Last night at dinner we were celebrating the lunar new year with some traditional Korean rice cake soup. I’m not entirely sure how the discussion started, but we were talking about how times were harder a while ago for minority children and he busts out with a comparison to “The Little Rock Nine“. My wife and I sat there slack-jawed for a moment and then she asks him, “How do you know about The Little Rock Nine?” To which he casually responds, “Oh, my teacher was telling us about it.”  Now, I don’t know about you, but I did not learn about The Little Rock Nine when I was 7 years old.  I’m pretty sure I was still learning about how rocks were hard and water was wet, but things are a little fuzzy from those days. Anyway, so he goes on and on and he has a surprising level of depth and understanding of what was going on back then and why. He asked very pointed questions about segregation and asked whether our families lived through that time (as it happens, only 1 of his 4 grandparents grew up in America during the 50’s and most of the 60’s).

My wife got an autographed copy of Terrence Roberts’ new book since her uncle and Mr. Roberts are friends, so she pulled it out and showed The Boy some pictures.  After dinner, The Boy decided to write Mr. Roberts a letter, which will be going out in the mail tomorrow.  But we wanted to keep a copy of it for posterity.  I think it shows surprising astuteness and empathy.  Here it is. I guess you get to read it before Terrence Roberts does:

AndrewLetter2TerrenceRoberts3

Due to last week’s Snowpocalypse here in Seattle, the streets before Christmas were essentially unpassable.  UPS and Fedex had a particularly difficult time getting packages delivered, which resulted in a number of Christmas presents not being under the tree on the 24th/25th.

We made do with the Santa gifts by me going out and buying one more gift each for the kids.  So the “Santa Crisis” was averted, but only just barely.  Thankfully, the kids seem to like their replacement Santa gifts.  However, the gifts from us and my parents hadn’t arrived by then, as did various gift packages from my wife’s side of the family.  Some of those arrived on the 27th, so we ended up with a second Christmas then.

Since then, packages that should have been delivered a week ago have been trickling in and a FEW HAVE NOT YET BEEN DELIVERED.  It’s basically been a full week since Christmas and a good 4 days since the roads have been totally cleared.

The city plan for snow has been a total disaster.  And it’s almost acceptable NOT to have a plan in place for a situation like this, but what is NOT acceptable is to not put an emergency plan together that takes action when a situation like this occurs.  This is not about Christmas gifts (though, that is not a trivial issue where kids are concerned), this is also about city services, public safety, and now with the garbage piling up, public health.

These days it’s not favorable being a free market supporter.  My alma mater is famous for its free market ideals and its spiritual leader, Milton Friedman. 

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