spudbudd

In the six years I worked with you you earned my respect, and in the 20+ years I've known you you've earned my love. We played cards together every week; we lost equally well and often. We talked for hours about minutia; we tripped through Juarez like characters from some modern day SATYRICON. We slept on each others couches, we shared our stories and our dreams; our hopes and our histories. Never took a class from you, but you taught me; never got to tell you some things, but I know you know 'em, anyway. Like Grisman and Garcia,we were, compa...challenging each other to try new things while we shared our love for the people, the land, and the art. Still don't know Noam Chomsky from Norm Crosby, still don't know my Derrida from my derriere...but I know the world is a lesser place for your not being in it, carnal. Say "Hola" to mi Angelita, Big Daddy, Louis, Jon, and the others...I'll be showin' you guys my mad new poker skills soon enough.

That Bowzer is too cool. A lot of people forget that Sha Na Na played at Woodstock.

LOL...last night I fell asleep on the couch w/ the TV playing, and when I woke up Bowzer (the real life, present day Bowzer) was on the tube hawking an old school CD collection. Seen that boy lately? I could say so much...but it would be lacking.

The voice hasn't changed a whit, however. Nor the hair.

He was (playing?)a supporting redneck on a "Reno 911" episode...remember the one where Garcia and Junior travel down to help build a section of "border defense"?

The racist/xenophobic aspects of this argument are always well understood, though seldom voiced. And to fail to understand the transitory nature of borders, and the concomitant refusal by those who live and work on either side of such arbitrary and imaginary lines to acknowledge them (except by force), is to demonstrate a profound ignorance of both borders and people.

Does the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and the boundaries it establishes,thus justify Norteno wall building as a defense against invading Anglo's, who seem to have just run wild ever since we let "just a few" settle here?

Why build walls when bridges would work better?

I had a very good, and very dear friend who was very big and very black. He actually looked very much like a gorilla and, in fact, he went by the name "Gorilla" although he was one of the sweetest, most genuine, and most gentle men you would ever want to know. I know that he would have been hurt and insulted if some "sensitive" person had insisted on calling him by his given name instead of Gorilla.My point? In this day and age, get over it. Try to see us all as equals whether in regards to compliments, insults, or whatever. By bending over backwards to be "sensitive" you are actually encouraging and perpetuating racial divisions.

Those type of "harmless" nicknames are most often used by those who would bully with words those who by nature are less aggressive and by those who seek affirmation of their own superiority by diminishment of a "friend". I have a beautiful friend who calls himself "Fat Larry". I told him when I first met him I would not feel right calling him anything other than just plain ol' "Larry". Years later, while semi-drunk, he admitted to me how he hated the "Fat" part of his name, and how he had only adopted it in a preemptive way.

There are nicknames that hurt and nicknames that don't, and, as noted above common sense and good manners will always show us the difference.