Spain, the mother country.

Maybe this is just a hunch that needs further exploration, but since many of Alec Baldwin’s staff had walked off the film set in protest, I wonder if someone might have surreptitiously put a real bullet in the gun he fired in a deliberate effort at sabotage? It’s something to be explored, although there were apparently previous gun mishaps on the set. Why make so many movies with gun themes anyway? Why glorify gun use?

The 74, Record-High Gun Violence Sweeps The Country, More than 1000 Kids Killed in 2021

Firearms proliferation in the US makes domestic terrorism that much more deadly. Domestic terrorism now has become a greater threat here than foreign terrorism, something always aided and abetted by Donald Trump, but not due totally to his influence. Rather, he seems to be more an expression and embodiment of the frustrations and grievances already being felt within a segment of the polity and magnified by social media.   

Nov. 28 is election day in Honduras and thank goodness that Juan Orlando Hernández will no longer be in office.

AP, Gang boss in Haiti threatens to kill abducted missionaries

 

NBC News, ‘We know terrible things can happen:’ Cuba opposition leader vows national march

In defiance of Cuba's government, a young artist who has emerged as one of the country's leading opposition leaders vowed that he and others are moving forward with national protests planned for Nov. 15. “We know we can go to prison, we know terrible things can happen," Yunior García, 39, told NBC News via WhatsApp messages about the planned demonstration to demand civil liberties in the communist country. "We are already living them.”

HuffPost, How Spanish-Language Radio Helped Radicalize A Generation Of Miami Abuelos

MIAMI — Virginia’s mom has parroted a number of lies in the last year: The 2020 presidential election “was stolen, of course.” Antifa and Black Lives Matter share responsibility for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Joe Biden is a pedophile. Disagree? Then Virginia’s mother would say you’re probably a communist.

Virginia, a 58-year-old Cuban immigrant who lives in Broward County, north of Miami, says that many of her mother’s radical views stem from the same source: misinformation on regional Spanish-language talk radio. To her growing dismay, Virginia says her mamá, 79, is an avid listener, with particularly strong allegiance to right-wing commentators on Radio Mambí, Miami’s leading Cuban-exile station.

Reuters, Human Rights Watch says Cuba arbitrarily abused, arrested protesters in July

Cuban prosecutor warns dissident leaders against November protests HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban prosecutors on Thursday summoned dissident leaders from across the country who have called for protests on Nov. 15 over curbs to civil rights, warning them against convening the rallies under penalty of the law. The protest leaders, organized by a Facebook group called Archipelago, have called on Cubans to demonstrate for the right to peaceful protest and an amnesty for imprisoned government opponents. The group says it has some 20,000 members, many of whom live outside the country. The Cuban government last week denied permission for the protest, saying Archipelago had links with "subversive organizations" and an "open intention of changing the political system in Cuba."

 

[Three Spanish-language ads this time around]

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