Guest Book

ChrisR--I'm not so sure. The communities are all ready divided to a certain degree. And why is that necesarrily a bad thing, anyway? I seem to find that a lot of people seem to enjoy mixing with other cultures. We have a festival at the Hindu Temple nearby in the fall. They have a lot of Indian food and music, and it's mostly attended by Indian or Pakistani (Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs) folks--and everyone seems to enjoy what is basically a fall carnival without caramel corn... You can say similar stuff about the Gaspirilla Fest in Tampa. Sure, it's mostly Spanish, but I've never had a problem there. Or Chinese New Year in pretty much any Chinatown in any major city that has a Chinatown (NY, LA, SF, etc) . Or St Patrick's Day in Boston, NYC, or Savannah..... Hey, look---a great many of us had forebearers that originated from places that didn't speak English (including us Irish types, lol). Any of y'alls blood of Polish or Russian or Italian or French or Hungarian or German or Norwegian or Japanese or Isreali descent (or something) way back when your great grandparents boated over? Yeah, that's what I thought....And you know what? I bet some of you have a grandparent that doesn't speak English--or speaks it poorly. Think about that. That doesn't mean that if they don't assimilate that they're not good citizens. And there's tons of those type of people here--and they're not just Hispanics--which seems to be what all the fuss is about. All that said--yes, obviously, if you live here, it's best to speak fluent English. But you know what? It ain't the end of the world if you don't. Horace EAPFP