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These folks aren't waiting for change, they're making it happen

December 2009

Having just graduated from the University of North Texas in June 1965, I headed east to Washington, D.C., for a few years. I wanted to experience a place and culture that were different from where I'd been raised--and to absorb all the lessons I could about the new American politics emerging as my generation came of age in the sixties and seventies, including the progressive populist lessons to be found in such transformative movements as civil rights, antiwar activism, farmworker justice, feminism, and environmentalism, and the Ralph Nader model of corporate muckraking and public-interest advocacy.

It was a heady time for a 22-year-old Texas bumpkin to arrive in the nation's capital, for D.C. was an exciting, creative place politically. However, the city suffered from a serious, almost terminal cultural flaw: there was no Mexican food or barbeque worth eating. You could take the boy out of Texas, but you could not take Texas out of the boy, and I yearned for a real taste of home. Then it came.

The best Christmas present I ever received was from my parents--a cardboard box filled with a fantastic assortment of BBQ sauces, Cajun spices, chili mixings, tostados, salsa...and, of course, the essential liquid binder for all of the above: a 6-pack of Lone Star beer.

Today my favorite meals are those made up of an array of small plates with many different tastes, such as an Italian seafood misto, a 20-dish Turkish "salad" (like I once had in an Arab village in Israel), a Greek mezze, or just a selection of appetizers from any interesting American restaurant. I like variety.

So in this season of many flavors (Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Eid al-Adha, Winter Solstice, etc.), we're serving up a Lowdown misto for you this month--a holiday basket of tidbits, oddities, advice, and whatnots to ease you into 2010 and our next decade of grassroots activism. [ read more ]