
On the other hand, Texas is hot in the summer (and I mean hot—maybe not hot like Arizona is year-round, but really hot in July and August). There's a lot of poverty across the state and not a lot of social services to alleviate it. And those friendly people, especially the fair-skinned ones, can be downright unfriendly or worse when someone's complexion is darker or their language accented with anything other than a twang.
Two stories in the Times today caught my attention and reinforced my contradictory opinions: the first, about wind farming West Texas, made me proud of my birthplace; the other, about Bible classes in public schools, made me shake my head in disbelief once again.


At the same time, however, the lack of curriculum they provide actually leaves these courses open to being a true educational experience. I've no doubt that the zealots who got this approved can't imagine that there's any way to teach these classes other than how they would do so in their Sunday Schools—that's the myopic result of being certain that yours is the One-True-Religion. They probably don't even know any Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindi, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, Wicans, Druids or Native American spiritualists (or at least they don't think they do). Suppose a teacher with a different agenda were to get control of one of these classes? Or, worse still, someone who was willing to keep an open mind about spirituality and belief?! For most evangelicals, that's the most terrifying scenario of all: kids capable of thinking for themselves. Clearly, if that were to happen, those souls are lost to secular humanism forever.
2 comments:
found your blog on a whim - my maiden name is Rowell and I'm visiting relatives deep in the heart of hot summertime Texas - relying on sketchy hotel wifi in Longview. I spend a good deal of time en route schooling my 3 kids about keeping an open mind about their cousins beliefs and reminding them we are visitors to a foreign culture (we're from San Fran) and to be respectful. It's always an educational trip for them!
Thanks for coming by, Mary—I'm sorry it's taken me so long to respond... It's like those e-mails still in my inbox that I really WILL respond to when I have a few spare minutes because I don't want to just dash something off will-he-nil-he... and then several weeks (or even months) have passed and I still haven't. Anyway, enough of that. I'm glad you visited and hope you'll visit often!
It used to surprise me (and still surprises many of my friends) that Rowell is a relatively common name; I think it's because most of my friends know only me or my family. And yet, I've never lived in a city where I was the only Rowell in the phone book—frome Fort Worth (where I grew up), to Denton (most of college), to Austin (a year of grad school) and now in NYC (21 years and counting). I don't know how many Rowells there are in New York now (this being 2008, we don't have a phone book around anymore), but the last time I looked there were around 20 or so—and if I'm related to any of them at all, it's very distantly!
The most renowned Rowells of which I know are Victoria (an American television actor), George Rowell (a British theater historian) and Galen Rowell (a American photographer).
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