Observations From the Beach

A few observations from the beach and nearby environs.

There were a lot of Latinos at the beach. Way more than I noticed when I was there in 2016. I remarked on this to my daughter and she said, “well, it's free and they can all come.” That is a likely truth. I pondered on this and decided that is a quality that most of us have forgone since we grew up. When we were kids our families did the same things. We went swimming in the creek, picnics wherever we could find a spot, gatherings at our homes where the grownups would chat and kids would play into the night. This is not a bad thing. This is something that we should return to. I do not find it plausible to criticize those people for being family oriented and thrifty. We should look inward before we try to find fault with them.

It could be that some of the natives find it uncomfortable to mingle with the Latinos given our fear of anything different from ourselves. It is more plausible that they do not unduly fear mingling with us.

I don't know where they came from. Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, etc. It may be they've never had access to a beach and enough safety to gather in numbers. We should think about that before we criticize them for fleeing the danger and poverty of their homes. We should think about our boundless good fortune because most of us did nothing to deserve it other than be born here. An accident of birth left those people with danger that most of us would find intolerable and would flee also.

Much of the hardship in those countries is a result of the actions of of our government to make available to our corporations the natural resources of those countries. We have overthrown elected governments and installed dictators who would do our bidding. If you would like to have a few names just ask.

My daughter was amazed that the children of the Latinos were playing in parking lots unsupervised and walking down the middle of the streets. Now, this may be a little overboard but one should consider that they came from places where they lived in huts, didn't have enough food, girls were raped and boys were drafted into the local gangs who ran roughshod over the residents. This must seem like the Garden of Eden to them. What's to fear? Unfortunately, give them a generation or so and they will likely be just as unappreciative as the rest of us.

We could learn a thing or two from our new compatriots.