Odds and Ends commentary

TCU Bookstore fire update:

When I last checked, the preliminary estimate on the cost to repair was 1 million dollars. The cause seems to have been a blowtorch that was used in the interior, which caused part of the roofing material to smolder, which then later became the fire. No word yet on what happens next. The walls are still up, but I think that it might be better to just demolish the whole thing and start anew. That's going to take longer, of course, but they might end up with something better than what they had initially planned.

Illegal Immigrants demonstrations

I meant to comment on this sooner, but I wanted to see how it played out. I, for one, was glad to see that such a large group of Hispanics (I am Hispanic, for those of you who don't already know) go speak out about something. We usually are too quiet and keep to ourselves, even when we should speak out. Perhaps the demonstrations earlier in the week will help the Hispanic community to be more bold in protesting outrages and injustices.

The only thing I wasn't too happy about was the fact that so many high school kids actually used the demonstrations more as an excuse to skip school rather than being there to protest. Also, we are talking about people many of whom are in the country illegally, which does not make it easy to support their desire for "rights." Imagine breaking into someone's home, and then expecting to be treated as a member of the family. Illegal immigrants are right to raise certain issues about how many of them work at jobs that others wouldn't usually take, but their messages would have a great deal more "punch" if they also went through the process of legalizing their status, either as "guest workers" or as the start of the process of becoming American citizens. I will comment more here on this later, but I wanted to start out my views on this issue before any more time passed.

Baseball is coming!

Ah yes, baseball begins as of Monday! Even though the Texas Rangers historically do not accomplish as much as they could because of inadequate pitching, each new season always starts out with hope. Right now, I would settle for some sort of post-season play. I am not so sure that I want Roger Clemens. He has had a recent tendency to get injured, and I don't see any reason why that would change just because he signs with the Rangers. Better to just go with what we have, rather than risk getting used to Clemens only for him to bail on us (thus disrupting the chemistry) because of injury. Besides, we've been let down before by such pitching "saviors" (Chan Ho Park). I will definitely be commenting often about the Rangers here as the season progresses. :-)