Didn't see this posted, but we made the NY Times.

The 'Valley Girls' of the Rio Grande

Well, that was interesting. I know Emily Gurwitz's dad, attorney in McAllen and a good guy. But those interviews were tough reading.

Everyone here has a sad story.

I grew up with the Gurwitz's girls dad, that is a decent and very smart and driven family. Ironic that out of the whole RGV, she gets picked by the NYT.

In any place in the US nowadays if you look around you will find sad and bad stories, they are everywhere. For every sad and bad story there is probably a good one, or maybe a half of one or something. I was eating dinner the other night in a decent restaurant in McAllen when a guy comes up to me and says "RGV AG?" I am like "Yep, que paso?", no idea who the guy was. Well it was a guy that I worked with in Maquila's about 20 years ago, he was an operator and later went up the ladder some. I ended up leaving for Central America and lost touch with him and many others.

In the interim the guy ended up in the states and got residency papers, he is a very successful finish carpenter now and has 6 employees working for him. He is doing well with a daughter about to graduate Pan Am and another one a freshman. So there are good stories too.

I own property in Wilkinson County, Mississippi. After spending a little time there the last few years I know why the family left. Hijo de su, that place sucks gorilla ass. I would take the Valley any day of the week and twice on Tuesdays over that area, both LA and MS. The stories of teen pregnancy and dysfunction (drugs, no fathers, incarcerated family, poverty, and general mayhem) run rampant there. As I have always said, any place is what you make of it. I recently spent time in Haiti, an extended time and I was not on a Seagull missionary mission. Talk about a sheethole? Trump was generous. But even there I saw and experienced good things. The Valley ain't that bad, but it ain't for sissies.