Terra Extraneus

1975. Morelos, Zacatecas. Miguel and Maria and their 2-year-old, Angelina, live in Morelos, a village in Zacatecas, Mexico. Famous for its silver mines, Zacatecas was once one of the richest states of Mexico, but today more than half the population lives in poverty. Many jobs have moved from Mexico to China in recent years, and there are few opportunities in Zacatecas for young people like Miguel and Maria.

The young family has finally decided to follow in the steps of many Zacatecans. Moving to the United States will mean leaving relatives and their hometown behind, risking their lives to make the border crossing, and struggling to survive as illegal immigrants in the U.S. But there are no jobs in Morelos, and they have a daughter to provide for. Miguel and Maria’s dream is for Angelina to grow up with a better life than the one they have known.

1990. McAllen, Texas. Maria and 17-year-old Angelina have lived in Hidalgo County for 15 years. Miguel was killed in a farming accident 10 years ago. Maria works full-time as a waitress to provide for Angelina and two younger daughters. They don’t have much, but the life they have is better in many ways than what Maria knew growing up in Morelos.

Angelina may have been born in Mexico, but she has no memory of that place. She learned Spanish from her parents and still speaks it with her mom, but as a first-grader in McAllen public school, Angelina was a quick learner. Soon she was speaking English fluently. Among the first English words Angelina ever learned were the words of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Angelina knows that some people consider her an “illegal,” but her face turns red and her throat tightens when someone calls her a “Mexican.” The United States is the only home she has ever known.

This is a big year for Angelina. Last month she graduated from high school. Next month she is getting married. She is engaged to Ricardo, a member of the youth group of Iglesia Bautista, the bilingual Baptist church she has attended since a neighbor first invited her to Sunday School when she was 9. Ricardo works construction and Angelina works as a checker at the H-E-B grocery. Angelina plans to take classes two nights a week at the community college. Soon she will be married and start a family, and her dream is to give her children a better life than the one she has known.

2006. Dallas, Texas. Emma came along 11 months after Ricardo and Angelina were married. Fifteen years later, Emma is a freshman at a Dallas high school. Emma divides her time between girls basketball, digital photography, and instant messaging. Her favorite TV show is “American Idol,” although she can’t believe Taylor Hicks won. She loves Shakira, especially now that she’s finally recorded an album in English.

Like almost every Texan, Emma knows a little Spanish, including a few phrases she has picked up from her parents. But English is the only language Emma really knows. Her parents were born in Mexico, but neither of them have been back since they were toddlers. Emma has never been there.

Like most American teenagers, Emma has way too many other things to think about to be concerned with the country of her grandparents. She’s a good student, and she has a secret dream, one she hasn’t even told her mom. Emma hopes to be the first person in her family to earn a college degree.

2005. Washington, D.C. Five times in the past 11 years (1995, 1997, 1999, 2003, and 2005), a minority of far-right lawmakers have introduced the Citizenship Reform Act, which would do away with “birthright citizenship.” The doctrine of birthright citizenship guarantees citizenship to all children born in the U.S., except the children of diplomats. It is a right guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1868 to grant citizenship to freed slaves after the Civil War. Of course, the Constitution trumps any law passed by Congress. However, proponents claim that if the law were passed and brought to the Supreme Court, it might somehow pass the test of constitutionality.

Shockingly, according to one recent poll, 49% of American citizens say they agree with doing away with birthright citizenship. I have got to believe that many of those citizens have just not thought the issue through. If there are many citizens who really do understand the ramifications of this proposal – the tragic consequences it would have for children like Emma, children born and raised in our country who know no other home but America – it would break my heart.

It is one thing to debate whether Miguel and Maria were right or wrong to cross the border in the first place, and what we should do to secure our borders. But it is a much different question to propose that the solution is to deprive citizenship of children who become Americans exactly the same way almost all of the rest of us did – they were born and raised here.

There are valid points to weigh on both sides of the immigration debate. But when it comes to the children, there is nothing to debate. If we turn our backs on our children, children like Emma and millions of others whose only home has ever been the United States of America, then we cease to be the country to which Angelina and Emma have frequently pledged their allegiance. Remember that country — one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all? That should not be up for debate.

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My previous post is a review of Dustbury, one of Oklahoma’s best blogs, written by the inimitable Charles G. Hill. I intended to post that review to coincidence with Hill’s World Tour 06, which began two days ago on June 12.

Every summer Hill gasses up the car and hits the road to look for America. He burns 4,000 to 5,000 miles of highway exploring what he can in two to three weeks. Best of all, Hill invites his Dustbury readers to come along as he blogs each day from the road, complete with occasional photos.

Dustbury archives contain the reports from World Tours 2001-2005. On those various expeditions, Hill has traveled NW to Montana, N to North Dakota and Minnesota, NE as far as Maine, E to Virginia, SE to Georgia and S to Texas and Louisiana. Hill has a preference for the slower highways and out-of-the-way locations. His tours have mostly taken him back and forth across the Great Midwest and Deep South. Writes Hill:

I’ve traveled to forty-two states … I’ve driven enough miles to reach half a dozen times around the world. Even in the cases where I can’t say “Done that,” I can still often say “Been there.”

For World Tour 06, Hill mapped out a southbound route to Florida and back. For the first leg, Hill left OKC on Monday headed SE down Highway 3 toward Texarkana. He got as far Coalgate, Oklahoma, 114 miles from home, when World Tour 06 came to an abrupt halt.

I love Hill’s idea of driving the smaller highways. It’s not just about avoiding the traffic and tolls, but about taking your time and actually seeing America rather than just racing past it. Driving those old highways is like traveling back in time. Rural America along the old state highways hasn’t necessarily changed a whole lot in the last 50 years or so.

But small rural highways are not without hazards of their own. In particular, there is the wildlife. Just outside Coalgate, Hill had a collision with a deer. Bambi is dead. So is Sandy. Hill is apparently OK, although I think he’s still in shock. He’s back home, and he’s kept right on blogging, but he has had surprisingly little to say about his disappointing turn of events.

You’ve got to understand, this is the biggest news to hit Dustbury in a long time. For one thing, Hill is the kind of guy who gave his car a name and wrote a love letter to “her,” a Mazda 626 LX, when he first brought her home back in 2000. Yesterday, he posted a terse three-paragraph note titled, “She’s Dead.”

Furthermore, the World Tour must be about the biggest event of the year on the Dustbury activities calendar, so it must be a crushing blow to Dustbury’s citizenry for the tour to be canceled. In a post this morning, Hill comments on the Dodge Stratus rental he’s driving now:

This is the bottom-feeder of the line, with a nothing-special four-banger driving the front wheels. It’s an acceptable grocery-getter, but not the least bit amusing to drive, and while the seats are better than average, their adjustment range doesn’t include any position in which I’m comfortable.

Charles, we sure are sorry about your bad news. Sorry for you, and sorry for the rest of us, too. I was looking forward to being a vicarious participant in my first Dustbury World Tour, and hoped to bring a few TerraX readers along for the ride. But we’re glad you’re OK, and hopeful that there will be plenty more World Tours to come.

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Have you ever visited Dustbury, Oklahoma? Dustbury is a very real place just down the information highway, an unusual little world with a permanent population of 1. One eccentric, witty, irreverent, self-deprecating old coot named Charles G. Hill.

Dustbury is one of Oklahoma’s most popular blogs; it was voted the best-written blog in the 2005 Okie Blog Awards. I’ve been following Dustbury for a while now. I enjoy it a lot, and I added Dustbury to TerraX’s “Best of Okla. Blogs” some time ago.

Dustbury’s mayor, chief citizen and resident sage is Charles G. Hill, a middle-aged computer guru slash homespun philosopher. Hill has two adult children, two grandchildren and an ex-wife. Why hasn’t he remarried? “The level of desperation reported to exist among contemporary women is highly exaggerated.” Hill writes about many things, almost everything, including frequent observations about being single in the second half of life. Last week he wrote:

“Alone,” of course, does not equal “lonely.” But I’ve always believed that there’s a reason besides mere etymology that they share most of their letters.

Hill remains an Oklahoma Democrat long after most of the state has converted to GOP-ism. Sometimes he writes about politics, state and national, but he also serves up an eclectic mix of news, philosophy, music, poetry, computer tech notes – and a thousand other subjects. Among the numerous choices on the Dustbury menu is “The Vent,” a weekly column Hill has been writing for the last 10 years. That makes 488 Vent columns to date, and those columns alone make a drive to Dustbury worth the gas.

Hill is an eccentric. He still has his e-mail archives dating back to 1994. He has worn the same Casio watch for more than 25 years. He can tell you, in case you were wondering, the mathematical average of all of the zip codes at which he has ever lived. And, if you believe everything he says, at home Hill lives pretty much in the nude (Charles, too much information!), although he assures us that he suits up to do his lawn work.

Where is Dustbury? Hill is an Oklahoma City resident, but Dustbury is not confined to the city limits. “We want ritzy suburbia, but we know how hard it is to shake off the red clay of the country. Upscale, but still possessed by poverty: call it Dustbury — the dream home on the edge of nowhere.”

Here’s a short and clever 1997 piece introducing Dustbury, in which Hill manages in a few paragraphs to touch on the Trail of Tears, the Oklahoma Land Run, the Dust Bowl days, mentioning John Steinbeck and Walt Whitman along the way, and taking the obligatory potshot at the Daily Oklahoman. “What Is This Place Called Dustbury?”

This isn’t at all a bad place to be. The sun shines most of the time, and the feeling is laid-back; while wages are definitely on the low side, the cost of living is not disproportionately high; and for every single example of Oklahoma stupidity and venality you see in the media, I can show you a dozen examples of Oklahoma brightness and kindness. I’ve done a stint on the Left Coast and one on the Right, but just about half my life has been spent here among the Sooners, and for the most part, we get along just fine.

Dustbury’s archives go back to 2002, but the site contains articles dating back more than a decade, salvaged from previous Hill websites, and the site boasts: “founded: April 9, 1996.” Reading Dustbury is the kind of non-linear experience that exemplifies the way the Internet is supposed to work – but almost never does. A Dustbury visitor glances through Hill’s FAQ, where he clicks on a hyperlink to “mysterious people,” which mentions “She Who is Not To Be Named,” which clicks to another page that offers a poignant account of a heartbreak. And no buttons or links back or forward to any other page except the homepage. So the reader is forced to click back to where he started, ready to take another ride. Before long the Dustbury visitor has started several articles and finished none, doesn’t remember where he began or everything he has seen along the way – but he enjoyed the trip.

There’s nothing fictional about Dustbury. It may not be on the map, but it has a very real URL address, and I recommend a visit. The site gets more than 800 visitors a day, and has had more than 1 million visitors since 1999. Dustbury offers literally thousands of pages of good reading, with more served fresh daily. Dustbury is what a blog can become, when a talented writer with a keen wit pours his life into its creation for several years. As Michael Bates over at Batesline says, “Dustbury is the epitome of a blog … By comparison, other blogs are mere shadows on the wall of a cave.”

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I’m afraid we have been forced to change our comments policy at Terra Extraneus. Henceforth, the first comment that a reader makes on this blog will require moderation and approval. Subsequent comments by the same person will post immediately, without moderation.

This has become necessary because the spammers have turned vicious. It is only 9 in the morning, and I have already been forced to delete about 25 spam messages posted on Terra Extraneus this morning in the form of comments. It is obvious from the way these comments read that they are generated automatically by some evil spam program. Some of them contain obscene language, and most of them have links to objectionable websites. That’s the idea, I guess, to make us curious about who put up the comment, so we will click back to their site.

Rod Heggy and I welcome all legitimate comments, from both friends and strangers, from both people who agree and who disagree with what we have to say. But we are forced to go to first-comment moderation to fight back against the spammers.

If you attempt to post a legitimate comment and run into any problems, I apologize in advance for your inconvenience. Please send me an email and I will correct the problem.

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