Whirlwind.

You can't imagine how freaky only 3 or 4 trucks showing up at the port of Long Beach is unless you've been stuck in traffic headed for the Vincent Thomas at 3 in the afternoon or 9-ish in the morning. Well, maybe you can. But it's fantastic.

One of the many stories about it--one of the less insulting.


"The New Colossus" -- Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"


Frankly, as long as that's what we've got posted at one of our borders. . .

Anyway, I'm not going to go into that any further, here. At the moment. I wound up going off happily at the delightful blog of Joe. My. God.--more than I'd planned, because there was an interesting comment left there. His post was friendly--I was just going to make the note that we're also ALL immigrants, another thing that keeps getting left out of this discussion. Irish Need Not Apply, for instance, came around when the *other* European groups thought the *Irish* were substandard and didn't deserve to pursue the "American Dream" and shouldn't be allowed to take *their* jobs. So the Irish worked. . .building. . railroads. And got sent off to war. With the exploited Chinese and Black and Hispanic populace. Which I'm sure the English and German and Italian families who'd been there a few generations longer and had proper work in shops and government were all clamoring to do. (Blazing Saddles: "All right, we'll give some land to the niggers and the chinks, but we don't want the Irish.. . .")

I should've probably saved it for here, and posted a proper entry. But, eh.

I don't know that my brain's in that kind of space. I'm torn between posting my half finished fanfic smut (which I intend to do over here, at my 'commenting' journal if I do, which I've been using way more than I intended, already [EDIT: Four fics are now posted, one X-Men, two Farscape, and a hockey fic]) and talking about my brother. Which I'd do here.

Lucky you, huh?

So.

My brother's going to be hospitalized. Institutionalized. Here, I think (though that's only just about the half of it). Until he "gets better." 3 weeks? 4, 5, maybe 6. . .

I guess we'll see.

So. Um. We don't know if visiting is going to be allowed. Or how soon it'll start. Anything, really.

All I know is UCLA. And that it's important, and they think it's necessary.

So I'm a little scared, you know?