Every once in a while our little town surprises us.
Who would have thought with a population of next to nothing we could generate a million and a half votes for a girl who sang in a language half of us can’t understand?
But we did and it feels kind of good that Jacky Collazo could count on her home town when push came to shove.
This is a special town we told her.
They have your back.
All ways.
All that is ever asked Jacky is that someday, someone from your home town will need a hand up.
Pay it forward.
Its funny that soon it will be 20 years since Independence Day came out.
Seems like yesterday only it doesn’t.
We have not changed all that much in 20 years.
But then again our kids have.
The 12 year old girl who connived with her best friend to casually stroll to the golf course while Will Smith was playing is now a mother of two and a book editor/translator/publisher.
We wonder if in the near distant future she will relate to her children her adventure when Hollywood came to town.
There are lessons and there are lessons in the mess that is Baltimore.
The first lesson is that everything people said about Ferguson cannot be applied to Baltimore. Ferguson politics was in white hands backed up by a white police force. Baltimore had a black mayor and a mostly black city council. About half of its police force is black.
Yet Baltimore is burning.
The black parts of it are anyway.
Which brings us to the second lesson.
Nobody in their right mind is going to spend a dime in Baltimore because no one will be able to trust a city that gives rioters a “space to destroy”
If that quote was taken out of context it is regrettable.
But that and 50 cents will buy you a cup of coffee.
Probably not now in Baltimore.
Maybe not ever.
There are sections of Baltimore that are still burnt out from the riots of 1968.
How long will the new vacants lots created by this round of black rage be around?